Abstrakt
Every scholar interested in the conversions of Roma has touched the topic of kinship and its relation to conversions. On one side the kin (mostly patrilinear group) can be used as a receptive environment for proselytization.
Historically the conversions of whole patrilinear groups have been giving rise to new Romani religious groups (mostly the Pentecostal ones). On the other side whole families have been leaving the religious groups together at once.
It has been commented, that Romani conversions and congregations are still based mostly on kinship ties. Hrustič, for example, puts it that almost all the converts to Jehova Witnesses and to Charismatic movement in the village he did fieldwork at were first proselytized by their kin (Hrustič 2007).
I do not necesarily see kinship as a limit to religious change among Roma. In the Romani Charismatic congregation in Western Bohemia I have been doing my fieldwork, I could see how conversions to Charismatic Christianity gave rise to new kinship ties, such as between young couples, and between their parents.
Kinship had been strategically built, among other means, through religious conversion. Family boundaries and loyalties have been re-negotiated when the congregation was in a deep crisis and kinship ties to one family who left the congregation have been questioned and undeplayed by those who remained.
A closer look at (new) ends and beginnings of this congregation will give a more nuanced picture of the interplay between kin and religion among Czech Roma.