In treating the Charismatic movement as "an episode in the social history of the imagination," Csordas describes the movement's internal diversity and traces its development and international expansion across the thirty years of its existence.

He offers insights regarding the contemporary nature of rationality, the transformation of space and time in Charismatic daily life, gender discipline, the conditions for the blurring of boundaries between ritual and everyday events the sense of community forged through shared ritual participation, and the creativity of language and metaphor in prophetic utterance.

This new work makes an original, important contribution to anthropology, linguistic-semiotic and rhetorical studies, the multidisciplinary study of social movements, and American studies.