Creencias protestantes, estrategias gitanas. El evangelismo de las iglesias de Filadelfia en el Sur de España

Abstract

Since four decades, the conversions of gypsies to evangelical Protestantism are the most important religious, social and political movement in the complex history of this people. This article approaches gipsy Pentecostalism of the Philadelphia Churches starting from its ethnographical and historical context, to focuse on the representation of two crossed narratives which describe the beginning of the first gipsy evangelical church in Andalusia. This first evangelical community was formed in a marginal district of Sevilla city. These religious meetings were started by two French preachers that propagated the new bornagain religión among the andalusian gypsies. Furthermore, this article developed some ideas about the social and political uses of the gipsy conversion to Pentecostalism in the ethnographical context of our fieldwork, developed in Sevilla and Cadiz.