Jesus In The Hispanic Community

This first-of-its-kind collection reveals U.S. Latino/a theological scholarship as a vital terrain of study in the search for better understanding of the varieties of religious experience in the United States. While the insights of Latino/a theologians from Central and South America have gained attention among professional theologians, until now the role of U.S. Latino/a theology in the formation of North American theological identity has been largely unacknowledged. Nonetheless, the four-centuries old Latino/a presence in the United States has been forming a rich, creative, and distinctively North American Latino/a Christology. Exploring both constructive theology and popular religion, this collection of essays from top U.S. Latino/a scholars reveals the varieties of religious experience in the United States and the importance of Latino/a understandings of Christ to both academy and community.

While the growth in both numbers and influence of Hispanics in North American Catholicism and Protestantism has been commented on widely, up until now there has been no systematic attempt to define a Hispanic theology. Roberto Goizueta, a Cuban-American theologian, aware that "Hispanic" and "Latino" can be terms imposed artificially on diverse peoples, finds a common link in the Spanish language and in a shared culture. Central to this culture is the experience of exile, of being a people at the margins of a society, who must find and make their way together. Central also is faith, and its grounding in this experience of being in exile. In delineating the very particular nature and worldview of Hispanic/Latino theology, Caminemos con Jesus challenges both traditional Euro-American theologies and modern Western epistemological assumptions. It examines the implications of this theological method for the Church and the academy, as well as for the future of the Latino community and North American society. Caminemos con Jesus provides lessons in discipleship for non-Hispanics and Hispanics alike, for students of contemporary theology, and all those engaged in pastoral and church-based work.

The Politics of Jesús is a powerful new biography of Jesus told from the margins. Miguel A. De La Torre argues that we all create Jesus in our own image, reflecting and reinforcing the values of communities—sometimes for better, and often for worse. In light of the increasing economic and social inequality around the world, De La Torre asserts that what the world needs is a Jesus of solidarity who also comes from the underside of global power. The Politics of Jesús is a search for a Jesus that resonates specifically with the Latino/a community, as well as other marginalized groups. The book unabashedly rejects the Eurocentric Jesus for the Hispanic Jesús, whose mission is to give life abundantly, who resonates with the Latino/a experience of disenfranchisement, and who works for real social justice and political change. While Jesus is an admirable figure for Christians, The Politics of Jesús highlights the way the Jesus of dominant culture is oppressive and describes a Jesús from the barrio who chose poverty and disrupted the status quo. Saying “no” to oppression and its symbols, even when one of those symbols is Jesus, is the first step to saying “yes” to the self, to liberation, and symbols of that liberation. For Jesus to connect with the Hispanic quest for liberation, Jesús must be unapologetically Hispanic and compel people to action. The Politics of Jesús provocatively moves the study of Jesús into the global present.

Life as a Latino in America is complicated. Living between the two worlds of being Latino and American can generate great uncertainty. And the strange mixture of ethnic pride and racial prejudice creates another sort of confusion. Who are you as a Latino? Who are you as an American? What has Christ to say about your dilemma? How can you accept who you are in Christ with joy and confidence? Orlando Crespo has taken his own journey from Puerto Rico to an immigrant neighborhood in Springfield, Massachusetts, and back again to his Latino roots. In this books he helps you to reflect on your own voyage of self-understanding and on what it means to have a mixed heritage from the days of the original Spanish Conquest to the present. His straightforward approach also takes him to what the Bible says about ethnic identity--about a people who were often oppressed by more powerful cultures. He helps you to see how Jesus' own humanity unfolded in the context of a people who were considered to be inferior. Thus Crespo finds both realism and hope in the good news of Jesus. There is more, however, than merely coming to terms with who you are. Crespo also shows how Latinos are called to step out positively in ministry to the world. You can make a positive impact in on the world in racial reconciliation, in bicultural ministry and more because of who God has uniquely made you to be. Here is a book for all Latinos who want to live confidently in Christ.

Sharon E. Heaney describes how the life-giving interruption of Latin American poets, novelists, artists, and theologians changed her life in a conflict-ridden Northern Ireland. An outsider, in this study she provides an engagement with a stream of theology in the United States she takes to be exemplary. Latino/a/x theology is teología en conjunto (collaborative theology). It models ways to examine complicated and contested histories and identities, and it resists dominant assumptions about theological points of departure in favor of also valuing the everyday as locus theologicus. Identifying major themes and foundational thinkers, alongside more recent developments, Heaney offers an overview and invites readers to further reading, study, and formation. Modelling what it esteems, each chapter closes in conversation with a Latino/a/x leader in the church. The conclusion is written by practical theologian, Altagracia Pérez-Bullard. She affirms, this “is not just an intellectual exercise, . . . this engagement . . . is the practice of our lives as we journey with God and as we journey with one another. . . . It is an exciting journey. It changes us.”

This book goes to the very heart of the passionate debate over the true character of Christian faith and practice. The advance of liberation theology in the Latin American church has caused international reverberations within both the religious and political worlds. The Vatican was moved to denounce it as heretical, and the Reagan-Bush administration has deemed it a significant threat to the stability of the region. Here Batstone evaluates the writings of liberation theologians as they consider the central figure of Christian faith, Jesus of Nazareth, and asks whether a message of liberation for the poor and oppressed actually springs from the life and teachings of Jesus or is merely a religious projection of activists bent on radical social transformation. The judgment given to that issue will weigh heavily in the debate which currently rages in religious communities and seminaries over the political role and responsibility of the church. Batstone's work links these discussions to the concrete lives of the Latin American people and, in that sense, goes beneath the text and examines the subtext of religious reflection. Chapters present events and stories that originate in the daily realities of contemporary Latin America and then consider what connection these experiences have to the story of Jesus of Nazareth.

In this, the only book available that addresses the distinctive issues and character of preaching in the Hispanic congregation, the authors discuss important historical, theoretical, and methodological issues in Hispanic homiletics. Includes ten sermons.