What Can Martial Arts Monks Teach Us About Faith?
The Master and a Warrior of Light
(REVIEW) In the 2019 documentary “Faith,” spiritual leader “the Master” addresses his faith community of Warriors of Light after a conflict involving one of its members: “I don’t want anybody ever to say, ‘They’re like any other sect. There’s something fishy about them.’”
In many ways, this small group of formal martial arts champions nestled in the Bolzano hills of northern Italy isn’t at all like other sects — if it wasn’t unique enough that it’s made up of former martial arts champions. Members aren’t concerned with money, fame or evangelizing to gain new members. They allow members to leave at any time, though they certainly mourn the loss and attempt to change for the better when it happens. They dance and train to German house music.
In other ways, of course, they’re too similar. The Master retains complete control of the routines and training of his students, and he is at times brutal in his physicality and his critique. The members live in one small compound; they’re allowed no physical or emotional connection to the outside world.
But “Faith” isn’t about analyzing this group’s practices and determining their harm or benefit. Instead, it’s about the things that give people faith and how they sustain it. Though intentionally inconclusive, the documentary raises worthwhile questions about the nature of belief.
Little is actually known about the group’s full doctrine. Members are hardly public enough to have been studied beyond the bounds of this documentary, and the documentary goes into precious little detail.
Their beliefs are a combination of Catholicism and Shaolin kung fu, which is connected to Chan Buddhism. They’re seen praying the Lord’s Prayer, Psalm 23 and the Hail Mary. They end all their prayers by saying “peace and love.”
As a wall of text preceding the documentary claims, the Master founded the Warriors of Light in 1998. Soon after, “he selected the Chosen one who would bring Light into the world and founded a Monastery in her defense.”
The chosen one, Cristina, begins her official training in the documentary. It’s grueling, and she quickly begins to have doubts — which is difficult for the Master to bear.
“I mean, I spent 20 years of my life on this because we believe in this,” he says to other leaders within the group. “Now to hear her say that she doesn’t believe it, you see, it can be a problem. And at that point, what are you doing here?”
This brief prologue also claims that the Warriors of Light exist to “fight evil” and “are now a small army awaiting the final battle.”
This final battle is never explicitly discussed within the documentary, nor are the origins of the belief. In an interview, director Valentina Pedicini said that the Warriors of Light “believe in an apocalyptic dimension that will come in the future, and they are ready to fight it to defend us all.”
For the time being, however, the group only fights themselves. Physically, they seek no other sparring partners beyond the walls of their training rooms. Emotionally, they are determined to overcome their own weaknesses and spiritual shortcomings.
The audience is only offered one further glimpse into the doctrine as two members leave to meet with family for an afternoon. The conversation is stilted but tolerant. One member explains that to maintain the no contact rule, they can’t eat food that has been touched by someone from the “outside world” unless it’s a prepackaged item.
It’s somewhat disappointing that so little is revealed about the group because it is endlessly fascinating and, with every new detail, increasingly strange. But the lack of information is intentional.
Pedicini is much more interested in showing the routines of the warriors: their bathing and shaving, their prayers, their physical exertion and subsequent exhaustion. She’s not as interested in what people believe as she is why they believe it.
The thesis statement of “Faith” could be boiled down to one question: What leads a person to devote 20 years to training in isolation to fight in an apocalyptic dimensional war?
“It’s been an interesting way to break down prejudices, because one often thinks that people who are involved in this kind of situation have big problems,” Pedicini said. “Instead, these people belong to the middle-high class — some of them have a college degree and didn’t have huge problems in their lives.”
The documentary’s cinematography comes closest to answering this overarching question.
Filmed in black and white, it emphasizes the severity of the group’s beliefs and practices. The members fight daily to win — and they don’t accept loss or weakness — in the same way they don’t accept “contamination” from the outside world. They know what their goal is, and they know how to achieve it. For the most part, the Warriors of Light don’t struggle with clarity.
The warriors are also revealed primarily with close-up shots of faces, eyes, gloved fists and quickly moving bodies. There’s a powerful intensity to their violence, even as the Master’s training borders on cruelty.
This physicality is entrancing, and it’s clear that the training would be rewarding in both body and mind. Still, its specificity raises more questions. Were the members only chosen because the Master believed they would make the best warriors, or were they only drawn to the sect because the promise of war appealed to already physical natures? Is all religion, on some level, catering to individual desires of the heart?
There’s also a poignant intimacy within the group’s routine that answers many of the film’s questions. Like church liturgy and religious tradition, daily sparring sessions provide a steadiness that helps form a spiritual connection with the body, the faith community and God.
And sparring sessions, for the Warriors of Light, are treated with no less reverence than their daily prayers.
“Faith” is available to stream on Film Movement+.
Jillian Cheney is a contributing culture writer for Religion Unplugged. She also writes on American Protestantism and evangelical Christianity and was Religion Unplugged’s 2020-21 Poynter-Koch fellow. You can find her on Twitter @_jilliancheney.