From pope to coach

Chapter 10 starts with Latin America before illustrating many trends that are taking shape in ‘the West.’ This chapter highlights some of the ways in which marketisation is operating to reshape religion through a series of snapshots. Drawing from some of the best work done to date on the subject, the chapter refines the analytic by discussing various responses to the pressures of marketisation. While phenomena such as the vertiginous rise of Global Pentecostalism are perfectly fitted into the Global-Market mould, they are just the tip of a much larger iceberg. Looking at European mainline Protestant denominations as well as the Catholic Church, the discussion shows how a priori neoliberal-sceptical faiths aresometimes inadvertentlybeing reshaped within a Global-Market model, both from within, through structural reforms, communication strategies, and modes of governance, and without, through the lifestylisation of religion of the many who prefer new ‘low-threshold’ offers (meditation, mysticism, festivals, pilgrimages, laying of hands healing techniques, female worships, etc.) to pews. Important in this regard is the shift from traditional and institutional authorities to charismatic ones, with important consequences for religious institutions. These transformations are part of a much deeper shift by which the ethics of authenticity have contributed to mainstream New Age-derived conceptions and practices while fusing them with management themes, as illustrated by the ‘coaching’ phenomenon.