Prisoners of Hope: Intra-Prison Community Resources of Chilean Pentecostalism Between 1925 and 1950

Chilean Pentecostalism started its intra-prison activities in the Chilean prisons in 1925. It presented itself as a religious community with diverse community resources, which, in the first instance, allows the converted prisoner to take refuge in the intra-prison religious community, offering at least four significant community resources: (a) conversion as a ritual resource of community initiation; (b) symbolic resources resignify prison by differentiating between the guilt and the responsibility facing crime in the image of Satan, and proposing prison as a school, a space of painful learning; (c) hymns as community resources in which prayer and reading are individual, but singing is communal, as it transforms the community in a cathartic time and space; (d) finally, it offers community networks, as social resources for accompaniment, and the possibility of social reintegration. The methodology employed was access to institutional magazines as a source of information: (a) Review of Chile Pentecostal (1925–1950) and (b) Review of Fuego de Pentecostés (1928–1950). In total, approximately 300 magazines were reviewed.