WHY AFRICANS DO WHAT THEY DO. ARGUMENTS, DISCUSSIONS AND RELIGIOUS TRANSMISSION IN ANGOLAN PENTECOSTAL CHURCHES IN LISBON

Mavengo, an Angolan evangelical pastor living in Lisbon is, in appearance, a discrete person. Not so tall in size, he looks younger than his actual age, perhaps due to his joyous and affable posture. One would not tell immediately that he has been leading a Christian congregation – the ‘African Cult ’ of Lisbon1 – for decades now. Yet, as he told me once when I interviewed him a few months ago, he also enjoys provok-ing a good quid pro quo among his fellow believers every now and then. For instance, in that occasion he described how he once upset his fellow believers with a seemingly ‘odd behaviour’: months earlier, he had arrived with his wife at a celebration party of a fellow Angolan’s wedding. He told her to sit down at a table with her friends while he himself served her some food and drinks from the buffet. This behaviour was shunned by his Christian brothers, who told him they could not understand why he did not behave as a ‘proper African’, i.e., sit down himself and wait for his wife to serve him instead. This somehow (and apparently) seemed to undermine his authority as a man and simultaneously as a church leader. Mavengo later gave me a thorough description of his personal migration experi