Catholics Rich in Spirit: El Shaddai

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Philippines, this article argues that El Shaddai, a popular Filipino Catholic charismatic movement, offers a unique and relevant religious option by straddling a “modern” and Pentecostal-like approach to spirituality, ritual, and Christian life, on the one hand, and a Catholic social identity and communal life, on the other. Although El Shaddai members, unlike Pentecostals, maintain many of the traditional social attachments of Filipino Catholicism, El Shaddai’s prosperity theology and mass mediated ritual forms contribute to divergent understandings of spiritual power and poverty, as well as a sense of demarginalization and self-determination.