www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/us/02fight.html
By R M SCHNEIDERMAN Published: February 1, 2010 MEMPHIS -- In the back room of a theater on Beale Street, John Renken, 42, a pastor, recently led a group of young men in prayer.
Enlarge This Image Fred R Conrad/The New York Times Before the Cage Assault bout in Memphis, Mr Lane got his hands taped by Pastor John Renken of Xtreme Ministries. An hour later, a member of his flock who had bowed his head was now unleashing a torrent of blows on an opponent, and Mr Renken was offering guidance that was not exactly prayerful. he shouted from the sidelines of a martial arts event called Cage Assault.
Mr Renken, who founded the church and academy, doubles as the team's coach. The school's motto is "Where Feet, Fist and Faith Collide." Mr Renken's ministry is one of a small but growing number of evangelical churches that have embraced mixed martial arts -- a sport with a reputation for violence and blood that combines kickboxing, wrestling and other fighting styles -- to reach and convert young men, whose church attendance has been persistently low. Mixed martial arts events have drawn millions of television viewers, and one was the top pay-per-view event in 2009. Recruitment efforts at the churches, which are predominantly white, involve fight night television viewing parties and lecture series that use ultimate fighting to explain how Christ fought for what he believed in. Other ministers go further, hosting or participating in live events. The goal, these pastors say, is to inject some machismo into their ministries -- and into the image of Jesus -- in the hope of making Christianity more appealing.
"But what led me to find Christ was that Jesus was a fighter." The outreach is part of a larger and more longstanding effort on the part of some ministers who fear that their churches have become too feminized, promoting kindness and compassion at the expense of strength and responsibility.
These pastors say the marriage of faith and fighting is intended to promote Christian values, quoting verses like "fight the good fight of faith" from Timothy 6:12. Several put the number of churches taking up mixed martial arts at roughly 700 of an estimated 115,000 white evangelical churches in America. The sport is seen as a legitimate outreach tool by the youth ministry affiliate of the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents more than 45,000 churches. "You have a lot of troubled young men who grew up without fathers, and they're wandering and they're hopeless and they're lousy dads themselves and they're just lost," said Paul Robie, 54, a pastor at South Mountain Community Church in Draper, Utah. Fighting as a metaphor has resonated with some young men. "I'm fighting to provide a better quality of life for my family and provide them with things that I didn't have growing up," said Mike Thompson, 32, a former gang member and student of Mr Renken's who until recently had struggled with unemployment and who fights under the nickname the Fury. "Once I accepted Christ in my life," Mr Thompson said, "I realized that a person can fight for good."
Eugene Cho, 39, a pastor at Quest Church, an evangelical congregation in Seattle. "I don't live for the Jesus who eats red meat, drinks beer and beats on other men." Robert Brady, 49, the executive vice president of a conservative evangelical group, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, agreed, saying that the mixed martial arts motif of evangelism "so easily takes away from the real focus of the church, which is the Gospel." Almost a decade ago, mixed martial arts was seen as a blood sport without rules or regulation.
Roughly 100 young men, many sporting shaved heads and tattoos, attend fight parties at Canyon Creek near Seattle, watching bouts on the church's four big-screen televisions. Vendors hustle hot dogs and "Predestined to Fight" T-shirts.
Men ages 18 to 34 are absent from churches, some pastors said, because churches have become more amenable to women and children. "We grew up in a church that had pastel pews," said Tom Skiles, 37, the pastor of Spirit of St. In focusing on the toughness of Christ, evangelical leaders are harking back to a similar movement in the early 1900s, historians say, when women began entering the work force. Proponents of this so-called muscular Christianity advocated weight lifting as a way for Christians to express their masculinity.
Xtreme Ministries, watched as two of his three fighters were beaten, one emerging with a broken ankle. Another, Jesse Johnson, 20, a potential convert, was subdued in a chokehold and decided not to return home with the other church members after his bout. He stayed in Memphis, drinking and carousing with friends along Beale Street, this city's raucous, neon-lighted strip of bars.
|
http://csua.com/feed/