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

I bought this book because I was intrigued by the subject, and I wanted to give Inter-Varsity Press one more chance to redeem themselves as being capable of at least a single title with thoughtful, reflective analysis. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. The title itself is problematic. “Latino” and “Brown” are both – as the author acknowledges –modern US constructs and are therefore inapplicable to nearly all of the past “Five Centuries”. “The Brown Church” does not exist – Latin America is full of different faith traditions, and the author does not belong to the same Church as nearly every figure that he writes about in his book.Leaving that aside, when looking at Latin American Christianity there are several approaches whichI could envision:- A material analysis of how conflict over economic and political power is the engine of history, and how these conflicts sparked various theological ideas and social movements in Latin America.- An ideological analysis of the diverse Latin American theologies, including both their antecedents and their legacies as well as their dialogue with contemporary work from around the world.- A historical and sociological analysis of how religion is actually understood and practiced within the diverse Christian communities of Latin America.The author pursues none of these routes. Instead, he engages in a 19th century-style hagiographic “Great Man” history, playing connect-the-dots with a hodgepodge of largely unrelated Latin American historical figures who happened to be Catholic. Rather than analyze the broader movements (whether material, social, or religious), community identity and collective action, or even the divisions within these faith communities, the author paints a rosy, individualistic picture of the “Brown Church” by concentrating exclusively on a handful of heroes.Introduction"At the same time, in the world of Chicano studies and activism, one's faith is usually discouraged or criticized. We are told "You can't be a Christian and care about issues of racial and gender justice. Christianity is the white man's religion, and it's a tool of settler colonialism. It's racist, classist, and sexist" (6).This is the author’s own chip with his colleagues in academia rather than connecting in any way to the lived experience of Latin American Christianity. “Chicano” is an entirely American construct – nobody cares about it south of the Río Grande, and few people north of the Río Grande care about it either.“It is my contention that these many Latino/a Christian social justice pioneers form what may be called the Brown Church: a prophetic ecclesial community of Latinas/os that has contested racial and social injustice in Latin America and the United States for the past 500 years” (11).This has several issues with it:1) “Brown” is an entirely modern US construct, and “Latino” is also a largely modern US construct. Most of the people named in the book did not imagine themselves as Brown or Latino, but as part of their distinct national communities.2) This wording demonstrates the complete lack of class consciousness that blinds the author, as well as all American academia in general. It is impossible to examine any of the theology of the people named in this book – from Bartolomé de las Casas to Gustavo Gutierrez – without recognizing the primacy of economic exploitation which they themselves emphasized in their own works. All of them were involved with racial and social justice in the Americas, but their primary focus was economic exploitation and material power struggles, and their audience was universalist rather than strictly Latino or Brown.3) There is no ecclesial community. I know that as a Protestant the author wants to claim all the Catholics as part of the “Brown Church”, but fundamentally there are many faith communities with both internal and external divisions. We cannot talk about social justice without talking about social injustice. We cannot talk about the Catholic Oscar Romero without also talking about the Catholics who were willing to kill him. We cannot talk about the Protestant churches and the Sanctuary Movement without also talking about Ríos Montt, the Protestant pastor whose genocide necessitated the Sanctuary Movement to begin with. A hagiography of a non-existent “Brown Church” is not an honest appraisal of religion in Latin American communities.Let’s dive into the chapters.Chapter 1: El Plan Espiritual de Galillee“In Jesus’ day there were three major responses to the oppression of Roman cultural, political, and economic colonialism. The first was compromise. This approach was characterized by the Sadducees and the Herodians . . . These were the sellouts. The second approach of Jesus’ day was that of withdrawal. The Essenes, of Dead Sea Scrolls’ acclaim, embodied this approach. The Zealots represent the third approach common in Jesus’ day. . . They felt the best way to respond to Roman oppression was to draw close to God, live highly religious lives, and prepare for war” (34).I’m not sure how the author could come away with that perspective. For instance, the First Roman-Jewish War had a leadership comprised of some Zealots but mostly of Sadducees and Hasmoneans; “sellout” hardly seems fair.“Most Latina/o Zealots are hostile to Christian faith, however, and condemn Christianity as the religion of modern-day Roman colonizers – i.e. white Republican males. Confused, many Latina/o millennials and Gen Zs go back to their home churches and look for answers from their pastors and parents . . . In response, they hear one typical Latina/o Essene reply: “Don’t get involved with the Zealots – that is, with the Chicana/o activists. They’re liberals who don’t know God. We’re called by God to obey the government. Our president is chosen by God, and to challenge him is to challenge God . . . ” (36).This seems like the author’s unique chip with both ultra-reactionary Protestant churches and with narcissistic Chicano Studies academics.Chapter 2: Las Casas, La Virgen de Guadalupe, and the Birth of the Brown Church“How many pastors in the United States earn significant incomes, live in segregated suburbs, send their kids to segregated schools . . .” (54).Again demonstrating the complete disconnect between the author’s experience and the majority Latino experience in the United States. According to Pew, 55% of US Latinos are Catholic and another 20% are unaffiliated; less than 25% are Protestant.“Las Casas’ conversion narrative represents one of the first recorded examples of concientización, or awakening of critical consciousness, in the Americas. As discussed by Paulo Freire . . . “ (55).Why is the author writing concientización? Paulo Freire wrote about conscientização, and the author’s own citation comes from an English-language translation. Instead of sprinkling gratuitous Spanish throughout the text, the author should engage with the primary language source material.“Tragically, the entire native population of the Caribbean would disappear as a consequence of European colonization . . . by 1524 the entire Taíno population ceased to exist as a separate population group” (62).No, the Taíno population endured at least until the end of the 16th century and native Caribbean populations would persist on the islands for centuries later. There are still millions of Arawakan people in the Caribbean basin – including the descendants of island peoples who migrated back to the mainland during colonial times.“It goes on to describe the Papal donation of the East Indies to the King and Queen of Spain” (65).No, the East Indies were assigned to Portugal. The West Indies were assigned to Spain. Although given the previous hispanicization of Paulo Freire, perhaps the author is ignorant of the existence of the Portuguese Empire.“In response to these reported miracles and apparitions, the church was built, and it is reported that millions of indigenous people subsequently came to faith in Christ . . . the story of La Virgen de Guadalupe and Juan Diego is perhaps the most beautiful expression of the cultural and spiritual mestizaje of Mexico” (72).Many issues:1) That isn’t how people work. Millions of people do not convert because of an image.2) The author keeps bringing up nepantla – torn-between – to describe a sort of internal spiritual conflict, and acknowledges that this is a Nahuatl word. What he fails to note is the context of this word – that many of the Nahua and other Indian converts did not abandon their pre-Christian beliefs and practices for decades or even centuries after “conversion”. As it turns out, sprinkling water and muttering Latin does not cause people to change their worldview immediately. This is something which frustrated the missionary friars for much of the later 16th and the 17th centuries.3) Lack of documentary evidence. The first published account of the Virgin of Guadalupe is from 1648 and it is in Spanish; the Nican Mopohua was published in 1649. Granted, the Nican Mopohua is almost universally attributed to the 1550s on the basis of textual and linguistic features. I am not casting doubts on the veracity of the apparitions or on the authenticity of the text itself. However, my point is that Guadalupe was not publicized until over a century AFTER it occurred. All the detailed ethnographies, letters, homilaries, catechisms, confessionals, preaching guides, and inquisitorial documents – that is, the entire surviving corpus of Spanish and Nahuatl accounts of Central Mexican belief and practice – fail to mention Guadalupe. Hadly anybody cared for nearly 120 years, and therefore the mass conversion of New World peoples cannot be attributed to the Guadalupe apparitions.4) The author shifts the focus of Guadalupe – the Virgin speaking to a Nahua man in Nahuatl – into being a symbol of mestizaje. This is a 20th century Mexican nationalist and Chicano activist projection onto a fundamentally indigenous religious tradition.Chapter 3: Multicultural Voices of Colonial Resistance“For all of his prophetic fire and spiritual insight, Guaman Poma possessed two analytical blind spots. The first was sexism . . . it appears that Poma came to embrace the machisimo that prevailed in Spanish colonial culture . . . Thankfully, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz would come along less than a century later to offer a necessary corrective. Guaman Poma’s second glaring blind spot was his paternalism towards Indian commoners . . . Despite these shortcomings, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala was a monumental indigenous prophet of the Brown Church” (89 – 90).My complaints:1) I need to point out that “machismo” is a 20th century American ENGLISH word, which then got back-fed into Spanish after the 1950s. Using it to describe a Quechua noble from the 1600s is anachronistic.2) Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is not a corrective. They lived on different continents and in different time periods, and both of them were ultimately ignored by contemporaries.3) This is once again demonstrating a complete lack of material analysis. These weren’t “blind spots”, these were fundamental to Guaman Poma’s argument. Guaman Poma was one of many Peruvian nobles who argued that they should govern the Kingdom of Peru rather than the Spanish colonists while remaining under the suzerainty of the King of Spain. Paternalism towards women and commoners was entirely consonant with putting forward male nobles as suitable stewards of the realm.4) The author forgot to mention the “blind spot” that Guaman Poma despised mixed race people and advocated for segregation to keep the Andean and Spanish populations separate and pure. He also despised Jews, Muslims, and the English. That nasty, ugly little fact would conflict with the author’s positioning of Guaman Poma as part of the “Brown Church”, which is perhaps why he neglected it.Chapter 4: Padre Antonio José Martinez: The US-Mexico War and the Birth of “Brown”I cannot complain about anything which was written here. I can, however, complain about what was not written here.The author failed to highlight how this is the period when Indians and Mexicans were racially distinguished in US culture. In Mexican Law Indians, Spanish, and Mestizos were all citizens. This was not the case in the US, where Americans distinguished between the Indian and Mexican residents after Guadalupe-Hidaglo. By failing to describe the fate of indigenous peoples under US rule in the former Mexican territories, the author ironically reifies the US separation of Indians from mexicanidad and erases the experience of Indian Mexican Catholics, who by any standard were the overwhelming majority of Mexicans in the years immediately following the Mexican-American War.Chapter 5: Cesar ChavezI have zero complaints here, and I think this was extremely fair.Chapter 6: Social Justice Theologies of Latin AmericaI have two complaints here.1. The author does not acknowledge the long history of social justice theology in modern Latin America. There was a lot happening between the 1600s and 1968! Liberation Theology did not emerge ex nihilo in the ‘60s, there are both clear historical antecedents and particular events and material analysis that motivated this.2. The author presents Liberation Theology as a via media between capitalism and Marxism, which completely ignores that 1) all Liberation Theology is based on Marxist economic analysis combined with Catholic social justice teaching, and 2) literally every socialist party in Latin America outside of Cuba has its origin in Liberation Theology. The author demonstrates the American aversion to anything Marxist and as a result completely misses the significance of Liberation Theology. Liberation Theology was one of the first attempts at DEMOCRATIC socialism (as opposed to authoritarian communism). That is why it sparked so much controversy at the time, why Pope JP2 hated it, and how its success eventually convinced Pope BXVI to endorse democratic socialism for Catholics during his papacy.Chapter 7: Oscar RomeroI have zero complaints here.Chapter 8: Recent Social Justice TheologiesI don’t have much to complain about here, except that this chapter was disproportionately focused on Evangelical theologians (20 out of 30 pages) compared to their proportion among US Latinos (less than 1 out of 5).ConclusionAnecdotes and 10 points for the “Brown Church”. No complaints.Overall, this book fails to analyze the diversity within Latin American Christianity, material analysis, power and class conflict, collective action, actual and historic beliefs and practices, ideological underpinnings, or the extended history of religious and social movements. Instead the book zeroes in on a handful of unrelated individuals and reifies American social constructs and individualism, and often offers a shoddy analysis of these persons. I cannot recommend it.

A good read for Christian leaders who want to understand the impact of Western Christianity on our Latina and Latino communities and how Jesus sides with the marginalized in any form.

As a Christian minister I have enjoyed studying our theological heritage. While it can be challenging and at times deconstucting to learn that the path it took for our faith to get from the apostles to my comfortable home in America in the 21st century has not always been a pristine righteous one, it is also important to understand the truth. In my academic studies I've learned mostly about the European path through the Medieval period and Reformation to Protestant migration to the U.S. This has been the heritage I was taught, one that is complicated in its own right. Brown Church is a missing part of my theological heritage education, one that is especially important to me as half-Hispanic, half-White minister in the diverse state of California. As someone who grew up with a Chicano family that held strong anti-Catholic sentiment, much of the story wasn't my own. We were taught not to revere the Virgen de Guadalupe, so I never understood the true importance her story held to Catholic cousins in the faith. There were so many other enlightening moments in this book that I will have to return to as I continue to learn.Regardless of your ethnicity, I would recommend this to you. You will learn something about our history as a church, and how God has been at work in people and places that have been overlooked for too long. Thank you, Dr. Romero for this educational and inspiring work.

Romero provides a fascinating review of Latin American history in relation to social justice. From the resistance movement to the Spanish conquistadors to our present day, the books demonstrates that the struggle for social justice is part of the Brown church's DNA. This book came just in time for a course on Contextual Theology that I taught for upper-division undergraduate students. Many of my students loved the book, especially its ability to weave in Brown theology and history. It gave us all a sense of recognition that we do not need to divide our faith from being either concerned about the spiritual or present age. We can do both and faithfully live out out the Brown church's identity. I highly recommend this book for an undergraduate/graduate course on Social Justice from a Latino/a perspective, Latinx Church History, Latino/a theology, or simply for personal development if you want to know more about the history of the Brown church. I was fascinated by the unspoken history of the Latino church that I did not even learn at Divinity school.

Latino/a voices in theology bring an essential corrective to the often bleached theopoltical world of dominant culture Christianity In the US. Dr. Chao Romero does all of Christianity a service by providing an accessible, concise roadmap to some of the most important ideas and people that witness to the God who became human in Jesus, who “chose to be embodied as a socially, economically, and politically insignificant Galilean...from the despised town of Nazareth.” (P 184). This is a great book for your own edification, even better for a book club, small group discussions, for a whole congregation wanting to better engage prophetically in the world. What a breath of fresh air and an energetic call for us all to listen to the God, and God’s people, who speak from the margins. If you read carefully, this book should get you and your fellow readers fired up for justice and reconciliation in meaningful ways.Dr. Jamie Gates, Point Loma Nazarene University