Andrew Johnson is a research associate with CRCC's Religious Competition and Creative Innovation (RCCI) initiative. He spent the last year as a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University. He is currently working on a book manuscript and documentary film on Pentecostalism inside of prison in Rio de Janeiro. Andrew conducted the research inside of Rio de Janeiro’s prisons as member of the Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Initiative and is interested in studying religious practice on the margins of society.
Andrew received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Minnesota in the fall of 2012. Before entering the doctoral program at Minnesota, he served as a foreign service officer in the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and worked at the U.S. Embassies in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and Brasilia, Brazil.
For Brazil’s “killable people”, there are two prevalent ways to deal with the relative hell of prison - both involving allegiance and devotion. You can give your life to the gang or give your life to God. Only three types of people dare to venture into the heart of a Minas Gerais prison: the condemned, the pentecostal pastors leading the prison ministry, ...
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