Lived religion and religious market theory: A promising dialogue. A study of two Peruvian Pentecostal churches: Movimiento Misionero Mundial (MMM) and Monte de Oración (MO)

Abstract: To counteract the absence of paradigms that explain Latin American religious transformations from their own models, this article proposes an exploratory dialogue between two interpretative frameworks assumed to be antagonistic: the religious market theory developed in the capitalist system and the lived religion approach. The reflections are illustrated in two different cases from the broad Peruvian Pentecostal spectrum: Monte de Oración, an independent church, a family business located in a Lima slum, and the World Missionary Movement, a transnational megachurch of Puerto Rican origin with pan-Peruvian aspirations. The lived religion approach leads to an enchanted worldview outside the logic of separation into spheres. It therefore allows the theory of the religious market to be adapted to an environment that continues to function traditionally as a family business or farm, despite having some of the characteristics of a globalized market. This approach also reveals that attachment to certain traditions and the existential quest in changing contexts -elements apparently alien to commercial logic- end up shaping a dynamic market. These theories lead us towards the little studied and debated popular Pentecostalism, which destroys certain customs, reinterprets others, and creates new formulas. This religious movement manages to combine an attractive local rootedness for its potential members with international connections that legitimize it in a society in transition.