« Être chrétien, ce n'est pas une religion, c'est une manière de vivre » : religion et incorporation chez les Népalo-bhoutanais convertis au pentecôtisme de Saint-Jérôme (Québec)

In Bhutan, in Nepal as in Quebec, minority religions are subjected to a number of suspicions justifying their regulations, if not their exclusion from national space. Those suspicions only increase if the religion in question is also closely associated with an ethnic minority group. Those fears concerned with a perceived ethnicity-religion elision disruptive of the majoritarian social order have more to do with national myths built around, and in reaction to, certain religions more than with any genuine contestation inherent to religious groupings. Religion’s contribution to, particularly in a migratory and minoritarian context, a full and active participation in a new host society has been amply demonstrated. Religion helps make sense of migratory experiences, contributing to a notable anchoring of newcomers to their surroundings. The religious group, for its part, contributes a material, psychological and social help to newcomers.  This study, conducted alongside two congregations gathering Nepalo-bhutanese converts to christianity in a Montreal region, sheds light on religion’s role as a space of negociation between imposed norms – religious as well as secular – to believers and the subjectivity of their religious experience. By following the trajectory of the forced migration of the members of both congregations, I explore the impact of the integration imperatives of localities, the geographycally and historically situated social and material environnements, on the negociations enabled by religion. I show that tensions and conflicts which can arise from those negociations do not entail an end to social cohesion. Rather, they inform a vivre-ensemble caracterised by a certain conviviality.  Two manifestations of these negociations and their impact on the vivre-ensemble are studied. Conversion to christianity is the first of them. Performed in a hindu context, it shows how religion answers a need for a recomposition of the self following experiences of suffering, loss of meaning and exclusion. Despite the challenge it levels at the hindu social order and of the consequences it carries, conversion enables to project oneself in a dignified identity and a new peer group. Performed in the Quebec context, conversion is the starting point of a renegociation with one’s past reading of religion. It is the occasion to realise an idealised self, without fear of social reprisal. In both contexts, conversion constitutes a negociation between the locality’s integration imperatives and the believer’s yearnings.  The choice of the religious grouping, the congregation, is also the result of negociations. The Nepalo-bhutanese christians initially gathered in the same multiethnic congregation, l’Église Originelle. The majority of them have since left and created their own congregation, Naya Mandali. Despite the « ethnico-religious » spectre looming over their decision, the ethnic referents around which Naya Mandali was built cannot by themselves explain the division. Linguistic choice, celebrations’ style and Jati divisions intersect effectively with properly sociological divisive factors, such as a transition in authority figures, prefered leadership styles and pressure from figures external to the religious grouping. Properly religious claims are also made, despite ethnic referents. Thus, the choice of Nepali speaks more to the tools it represents in enabling a better understanding and transmission of the religious message. The locality’s vernacular language is not necessarily evacuated from the cult’s presentation for it, the congregation making the possibility of francophone visitors one of their preoccupation. The actualization of the self as a better christian is much more the objectif behind the creation of Naya Mandali than the actualization of a nepalese self.   The two congregations that emerged from the schism translate a distinct way of doing Church. Instead of a meance to the host society,s cohesion, the creation of Naya Mandali is a manifestation of the unexpected modes of incorporation enabled by religion. The results of negociations between integration imperatives instilled by the host societies and the believers’ yearnings, the Nepalo-bhutanese congregation had to create contacts with the localities’ other christians. Thus, they established contacts with non-migrants who would have not met them otherwise. Through religion’s medium, the schismatics have fulfilled, in a somewhat subversive way, the integration imperatives of the localities they navigated across: autonomisation, responsabilisation and self-fulfilment.

Keyphrases: Religion, Conversion, Anthropology, Ethnology, Christianity, Diversity, Majority-minority, Nepalo-bhutanese, Refugees, Incorporation