Paper short abstract:

Various religions have different views of what body modification and body enhancement practices entail. Using ethnographic data, we will analyze how the conceptualization of the body mirrors religious rules and norms, but can also be used for challenging, transgressing and reformulating them.

Paper long abstract:

According to Charismatic movements, excellence reveals the human desire to aspire to divinity. Perfect looks, athletic ability, intelligence, greater productivity, increased longevity and even moral perfectionism seem to be within reach in contemporary neoliberal societies. The idealized enhanced body, with the support of biomedical advance and technologies, defies age, sickness and death, epitomizing eternal youth and vitality. Pentecostal religions affirm that, although we were made in the perfect image of God, that image was lost in part due to Adam’s sin. People can survive in the harsh conditions of the natural world with technology, which is nothing more than the extension of humans in the divinity direction. Technological enhancement will lead adepts to a rebirth or born again experience, in order to recover that lost divine image. This paper investigates the integration of various religious interpretations - Pentecostal, Neo-Pentecostal, Charismatic Churches, Afro-Brazilian and African religions in the diaspora - with regards to body modification and enhancement practices. It will address how individuals and social groups articulate the pursue of economic and social improvement with religious discourses and practices, such as miraculous transformation, divine healing, born again experience, physical and spiritual enhancement practices. Using ethnographic data from research in the project EXCEL The Pursuit of Excellence, we will analyze how the conceptualization of the body mirrors social rules and social order – in this case, religious ones- but can also be used as tools for challenging, transgressing and reformulating those rules.