Self-othering in the testimonials of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in Madrid

Introduction

The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) is a Brazilian Pentecostal church of the third wave (Freston, 1993: 95), also known as Brazilian Neo-Pentecostalism (Mariano, 2012). Dissident members of the New Life Church, who wanted a more democratic message that included people from poor neighborhoods (Lehmann, 1996: 122), founded the UCKG in 1977 in Brazil, more specifically in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Bishop Edir Macedo, one of the founding fathers of the church, has been its main leader since the UCKG’s early years. The church grew exponentially during its first few decades, spreading to almost every part of the world. There are temples in most Latin American countries, North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, although the church’s message tends to be stronger in Lusophone countries such as Brazil, Portugal, and Angola. The UCKG owns several radio stations and the second-largest TV channel in Brazil (Birman and Lehmann, 1999; Ribeiro and Pinto, 2007); the latter has come into conflict with other media outlets, especially in its home country.

Academic studies of the UCKG generally agree that its main characteristics are prosperity theology (Mariano, 1996; Nolivos, 2012) and spiritual warfare (Mariz, 1999; Oliva, 2007; Oro, 2005). The former is the belief that members should give their money to the church, with absolute faith and devotion, and that God will return this investment, as promised in the Bible. ¹ The latter relates to a constant struggle against demonic forces, which makes the Devil a protagonist in church services (Mariano, 2003) and generally targets Afro-Brazilian religious entities. Outside Brazil, the church adapts its demonology to the cultural substrata of each region (Wyk, 2014: 53).

This article is based on material collected during fieldwork in the city of Madrid; it begins by discussing a few characteristics of the UCKG in that city. Its main objective is to analyze how the church constructs its discourses of conversion and how an individual’s identity before conversion relates to his or converted self through a process that I have called ‘self-othering’. This theoretical tool is based on two key theoretical frameworks: Norbert Elias and John Scotson’s (1994) work on the interdependence between ‘the established’ and ‘outsiders’, and Brazilian sociologist Antônio Flávio Pierucci’s (2006) work on individual salvation. This study observes the implications of conversion and the qualitative gain, from a church member’s point of view, derived from the relationship between his or her old and new self. It argues that the church’s demonization of its members’ past lives has social implications, namely, a subalternization of older social, cultural, and religious identities. During this process, the church presents itself as a better option than other religions and social groups. The term ‘self-othering’ was used by Craig Svonkin to analyze the work of beatnik author Allen Ginsberg. According to Svonkin (2010: 167), Ginsberg’s ‘self-othering’ was an attempt to kill off his own Jewish identity, transforming it into something hybrid, syncretic, and fragmented. Whether or not Ginsberg’s writings plausibly reveal an attempt to kill off an old identity, Svonkin’s concept does not have much to do with the present analysis. However, Svonkin deserves credit for introducing this nomenclature.

To observe how self-othering occurs in the church, I discuss the importance of each newly converted member’s baptism, as a rite of passage. The discourse in which self-othering becomes more visible – and audible – is analyzed using a biography of the bishop responsible for church activities in Madrid during most of research period. Interviews and public testimonials have also been used to gather information about church members – these were the main sources of information about their old selves. Although the concept needs further development, it clearly points to a relatively common pattern in conversions within the church.

The UCKG in Madrid – Familia Unida

The UCKG officially began its activities in Spain in 1990 through the work of missionaries. In the beginning, there were no actual church buildings or temples; the first official temple was built in 1992. ² The first and main temple of the church in Spain is located on Madrid’s Santa Maria de la Cabeza Street, near the famous Atocha Station. In a controversial book about the UCKG, Nos bastidores do reino: a vida secreta na Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (The Making of the Kingdom: The Secret Life of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God), a former church pastor, Mario Justino (1995: 100), claimed that church activities began in Spain because Brazilian pastors and missionaries in Portugal had to cross the border to avoid being deported. As they did not have work visas, they constantly needed to renew their Portuguese tourist visas.

The UCKG is officially registered in Spain under the name, Comunidad Cristiana del Espiritu Santo. ³ The church previously used the name Pare de Sufrir; ⁴ during the research period, it was known as Familia Unida.^5,6 Pastor Alberto explained, during an interview, that the latter was chosen by administrative staff in Spain to ‘spread the message’. The church billboard reads Familia Unida and makes almost no reference to the UCKG. Only inside the church will visitors find a huge poster of the Temple of Solomon, the largest UCKG building in Brazil, enabling those who know about the church to confirm the link between its Spanish and Brazilian branches. After the fieldwork period, the church changed its name again – to Centro de Ayuda Cristiano. As Paul Freston (2001: 203) has observed, the church frequently changes its name to avoid legal embargos, given its bad reputation in a range of countries. In Spain as a whole, the church is more widely disseminated than in other European countries, apart from Portugal (which has the largest membership in the Old World). There are, according to Familia Unida, the official magazine of the church in Spain, around 27 venues where services are held; most are in Madrid and Catalonia (especially in Barcelona).

Few academic studies have investigated the UCKG in Spain. One academic paper has discussed the church alongside other religious institutions (Rodrigues and Silva, 2015); another discusses the UCKG in Rome, as well as Barcelona and Madrid (Silva et al., 2013). The book Igreja Universal: os novos conquistadores da fé (Universal Church: the new conquistadors of faith; Oro et al., 2003) addresses the UCKG’s worldwide dissemination but lacks a specific chapter on the church in Spain. The UCKG has been the subject of many PhD dissertations, books, and academic papers, especially in Brazil. However, the lack of any substantial research on Spain or Madrid made it particularly interesting to study the church in that location.

The social characteristics of UCKG members in Madrid differ from those of members in Brazil, where the great majority are low-income Black or dark-skinned pardos ⁷ (Burdick, 1999; Mariano, 2004: 122). The pattern is similar in Spain, where the non-White majority tends to be poor. According to Silva et al. (2013: 147), 90% of UCKG members in Madrid and Barcelona are Latin American immigrants, while 70% of all members are women (Rodrigues and Silva, 2015: 1382). However, the first Spanish bishop of the church, Antonio Francisco Cantua, said in an interview ⁸ that 60% of members of the main Madrid church were immigrants. He noted that the number could be higher on the outskirts of the city, as the headquarters were in a traditional central zone. Setting aside this discrepancy in the number of immigrant members, as calculated by academics and religious leaders (with current numbers likely to fall between the two), it is important to highlight two points. First, although many congregants are Latin American immigrants, from South America in particular, the church membership also includes immigrants from other parts of the world, including Africa and Central America. Second, it is clear that the church has a membership composed mainly of immigrants. There are also many immigrant pastors. Although most UCKG religious leaders come from Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia, or Portugal, there are also Spanish members and pastors.

Toward self-othering: the first step – ‘the other’ in sociology

Analyses of the formation of ‘the other’ – the othering process – by social groups are far from new in sociology and the other social sciences. Many authors have developed theories about the way in which ‘other’ formation creates and reinforces social bonds among group insiders – the battle between ‘them’ and ‘us’. Edward Said (2003) considered the formation of the East (Orientalism) to be ‘the other’ of Western society. Friedrich von Hayek (2008: 143) observed the importance of strengthened internal solidification of a social group in the struggle of ‘us against them’. Simone de Beauvoir (1956) analyzed the construction of women as ‘the other’ of men. There are numerous examples. This study draws on fundamental concepts from the sociology of Norbert Elias and John Scotson in The Established and the Outsiders (1994) to develop the self-othering concept used here. Elias and Scotson analyzed a small English town, observing the characteristics of a social group, ‘the established’, which constructed its own image by pointing out negative aspects of another group, ‘the outsiders’. The tactics of the first group, which understood the other group as less valuable than itself, fell into the pars pro toto pattern. The worst individuals in the group were seen as representative outsiders, while the best individuals were seen as representative insiders. This created a group charisma between insiders, since the highlighted characteristics always revealed qualitative differences between the two groups. Elias and Scotson’s observations of the interdependence between insiders and outsiders seem fundamental to the creation of any social group identity. How is it possible to create a self-image of a better group without the existence of outsiders? This question, setting aside its tautology, highlights the importance of ‘the different’ in society. Outsiders (‘the different’) are an important part of insider identity – and needed to create such an identity.

In its creation of outside others, the UCKG has characteristics of ‘the established’, especially in the spiritual warfare it promotes against other religions. The UCKG often demonizes Catholic and Anglican Churches, Islam, and especially Brazilian Spiritism and Afro-Brazilian religions (Freston, 2005: 45; Mariano, 2007; Silva, 2005). In this, it resembles other branches of Pentecostalism (Meyer, 1999). The demonization of other religions, especially the Afro-Brazilian pantheon, involves declaring that other spiritualties are real, but evil and satanic. In Madrid, the demons have become more fluid and secularized (Moreira, 2021); they now include entities such as depression and bankruptcy. The church also has a good relationship with outsiders seen as enemies in other contexts, such as Islam and Hinduism (Moreira, 2019); it even has ecumenical encounters with members of other religions in the city. However, this article explores the self-transformation of members through ruptures with the past, so the church demonology in Madrid will not be discussed further.

Joel Robbins (2004) observed a similar pattern in his study of global Pentecostalism, acknowledging that the discourses of Pentecostals ontologically preserved traditional religions through the demonization of traditional spirits. Similarly, the UCKG’s theology does not deny the power of other religions; instead, it tries to present itself as a better religious option in a symbolic market of goods. The UCKG welcomes what its leaders consider to be satanic entities to services, but only to humiliate them and cast them out through exorcisms (Almeida, 2009: 96). This process reveals that the God preached by the church and the power of its religious leaders are more powerful than the spiritual beings and leaders associated with other religions.

The main concern during the first step, especially with regard to the othering process, is to understand the church’s attempt to rupture an individual’s old self prior to his or her conversion and transformation into a UCKG member. When I listened to members’ conversion testimonials, their transformation into faithful and committed followers of the church was always aligned with their lives before conversion. Past selves were used to enhance the members’ present conditions. Hence, there is a need to understand the self-transformation as well.

Second step: Pierucci’s concept of individual salvation and the bishop’s example

The second step in developing this self-othering conceptualization came from the Brazilian sociologist Antônio Flávio Pierucci, a former professor at the University of São Paulo. In his article ‘Religião como solvente – uma aula’ (Religion as a solvent – a lecture, 2006), Pierucci set out to distinguish Max Weber’s sociology of religion from that of Emile Durkheim, with the understanding that the former observed religion as a transformer of the social (or a solvent of older traditions), while the latter considered it a communion of individuals (or a social cement) that aided social cohesion. Pierucci understood that Brazilian Pentecostalism was aligned with his understanding of Weberian sociology; the Brazilian sociologist has called it a universal religion of individual salvation. Thus, this religious movement has a disruptive characteristic of taking individuals out of their old routines and collectivities (Pierucci, 2006: 122).

The aforementioned analysis by Pierucci was fundamental to the conceptualization of the self-othering process, especially when it came to the break with older religious affiliations and the acceptance of new social routines and values and even a new ethos. When considering the conversion process, it is necessary to understand the re-signification of worldviews brought about through acceptance of a new religion. In contrast to Pierucci’s view, in which religion causes a rupture or a break with the past, I believe that Elias and Scotson’s concept of interdependence provides a more correct understanding of the logic of Pentecostal conversion. The relation between the old and new selves of a newly converted member of the UCKG in Madrid indicates that the rupture is far from total – it is a reinterpretation of the past, rather than a clean break.

The life of the Brazilian bishop who ran the Madrid headquarters in 2016 provides a useful example. According to his video biography, Bishop Gilberto Santana came from a very problematic family. Before his family found the UCKG and began to rebuild their lives, doctors had declared that his sick brother would not survive. The video does not mention any other parts of this life reconstruction, which were revealed by the bishop himself in a Sunday morning service on 5 June 2016. While preaching to a man who suffered from alcoholism, the bishop said that the same God who had saved his father from the disease would also cure him. The UCKG considers the father to be the head of the family; if anything goes wrong with him, everyone else will suffer and become potential targets for satanic activities.

The bishop’s video biography also illuminates another very common characteristic of UCKG members: their conversion and subsequent abandonment of the church. There are many stories of members who initially achieved what they wanted, whether monetary blessings or spiritual healing, and then stopped attending church because they had fulfilled their goals. Santana provides an example of such a story. After his conversion, the bishop suffered a romantic setback and stopped going to church for 3 years, while participating in various sinful behaviors, such as consuming alcohol and drugs. Only after watching a UCKG television program was Santana able to return to the church and transforms his disorderly and problematic life into that of a faithful UCKG member. Santana became a church assistant, then a pastor, and finally a bishop in a meteoric rise up the church hierarchy. He married another church assistant, whom he met on an international mission for the church outside Brazil.

The trajectory of Santana’s life provides a clear example of the pattern Pierucci has observed, using his proposition of individual salvation. The act of becoming a member must be directly linked to an individual’s desire for salvation. Although the bishop’s whole family converted, he had the free will to stop attending church whenever he wanted. Only after making a full commitment to church activities and rules did Gilberto Santana finally obtain his desired transformation. Individual salvation is founded on the conduct of a free person, with his or her past brought back as a model of bad and misguided behavior, contrasting with the newly empowered and saved individual after conversion. Before commencing a more substantial analysis of self-othering in the UCKG, it is important to discuss the baptism of new members as a rite of passage.

Baptism as a rite of passage – cleansing sins and becoming a member

Baptism by the Holy Spirit was a fundamental experience for early Pentecostals (Lima et al., 2015) and the UCKG inherited this characteristic from them. There is a reason why Pentecostals are known as ‘born again’ – they are reborn through baptism in the Holy Spirit. Although this specific practice exists in the UCKG, the church expands it into three different forms, as noted in the official blog of the UCKG leader, Bishop Edir Macedo: ⁹ baptism in water, baptism by the Holy Spirit, and baptism by fire. The first is characterized by the member’s commitment to change his or her behavior, after recognizing the need to change. Macedo highlights the importance of free will and the individual’s need to change in this type of baptism. Baptism by the Holy Spirit means full commitment to change; according to Macedo, accepting this change enables the member to understand God’s will in a more decisive way and to have a life that is more closely aligned with church principles. Baptism by fire describes a situation in which the member puts his or her faith to the test; it can occur more than once. In this type of baptism, God’s promises must be tested, usually by giving money faithfully to the church, since the Almighty has to keep His biblical promises and return such blessings to a devout person (Macedo, 1996: 76).

Pastor Lenin, in a service on 23 June 2016, summarized the UCKG’s understanding of baptism as a rebirth within the institution. According to him, ‘a person baptized is cleansed of all sins. The person may have committed murder or lived a completely deviant life, but since he/she receives the blessing of baptism, he/she becomes cleansed of all sins’. Thus, the aim of baptism is to free individuals from their sins; at the same time, they are empowered by the institution. As a previous study of the Brazilian Assemblies of God (Lima et al., 2015: 80–83) has observed, Pentecostal baptism enables members to engage in five new practices within the church: giving testimonials, performing miracles, ministering for the church, being open to spiritual manifestations, and living a correct life. From my experience with the UCKG, although the church encompasses all of these aspects, some are emphasized more than others. The power to give testimonials is, undoubtedly, the first and one of the most important. However, in addition to living a correct life and remembering bad experiences before a fully committed conversion, there must be self-othering by the member. The power to perform miracles, which in the UCKG include healing, exorcisms, and monetary blessings, is connected with the Holy Spirit. As the member becomes an instrument of the Holy Spirit, the power to perform these miracles is highly controlled by the institution. The pastor acts, during the services, as a coordinator of prayers and ecstatic behavior; there is even a separation of the days on which each miracle occurs. There are specific days and times for services that focus on healing, cures for addictions, spiritual cleansing, monetary issues, and even romantic relationships – not to mention specific times during services when miracles and exorcisms are scheduled to happen. After baptism, the UCKG member becomes a receiver of miracles, since he or she is living a correct life. To become a pastor (in Madrid, only men held this position), the member must first become an assistant. There must be a mutual interest between the institution and the individual, as Pastor Alberto explained in an interview. Of course, the member must pass through periods of probation to become a pastor; he and the UCKG must be aligned in his training as a pastor at all times.

Hence, baptism represents an attempt to break with a former spiritual (or, in some cases non-spiritual) life, inasmuch as baptism works as a rite of passage into a new life. The individual transforms himself or herself into a member by accumulating more religious capital and recognition within the church through this ritual. The hierarchy of the church depends heavily on baptism as rite of passage; without it, members cannot prove their commitment to the church or rise to higher-ranking positions, such as an assistant, a pastor, or a bishop. Self-othering, via rupture with an old self and the creation of a new self, requires baptism to construct a new social identity through an observable ritual. Both the ritual and the social identity are controlled by the UCKG.

The UCKG rite of passage, baptism, is the trigger for self-othering in this church, delivering not only institutional legitimacy, which attests to each individual transformation, but also the right way of achieving it by closely adhering to church guidelines. The specificity of this spiritual rebirth has, like most UCKG practices, a biblical basis. It refers in particular to the New Testament passage in which Jesus discusses how Nicodemus has been born again (John, 3: 3–14). As the UCKG encourages its members to take possession of the word of God (Mafra, 2002), there is nothing more appropriate than a biblical passage to strengthen the church’s interpretation of transformation by baptism.

Examples of self-othering in UCKG testimonials

In the following three testimonials, the self-othering process can be observed. There is a clear attempt to separate the old self – before conversion – from the new self – after conversion.

Example 1: Assistant I. was a Brazilian woman, approximately 65 years old. She had been a member of the church for more than 30 years. According to her account, she suffered from extreme shyness and panic attacks before her conversion, when she was still living in Brazil. I. stated repeatedly that the church had helped her financially over the years, simply because of her commitment to the church premises. She said that she had already donated around 25,000 reais (slightly more than 6000 dollars) to the church all at once. She considered herself more successful than her siblings, despite being less intelligent and having faced more difficulties than they had. According to I., her siblings could not understand her success, even though she told them that it came from God. Other members of the church, including pastors, recognized I. for her unflagging work for the church. Although she sometimes complained about her financial situation, the recognition of others suggested that she had more religious capital within the church than other assistants. I.’s control and correction of the behavior of younger assistants suggested that she was one of the most acknowledged members of the church.

Example 2: D. was a Brazilian male, approximately 30 years old. He had been a UCKG member for more than 10 years. Unlike I., who moved to Madrid because of the church mission, D. was an immigrant who arrived in the city looking for a better life before his conversion. He told me that everyone in Brazil thought of Europe as an easy place to make money and admitted that he too had believed it would be easy to get a job and become rich. When he arrived at the UCKG in Madrid, he had ‘nothing more than two t-shirts’. D. had previously experimented with various religious affiliations. He was born into a Catholic family, attended Brazilian Spiritism services, and joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Brazilian Assemblies of God. ¹⁰ D. felt that Catholicism was insufficiently critical of homosexuality, while the Assemblies of God did not motivate their members enough to achieve monetary goals: ‘People who come from other (Pentecostal) churches are often surprised that they can become rich’. After his conversion to the UCKG, D. became a successful businessperson with two restaurants in Madrid’s central district. He understood that only full commitment to God, via the UCKG, would allow an individual to enjoy complete success. He often used examples of billionaires who had problems with their families to suggest that, without God, there would always be something missing.

Example 3: G. was a Colombian woman, approximately 20 years old. She had been a member of the church for around 3 years. According to her testimonial, she came from a completely ‘messed-up family’, with drug-addiction problems. G. started drinking and taking illicit drugs as a teenager. During her teenage years, she was also initiated into witchcraft and underwent an abortion. Her contact with black magic opened a spiritual door for ‘obscure figures’ (i.e. evil spirits), who haunted her. Due to her spiritual problems, G. suffered from suicidal tendencies and depression until a member of the church finally invited her to the UCKG. She became a member of the church and afterward brought in the rest of her family. After her conversion, she was cured of her addictions and depression; the ‘obscure figures’ also began to disappear. The UCKG was responsible for restoring her health and curing her spiritual problems.

In all three cases, the UCKG members were characterized by their anomic experiences before conversion. Danièle Hervieu-Léger (2008: 109) describes a type of conversion in which the older religious affiliation is not capable of resolving current social or spiritual demands on the individual making the religious shift. This model of conversion is characterized by disillusion with the former religion. The UCKG makes determined use of such disillusion to support its own aims by demonizing the former lives of members and publicly sharing the testimonials in which they describe their damaged lives prior to conversion. There is thus an interdependence between the past condition – as a non-member – and present condition – as a member – due to the consolidation of benefits achieved. The benefits of members’ former lives are usually non-existent, or at least rarely discussed, while the benefits they enjoy in the present moment are strongly emphasized.

The second example, involving D., highlights a type of conversion that is common in the UCKG diaspora. Church proselytism is attractive to Brazilians and other immigrants, especially those from Latin America who are not well integrated into the foreign countries they live in. Some members have already been converted in their home countries; for these, the UCKG becomes a primary means of forging new social bonds with others who share the same religious beliefs. Others, like D., seek something more than a mere continuation of established religious practices. In member testimonials, the church is presented as a religious panacea, capable of curing all kinds of problems related to spiritual or material suffering. The term ‘Stop Suffering’ is associated with church attributes in members’ discourses.

This pattern in member testimonials resembles the process of conversion observed by Anders Ruuth and Donizete Rodrigues (1999: 110) in their research on the UCKG:

The message is always: before conversion – the person is an unbeliever, nervous, unhappy, depressive, lost, sick [. . .]. After conversion – the believer becomes an optimist, fulfilled, full of peace, love and happiness.

The good aspects of life before conversion are typically excluded from member testimonials. One person in particular exemplified this aspect of UCKG testimonials. A. was approximately 60 years old: a man with four aristocratic titles, descended from a noble Spanish family. He had taught history at a famous university in Spain, preparing students for the diplomatic service. In his testimonial to Pastor Alberto at a service held on 26 June 2016, A. said that his life had been destroyed before he arrived at the UCKG. After his complete commitment to the church, which included donating significant amounts of money, his prosperity was fully restored. Although his testimonial was very similar to what is commonly preached in the church, it was clear that A. came from a very well-structured family, financially speaking. He had experienced a moment of crisis, which the church helped him to overcome. Later, I discovered that A. had been facing a legal battle over the family inheritance; after participating in a more substantial manner in a church campaign (The Holy Fire of Israel), he won the legal fight. Afterward, his history of success became a testimonial, used to support the campaign in the city. Even without much money at that moment, A. had engaged himself fully and had given a large amount of money to the church with truthful faith. The testimonial and self-othering of A. became a tool, used by the church to preach about the correct way to practice the faith and tithe.

In the above-mentioned example, there is a similar strategic use of the pars pro toto pattern observed by Elias and Scotson. However, instead of the best individuals serving as models for ‘the established’ and the worst ones serving as models for ‘outsiders’, the self-othering of A. applies pars pro toto to both the old and new selves. The problems of the old self are highlighted, while the good aspects of the new self are also emphasized. Bad and good aspects of the self are always enhanced to underpin the conversion: beforehand, the self faces problems and bankruptcy; afterward, it can enjoy prosperity and miracles.

As these testimonials demonstrate, members’ experiences are open to being both re-signified and publicized. It is quite common for these experiences to be shared among members and through pastors’ sermons. When a neophyte member has a problem, the pastors and assistants usually recommend conversations and participation in services with other members who have experienced similar issues. There is thus a constant flow of aid through the empirical examples of people who have undergone similar torments; most of the time, possible solutions are available. In this way, self-othering is a form of social control, which delivers benefits beyond individual conversion. UCKG conversion is an extreme case, as it usually involves an attempt at rupture. However, examples of this pattern may exist in conversion to other religions. Edênio Valle (2002), in analyzing conversions to Buddhism among Brazilians, observed the importance of the personal itinerary – life experiences – in shaping former religious experiences to the new religion. In other words, self-othering can involve a less antagonistic narrative of the past than those favored by the UCKG. It can also involve a less institutional reinterpretation of an person’s misguided past through more individual religiosities, as happens in the New Era movement. Nonetheless, the traits of quality gain and reinterpretation of the past (interdependence) through conversion (or re-conversion) are sine qua non for the self-othering. There is only a variation of intensity, but these two aforementioned features are always present.

Each member’s experience of othering his or her past is aligned with the demonization of other social groups by the church. The self-othering process typically makes the member’s past life, and consequently his or her social and cultural background, the demonic other and thus less valuable. The past self is a subaltern of the present; it has less qualitative value, but is essential to empowering the new self. Hence, self-othering is a process of subalternizing the old self, both as an individual and as a social being. Testimonials generally expose not only the bad aspects of life before conversion but also the cultural and especially the religious affiliations of converting members. Furthermore, the testimonials transform members’ past lives into subalterns, not just for themselves, but also for others; the newly converted members are living proof of how problematic and demonic the commitment to other religions and/or lifestyles can be. They bear witness to change, but also to what happens to people living without the UCKG. Highlighting the deviation is thus a fundamental principle within a discourse that aims to standardize guidelines for members of the church. The need to make testimonials public in the UCKG also indicates, as an elementary characteristic, a form of member control through the experiences of those who testify – this pattern can be seen even in non-religious groups. The system functions in a similar way to Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous, to cite two non-religious institutions that control actions considered to be deviant and/or compulsive. The process has similar characteristics to those observed by Michel Foucault (2011: 311) in relation to cynics, for whom control of the self is simultaneously control of others. While testimonials of conversion and stories about overcoming deleterious habits represent a form of (self) control for those who speak in public, they also give audience members a path to follow.

It is worth remembering that testimonials are performed with a certain rigidity, institutionally speaking. The pastor controls the speech and directs members’ testimonials, since he has the task of leading services in a quasi-standardized manner. The UCKG self-othering process has a direct connection to specific institutional practices and principles. Furthermore, there is re-signification of the old self, understood as an antagonist, and creation of a new self, whose meaning depends on the old self. At the same time, institutional control occurs through examples provided by other members, including religious leaders. The newcomers have many different life experiences and stories about overcoming problems after joining the church. It is worth remembering that transformation (with the aid of these examples) is required; without it, no individual can be considered a truly committed member.

Conclusion

Transforming an individual’s worldview is not an easy task for any kind of social group. This article documents the way in which the UCKG in Madrid deals with this problem. The church is a relatively new arrival in Spain, able to form a community around itself only by converting outsiders. The literature does not offer a theoretical framework for analyzing this specific subject – the interdependence of an individual’s life before and after conversion – from a relevant perspective. Although it may seem rather bold to introduce an apparently new concept to UCKG research, which is extensive and has been well-established in the Brazilian academy for two decades (Campos, 1999; Freston, 1993; Mariano, 2012), I believe it is suitable. Theoretical difficulties are doors to creativity. Although this concept will need further development, the first seeds for its development have at least been sown.

The self-othering process described in this article has one very specific characteristic: it is the form of self-othering encountered in testimonials of the UCKG in Madrid. Most of those who search out the UCKG in the city are immigrants in need of some kind of social assistance. The church is known for helping and empowering such people, creating new communitarian bonds that can open up new possibilities, particularly in relation to work. However, the conversion and self-othering process are also characterized by the subjugation and demonization of members’ previous cultural and religious affiliations. In its creation of ‘outside others’, the church does not necessarily need a former religious affiliation; its Manichean worldview has a very broad capacity to demonize a wide range of others. Church members and leaders see themselves as superior and as having a unique charisma; this can lead them to oppress other religions, as has happened in the past. However, this stance also gives the church an enormous capacity for adaptation, as any type of past or outsider status can be reinterpreted.

Although the notion of self-othering is specific to the UCKG, this concept could be expanded and applied to affiliations with (or conversion to) other social groups, especially religious groups. Of course, it is essential to clarify the specificities of each group and/or religion, including the characteristics of members’ previous identities, the group’s way of understanding its members’ old identities, the way in which individuals publicly share their former social bonds, and each group’s method of exercising control. It is also fundamental to the self-othering concept developed here that individuals experience qualitative growth when passing from their old to new selves – and that their two selves are interdependent. This makes it possible to comprehend how past and present work together – despite an apparent rupture – to socially construct the individual.