Family Values

This chapter discusses how the long-term success of converts required reworking relationships with preconversion families and lives. Pentecostal rupture with the unconverted world in practice was not ever complete. Converts' success hinged on the uncertain prospect of exchanging spiritual capital gained in the ministry for the local currency of their fragile families. Ironically, those converts who had more resources before conversion were often those who could best capitalize on their new Christian relationships, their identities and authority both inside and outside of the ministries. Thus, the radical egalitarianism of each saved soul's worth was continually undercut by differential access in the present material world.