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could be said that NPL directly transfer their religious experience and lessons received to the economic field. Indeed some of them interpret biblical promises in more economic terms rather than in their true biblical sense. This could be seen clearly in the opinion of several of the lay people.\u000A2. Conversion and social mobility\u000AAccording to testimonies gathered among NPL a good number of them reached some type of social mobility. Their conversion operated a change of life that was translated into improvement in different directions. According to Mart\u00EDn \u2018The governing category of betterment includes moral recovery, the righting of previous wrongs and it suggested a reversal of old ways and wasteful or destructive priorities\u2019 (2006, 29).144 According to the lay people, their conversion reshaped their inner world which also had effects on their world. That is to say, the churches are a means where the people have an encounter with God by means of conversion that places in their agenda the possibility of becoming a new sort of person, professional, citizen, which can lead them to establish changes in their social status.\u000ARecio Adrados affirms that \u2018a consequence normally not sought after of conversion is social mobility especially if the origin of the converts low or lower middle class\u2019. He points out that \u2018the socio-economic ascent is obtained normally through a more methodical lifestyle and working life that is adopted through contact with the informal access to groups or networks of association\u2019 (1993: 83-84). Martin observes the social changes that David Maxwell comments among Pentecostal churches of Zimbabwe. He comments that it \u2018is clear that concern for betterment has deep African roots and that prosperity teaching is focused on local concerns. He says that for some they have engendered social mobility, for others provided a code helpful in avoiding destitution and for yet others a pattern for dealing with modernity and benefiting from it\u2019 (2002: 146, 151). Gerhard Lenski in his\u000A144 See article of Martin \u2018Undermining the old paradigms\u2019, Paper for the Conference of the European Research Network on Global Pentecostalism (GLOPENT) on What is Pentecostalism? \u2018Constructing and Representing Global Pentecostalism in Academic Discourse\u2019. Birmingham, January 19-20, 2006.\u000A312\u000A 


































































































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