Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States

The Latino community in the United States is commonly stereotyped as Roman Catholic and politically passive. Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States challenges and revises these stereotypes by demonstrating the critical influence of Latino Catholics, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Mainline Protestants, and others on political, civic, and social engagement in the United States and Puerto Rico. It also revises the ostensibly secular narrative of Latino history and politics. The authors analyze the critical role that institutional, popular, and civil religion have played in Latino activism. This timely book offers readers a new framework by which to understand and to interpret the central importance of religious symbols, rhetoric, ideology, world-views, and leaders to Latino religions and politics over the past 150 years.

Gast�n Espinosa is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Claremont McKenna College and past project manager of the Hispanic Churches in American Public Life research project. Virgilio Elizondo is Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Notre Dame, co-principal investigator of the Hispanic Churches in American Public Life research project, and co-founder of the Mexican American Cultural Center in San Antonio, Texas. Jesse Miranda is Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Urban Studies and Ethnic Leadership at Vanguard University, co-principal investigator of the Hispanic Churches in American Public Life research project, and founder and president of the Alianza de Ministerios Evang�licos Nacionales (AMEN).