"Fools and fundamentalists" : the institutional dilemmas of Australian Pentecostalism

Australia is a post-Christian, modernist secular state with a public square ideologically defined by the requirements of a pluralistic Welfare State. That ideology is propagated and defended by media, academia, and a two party majority system of government balanced between liberal democracy and economic liberalism, which filter out 'supernatural' religious content in the interest of maintaining policy settings which do not preference one or another of the major religious traditions which provide over half of the country's welfare services. In the midst of this, supernaturalist religions find themselves in constant tension between participating in state recognized 'religious' functions as traditionally defined, on the one hand, and maintaining their spiritual self-identities and worldviews on the other. The growth of desecularizing movements - migrant Islam, Sydney evangelicalism, and globalizing Pentecostalism are examples - increases the tensions between the traditional state/church settlement as these energetic forms are 'schooled' in how to behave politely in the public square. One way of interrogating tl1e dilemmas which arise is through a taxonomy, such as that provided by Thomas O'Dea's 'dilemmas of institutionalization'. Progressively, these will be explained as dilemmas under the rubrics: Mixed Motivation, the Symbolic, Administrative order, Delimitation, and Power.