as mentally ill, but instead celebrated him as a beacon of spiritual health. Had I met Octavio in a medical clinic, without an understanding of Pentecostal cosmology, I would have diagnosed him with a psychotic disorder or with HIV dementia based on his limited attention to my questions, and his communication with beings that others could not see or hear. In the ministry, his unending dialogue with spirits was a coveted state that required focused self-discipline and skill.
And it was Octavio and Juan’s testimony that allowed me to imagine, if not experience, the spiritual eyes and ears with which they perceived the occult realm and channeled spiritual power. Testimony was the narrative tool bridging the everyday world to the enchanted world of spiritual knowing that opened up to converts, a world in which hidden meaning was revealed, in which the apparent disorder of addicted pasts became part of a grander design, and which portended a victorious future. Juan and Octavio’s testimony inserted glimpses of the occult into my own perceptions; they gave me experiential clues to the world they inhabited. Their testimony worked on me in a less cognitive, in a more visceral, somatic way than that described by Susan Harding (2000). Her classic linguistic analysis of witness—the testimony of fundamentalist Christians to the power and reality of their salvation—identified it as a narrative technique that moves listeners from unbelief to the gap between unbelief and belief (Harding 2000). What I observed at Restoration House was not the inculcation of sheer belief but, rather, of experiential proof, through Juan and Octavio’s testimony: the occult perceptions and sensations that listening to testimony generated in naïve listeners stoked a curiosity and desire for more. At the same time, it was a practice that reinforced the single-minded commitment of those giving testimony, allowing them to experience and re-experience their own inhabitation by spirits in the intimate folds of their story.
Through testimony, moments of insight, spirit possession, and Christian passion could be relived again and again in a timeless space of memory and sensation that gave converts a sense of what eternal salvation might be like. As George Saunders (1995) wrote of Pentecostal conversion stories, “The ‘eternalness’ of Pentecostal time horizons . . . also allows them to live in the present moment, as ‘inner-worldly’ activists” (Saunders 1995, 335). In other words, converts use testimony to till and seed their inner terrain with guided imagery and the renaming of sensory experience; to make the self the site of action and change. Testimony allows converts to treat their thoughts and internal signals as clay to be shaped through narrative and bodily practices. In testifying to their choice to follow the Lord, argues Saunders, “They are liberated from their passivity. They have recreated their own histories and, in the process, have regained a presence in history itself” (Saunders 1995, 336).
What this means is that testimony is as important for the faith of the person giving it as for the future faith of the person receiving it. Harding (2000) describes testimony as a tool for evangelism, for creating doubt in non-believers and moving them toward belief. I came to see testimony as an equally critical tool for believers to cultivate their own belief. Testimony shapes the self by narrating it into an archetype of trial, decision, and transformation. It injects everyday life with a sense of significance and forward motion, locating converts in mystical time and space that is both immediate and perpetual.
Ironically, these themes of immediacy and perpetuity, repetition and memory, are echoed by clinical and neuroscience researchers describing addiction itself. Their descriptions highlight the phenomena of “triggers”; memory cues in the environment that lead to cravings, to the compulsion to give one’s full attention to the pursuit of drugs in a way that is as absorbing and anticipatory as it is repetitive and unchanging. As stated in a special issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry that reviewed biological models of addiction, “evidence at the molecular, cellular, systems, behavioral, and computational levels of analysis is converging to suggest the view that addiction represents a pathological usurpation of the neural mechanisms of learning and memory” (Hyman 2005: 1414).
If nothing else, evangelical testimony is a practice of memory creation, a practice that is both relational and internal, one that cues the testifier to re-experience spiritual encounters. Yet, when neuroscientists propose “treating addiction through manipulations of learning and memory” (Torregrossa, Corlett, and Taylor 2011, 609) they refer to pharmaceuticals that disrupt the chemical reactions at neuroreceptors that consolidate memories and facilitate learning of new cues. Their studies are based largely on mice that model human behavior. Missing from their inquiry are the ways that human subjects shape their own external and internal environments to create new cues.
TESTS
One day I pulled up to the gates at Restoration House to find Juan in an upbeat mood. It was mild, not humid; typical of January in Puerto Rico, and the yellow sunlight filtering through the mango trees matched Juan’s energetic walk to meet me at the gates.
I passed a test today, with an “A.” I feel so happy. I realize it’s my decision to do or no. . . . Last night I sang, when I sing I’m flying. When I’m not singing I have to put my feet on the floor again. I felt Jesus very special.
At culto Juan had been called to the altar to receive a healing prayer from the pastor.
I had a vision. I saw big hands. The Holy Spirit said look at this: it’s a fruit. On the outside it was not very clean, but when the hands peeled it, it was beautiful inside. Preacher said come here—he answered all the questions I had for God. He said feel my love, don’t try to understand me because you can’t. You know I need you, gonna use you. You’ll live your life in my hands.
This feeling of forgiveness through God’s grace was one that Juan found habit forming. “I wanna feel like I feel now every time. Bible says watch yourself—think of God all the time. God is going to put a piece of God inside of you.”
Trying out a theory that Juan’s words brought to mind, I asked, “So you were feeling fortified this afternoon when you were tested?” Juan replied,
The Bible says free will: you have to learn to say yes or no. It’s like a fight inside of you. God says “don’t do it, if you wanna feel [good] like that.” I say it’s like that? I laugh I’m so happy. I feel like the first time I met Him. I failed Him, I have to start up again. I’m under construction.
Juan’s explanation reflected the complexity of Pentecostal ideas about agency and free will. Although becoming saved meant giving one’s life over to the will of God, this required actively listening and looking in order to know what God was asking, through prayer, Bible study, meditation, and fasting. That is, converts had to cultivate their communion with God. They had to do so regularly, such that they became a habit, and replaced the old habits that had left them vulnerable to evil spirits in their addiction. In this logic, personal agency and its opposite, addiction, link habit—the product of a series of willful acts—to the forces of spirits, which originate outside of the person; an individual is responsible for cultivating the interior environment for good spirits to dominate. Tests were reminders to be vigilant of one’s inner state, to maximize unity with God.
Juan elaborated on his tests during a life-history interview that he granted me in his “office,” the small stucco building in which he did intake interviews with new clients. He picked up where he left off. His father had died when he was twelve, leaving him, his mother, and eleven siblings to fend for themselves.
I was mostly away from the house, working various jobs. I wasn’t using drugs at work, but Friday and Saturday—wow! I made friends with the dealers at drug-copping spots. One of my hobbies was washing cars. I was meticulous—I used Q-tips to clean the air conditioning filter. The dealers liked that and hired me. I met a woman, 31 years old with three kids, when I was 21. I lived with her 7 years. [When] she met me [I was] smoking marijuana. I met the person selling marijuana, then through him the person selling heroin, then through him the person selling cocaine. . . . I had to leave her because of my problem. She’s a beautiful woman, not a drug user.
Juan
