Patriarchal “Love School”: Entrepreneurial Heroic Masculinity and Neoliberalism in A Pentecostal Church in London

Abstract

Many Pentecostal churches founded in the Global South are now rapidly growing in European cities. Although research is catching up with this development, we know little about how these processes affect gendered and racialized practices regarding sexualities, bodies, and masculinities in former colonial metropolises shaped by neoliberal capitalism. This article addresses this gap by interrogating the transnational movement of Pentecostal masculinities and their economic, sexual, and political dimensions in a church in North London. The contribution argues that the church promotes what I call entrepreneurial heroic masculinity, which consists of three main elements: a gendered conversion narrative, a pastoral masculinity of dominating behavior, and the cultivation of anti-affective, rational love. In this way, traditionalist masculinist tropes are mapped onto a world allegedly full of opportunities for material blessings where becoming a man of God means becoming a faithful self-entrepreneur, which requires strict autonomy from emotions, family, and the government. The article contributes to the critical debate on masculinity and transnational religious movements by demonstrating how the demands and promises of neoliberal capitalism are deeply entangled with the reconstitution of heroic patriarchal subjectivity.