Conclusions: Challenging Hierarchical Pluralism

Abstract

I started this book by recalling a conversation with Michał, a Pentecostal pastor, emphasizing his reluctance to speak about the position of the Catholic Church and his willingness to discuss, instead, local ways of “making pluralism.” During the same meeting, Michał told me the story of a charitable initiative that he coordinated in the mid-1990s. Thanks to transnational Pentecostal networks, gifts from Switzerland—mainly school equipment, toys, clothes, and sweets for children—were sent to Rozstaje, where they were supposed to be distributed among the needy inhabitants. Aware that he only knew of such inhabitants in his own congregation, Michał asked some of the Roman Catholic priests to help him out. “You know best who needs the aid most,” he explained in his conversations with the priests, but this argument was often unsuccessful. Some priests refused to assist him and even warned their parishioners against accepting “suspicious” gifts from Pentecostals. Others asked Michał where the help had come from, a question that he himself found difficult to answer; although the charity network was run by the Pentecostal community, the donors of the gifts might have been people of different religious backgrounds. Eventually, the head of the Rozstaje parish accepted his invitation and the two clergymen went through the villages together, distributing the gifts to school children and visiting the poorest houses.