Investing in miracles : El Shaddai and the transformation of popular Catholicism in the Philippines / Katharine L. Wiegele.

and the relevance of their very notions of God, Christian community, and Christian life. (Source: http://www.kabayancentral.com)

Since the early 1980s, approximately ten million people have turned to charismatic businessman-turned-preacher "Brother Mike" and his Catholic "prosperity" movement, El Shaddai. Investing in Miracles offers an in-depth look at this unique indigenous movement, characterized by its effective use of mass media and its huge, emotion-filled outdoor rallies. Wiegele argues that El Shaddai's theology directly engages and affirms desires for the material signs of modernity in ways that the mainstream Philippine Roman Catholic Church and Filipino leftist movements do not. At stake for its many adherents are their place and identity within the broader society, the meaning of their experiences pf poverty, suffering, and oppression