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.