Abstract
The author discusses what she learned from her participation in evangelical fighting ministries, paying special attention to how these communities sought to connect with God through interacting with each other. In training with and interviewing the members of these ministries in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the author found that as evangelical Christians, many struggled to establish and maintain the primacy of their personal relationships with God over their interpersonal interests. Yet they also believed their relationships with God were meant to be witnessed and experienced by others. During moments of worship they shared emotional intimacy, granting each other opportunities to make outwardly perceivable their internally felt relationships with God. During their Brazilian jiu-jitsu training, they were encouraged to feel God’s presence as they grappled with each other at very close contact. Using the concept of compartmentalisation, the author analyses how these evangelical fighting ministries demarcated their practices into emotional and physical forms of intimacy, thereby finding different ways to achieve what they perceived as personal contact with God in their intense interactions with each other.
Highlights
The author discusses what she learned from her participation in evangelical fighting ministries, paying special attention to how these communities sought to connect with God through interacting with each other
For years popular culture has been used in church social programming in urban Brazil
One surprising development since the turn of the 21st century has been the popularising of evangelical fighting ministries
Summary
The author discusses what she learned from her participation in evangelical fighting ministries, paying special attention to how these communities sought to connect with God through interacting with each other. As self-proclaimed evangelicals, many of these ministries’ participants devoted their time to maintaining personal relationships with God in the face of myriad interpersonal interests This could be a difficult task due to the visceral intensity of urban Brazilian daily life, as it was cluttered with stories, sometimes first-hand, of violence, sex, and mind-altering influences (Lewis 1999; Matta 1979; Matta 1991). During their combat sport training participants of these ministries were meant to learn about their relationships with God by grappling with each other at very close contact in near silence Their stoic give-and-take of pain happened within an intimate space of physical interdependence.
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