Becoming Men, Becoming Human: Building Refuge, Masculinity and Worthiness in a Puerto Rican Church

Abstract

Puerto Rico continues to suffer from the impacts of its colonial status manifesting through the debt crisis, austerity, and the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Simultaneously, Protestant evangelical churches have emerged as one of the more prominent social institutions responding to this suffering, often playing significant roles in addressing the spiritual, social, and material needs of a population in crisis. Many of these churches have attempted to address the impacts of colonial-capitalism and severe austerity through spiritual approaches that center the family and link Puerto Rico’s social, political and economic suffering to a crisis of masculinity, manhood and the disintegration of traditional family values. The purpose of this study was to determine how the church discourse attempts to address the economic crisis facing the Reyes community through how church leaders make sense of their own approaches, and how—in relation to this— the participants make sense of their spiritual journeys and their relationship with the church. Through a reflexive phenomenological approach—guided by the methodology of reflexive praxis—I uncovered that the church addresses structural violence—as it manifests through the family and communities—by working to create new kinds of Christian men, manhood, and masculinity. Specifically, I uncovered (1) how two CDR male church leaders made sense of their own discursive approaches to becoming (Christian) men, and (2) in relation to these approaches and their logics, how two prominent male church members made sense of their own suffering and eventual spiritual and ethical transformation to become “hombres correctos” in a non-denominational evangelical Puerto Rican church. The results reveal the church as a contested space of biblical interpretation, competing masculinities and gender norms. At the same time, the results show that the crisis of masculinity, as it impacted participants, is best understood as a struggle to meaningfully exist and that spiritual “refuge”—involving divinely rooted worthiness—functioned as an indispensable component toward becoming more loving and compassionate men while simultaneously allowing them to detach themselves from more dehumanizing manhood and masculinities. Implications for policy, practice and research are discussed.