Episode 23: Felipe Hinojosa – Latino Church History is American Church History

Jared  

You’re listening to Faith for Normal People, the only other God-ordained podcast on the internet. 

Pete  

I’m Pete Enns. 

Jared  

And I’m Jared Byas.

Intro  

Jared  

Hey everyone, before we get started, we need to tell you something very important and very exciting. We’re returning to Theology Beer Camp 2023, which is hosted by our good friend Tripp Fuller. But Tripp Fuller is the person I’m least excited to see. 

Pete  

Jared  

If it’s an event where Tripp Fuller’s the person I’m least excited to see—

Pete  

Can you believe that?

Jared  

—then it’s a serious event. You know?

Pete  

Yeah, it’s fun. I was there last year and you get to hang out with some scholars, some very nerdy, nerdy people and enjoy some wonderful wild and live podcasts, some serious fun at a tailgate party, and take part in some fall festivities. It really is a fun time that is also like, oh man, you walk away from this having learned stuff. You’ve got some great people coming to speak and all sorts of stuff.

Jared  

Yeah. And not to, you know, talk about other podcasts on this podcast—

Jared  

—but our friends who do other podcasts like Tim Whitaker of The New Evangelicals, Dan from You Have Permission, Josh Patterson from Rethinking Faith. There’s a lot of folks who are going to be there. So if you listen to any of those, or probably pretty much any other kind of theology based podcasts, they’re probably going to be there. In addition, some of our past and future guests, you know, like John Dominic Crossan and others are going to be speaking. There’s also this other guy, I think Pete Enns is his name. I don’t know that one really. But also the—

Pete  

Yeah. Music!

Jared  

—which I’m really excited about. Who are some of the music folks?

Pete  

So we got Trey Pearson, we have Derek Webb, we have Dan Haseltine, and it looks like a nice lineup. Anyway, folks, we should tell you when this is happening, this is happening October 19-21 in Springfield, Missouri. And you can get more info and sign up at the website, which is TheologyBeer.Camp.

Jared  

And this is the most important thing: If you use code “B4NP” that’s the number four, “B4NPGODPOD” all one word. “B4NPGODPOD” You can get $25 off your registration. And we get credit, we get like street cred. 

Pete  

Yeah.

Jared  

If you use our code, because then we’re, you know, bringing folks and we want to know.

Pete  

Alright, folks hope you show up. I’ll be there. Jared will be there. We’ll have fun. 

Jared  

See you there. 

Pete  

Today on Faith for Normal People, we’re talking about how Latino church history is American church history with Felipe Hinojosa.

Jared  

And we’re talking about this through the lens of his experience as a Mennonite and a historian of Latin American religious politics. And you know, who better to speak on that than Felipe, who’s the newly appointed John and Nancy Jackson Endowed Chair in Latin America and professor of history at Baylor University. I think this episode was actually his first act as chair, I think it was like day two.

Pete  

Now he’s written some books. A couple of them are Latino Mennonites: Civil Rights, Faith, and Evangelical Culture, and also Apostles of Change: Latino, Radical Politics, Church Occupations, and the Fight to Save the Barrio both of which are part of our conversation today.

Jared  

And don’t forget to stay tuned at the end of the episode for Quiet Time, where we’re going to reflect on the episode together. So hope you enjoy this conversation with Felipe.

Intro  

Felipe  

“How can we draft the narrative of American religious history that is much more inclusive, much more expansive, speaks to the different ways that Latinos enter the story—not just as Catholics, by the way, not just as Pentecostal, but also as Mennonites, also as Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, all of these sort of eclectic views and understandings that made for such a vibrant moment in American history.”

Pete  

Felipe, welcome to the podcast. It’s great to have you here.

Felipe  

It’s great to be on here. Thank you so much.

Pete  

Absolutely. Well, listen, we’re gonna get into some important things here. But just to start off, let’s talk about, give us some insight into your personal history in the Mennonite expression of Christian faith.

Felipe  

Yeah, you know, it’s an interesting story. I didn’t know it at the time that it was interesting, but looking back, just sort of where I grew up—I grew up in Brownsville, Texas and for all listeners out there, I mean, that’s the southernmost tip of Texas right on the border. The house that I grew up in was about a 10 minute walk to the point of entry from the city of Matamoros in the state of Tamaulipas in Mexico. And so borderland living was my entire life. I have five older sisters, one older brother, my parents, my entire life at least, were ministers and pastors of a Mennonite Church in Brownsville but you know, as I grew up in that context, I’ll just tell you a little bit about Brownsville. I mean, we’re talking about a region that is overwhelmingly Mexican and Mexican-American and religiously overwhelmingly Catholic. So I was one of the few kids growing up that was not Catholic and that wasn’t Pentecostal either that was part of this sort of strange [Chuckles] Mennonite tradition. 

And it sort of came about because both of my parents were farm workers. Both of them, when they got married in the late 1950s, my mother’s family—my mother was Methodist, by the way, my father was Catholic—both my mother’s family would go up and pick cherries in Traverse City, Michigan, they picked tomatoes in northwestern Ohio, they would pick cotton all the way up as they drove up to the Midwest in those areas. And it was in Ohio where they would stop to pick tomatoes at Mennonite farms. And my grandmother, my maternal grandmother, who was a very committed Methodist, really loved that the Mennonites would give them Sunday off, there was no work on Sundays, and they could hold church. And there were a lot of Mennonite missionaries from Latin America that would be on furlough in Ohio and they would hold Spanish language Bible studies. 

This was just a novelty, just a beautiful thing for my entire family, they were able to take a break and worship God with other Mexican-American families who were also workers from different walks of life that were also there. And dad, eventually, after that many years of Bible studies and all that, gave his life over to Christ and said that he wanted to be a minister and that he wanted to minister to his people. So in about 1969 or 1970, he comes back to Brownsville and he starts a little Mennonite Church in my uncle’s garage, in el barrio La Southmost. Okay, this is a working class neighborhood. My uncle says, “Yeah, you can start your little church here in my garage,” he didn’t tell the Mennonites. The Mennonites, as you might know, they’re a tight group [Chuckles] so he didn’t tell him anything. And they somehow word got up to mission headquarters in Indiana and some of the denominational leaders came down to Brownsville to visit him and the rest is history. Iglesia Menonita del Cordero, or Mennonite Church of the Lamb, was the church that he started in about 1970 and it’s still a church that’s going strong in Brownsville today.

Pete  

So you’re obviously very much attracted to, and obviously a part of the Mennonite tradition. So—

Felipe  

Yes.

Pete  

For people who don’t know very much about what Mennonites are, could you just help us understand by giving us some distinctives of the Mennonite faith?

Felipe  

Yeah, so first of all, I should say that a lot of people right off the bat will think of the Amish when they think of Mennonites, or they think of horse and buggy. And in South Texas, the idea was also very much on Mennonites that had left the US and Canada in the middle part of the 20th century to establish colonies in Mexico, a lot of the old order Mennonites. But there are many different factions to this Mennonite and Anabaptist tradition. And the tradition that my parents happened to stumble upon was a much more Americanized version and a much more evangelical version. Although I know for my Mennonite listeners out there, I’m probably gonna get pushback for saying that, but it’s true. They were mission oriented. These were folks that wanted to bring people into the fold. They have strong ties to their German and Russian roots and so there’s a strong ethnic side to the Mennonite faith in the Mennonite tradition. There’s a lot of surnames that I’m very familiar with that I can spot as being either of Mennonite faith or German or Russian background that I grew up in. And so we were a Mexican-American working class family in el Barrio in South Texas, that had all of these connections to this sort of white ethnic religious denomination in the Midwest. And there’s a big side to the culture, there’s a big side to the ethnicity, but I should say that what really attracted my parents and other Mexican-American families—I mean, our Mennonite Church was almost entirely Mexican-American and working class in Brownsville when I was growing up—but what attracted a lot of us was, were two main distinctives here. 

The first is a peace emphasis. This belief in pacifism, and this belief in non-resistance and this belief that there are different ways to solving conflict. So that was a big one. And I should put that in a Mexican-American context where we have a very rich military service tradition. As a matter of fact, it’s many of our World War II veterans that join and start the Civil Rights movement after they come back from fighting in World War II, very similar to African-Americans who returned after the war. So there’s a strong tradition and yet amongst our communities here, that notion of pacifism, and being able to not simply think of the military as a way out economically for our families, that was something refreshing for us. 

The second thing that I should note is social service ethics and the ways in which Mennonites engage the world. Yes, they wanted to invite you to church and they wanted to pray for you and they wanted you to accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Missions was central to this group in Brownsville. But at the same time, you couldn’t separate that from the idea of social justice and you couldn’t separate that from service, right? So that missions and service went hand in hand. This was something that was not mutually exclusive, but very much integrated and threaded together in everything that we did as a church. And I think when you’re in a poor community, when you’re in a working class community, and especially in the 1980s, when we are on the receiving end of a large influx of refugees from Central America that are escaping war—a war that our government was funding and fueling, civil war in Central America—that kind of prophetic witness really appealed to a lot of us growing up and to a lot of the parents and families that believed that if you were going to follow Jesus Christ, that meant that you had to serve your neighbor.

Jared  

I’m speaking here as a, I would say, a baby Mennonite. You know, I grew up in Texas, I grew up Southern Baptist, and moving up to Southeastern Pennsylvania, being introduced to the Mennonite tradition and being a Mennonite for the past eight years, I just resonate with those distinctives: the piece, the social service ethics, you know, the prophetic witness. Our congregation has, instead of vacation Bible school, we do a peace camp where we teach kids like conflict resolution skills, and I really appreciate that and resonate with it. But as a follow-up to that, as a historian and in some of your work around Latino churches in the 60s and 70s and the 20th century, how did those distinctives take a more specific shape in Latino communities? Like what’s happening in the 20th century, mid-20th century around how this takes shape in Latino communities specifically?

Felipe  

Well, I mean, I think, first of all, you start with the Vietnam War. The fact that more Mexican-Americans were dying in Vietnam as a result of this war, and were being drafted, I think sends a strong signal to a lot of the Mennonites and Puerto Ricans also. You know, my first book on Latino Mennonites looks at South Texas, but also New York City, Chicago, the island of Puerto Rico, and looking at how this sort of moment in American history where this rising political consciousness among young people, this sense of duty, this sense of also, for Latinos in particular, of wanting to prove their Americanness, wanting to say that they also belong to this American story, that they’re going to contribute to the makings of democracy. It’s a powerful moment there and to be able to come across Mennonites that were, in effect, bringing sort of—to use Don Kraybill’s words, this upside down kingdom, this different way of viewing citizenship, this different way of viewing the world as to say, you don’t have to join the military and go and fight in Vietnam. You don’t have to do those things to prove that you are a citizen of this country, you are a child of God, right? You belong to God’s kingdom. 

That was, I think, a really powerful message, especially for young working class Latinos in urban and in rural areas of South Texas, that gave them some sense of an alternative way of being, an alternative way of viewing the world. And of course, while Mennonites are doing that, and Mennonites had a very sort of strong, non-resistant stance on that, Black Americans are avoiding the war. Muhammad Ali is stepping away from that and refusing to go and fight in Vietnam. And MLK is becoming much more critical of Vietnam. And so Latinos are watching this in terms of a much more forceful way of being peaceful, right, not just simply the Mennonite way. And that’s quite a significant, I think narrative for Latinos that are joining the civil rights movement, that are participating in it. They are people of faith, and so to be able to join those too—their love of social justice and to reform and revolutionize society, but their love for God and their love for Christ, moving them in a way to think about avoiding the draft or becoming a conscientious objector and refusing to fight in Vietnam is not just a political stance—it’s a theological one. And it’s a powerful one at it. 

And that was really powerful for me. Because in my home, my dad was a, you know, a pastor. And so I didn’t realize it then. But many of the people that would come and visit dad on the border were African-American Mennonites from St. Louis, from Chicago, Puerto Rican Mennonites from New York City or from the island, who had basically come up in this Mennonite Church—challenging it, challenging its whiteness, even as they took in and very much internalized this love of peace and of non-resistance and so forth. So it’s sort of like this sort of eclectic world that is shaping and happening at the same time and Latinos are finding a way and finding their path within it. And it’s not all white Mennonite theology, it’s not all the ethics of nonresistance that Mennonite, Ephesus, like Guy F Hershberger we’re talking about. But it’s much more I think, sided with what Martin Luther King was talking about, in a much more sort of forceful sense of non-resistance and peacemaking. That was really powerful for a lot of these folks. And it made for some very interesting oral history interviews for sure.

Ad Break  

Jared  

I’m always interested in how we get such diverse and divergent expressions of faith, when we might say we’re using the same Christian tradition, we’re using the same biblical text. And you know, at the same time in mid-century, we start getting the beginnings of like the Moral Majority. And Evangelicalism as we kind of know it today, looking back, was really gaining its ground and forming its roots around the same time, you know, talking about it as theologically and as biblically, as you know, the Mennonite communities or even other African-American or Latino religious communities are taking shape around the civil rights movement and these things. What historically, how do historians think about this divergence and what are the theological underpinnings that lead us in these such different directions? Because the picture you’re painting of these Latin American and African-American communities and how their religious faith is compelling them to non-resistance, peace, but also social service, and that kind of ethical framework—I can’t help but contrast it with sort of my upbringing and the history of that tradition as well.

Felipe  

Yeah, no, that’s a great question. I don’t know that I can speak very well to the theological underpinnings only to say that, I think this is a reason why I am a strong believer that Latino history is American history. Primarily because I think it’s easy for folks today to see Latino religious communities and maybe categorize them as apolitical, maybe as more Reformist, or maybe in some circles, even quite politically conservative. And it was a 180 degree difference in the 1960s and 1970s. There was a much more radical tradition of faith where people were drawing on different modes of thinking and different ways of understanding the world. And Mennonite, Latino Mennonites in particular, were a part of this movement. 

And one of the things that religious networks do is it brings people together that otherwise would not have joined together. I mean, one of the things that I write about in my book is looking at multi-ethnic coalitions. And this is something that towards the latter part of the 1960s when we look at the rise of Black power, when we look at the rise of Brown power, we sometimes I think, tend to erroneously look at some of these groups as living in these silos where they were cultural nationalists, and they were looking after themselves and that was it. Nothing can be further from the truth and our prime example’s in the city of Chicago with the Rainbow Coalition that Fred Hampton, the leader and the founder of the Black Panther Party chapter there in Illinois, in Chicago, joining with Puerto Ricans and joining with Appalachian whites in neighborhoods across the city of Chicago to push back against urban renewal. Those are the kinds of ways that I think about not so much theologically, although I suppose there’s a lot of theology there, too. But I’m thinking about how these religious networks bring people together that otherwise might not come together. 

In the Mennonite context, it was Black Americans with Puerto Ricans with Mexican-Americans. And we can’t simply assume because they’re people of color that they’re going to somehow agree—and by the way, also progressive whites within the Mennonite church, we can’t just sort of assume that because they were politically aligned, that somehow they shared a similar political worldview. Nothing could be further from the truth. And I think there were a lot of contestations within them, but also a lot of ways of being and viewing the world in terms of thinking about—what does it mean to be Latino and Mennonite? What does it mean to be Black and Mennonite in this particular context? What does it mean to practice white Mennonite theology and pacifism in a context where much of that theology comes from a place of privilege? And much of that theology comes from a place of economic privilege in particular, racial as well, but also very much economic. 

So I’m thinking about it in those ways and in those terms to try to say, okay, how can we draft a narrative of American religious history that is much more inclusive, much more expansive, speaks to the different ways that Latinos enter the story—not just as Catholics, by the way, not just as Pentecostal, but also as Mennonites also as Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, all of these sort of eclectic views and understandings that made for such a vibrant moment in American history.

Pete  

Yeah. So I mean, could you flesh out a little bit more, Felipe, for us—I guess the tensions that maybe you’ve experienced and studied between, I guess, white evangelicalism and Latino freedom movement or Latino justice movements in the church?

Felipe  

Yeah, I think, you know, first of all, being able to sort of directly understand the question of who Latinos are, because for many white Americans in the 1960s, Latinos were invisible, completely. Even progressive whites that were very much on the side of pushing back against urban renewal, some even joining the farm worker movement, and maybe even marching with Cesar Chavez and not completely understanding the plight of Mexican-Americans or Puerto Ricans in urban and rural contexts. There’s an incredible quote that I use from the Presbyterian national conference that took place in 1969 in San Antonio, Texas. And the Presbyterian Church was their gathering and James Foreman, who had drafted the Black Manifesto—and the Black Manifesto was basically in a nutshell asking for $500 million from white churches that had enriched themselves through slavery and the enslavement of Black people. So Foreman is invited to come to this conference in ’69 and Latinos show up. Nobody invites Latinos, but they show up. And Foreman creates some room for them at the stage and there’s a young man by the name of Obed Lopez from Chicago—they had just occupied McCormick Theological Seminary and I can say more about that a little bit later—but the point is that Obed gives his speech, he talks about the Latin American and the Latinos in the United States and the issues that they face. 

And one of the Presbyterian said, “Foreman sounds prophetic, he’s charismatic, he’s this, we must listen to him. And these Latins—” (because that’s the term that was used back then, among others, Spanish speaking or Latin) “—these Latins sound like far off thunder.” And I think that for many white evangelicals at that moment, Latinos were an anomaly, a puzzle wrapped in an enigma, let’s say. They weren’t really Latin American, which they understood maybe that context better. But they weren’t, quote unquote, “fully American.” They were perpetually foreign, in their sense, right? Some of them spoke English, some of them didn’t. Some of them with accents, others not. Many of them were undocumented in the 60s and 70s and were leading many of these civil rights movements. 

And so for a lot of white evangelicals at this moment, there’s a real sense of misunderstanding. Mind you, the movement of liberation theology is bursting and booming in Latin America and coming from that. And that, to a large degree, does help at least situate Latinos within a theological frame, in a theological context. But Latinos to a large degree, were just learning of liberation theology themselves and trying to figure it out and trying to make a way for themselves. But to their credit, the creation or the idea and the development of a particularly Latino and Latina theological frame begins to emerge in the 1970s. Writers like Justo González, Maria Isasi-Diaz, Orlando Costas—these folks begin to draft the first draft of what it means to be Latino in the United States and Christian. And what are the theological frames that we use that, mind you, are grabbing and learning from James Cone, that are learning from Philip Berryman, that are learning from liberation theology in Latin America, and are trying to merge all of these theological viewpoints together to get a sense to say, “We are Brown. We are not White, and White America must deal with us whether they want to or not.”

Jared  

When you say that it rings or resonates with, if I just go with my instinct, I tend to associate liberation theology with Latin America and with Latinos. What was it about that that resonated and allowed for, again, maybe some raw materials out of which a Latin American theological framework could emerge?

Felipe  

Well, I think first and foremost that it was contextual, right? And I think now, I mean, at least, maybe I take this for granted, but thinking about all theology as contextual, right, and emerging within a particular place and time. For Latinos to read the Bible in Spanish, for Latinos to sing [Spanish word] or short little hymns that are fast paced, that are a different cultural frame and context than white American evangelicalism, that are much more representative of their culture—the worship is more lively, the sermons maybe drag on a little longer, the prayers are maybe a little louder. There’s a sense of joy within the congregation and the church, that you could be who you wanted to be in that space, right. 

One of the things that I write about in the Latino Mennonites book is the first encounter with Mennonite missionaries in South Texas, in the 1930s and in the 1940s. There’s a really strong sense by the Mennonites, that this is the way you must dress, you must sing acapella, no instruments inside of the church. This is the way we read the Bible, on and on. These were all these cultural requirements that Latinos were imposed, and took on upon themselves. What the 1960s and 1970s did for Latinos, and especially the rise of liberation theology, was to be able to see themselves in a brand new way. To be able to rearticulate their identity. To reject this notion that they were to just assimilate and become white Americans to take on a “brown” identity, a sense of difference and a connection with indigenous roots, a connection with their language, with their culture, and a strong sense that we are not doing church in the way that white America does church, we’re going to create our own distinctive ways of doing church. 

And that I think was, you know, a beautiful moment in terms of the development of, for example, mariachi mass in the Catholic Church—the bishop, Patricio Flores, who was the first Mexican American bishop appointed in 1970—institutes this mariachi mass. And so you have these instruments inside of the church, this sacred space that would have never been allowed prior to Vatican 2, especially. So being able to sort of think about the church in these sorts of cultural ways, really, I think dictated the kinds of connections that Latinos would make with liberation theology, and even to a large degree, create their own sense of theological frame here in the United States.

Pete  

Mhmm. You mentioned the 1970s as sort of a big moment where there was maybe more of a sense of self-consciousness, in a good sense of the word, for Latino theology in America and maybe the Mennonites in particular. And I’m just wondering, like, what—I don’t like to use the word “progress.” It’s really not the word I’m talking about—but the expansion of this thinking, I mean, are you hopeful for where things have been going the past, say, 40 years here in America? 

Felipe  

Um, I mean, I always try to be hopeful. [Laughs]

Pete  

Okay, so you’re not. Go ahead. [Laughs]

Felipe  

Pete  

Yeah, I mean, talk about what’s—what’s going on, really, I mean. 

Felipe  

Yeah. 

Pete  

Talk to us about that.

Felipe  

Yeah. I mean, I think there’s different ways to sort of think about this history. One is, we certainly have seen in, at least the last 30 years, a much more sort of conservative shift within a lot of Latino evangelical churches. I don’t want to deny that at all. And that’s something that worries me. There’s going to be a conference, by the way, in Atlanta in September—I’m not able to make it—but it’s going to be at Candler School of Theology, that’s going to look at the Latino version of Christian nationalism in the United States. So there’s obviously concern, right? For those kinds of currents that have arisen as of late and have been there for I think, quite some time. 

I think the other part that people sometimes forget is that this is a community that is consistently—for lack of a better way of saying it—reintroducing itself to itself. It’s an immigrant community that is replenishing communities that are either assimilating to some extent, acculturating to some extent, and immigration kind of keeps this vibe going instead of in the sense of what it means to be Latino in the United States. Now, what that has translated into is a fervent and powerful immigrant rights movement within the church and in secular settings as well. And it starts not just in the sanctuary movement in the 1980s, as I mentioned earlier. You know, Latino historians have noted that, at least in the place of the Latino church, this notion of being sanctuary dates back hundreds of years, if not centuries, in terms of indigenous communities, the colonial era, and even moving into the more contemporary era. So I think that that’s the place where I do find hope, where there is a continued responsibility that begins to emerge in the 1970s among Latinos that are viewing themselves as Mexican-Americans, as Puerto Ricans that are now Nuyoricans, right. They’re raised in New York City or Puerto Ricans in Chicago or wherever they may be, where they begin to see the ways in which our country continues to intercede or get in the way of foreign governments and especially in Latin America, and how that intervention then spurs on the immigration. Right? 

Juán Gonzalez wrote a great book, I think everybody should read it as a primer to Latino history, it’s called Harvest of Empire. It’s a fantastic look at how US colonial projects have then created this massive wave of immigration to the United States from Latin America. That movement continues, and that continues to be strong in the church. And that’s my one area there where I cling on to the hope of our churches that are continuing to carry on that, what I would view as, a very radical tradition in housing immigrants, undocumented folks, helping them as they’re here, continuing to see the church as a space of orientation, as a space of welcome.

Jared  

What is the response for, there’s a social pressure here of what do we do with—It’s kind of sort of the law and order way of thinking about this, sort of, God has created an order and this is, which basically means we have to uphold the laws of the land and if you break through the rules of the land, then you get your just desserts and punishment. It is a different theological and ecclesiological and social framework to think about how our political system and our religious traditions either are in bed with each other, or they can clash. How do people navigate this, with your background, your understanding of history, your own experiences—and again, I don’t think our listeners necessarily will struggle with that for themselves personally, but when they step into spaces where it’s not taken for granted that these powerful immigrant rights, the prophetic witness, the social service ethics, these things are not part of a lot of religious traditions, especially I would say, in kind of white evangelicalism. How do we talk about these things in a way that might help move the needle, so to speak? Does all that make sense?

Felipe  

It makes perfect sense. I appreciate the question very much. I mean I think we should keep in mind that even as we sit here and talk, there are conversations like this happening in churches across America and in neighborhoods. The landscape is changing, the demographics are changing. This is the panic [Chuckles] that a lot of politicians, I think, are reacting to these days with their attacks on diversity and equity and inclusion with critical race theory, this sense that the idea of what it means to be an American is changing, right, and that somehow immigrants are to blame for that. That Latino immigrants are going to fundamentally change this and on top of that, they’re criminals and you know, all of these sort of myths that get thrown out there. I think those are these grand narratives that live in the world, and we must take them very seriously and at the same time, I still have a very strong sense of hope that people in their communities and in their churches figure these things out for themselves. 

And I say that I think based not so much on my work as a historian, but as my own upbringing in a church that was in the middle of a working class neighborhood, had about 150 people in it growing up, we were a family, certainly, with our own problems. The church had its issues, ups and downs, and so forth. But there were also a large group of white volunteers, Mennonite volunteers, VS-ers, they call them—voluntary service workers—that would come down to Brownsville, give up a year or two of their life, they would serve as a nurse, they would serve as a teacher, construction worker, whatever it might be, and they lived in the community. I know that they were sympathetic to us, and they were there to serve us and it was a sense of giving back for them. But I also know that they didn’t really understand us either. And I’m not sure that we understood them, either. We didn’t understand how you could give up a year or two of your life with no pay, and go live somewhere else and volunteer for a year or two. That didn’t make any sense to our working class sensibilities, right? 

And yet, what I witnessed—and this wasn’t some sort of utopian community of white and Latino Mennonites, that, you know, we’re going to church together and all of that—but I think it really sort of put us and it forced us to be in a space where we had to understand the sense that it wasn’t our identity shaping our politics, but that it was our politics shaping our identity, that it was the way that we were looking at the world, understanding God, and even our social location that was shaping and helping and situating ourselves as a Mexican-American congregation that was working class. Some were immigrants, some were generationally there. And so what that meant, at the grassroots level, was that you had white volunteers that had much more freedom to march in the streets of Brownsville and you had much more freedom to criticize the US government, to be much more vocal in our church, which I saw…In retrospect, now looking back, I see it as being a part of this radical sanctuary of church tradition, not because they were marching in the streets, not because they were carrying bull horns, not because they were giving rides to refugees up to Dallas or Houston—although that was happening—but because they were offering meals, they were offering clothing, a week of shelter, money, and a phone for a long distance phone call when a long distance phone call was a thing. 

These were radical things at the moment for a church such as ours. And so to be able to understand our own social locations, to be able to understand the places where we’re coming from, I’m hoping that we can begin to understand why people might take these different political beliefs and these different stances on politics, and then maybe work together where possible—or not work together, right. But I don’t, it’s not enough to simply sort of throw the law and order argument at us or at some of these churches, without trying to do the work of understanding where they’re coming from, understanding their context, and understanding that for many of us, this work is deeply, deeply personal. It might be that some of our families are undocumented, it could be that it’s a generational thing. But it’s certainly rooted in who we are as a people and it’s part of the tradition that we come from and that we exhibit. And I also think it’s why we get attacked in the way that we do.

Jared  

You know, we—and by we, I mean, within the Mennonite congregation I’m a part of, and within kind of the Mennonite conference and other things like that—I think there’s a struggle for figuring out how to, I don’t know if balance is the right word. But there’s a heavy emphasis at least in kind of our area around discernment and around staying together even amidst disagreement, till we figure out a way that everyone can be at the table. And in trying to figure out how to navigate that when the things on the table are matters of, say, LGBTQ inclusion, or immigrant rights and these things that—it’s a very privileged conversation as a primarily white congregation to have, that we can sit around and talk for two or three years to bring people along, while maybe those that we are talking about don’t have the luxury of not being harmed by our patience. 

So I’m curious because I only have this white privileged experience in that congregation. I can’t really get out of that. That’s where I find myself. How has Latino American, Mennonite congregations wrestled with this patience welcoming, and yet also the prophetic witness of being on the front lines of things, where also though, we are called to this discernment, and to sort of be patient with others as they come along. And we’re—I would just say, I personally—find it a challenge to figure out how to do that personally. And then, of course, as a congregation, we’re trying to figure out how we, you know, you talk about working together. Do you—have you—any insights of how do we balance that? I think it’s a very relevant question, you know, post-2016, for how we figure out how to do things together, while also paying attention to the people who are suffering in our patience, if that’s a way of saying it.

Felipe  

Yeah, I don’t think there’s an easy answer to that. I think, part of what I love and am fascinated by with the study of the civil rights movement, and of the Latino civil rights movement, in particular—although I think this goes for multiple movements across across the board and during that time—was that I think we have a sort of romanticized sense of what these movements were really like. I mean, I’ll never forget when I was in graduate school, one of my professors was writing a book on the farm worker movement on Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. He had gone up to Wayne State University where the Labor Archives are in Detroit and had—you might or might not know this—but Chavez basically audio recorded every meeting that they ever had in the farm worker movement. And so he had copies of these tapes. 

And he would play before every seminar, before every class, he would play about 20 or 25 minutes of these tapes of these meetings that they had. And they were not what I was expecting, or not my own romantic ideals of what the movement would have been like, with prayer and singing and all of this. There were fights, there was shouting, there was cursing, there were all of these things that were going back and forth. There were, you know, pointing fingers at a lot of the privileged white kids that had come out to California to march and weren’t struggling in the same way. There were folks that were talking from their positionalities. The kind of abuse that women suffered. The lack of funds that a lot of the organizers had, there were some real deep and fundamental issues that they had to consistently work through. And I think taking those lessons, for me, has reminded me of the power of exactly what you’re saying, which is doing the hard work of sticking together as much as you can, as long as everybody who’s in it is cognizant of the fact that this is going to be a struggle, and we’re all at different—we’re taking a different pace as we go, right? 

And not everybody’s going to be able to contribute in the same way. Not everybody’s going to be there at the same time. But I think, given the political trends that we have been in, we really do not have any other choice in terms of where we are as a nation currently and what we’re doing. You know, we spoke about hope a little bit ago, one of the things that gives me hope is that, you know, we tend to think of—and I’m in Texas, and people see us as a very conservative state, and we are. People look at Alabama, or Georgia, or Florida as states that are keeping the nation from, you know, progressing forward. But if you take a closer look, it’s in the south, and in the Deep South in particular, where there are some of the fiercest and strongest movements for immigrant rights, for Latino rights. And when I say immigrant rights in the South, I’m not talking just about Latinos, right? I’m talking about Asian immigrants, talking about different African immigrants, different folks from across the globe that are coming to the south. 

And the young people there, people like the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, the murals and the artistic work of the muralist, Yehimi Cambrón. And if you drive around the city of Atlanta, you see the faces of immigrants at Mercedes-Benz stadium in downtown Atlanta, and I bet people probably miss that when they’re driving through that city. They don’t see those murals. And I think it’s a powerful testament to the work that people are doing in some hotly contested parts of our country. My thinking is, if they can do it, and they can continue to be as successful as they have, if organizers in Houston, and organizers in San Antonio and Austin can keep pushing back against gentrification, can keep pushing back against gerrymandering that has completely flipped our state and kept us stagnant—if people can do those things, then certainly anywhere that we are at in this country, we can continue to do that work. That’s the sense of struggle. That’s the sense of fight, of tenacity, that I think we need to take a look at and learn from as we continue to do this work. That’s what I think about when you’re asking your question. I just, I went straight there just sort of thinking about, this is a fight, we’re in it together, and if we can stick it out as much as we can, even with all our differences, I think there’s a way forward.

Jared  

I really appreciate your perspective. And you know, I have kind of my own insider stuff, I’m really struggling right now as a Mennonite with—we’re in a very unique, it’s an interesting situation of having one of the larger, more privileged, more affluent congregations in our conference. And we’re progressive. And we are in conference, we are in communion, with a lot more theologically conservative congregations who are not welcoming, but they are like immigrant congregations, a lot of South Asian and Latino American and they are like, those churches are like community centers for these folks. They are resources, lifelines, you know, it’s a matter of survival of getting them to navigate the American bureaucratic system, its food, its shelter, its clothes. It’s interesting to see these value systems being put at odds. It’s like, okay, they’re more theologically conservative and so for us to fellowship with them, like our progressive friends are like, “You can’t do that,” because they are not like welcoming of LGBTQ. But if we pull our support, they are using our funds to like, serve immigrants and serve people in the congregation. It’s like, whoo! This is a tough one to navigate. 

Felipe  

Yeah, for sure. I’ve known of those conversations. I’ve been a part of many of them myself in Mennonite higher education circles, and at the church level, too. And so yeah, I have been very much a part of that. But I also, like, I’m a big believer in like, we cannot, there’s no way that we can step away, we have to continue to stay engaged with each other, even if our politics differ, because I think that’s what at the end of the day, maybe there’s a bridge that’s built, maybe there’s not, but if there’s a conversation, there’s always a possibility.

Jared  

Yeah, I really appreciate that perspective. 

Felipe  

Absolutely. I’m an evangelist for Latino history because I just think it’s so important for people to understand that when we talk about the Civil Rights Movement, you know, there were so many different angles and takes to it, I think we’re just barely now scratching the surface to really understand. And I’m hoping that it becomes a relevant thing for today’s organizers, right? That it’s something that they can take and say, you know, “Hey, look, there were multiracial multi-ethnic coalitions being built back then, you know, how are they dealing with difference? How are they dealing with ideas of capitalism versus socialism and all of these gender inequalities and sexuality?” Like none of that is new, and how can we learn from that? Because I think there’s, there’s a rich, rich story there that’s yet to be told.

Pete  

Mhmm. Yes. Well, Felipe, I thank you so much for being with us. You know, you said something, as we bring this to a close here, unfortunately—you said before that Latino history is American history. 

Felipe  

Yep.

Pete  

And, you know, of course, included in that is Latino church history is American church history as well. You know, I went to seminary in the 80s and I taught in a seminary for 14 years, and none of this stuff was talked about. They had particular traditions that they needed to perpetuate and so this is, you know, I want to thank you, for all of us, for helping to expand our vista a bit and to see the world differently, and to see how other people are navigating some difficult things and trying to do that within another faith in Christ.

Felipe  

Well, thank you both for the work that you do. I’ve been thinking about the ways in which people live out their faith and having these conversations is supremely important. I’ve learned a lot in these last few months listening to you both. So thank you.

Jared  

And now for Quiet Time…

Pete  

With Pete and Jared. 

Pete  

Well, so Jared, you know, we talked with Felipe and he’s Mennonite and so are you. So just what led you to become Mennonite? What was the draw for you to be a part of that community?

Jared  

Yeah, so I think for me, I was drawn to the community, particularly the congregation before being drawn to something abstract called being Mennonite or Anabaptist. 

Pete  

Ah.

Jared  

It’s not like I came through, I studied the theology of it, not like when I was-

Pete  

That’s like Cotesworth, by the way.

Jared  

Well, when I was reformed, though, it was the other way around.

Pete  

Jared  

Which was most abstract, never even been really to a Presbyterian Church. And I’m getting books on tape, and lectures on tape from the Westminster bookstore, like on cassette tape of Greg Bahnson, and Cornelius Van Til being mailed to my house. And so it’s very abstract for me, it’s all like theological. 

Pete  

This is very different-

Jared  

This is the opposite, where I like, came to a congregation and said, “Oh, this is great. I love this. Oh, this is Mennonite? Okay.” So that’s what you know, led me there was—actually, interestingly enough, the story is I had come back up to Pennsylvania to work for something, I was teaching in Phoenix, at the time at Grand Canyon University. And I had flown back to Pennsylvania for something and before I came back, someone had reached out to me and said, “Hey, we’re reading your book Genesis for Normal People.” This was probably back in 2013, or something. And they said, “We are reading it as our Sunday school with lots of lively debate, would you mind coming and like talking to us?” So when I came back to Pennsylvania for a work thing, once I went to this congregation, and basically it’s a roomful of older adults, probably in their 60s and 70s, and they mostly just yelled, I like, talked for a little bit-

Pete  

Jared  

-And they mostly just yelled at each other, and like, debated each other on what the significance of Genesis was, and how we read it and there were literalists, and they were, you know, symbolicists, and everything in between and historical context-ists, and I thought, “This is fantastic. It’s just such a lively debate. And at the end of this, they’re all going to go to lunch and they’re going to just stay connected,” and half of them are related to each other so they’re still family, like, I just really appreciated that. So that’s really what drew me. And then the peace, later on, as I got to know more about it, kind of the peace emphasis I’ve shared before we have at our church, instead of vacation bible school for kids every year, we have peace camp, where they learn like peace-making skills and conflict resolution skills and things like that. And I just really, really appreciate that emphasis within the Mennonite domination. 

Pete  

Yeah, I mean, it’s—I mean, not to be simplistic—it sounds more like a lot of spiritual formation and honest discussion and not so much hold on to the specific thoughts using this language and expressing it in this way and then you’re sort of safe on the inside. So.

Jared  

Yeah. 

Pete  

Right, well, if you would Jared, just reflect on the ending of the podcast with Felipe, where you talk about the tension of, you know, fellowship between more progressive and more conservative churches.

Jared  

Yeah. If you remember the context for that—which I’m hesitant to share, it’s not necessarily my story to really share, but it is within the denomination and within our conference right now. We’re really struggling with being in fellowship. We have what’s called a conference that we have lots of congregations in, and it’s interesting because those who are more theologically conservative are often the ones who were the pillars of their community in very practical financial whole social administrative ways. 

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

And we want to support that. And yet theologically, we can be very different. Because we are more progressive, sort of inclusive, welcoming, that kind of thing. And it’s just a real hard tension to sort of figure out how do you be- How do you support a group of people, because they’re doing really good work in one area, while holding to things that you think might be harmful to a group of people? And how do you navigate that? And I think it’s, for me, the reason I brought it up was, yeah, it’s helpful on the institutional level. But I think it’s more also, how do we hold space for differences and understanding that we come at conclusions at different times and in different places. And thinking back to, if someone hadn’t held space for me to kind of go along in my own piece, I might have overreacted and doubled down on my fundamentalism. If it was sort of like “No, right now you have to choose. And if you don’t choose this, you’re against us. And we hate you and you’re excluded. And how dare you,” and kind of shame-based rejection of you. It’s just complicated. I don’t know if that makes sense. But-

Pete  

No, it does. So that was modeled for you, I guess that kind of merging together of what are typically polls, you know, progressive and conservative.

Jared  

Right. Yeah, holding that tension in some very uncomfortable way. 

Pete  

So, the community helped you do that? 

Jared  

Oh, for sure. 

Pete  

Yeah.

Jared  

Yeah. Because there’s a value, I think it’s a Mennonite value, of discernment. And discernment. What I’ve learned tongue-in-cheek is talking ad nauseam about something, and just refusing to make a decision until it feels good to the community. 

Pete  

Yeah. 

Jared  

And it’s just like, oh, my gosh, we gotta go. Like, we talk about it as a community. And then we go to every individual and talk about it with them. And then we come back as a community, and then we go back to every individual, and just discernment is trusting that the spirit of god will work in the process to bring us to the conclusion that the community needs to come to, and it’s like, ugh, coming from a top-down evangelical megachurch, where you just have a dude at the front, who just tells you the direction we’re going, that can feel really messy and inefficient, to have a community based kind of grassroots decision making model.

Pete  

Right. And I think, you know, the criticism of that, which I don’t agree with is that, while you’re not getting good doctrine, you need the- It has to come from the top-

Jared  

Mhmm.

Pete  

-What to think but in a sense, what I think what you’re describing is doctrine, in a sense, it’s like, what, how should Christians live? And-

Jared  

Like the ground up, it’s from the ground up. 

Pete  

Yeah, and the debating and stuff, and that, you know, we’ve had guests on, and we’ve talked about how Judaism tends to, historically, allow for that kind of latitude to really debate things and to, you know, have a space to think together without feeling the pressure of having to come to the same conclusion. 

Jared  

Yeah, well, I’m going to turn the tables on you a little bit. Just kind of in that same vein, who was patient with you when you were trying to like, navigate these faith shifts?

Pete  

Generally speaking, I would say it’s people who, themselves had a similar journey before I did, and they understood already what was going on. So I think it’s just being in those proper spaces where people have experience and are going to support you. And you know, that’s happened in church, but more in recent years, like the last I’d say, 10 or 15 years. Before that, not really, you know. So it took some time, and it took me leaving some of those communities and trying to find other ones. But that’s where that kind of support can happen. It doesn’t happen everywhere and you can’t ask a sort of a top-down institution to support you in a journey that undermines top-down, thinking, [Chuckles] you know, so but it was just people. Just everyday people, and sometimes people whose names I don’t remember, I just came across them, maybe I read something they wrote, or I just met them, or they’re friends of somebody else. And all of a sudden, you just realize maybe you’re not so crazy for trying to think differently about stuff.

Jared  

Yeah, I think that’s a good answer to that question. Maybe too, then do you find yourself still, do you struggle with compassion? And I mean, that in a sincere sense, because I think it’s worth a struggle. I think we can’t assume when I say, “Do you struggle to have compassion with those who aren’t there yet?” Sometimes that can feel like the automatic answer is we need to have more compassion for those who aren’t there yet but I think it’s a genuine question, because sometimes the not being there is hurting people too. 

Pete  

Yeah. 

Jared  

Right? Like, and that’s what we struggle with sometimes even in our congregation or other faith communities that I see is, yeah, it’s one thing, if you’re not there yet, it’s not just about you, it’s about the people that are being hurt because you’re not there yet. And that you’re still excluding a group of people who want to be there, but they have to sort of wait on your time. You hold all the cards for when they get to belong in the community. So I asked that sincerely. Do you struggle to have compassion for those who aren’t at a place that you feel like is more loving or more inclusive in faith community?

Pete  

Sometimes. Yeah. I mean, I think it depends on how well I know the person. Because if I know somebody well as I know, their heart, to use the phrase, right. And it’s like, you know, I think all sorts of things that I wouldn’t impose on anybody else. I just don’t know what those things are. Right. And so I have to be compassionate. And I think it’s fair to say that I’ve become aware of that need, but also, I think—I like the way you put it—there’s also a struggle involved there as well because you know, where, when should you speak? When should you sort of maybe give some unsolicited advice? When should you just sort of, like, accept people for who they are? And I just, you know, I do try to treat people in this respect the way I would hope people would treat me which is not to judge me too quickly, but to give me space to try to figure some things out. So to me, that’s compassion too, but sometimes, you’re right, people are actually really harming emotionally, physically, spiritually, they’re actually doing harm. And that’s, that’s a different thing altogether.

Jared  

Alright. Well, I think that’s going to be I mean, for me. That it continues to be a question of how do you navigate wisely, this world of of shifts and faith shifts, but also relational shifts and emotional maturity and immaturity and shifts in how we show up in the world? And so I don’t think we’re going to answer it all here. But I think it’s a good place to start and I think Felipe’s, the episode actually helped maybe raise some of those questions, too. 

Jared  

Absolutely. 

Outro  

Jared  

Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you want to support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just want to give a little money, go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/give.       

Pete  

And, if you want to support us and want a community, classes, and other great resources, go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/join.      

Jared  

And lastly, it always goes a long way if you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review, and tell others about our show. In addition, you can let us know what you thought about the episodeby emailing us at info@TheBibleForNormalPeople.com 

Outro  

Thanks for listening to Faith for Normal People! Don’t forget, you can also catch the latest episode of our other show, The Bible for Normal People, wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People podcast team: Brittany Prescott, Savannah Locke, Stephanie Speight, Natalie Weyand, Steven Henning, Tessa Stultz, Haley Warren, Nick Striegel, and Jessica Shao.

Outro  

Outro  

Pete  

Yeah, um…. Can I have two minutes to feed my cat? 

Jared  

You son of a—[beep plays to signal censor of curse word and end of blooper]