Glocalization and the Gift-Giving Spirit: Informality and Shalom beyond the Political Economy of Exchange

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between religion, globalization, and economics by focusing on the informal economy and by drawing from world pentecostalism as a more-or-less concrete case study. After defining the informal economy, the article examines the parallels and intersections between the church and informality, identifies the challenges and opportunities that exist for the church that is in but not constrained by the informal sphere, and sketches a pentecostal theology of the informal economy in light of early Christian economic practices. The burden of the paper is two-fold: to think about a Christian theology of the economy in the context of poverty and globalization processes, and to consider how the early Christian political economy of the book of Acts can inform such theological reflection. From this perspective, contemporary Pentecostalism provides a springboard for examining local and global economic issues in light of biblical and theological concerns and vice-versa. The challenge will be to discern how and to what degree early Christian economic practices can be said to inform contemporary pentecostal political economy on the one hand, and how this interface between biblical and contemporary practice funds reflection on a Christian theology of economics in the late modern capitalistic world of the early twenty-first century.