ABSTRACT
Pentecostalism is a twentieth-century, fundamentalist, charismatic religion, which draws on the Holiness tradition of early Methodism, especially religious injunctions concerning Christian behavior and dress, and which stresses the importance of spirit-led and spirit-filled religious services. The services in these small churches are lively and loud and, to the newcomer, appear to be unstructured. The notion that God will spontaneously provide a sermon for the minister while she/he is in the pulpit guides the services, which have no set schedule. The spiritual life stories of women preachers illustrate the collaborative aspects of community-shared narrative. Women who wish to become ministers must rescript their lives to fit the acceptable 'woman preacher' life script. The identifiable components of traditional narratives of life experiences remain surprisingly consistent from narrator to narrator. Virtually every one of the Pentecostal women who has related her story to me has remarked that she was born into a very poor family.
