"The Holy Spirit will surely fall..." : A Study in Bodily Experiences Interpreted as Religious by the Individual, in a Christian Charismatic Context

In this paper I aimed to explore the bodily experiences and expressions that Christian charismatics interpret as religious. The so-called presence of God and the so-called gifts of the spirit were in focus in the gathering of information. My purpose was to find out how the social community of the Christian charismatics affects the subjective bodily experiences that are interpreted as religious by the individual. The main questions were: 1: How do Christian charismatics describe religious experiences and their effect on the body? 2: What bodily expressions of religious experience can be observed in Christian charismatic contexts? 3: Is there a common way of expressing the experience of God's presence (individually or in a group) and how, in this case, can any resemblance be explained? The methods used to answer these questions were qualitative interviews and participant observations, which then were analyzed by the anthropologist Thomas J. Csordas theory of embodiment. By applying his theory on a Swedish-based material I hope to bring a new perspective into the research on this subject and inspire to further research and curiosity about Christian charismatics in Sweden. In this essay phenomena such as falling in the spirit, speaking in tongues, and healing were analyzed. Some of the phenomena, which are interpreted as presences of God by the believer, could be explained according to the theory of embodiment, but some could not. The similarities of bodily religious experiences among different groups of Christian charismatics can be explained with the concept of habitus. That is because even though the groups may have long distances between them, the still share behaviors and belief systems , for example the Bible, as common ideas in the global habitus of Christian charismatics