https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7954-2520
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Abstract
In the year 2020, COVID-19 wreaked havoc on everyday life in the Persian Gulf. Yet little is known about how non-citizens responded to a virus that inexorably exposed their transience and precarity. This article addresses a much-neglected aspect of local responses to COVID-19, namely, how non-citizens made sense of the virus theologically. Drawing on existing scholarship on cyber religion and migrant religiosity in the Gulf, I examine the theological responses of a distinctive subset of non-citizens –– Pentecostal-Charismatic Christians in Qatar. My approach, rooted in digital ethnographic methods, led me to uncover divergent theological responses to COVID-19 among lower-income “migrants” and higher-income “expats”. Lower-income “migrants” sought spiritual remedies to counter what they deemed to be a man-made virus, whereas higher-income “expats” strove for spiritual perfection during what they believed was a divine trial. Working through these divergent theological responses, I argue that both “migrants” and “expats” built stronger affinities to their host state during the pandemic as they developed new forms of spiritual communitas online.
Notes
1 Rashad and Barbuscia, “Saudi Triples VAT Rate in Austerity Push to Counter Oil Slump, Virus”, Reuters, 11 May 2020.
2 Yee, “Virus Forces Persian Gulf States to Reckon With Migrant Labor”, The New York Times, 9 May 2020.
3 Hubbard, “Coronavirus Fears Terrify and Impoverish Migrants in the Persian Gulf”, The New York Times, 13 April 2020.
4 See Ziegler, The Black Death (1969); Harper, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire (2017); Spinney, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World (2017).
5 John, Transnational Religious Organization and Practice: A Contextual Analysis of Kerala Pentecostal Churches in Kuwait (2018). Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity, with its roots in the 18th century Anglo-American Protestant revival movement known as the “Great Awakening”, can be defined as a form of Christianity in which believers premise their beliefs on the literal reading of the biblical canon and “receive the [spiritual] gifts of the Holy Spirit” via prophecies, miracles, and healing [Robbins, “The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity”, Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004), p. 119].
6 For more on the pre-colonial history of Christianity in the Persian Gulf, see: Carter, “Christianity in the Gulf During the First Centuries of Islam”, Arabian Archeology and Epigraphy 19.1 (2008), pp. 71–108; Jenkins, The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia — and How It Died (2009). For a thorough account of colonial-era missionary activity in the Persian Gulf, see Jerzy Zdanowski’s writings on American missionary efforts: Zdanowski, Saving Sinners, Even Moslems: The Arabian Mission (1889–1973) and Its Intellectual Roots (2018); Zdanowski, “In Search of the Supracultural: American Missionaries in the Gulf in 1920s–1930s”, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 30.3 (2019), pp. 383–399.
7 Brasher, Give Me That Online Religion (2004); O’Leary, “Cyberspace as Sacred Space: Communicating Religion on Computer Networks”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64.4 (1996); George, Religion and Technology in the 21st Century: Faith in the E-World (2006); Campbell, Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds (2013); Chiluwa, “Online Religion in Nigeria: The Internet Church and Cyber Miracles”, Journal of Asian and African Studies 47.6 (2012), pp. 734–749; Campbell, “Spiritualising the Internet: Uncovering Discourses and Narratives of Religious Internet Use”, Online-Heidelberg Journal of Religion on the Internet 1.1 (2005), pp. 23–42.
8 George, Religion and Technology in the 21st Century, p. 156.
9 Campbell, “Who’s Got the Power? Religious Authority and the Internet”, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12.3 (2007), pp. 1043–1062.
10 Campbell and Rule, “The Practice of Digital Religion”, in Friese et al. (eds), Handbuch Soziale Praktiken und Digitale Alltagswelten (2016).
11 Hilton and Khalid, “Qatar Closes Mosques, Suspends Prayers due to Coronavirus”, Al Arabiya English, 17 March 2020.
12 John, Transnational Religious Organization and Practice (2018); George (ed.), Desi Diaspora: Ministry Among Scattered Global Indian Christians (2019); Mehta and Onley, “The Hindu Community in Muscat: Creating Homes in the Diaspora”, Journal of Arabian Studies 5.2 (2015), pp. 156–183; Ahmad, Everyday Conversions: Islam, Domestic Work, and South Asian Migrant Women in Kuwait (2017); Jaffrelot and Louer (eds), Pan-Islamic Connections: Transnational Networks Between South Asia and the Gulf (2017); Osella and Osella, “Muslim Entrepreneurs in Public Life Between India and the Gulf: Making Good and Doing Good”, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15.s1 (2009), pp. S202–S221.
13 Ahmad, Everyday Conversions.
14 John, Transnational Religious Organization and Practice.
15 Oommen, “Transnational Religious Dynamics of Syrian Christians from Kerala in Kuwait: Blurring the Boundaries of Belief”, South Asia Research 35.1 (February 2015), pp. 1–20; George, Diaspora Christianities: Global Scattering and Gathering of South Asian Christians (2018); George (ed.), Desi Diaspora.
16 These sending countries tend to rely heavily on migrant remittance flows from the Gulf. See, for example, Gardner et al., “A Portrait of Low-Income Migrants in Contemporary Qatar”, Journal of Arabian Studies 3.1 (2013), pp. 1–17; Gardner, “Why Do They Keep Coming? Labor Migrants in the Gulf States”, in Kamrava and Babar (eds), Migrant Labor in the Persian Gulf (2012).
17 Mehta and Onley, “The Hindu Community in Muscat”, pp. 156–183.
18 Chandra and Promodh, “A Divided City in a Time of Pandemic: Dispatches from Doha”, City and Society 32.2 (2020); Sarmadi, “‘Bachelor’ in the City: Urban Transformation and Matter Out of Place in Dubai”, Journal of Arabian Studies 3.2 (2013), pp. 196–214.
19 Robbins, “The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity”.
20 The Anglican Centre in Mesaimeer, Qatar houses approximately 85 congregations in its premises on a weekly basis. The Interdenominational Christian Church (IDCC) religious complex adjacent to the Anglican Centre hosts 25 church groups (under the banner of 11 member churches) on a weekly basis. In addition, a number of villa-turned-churches host Christian believers independently across Qatar. Based on estimates by the religious compound administrators, approximately 70,000 Christian non-citizens attend services across Qatar each week.
21 Eckstein, “Case Studies and Theory in Political Science”, in Greenstein and Polsby (eds), Handbook of Political Science 7 (1975), pp. 79–138.
22 Rubin and Rubin, Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data (2012), pp. 71–93.
23 All interlocutors, churches, and other identifiers are represented by pseudonyms for reasons of confidentiality.
24 By “prophetic exchange”, I refer to the bilateral exchange of prophecies and prayers between Pastor Nathan on-screen and the laity in the comments. What Pastor Nathan prophesies on-screen is both echoed by and built upon in personalized ways by the laity who comment live during MF church services, sending their prophetic messages back and forth to one another and to the pastor in the “comments” section on Facebook.
25 O’Leary, “Cyberspace as Sacred Space: Communicating Religion on Computer Networks”.
26 My research suggests that members of the MF laity engage in “loud” intercession (in the Facebook comments section) during livestreamed services for two reasons: firstly, to counterpoise the lack of pre-pandemic in-person and kinesthetic forms of worship that believers know to generate “emotional energy” [Goffman, Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior (1967)] and a Durkheimian collective effervescence among them in a physical church building; secondly, since most members of the MF laity reside in shared living spaces in the labor camps of Doha where up to 8 male workers share a single room, my interlocutors conveyed that they often felt inhibited and awkward when praying or worshipping in their rooms with their roommates watching them. Due to the pandemic, my interlocutors in these shared rooms found themselves confined in their living spaces for most of the day. Stepping out of their rooms would cut them off from their room-bound internet connections as well. As such, my interlocutors chose to channel their spiritual energies into their intercessory practices online in the form of prophetic comments posted in rapid succession on Facebook. Bodily manifestations of their spiritual fervor were mediatized and transposed online.
27 The Guardian, “Modern-Day Slavery in Focus + Middle East and North Africa” (October 2018); Gulf Business, “The Ugly Face of Modern Day Slavery”, 23 December 2014.
28 Campbell, “Spiritualising the Internet: Uncovering Discourses and Narratives of Religious Internet Use”.
29 Haynes, Moving by the Spirit: Pentecostal Social Life on the Zambian Copperbelt (2017), p. 82.
30 Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (1969).
31 Robbins, “Pentecostal Networks and the Spirit of Globalization: On the Social Productivity of Ritual Forms”, Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice 53.1 (2009), p. 60.
32 Robbins, “The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity”, p. 120.
33 Ibid., p. 32; Robbins, Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society (2008).
34 Lawless, “Brothers and Sisters: Pentecostals as a Religious Folk Group”, in Oring (ed.) Folk Groups And Folklore Genres Reader: A Reader (1989), p. 100; Robbins, “The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity”.
35 Lawless, “Brothers and Sisters: Pentecostals as a Religious Folk Group”, p. 110.
36 Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD (2012), p. 86.
37 Robbins, “The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity”, p. 254.
38 The titles of sermons (preached between August 2019 and June 2020) that specifically provided moral guidance to a largely unmarried and male church laity include: “Supernatural Marital Connections: How to Meet the Spouse God Has for You”; “Stepping into a Season of Divine Encounter”; “Do Not Be Carnally Minded: Resist the Devices of the Devil”; “Living Without Grumbling and Faultfinding: Importance of Gratitude in Christian Walk”; “Serve Wherever You Are”.
39 Upon contacting the church administrator, a leader of the church and coordinator of the “open house meets” replied and conveyed her willingness to assist me in my digital ethnography. She added me to one of the more active open house WhatsApp groups that its members have used to schedule meetings and share personal testimonies or prayer-requests with one another during the pandemic.
40 Quotations from prayers exchanged during an “open house” meeting I attended on a Zoom video call.
41 O’Leary, “Cyberspace as Sacred Space: Communicating Religion on Computer Networks”, pp. 794–800.
42 Ibid.
43 In explaining this specific form of theological reasoning during my interviews with EF members, they drew on the biblical story of Job and the harsh trials he is believed to have endured at the hands of Satan who was “allowed” by God to inflict loss, pain, and disease on Job to test his faith. Within this scriptural context, the EF believer, like Job, strives to persevere in one’s faith amidst the crises brought about by the virus.
44 Stevenson, Sensational Devotion: Evangelical Performance in Twenty-First-Century America (2013), pp. 42–48.
45 Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”, Theatre Journal 40.4 (1988), pp. 519–531.
46 Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (1965), p. 3.
47 Vora, Impossible Citizens: Dubai’s Indian Diaspora (2013).
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Irene Ann Promodh
Irene Ann Promodh is a BSFS graduate of Georgetown University in Qatar, and is now pursuing a Ph.D. in socio-cultural anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA, [email protected]