Brown Church

Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity

Robert Chao Romero

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780830853953
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Foreword INDIES Book of the Year FinalistInterest in and awareness of the demand for social justice as an outworking of the Christian faith is growing. But it is not new.For five hundred years, Latina/o culture and identity have been shaped by their challenges to the religious, socio-economic, and political status quo, whether in opposition to Spanish colonialism, Latin American dictatorships, US imperialism in Central America, the oppression of farmworkers, or the current exploitation of undocumented immigrants. Christianity has played a significant role in that movement at every stage.Robert Chao Romero, the son of a Mexican father and a Chinese immigrant mother, explores the history and theology of what he terms the "Brown Church." Romero considers how this movement has responded to these and other injustices throughout its history by appealing to the belief that God's vision for redemption includes not only heavenly promises but also the transformation of every aspect of our lives and the world. Walking through this history of activism and faith, readers will discover that Latina/o Christians have a heart after God's own.

El Plan Espiritual de Galilee

EL PLAN ESPIRITUAL de Aztlán is the historic manifesto of the Chicana/o movement. First promulgated in 1969 during the height of the civil rights era, it declares:

In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal “gringo” invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlán from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny. . . .

Once we are committed to the idea and philosophy of El Plan de Aztlán, we can only conclude that social, economic, cultural, and political independence is the only road to total liberation from oppression, exploitation, and racism. Our struggle then must be for the control of our barrios, campos, pueblos, lands, our economy, our culture, and our political life.1

El Plan was revolutionary because it articulated a bold, new “Chicano” social identity that recognized the flagrant history of racism against Mexicans in the United States and sounded a clarion call to social justice activism. Chicanas and Chicanos understood that the United States had seized half of Mexico’s territory in 1848 as part of what even Abraham Lincoln had called an unjust war. The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, which ended the US-Mexico War, granted erstwhile Mexicans the rights of US citizens in theory, but denied these rights in practice through legislative and judicial chicanery. Chicanas/os also knew that Mexicans and other Latinas/os had been segregated in housing, education, and public spaces during the era of Jim Crow, and that the Méndez, Bernal, and López families fought these injustices in the courts and won.2 Chicanas/os were also familiar with so-called Americanization programs that sought to erase Latina/o culture and force assimilation, as well as with having their mouths taped and their hands slapped with rulers for speaking Spanish in public schools. More than that, they lived the dismal reality of socioeconomic and political marginalization. The median income of a Mexican American family in the 1960s was 62 percent of the general population. One-third of all Mexican American families lived below the federal poverty line ($3,000/year). Four-fifths were concentrated in unskilled or semiskilled jobs, and one in three of this number was employed in agriculture. The vast majority of Chicanas and Chicanos attended segregated schools. Seventy-five percent of students dropped out before high school graduation. In 1968, only one Mexican American served in the United States Senate and three in the House of Representatives. Not a single Mexican American was elected to the California state legislature.3

Armed with an understanding of this history and the consciousness of their lived realities, young Mexican Americans created a new, politicized cultural identity that they called Chicano. As reflected in El Plan and the famous poem “I Am Joaquin,”4 Chicana/o identity comprised three main components: (1) pride in the dual indigenous and Spanish cultural heritage of Mexican Americans; (2) recognition of the historic structural and systemic racism experienced by the Mexican descent community; (3) commitment to a lifestyle of social justice aimed at remedying the socioeconomic and political inequalities experienced by the Mexican American community.5 Beyond a new social identity, Chicanas and Chicanos throughout the United States developed a multifaceted movement known as “La Causa,” which fought for labor rights for farmworkers, educational reform, and women’s rights.

Because of the deep persistence of racial and structural inequality in the Latina/o community, the Chicana/o social identity continues to thrive among millennials and Generation Z today. They will not stay silent in the face of a US presidency that declares that they and their family members are rapists, drug dealers, and criminals, unjustly arrests and deports their mothers and fathers, and separates children from their parents at the border and locks them in cages. They cannot sit back as supporters of the status quo when 27 percent of all Latina/o children still live in poverty, only 8 percent will graduate from college, and less than one in one hundred go on to earn a doctorate.6 Nor will they stand silent when thousands of beautiful Brown youth are treated by law enforcement as guilty until proven innocent, and dozens are gunned down as part of unjust systems of policing. Nor can they turn a blind eye to the physical suffering experienced by themselves and their family members for lack of healthcare, and an inequitable health care system in which 39 percent of Latina/o immigrants, and 25 percent of all Latinas/os, have no health insurance.7 In the wake of the bloody El Paso Massacre, they understand that we live in a turning point of United States history.8 In the face of this lived reality, thousands of young Latinas/os continue to find personal and cultural validation and empowerment in the Chicana/o identity. Where they struggle, however, is in finding connection between the Christian (Protestant, Catholic, Pentecostal, Evangelical) faith of their families and these social justice concerns that weigh so heavily on their hearts.

There is good news, however, because what most young Latinas and Latinos have never heard is that Jesus had a “plan,” too, and his manifesto arose out of a shared experience of socioeconomic, political, and cultural colonization and marginalization.

Like Latinas/os in the United States, Jesus and his Jewish sisters and brothers lived as colonized peoples in what was once their own land. Roman soldiers sieged Jerusalem in 63 BC and made Judea a client state of the empire.9 From then, and on to the days of Jesus, Rome ruled the ancestral Jewish homeland through puppet governments and stripped the Jews of their socioeconomic, political, and religious sovereignty. Similar to the concept of Manifest Destiny, which undergirded the unjust US-Mexico War, Rome and its various emperors believed that they possessed a divine destiny to bring peace and prosperity to the ancient world. The Caesars in fact claimed for themselves titles like “Son of God,” “Lord,” “King of kings,” and “Savior of the world,” and the poet Virgil praised Rome for birthing global renewal and “a new order of the ages.” Convinced of a similar universal calling, the authors of the United States Constitution would later borrow this phrase for the Great Seal of the United States and the dollar bill.

As a fronterizo from the northern borderlands of Galilee, Jesus lived a doubly marginalized life.10 In addition to the general weight of oppression experienced by all Jews under Roman colonization, Galilee was relegated to a secondary status within the larger Jewish community itself.11 Because of Galilee’s distinct cultural mixture and geographic distance from the capital city of Jerusalem, Jews from Galilee were looked down on by their compatriots in Judea of the south. Like many Latinas/os, Galileans were bilingual (speaking Aramaic and Greek) and also spoke with an accent. Their frequent contact with Gentiles (non-Jews) threatened standards of cultural and religious purity. Similar to many Latinas/os, Galileans were shunned as mixed race and “half breeds”—mestizos. Galilee was also far away from the center of Jewish religious and political power in Jerusalem, which was embodied by the temple there. Galilee was the borderlands, the margins, the “hood”; Jerusalem was the seat of political, religious, and economic power, the “big city.” And Jesus was a Galilean. Not only that, Jesus was from Nazareth, a small town of several hundred people that was marginalized even within Galilee itself. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” one of his early disciples famously quipped (John 1:46). If Jesus lived in California today, he would come from South LA, East LA, the Inland Empire, or the Central Valley.

Most Galileans were peasant farmers. In fact, Galilee was known as the breadbasket of the plains because it supplied important agricultural products for its surrounding neighbors.12 Although Galilean farmers were subsistence farmers, they were also forced to grow extra crops for Roman tribute and temple tithes and taxes. They also paid up to half their harvest in rent to elite Jewish landlords. These extra burdens were often crushing, and led to great economic insecurity for most Galileans. Many Galilean peasants lost their lands to large landholders due to increasing debt.

Just as Latinas/os have been historically pressured to assimilate through Americanization programs and English-only movements, the Jewish residents of Galilee faced strong pressure to adopt foreign cultural, economic, and political practices and identities through what was known as Hellenization. Similar to the unrelenting economic forces of gentrification currently experienced by Latina/o communities in Los Angeles such as Boyle Heights, Highland Park, and Pico Union, Jesus and his Galilean family were encroached upon on all sides by the dual economic and cultural forces of Hellenistic urbanization. In fact, like Los Angeles, Galilee was known to be a cultural melting pot and a geographic borderlands where Jews, Greeks, and Romans all came together—sometimes in hostility.

In Jesus’ day, there were three major responses to the oppression of Roman cultural, political, and economic colonialism.13 The first was compromise. This approach was characterized by the Sadducees and the Herodians. These ruling religious and political elites secured for themselves a place of socioeconomic comfort and stability in imperial society by colluding with the Romans. The Sadducees were the priestly class, and the high priest was appointed by the Roman governor.14 The Herodians supported the puppet political rule of Rome.15 These were the “sellouts.”

The second approach of Jesus’ day was that of withdrawal. The Essenes, of Dead Sea Scrolls acclaim, embodied this approach. They felt that the best response to the oppression and religious impurity of the day was to move out into the desert and live a holy life in isolation and community. In God’s time, God would act as he saw fit.16

The Zealots represent the third approach common in Jesus’ day. Largely overlapping with the Pharisees of the time, Zealots prayed hard and sharpened their swords.17 They felt that the best way to respond to Roman oppression was to draw close to God, live highly religious lives, and prepare for war. Their approach was to counterstance, to stand on the opposite side of the river bank locked into a duel between oppressor and oppressed.18 The Zealots believed that as long as they remained close to God, God would give them military victory over their enemies and reestablish his kingdom.

In the twenty-first century, we see these three basic approaches reflected in the Latina/o community of the United States. We have our Sadducees—religious leaders who compromise, partnering with the ruling political establishment to maintain the status quo. Think of the numerous Latina/o clergy who stood in alliance with Donald Trump for the US presidency, and who downplayed the squalid conditions of border asylum camps. We have our Herodians—Latina/o politicians who assimilate into the American mainstream and pass laws and policies with little regard for the devastating impact on the lives of most Latinas/os. Think Ted Cruz.

Latina/o Essenes, those who withdraw, are probably the most common within the Latina/o religious community. Modern day Latina/o Essene churches do a good job of connecting their members with personal Christian spirituality and relationship with Jesus. Their great blind spot, however, is that they tend to dismiss legitimate and pressing issues of social justice as “liberal” and “worldly.” To make matters worse, many modern day Latina/o Essenes and Sadducees have forme...