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4 The Making of Community and the Work of Faith “We Live as a Community, Not as Individuals” Doña Eugenia is a frail-looking, spindle-thin woman, but spying her through the open door of her humble house, roughly kneading dough for flour tortillas, I didn’t doubt her strength. It was the inaugural meeting of Colonia Belén’s Catholic comunidad de base (base ecclesiastical community , or CEB), and I could think of no better place for it to be held than doña Eugenia’s house. She and her daughters are active in the church’s women’s group. Her family also embodies many of the prototypical characteristics of CEB families: female-headed household, poor but not destitute , and a family emphasis on the importance of education. All three of her daughters have finished high school, no small feat when many of their contemporaries (mid-twenties) haven’t finished primary school. On this August evening, the last month of my field research, about twenty participants sat in a large circle on an assortment of white plastic lawn chairs and long wooden benches borrowed from the church. Knowing how active the youth of the church are, it came as no surprise to me that almost half of the participants that night were also regulars of the youth group. I sat down next to Martín, who immediately disengaged himself from conversation with the older woman sitting next to him to elbow me in the ribs slightly. I tipped my head toward his. “Look who’s come,” Martín said quietly, jutting his lips out slightly to point in the direction across from us and to the left. Through the smoke and dim light, I made out the figure of Arturo and two of his gang buddies. I knew from previous conversations with Arturo that he converted to Pentecostalism for a brief spell, ultimately returning to the gang. I never expected to see him and his friends at a Catholic event. I couldn’t figure out why they were here—if someone had invited them, or if they found out about it from neighbors. Arturo caught me looking in his direction and nodded his head upward, chin thrust out in that silent greeting that indicates respect and intimidation simultaneously. Community and Faith 73 After the opening prayer, the facilitator of the evening, Chago, who is also the facilitator of the youth group, welcomed everyone and invited them to listen to the evening’s gospel reading. Meetings were organized around a central New Testament reading that was used as the focus of discussion to better understand the meaning of faith and the words of Jesus and the apostles. The meaning of the passage is supposed to develop organically from the ensuing discussion. Chago, in a voice that matched his robust body, read from Matthew 15:10–11, a passage that describes Jesus’ “heresy” against the Pharisees. When asked why Jesus’ followers did not follow Jewish food taboos, Jesus proclaimed that it was not what went into the mouth that made a person unclean, but rather what went out of a person’s mouth that made the person unclean. Or, as I understood it in Spanish: La mancha del hombre que sale de él (“a man’s mark or stain is what comes out of him”). There was a moment of reflection before Chago asked us to go around in the circle to comment on the passage. The first person to his left was José Luis, a young man of twenty who had been struggling with his marijuana addiction and trying to leave the 18th Street gang. This had led him on a religious odyssey, it seemed, because I had seen him days before at a Pentecostal small-group meeting. Later in the week, after he had made a formal conversion to Pentecostalism, he would tell me how hollow he had felt, how he had been feeling dead inside. He looked troubled as he prepared to speak, his compact, muscular body tightly wound as he sat upright and severe in the plastic chair. “Instead of expecting God to change you,” he spoke in a quiet voice to the group, “you have to be ready to change for God. All this time I have been wanting to change, it is true, but I was expecting God to do it for me. But that’s not it—it’s not just wanting to change, not just the desire, it’s that we...

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