Abstract
Pentecostalism (PC) is the most prolific branch of American evangelical Christianity (Jacobsen 2003) as it has been able to provide to its adherents, subcultures and collective identities that bestow meaning and belonging (Smith 1998). PC arose from Methodist and Baptist branches of Christianity at the end of the 19th century (Blumhofer 1993) and was involved in adjusting millions of migrants to U.S. city life (Synan 1997). Because PC has “straddled the race line in ways that most other American religious movements did not” (Jacobsen 2003: 260), it is significant to consider its wide appeal by analyzing how it manifests itself in local ways. Furthermore, if PC can distinguish itself while directly engaging the cultures it interacts with (Robbins 2004), how does it become appealing to the five million Latinos in the U.S. who consider themselves pentecostal (Sanchez 2003)? My attempt is to ascertain the type and extent of influence that Latino culture exerts on the general pentecostal model by considering the language, traditions, concepts, and practices of a local congregation mostly composed of firstgeneration migrants from Guatemala, Mexico, and various other Spanish-speaking nations. I seek to understand how PC transforms along different contexts while focusing on the relation of religion and culture through two pressing themes: Latino culture and gender.