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ABSTRACT
Actor, Andrew Garfield ‘fell in love with Jesus’ as he engaged in Ignatian spiritual practices in preparation for playing Father Rodrigues in the movie, Silence. Directed by Martin Scorsese, Paramount Pictures, 2016. While the importance of spiritual practices for faith formation is well recognised, spiritual practices are generally associated with developing spiritual maturity rather than with such pre-conversion engagement. This paper considers Garfield’s account of meeting Jesus alongside the lived experiences of other recent converts who similarly engaged in spiritual practices before their conversions to Christianity. It argues that understanding the Christian faith as performative helps explain how Christian faith is formed and made real through such embodied acts of ritualised practice.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Lynne Taylor is Jack Somerville Lecturer in Pastoral Theology at Otago University and co-leader of the Student Soul (Presbyterian) congregation. Her PhD explored why previously unchurched Australians become Christians today.
Notes
1 I am using the term affect in its broader psychological or philosophical sense, to contrast affective processes with cognitive processes (Zajonc Citation1980; Forgas Citation2000).
2 This contrasts with Garfield’s experience, which included a silent retreat and a period of celibacy.
3 Hamish began reading the bible, thinking: “I’m just going to have a flick through and have a good chuckle … about what these silly Christians believe.”
4 This is not to suggest that they were transformed by their own effort: God’s grace and activity was clearly evident in all their conversion stories. However, their performative engagement in spiritual practices provided an environment in which that transformation occurred.
5 Note the word “performance” speaks here of action rather than inauthenticity (Ruel Citation2005, 255).
6 All names are pseudonyms.