Daisy L. Machado - Böcker

The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), like many other Protestant churches in the United States, lives in an uneasy and tension-filled relationship with its Hispanic constituency. In this engagingly written work, Daisy L. Machado locates the historical underpinnings of this relationship through an analysis of the Disciples' interaction with Hispanics in Texas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Machodo shows that, while there was a large Hispanic population in the state during this period, the Christian Church was not able to develop a significant presence in Hispanic communities. Much of this failure can be traced, she argues, to the notion of the frontier, which influenced and shaped both church policy and theology for Disciples ministering to the Hispanic community. The frontier ethos - with a focus on divine providence and election, ideas about a chosen race and virgin land, and an understanding of the church as a socializing and Americanizing agent - provided an Anglo-American prism through which Disciples saw themselves and others. The acceptance and implementation of these ideologies meant that while the Christian Church was taking its place as a member of the American Protestant establishment, it was simultaneously failing in its work among Hispanics.The missionary theology inspired by the frontier ideology led to the formation of a paternalistic relationship between the church and the Hispanic community, with a predominantly Anglo-American church overseeing dependant Hispanic congregations lacking indigenous leadership. The church mission in Texas, then, was at odds with the very people it sought to reach, and Hispanic Disciples saw their church as failing to repond to their needs and visions. The result was the creation of a small Hispanic church in Texas that is still struggling to be self-supporting, and has no Mexican-American ministers. It is a church that exists on both the geographical and denominational margins of the Christian Church.Written with both an engaging style and a crisp historical view, Of Borders and Margins offers a penetrating historical examination of a previously unexamined area of the history of American Protestantism.

Speaking for the growing community of Latina feminist theologians, the editors of this volume write, "With the emergence and growth of the feminist theologies of liberation, we no longer wait for others to define or validate our experience of life and faith.... We want to express in our own words our plural ways of experiencing God and our plural ways of living our faith. And these ways have a liberative tone." With twelve original essays by emerging and established Latina feminist theologians, this first-of-its-kind volume adds the perspectives, realities, struggles, and spiritualities of U.S. Latinas to the larger feminist theological discourse. The editors have gathered writings from both Roman Catholics and Protestants and from various Latino/a communities. The writers address a wide array of theological concerns: popular religion, denominational presence and attraction, methodology, lived experience, analysis of nationhood, and interpretations of life lived on a border that is not only geographic but also racial, gendered, linguistic, and religious.

Borderland Religion narrates, presents and interprets the fascinating and significant practices when borders, migrants and religion intersect. This collection of original essays combines theology, philosophy and sociology to examine diverse religious issues surrounding external national borders and internal domestic borders as these are challenged by the unstoppable flow of documented and undocumented migrants. While many studies of migration have examined how religion plays a major role in the assimilation and integration of waves of migration, this volume looks at a number of empirical studies of how emergent religious practices arise around border crossings.The volume begins with a detailed analysis of the borderland religion context and research. The aim is to bring an eschatological interpretation of the borderland religion, its impact and significance for migrants. Themes include a critical analysis of how religion has formatted Europe; empirical studies from the US/Mexican border and Southern Africa; an overview of the European refugee crisis in 2015; editors’ account of borderland religion from the perspective of citizenship studies.Contributions of scholars from a broad range of disciplines ensure a careful analysis of this highly topical situation. The volume’s interdisciplinary profile will appeal to scholars and students in religious studies, migration studies, theology and citizenship studies.