Negotiating Respect: Pentecostalism, Masculinity, and the Politics of Spiritual Authority in the Dominican Republic

"Negotiating Respect" is an ethnographically rich investigation of Pentecostal Christianity--the Caribbean's fastest growing religious movement--in the contemporary Dominican Republic.

Within the context of urban poverty in a barrio of Villa Altagracia, Brendan Jamal Thornton considers the role of religious identity in the lives of young male churchgoers who navigate conversion as a transformative means of status acquisition, authority, and transition out of gang life. Thornton shows that conversion offers both spiritual and practical social value because it provides a strategic avenue for prestige and an acceptable way to transcend personal history.