Reviews
Felipe Hinojosa provides in this work a carefully crafted and rendered history of Latino Mennonites from the 1930s to the 1980s that builds on Latino studies and scholarship and also offers a fresh approach to Latino religious studies... Hinojosa's focus on interethnic co-operation as well as internal tensions is a turning point for Latino religious studies because it adds a vital comparative angle... Latino Mennonites is a wonderful story told, a model of engaged, revisionist Latino religious studies that should be read and assigned in upper-undergraduate-level and graduate-level classes as a model for the future of Latino religious studies scholarship.
He has not only contributed to the scholarly understanding of the way ethnic identity intersects with faith and politics, but has done so by telling the previously unknown story of Latino Mennonites in the United States
[Latino Mennonites] can help us understand a bit better not just important streams within American evangelicalism but some of Iowa's present and future religious landscape as well.
A detailed and fascinating history of the Mexican and Puerto Rican experience in the Mennonite Church... Latino Mennonites documents the unique way in which Latino Mennonites straddle the border of evangelicalism and Anabaptism, and it also illustrates the intersection of civil rights, faith, and evangelical culture... Hinojosa has an engaging style, and the depth of the historical context he provides allows the personalities o his informants to shine through.
Hinojosa has an engaging style, and the depth of the historical context he provides allows the personalities of his informants to shine through.
Latino Mennonites is an essential read for graduate students, scholars, and anyone interested in better understanding the political and social rise of Latinos and Latinas in the United States. With Latino Mennonites, Felipe Hinojosa has set a standard for the historical and cultural study of Latino evangelicals throughout the United States.
A pleasure to read with clear and engaging prose, Latino Mennonites is an important study of the interaction between civil rights movements and religious communities in identity formation.
Hinojosa adeptly examines how African American civil rights struggles, relations with Latin Americans, and trends in evangelical religion shaped the faith and activism of U.S. Latino Mennonites. Latino Mennonites is both a superb narrative history and a model for the scholarly analysis of religion within its wider social context.
Deftly weaving together stories of everyday life with analysis of economic and political structures, Hinojosa reconstructs the spaces where the identity 'Latino Mennonite' took shape. Moving from South Texas to Chicago to Puerto Rico, from Bible studies in homes to social justice protests in the streets, Hinojosa illustrates the complex manner in which Latinos and blacks were able to claim belonging—and in the process transform—the historically white Mennonite Church.
Latino Mennonites is a pathbreaking study of the hidden history of Latinos in the United States—the role of religion and politics. With masterful historical skills and a nuanced historical perspective, Felipe Hinojosa unearths the history of Latino Mennonites and contributes to the developing historiography of Latino religious studies and to a more inclusive history of American religions.
Book Details
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Interethnic Alliances, Sacred Spaces, and the Politics of Latino Evangelicalism
Part I: Missions and Race
1. Building Up the Temple: Mennonite Missions
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Interethnic Alliances, Sacred Spaces, and the Politics of Latino Evangelicalism
Part I: Missions and Race
1. Building Up the Temple: Mennonite Missions in Mexican and Puerto Rican Barrios
2. Missionary Motives: Race and the Making of the Urban Racial Council
Part II: Black, Brown, and Mennonite
3. The Fight over Money: Latinos and the Black Manifesto
4. "Jesus Christ Made a Macho Outta Me!": The 1972 Cross-Cultural Youth Convention
5. Social Movement or Labor Union? Mennonites and the Farmworker Movement
Part III: Becoming Evangélicos
6. Mujeres Evangélicas: Negotiating the Borderlands of Faith and Feminism
7. "Remember Sandia!": Meno-Latinos and Religious Identity Politics
Conclusion: Latino Mennonites and the Politics of Belonging
Notes
Bibliography
Index