Lived Religion, Worship and Conversion: Ethnographic Reflections in an Abstinence-based Christian Therapeutic Community

This chapter critically examines the intersection between lived religion, worship, and the ethics of conversion in a faith-based therapeutic community in the area of substance misuse and recovery. Drawing on a two-month residential ethnography in a Pentecostal therapeutic community in the UK, the chapter outlines a conceptual framework for analyzing the more-than-representational dimensions of conversion and Pentecostal worship, and draws attention to the emotional, spiritual, and therapeutic sensibilities residents attach to, and experience during, practices of worship and prayer. Worship practices are shown to potentially draw converts into powerful experiences of the sacred, which can generate new, or reaffirm existing, transformations in self-identity and religious belief. Equally, the mandatory nature of worship and its associated participatory manners can produce experiences of indifference, isolation and oppression.