Bialecki, “Character as Gift and Erasure”

Bialecki, Jon. 2018. Character as gift and erasure. Social Anthropology. SS(0): 1-11.

Abstract: For Southern Californian members of the Vineyard network of charismatic churches, character is a gift of God, traits bequested on them that are equal in dignity and importance to the classical divine gifts such as tongues, prophecy, healing or casting out demons. The chief difference is that these more classical gifts are not about gaining or valuing character traits, but about submission to God, and therefore are as much moments of character’s erasure as they are of elaboration. And both forms of character, as perduring divine gift or as an ascetically earned moral character shaped through submission, help believers understand character in a third sense: as their being participants, and therefore personages, in the wider Gospel narrative of cosmic salvation.