Christian televangelism and ‘crusades’ in a Muslim land

Drawing on ethnographic evidence from Punjab, this paper examines what makes the Islamic Republic of Pakistan a prized destination among foreign Pentecostal missionaries. I document the career of Anwar Fazal, a prominent Christian televangelist who achieved fame in the 2000s by holding large open-air services centered on the promise of miraculous healing and material advancement. These so-called healing ‘crusades’ increasingly feature the presence of mostly North American preachers on tour in the country, drawn by the prospect of evangelizing among Muslims, or at least of branding themselves as such on the global evangelical stage. The article elucidates how this transnational flow of pastors, money and Pentecostal ideas are leveraged by local Christian actors in search of mobility. I hypothesize that the viability of these collaborations and the entrepreneurial success of televangelists like Fazal rest on the moral value ascribed to Pakistan within Western Christian imagination, and on its continued dramatization as a land of Muslim fanaticism and Christian persecution. I conclude by reflecting on the extent to which Pentecostalism reconfigures the way Pakistani Christians construe emancipation and belonging in the context of Muslim cultural hegemony.