Women televangelists from the US have garnered a significant following among people in various parts of the world, including Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia. This paper looks at the influence of female televangelists, Juanita Bynum, Joyce Meyer and Paula White in Kingston, JA. Based upon ethnographic research in Jamaica, I argue that women televangelists have gained tremendous national and international followings based in part upon sharing their experiences of sexual trauma and redemption. These “gospels of sexual redemption,” should be read in light of popularly discussed gospels of prosperity because the economic changes that have occurred under neoliberal policies and massive urbanization have wreaked havoc on both the social and sexual lives of women. These gospels are thus not mutually exclusive but in many ways interconnected.
Austin-BroosDJ (1997) Jamaica Genesis: Religion and the Politics of Moral Orders. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2.
BillingsleyS (2008) It’s a New Day: Race and Gender in the Modern Charismatic Movement. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
3.
BrasherB (1998) Godly Women: Fundamentalism and Female Power. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
4.
BrennanD (2004) What’s Love Got to Do with It? Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic. Durham: Duke University Press.
5.
BrodwinP (2003) Pentecostalism in translation: Religion and the production of community in the Haitian diaspora. American Ethnologist30(1): 85–101.
6.
BruscoEE (1995) The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Columbia. Austin: University of Texas Press.
7.
ChevannesB (2001) Learning to Be a Man: Culture, Socialization, and Gender Identity in Five Caribbean Communities. Barbados: University of the West Indies Press.
8.
FrahmM-A (2010) Professional Woman in South African Pentecostal Charismatic Churches. Leiden: Brill.
9.
FrancisP (2005) One rape every 12 hrs. Jamaica Gleaner, 30October.
10.
FrederickM (2003) Between Sundays: Black Women and Everyday Struggles of Faith. Berkeley: University of California Press.
11.
FrederickM (2006) “But it’s Bible”: African American women and televangelism. In: Marie GriffithRSavageB (eds) Women and Religion in the African Diaspora. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
12.
HaagL (1993) Oprah Winfrey: The construction of intimacy in the talk show. Journal of Popular Culture26 (spring): 116.
13.
JacksonJL (2005) Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
14.
KempadooK (2004) Sexing the Caribbean: Gender, Race, and Sexual Labor. New York: Routledge.
15.
KempadooK (ed.) (1999) Sun, Sex, and Gold: Tourism and Sex Work in the Caribbean. New York: Routledge.
16.
LaFontS (2001) Very straight sex: The development of sexual morés in Jamaica. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History2(3): 1–21.
17.
MahmoodS (2005) Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
18.
ManningC (1999) God Gave Us the Right: Conservative Catholic, Evangelical Protestant and Orthodox Jewish Women Grapple with Feminism. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
19.
Marie GriffithR (1997) God’s Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission. Berkeley: University of California Press.
20.
MasciaroteG (1991) C’mon girl: Oprah Winfrey and the discourse of feminine talk. Genders11 (fall): 81–110.
21.
MillerDEYamamoriT (2007) Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement. Berkeley: University of California Press.
22.
MoortiS (1998) Cathartic confessions or emancipatory texts? Rape narratives on the Oprah Winfrey show. Social Text57 (winter): 83–102.
23.
MurrayD (2002) Opacity: Gender, Sexuality, Race, and the “Problem” of Identity in Martinique. New York: Peter Lang.
24.
NelsonT (2005) Every Time I Feel the Spirit: Religious Experience and Ritual in an African American Congregation. New York: NYU Press.
25.
PeckJ (1994) Talk about racism: Framing a popular discourse of race on Oprah Winfrey. Cultural Critique27 (spring): 89–126.
26.
RouseC (2004) Engaged Surrender: African American Women and Islam. Berkeley: University of California Press.
27.
SharpeJSamanthaP (2006) The sweetest taboo: Studies of Caribbean sexualities; a review essay. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society32(1): 247–74.
28.
SmildeD (2007) Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism. Berkeley: University of California Press.
29.
WhiteP (2004) Deal with It! You Cannot Conquer What You Will Not Confront. Waterville, ME: Walker Large Print.
