Beliefs about Apocalypses and utopias are an important facet of Christian ideological frameworks; in the here-and-now, new evangelical Christians in the Global South also often make radical breaks with pre-existing forms of social relations. It has been widely noted that traditional kinship, gender and generational hierarchies, and political and economic relations are challenged and restructured by Christian beliefs and practices, enabling new Christians to modernize and capitalize. The practices and beliefs associated with prosperity gospels, sacrifices, austerity, abrogating social ties with non-believers, transform the social structure of religious communities. But what does capitalism have to do with heaven the end of the world? What are the relationships between capitalist relations, imagined religious communities, and their imagined futures? How and why do practices intended to prepare believers for their end often reinforce the spread of capitalist relations in the mundane world while at other times isolating believers from those very relations? This panel examines the dialectical relationship between transformations in social practices and eschatological beliefs about radical transformations in specific cases among Evangelical Christians in the Global South.

Please submit a 250-word abstract for 15-minute presentation and a brief bio or cv to Pilar Rau pkr205@nyu.edu by Friday, March 28, 2008.