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Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity
Interest in and awareness of the demand for social justice as an outworking of the Christian faith is growing. But it is not new. For five hundred years, the Latina/o culture and identity has been shaped by its challenges to the religious, socio-economic, and political status quo, whether in its opposition to Spanish colonialism, Latin American dictatorships, US imperialism in Central America, the oppression of farmworkers, or the current exploitation of undocumented immigrants. Christianity has played a significant role in that movement at every stage. Robert Chao Romero, the son of a Mexican father and a Chinese immigrant mother, explores the history and theology of what he terms the "Brown Church." Romero considers how this movement has responded to these and other injustices throughout its history by appealing to the belief that God's vision for redemption includes not only heavenly promises but also the transformation of every aspect of our lives and the world. Walking through this history of activism and faith, readers will discover that Latina/o Christians have a heart after God's own.
290 pages, Paperback
First published May 26, 2020
70 people are currently reading
1196 people want to read
About the author
Robert Chao Romero
18 books14 followersRobert Chao Romero (PhD, University of California at Los Angeles; JD, University of California at Berkeley) is associate professor in the Departments of Chicana/o Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. He is the author of the award-winning The Chinese in Mexico, 1882-1940, Jesus for Revolutionaries: An Introduction to Race, Social Justice, and Christianity, and Mixed Race Student Politics.
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June 16, 2020
Summary: A study of the five hundred year of Latina/o Christianity and its resistance and response to colonialism, dictatorships, U.S. imperialism, and oppression toward farm workers and immigrants.
Imagine you had grown up in a vibrant church that translated faith into community development and advocated for those who were marginalized by majority culture. How would you respond if a respected university teacher, or a justice movement on your campus told you that your religious experience had been shaped by colonial imperialists who used religion as an opiate to suppress your people?
That is the challenge, in various forms, that the author states faces Latinas/os from Christian backgrounds. Robert Chao Romero argues that there is another side to that history, a church born of resistance, that views Latina/o culture as a gift of God, that is awake to the racism and injustice of its history, and has brought together love for Christ and commitments to justice for a marginalized people.
Romero does that by taking us on the five hundred year journey of the Brown Church, "Brown" reflecting the mixture of descent that makes up Latina/o people, that is neither Black nor White, but has a distinctive history and character and contribution to the body of Christ.
He begins by rooting this account in God's Galilee strategy. Galileans were the marginalized of Israel when the real power was in Jerusalem and Judea. And Nazareth was on the margin of the margins. The people of Galilee were considered a "mixed" breed and inferior. This is the place Jesus called "home." This is where he formed his movement and called his followers. He proposes that this plan was co-opted by a European, colonialist, white supremacist outlook that corrupted the church.
Yet a movement of resistance has existed from the beginnings of Spanish colonialism, beginning with Friar Montesino's denunciation of colonial injustices on the island of Hispaniola in 1511. From here, he traces the growth of the Brown Church through the stories of Bartholomé de Las Casas and the visions of Juan Diego of La Virgen de Guadelupe, who witnessed that the oppression was not God's intent. He introduces us to Guaman Poman whose faith led him to advocate for indigenous autonomy, and Sor Juana, a great Latina scholar of humane letters who dared to rebuke the heresies of the established church.
Romero looks at the treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo in 1845 between the U.S. and Mexico, ceding the lands of the American Southwest, creating a group of people in these lands with a liminal status, neither black nor white, but "brown." Romero traces the Brown church in the US to an ex-communicate priest in New Mexico, Padre Antonio Jose Martinez and the lay orders he formed, los Penitentes and las Carmelitas, who provided spiritual and community leadership to Latinas/os in this liminal space, not quite yet American citizens.
He then jumps forward to the farm organizing work of César Chávez. He tells a story of the spiritual roots of Chávez's life often not included in the history, from his "Abuelita theology" to the Catholic social teaching and community development training he received with Fr. Donald McDonnell. Chávez's non-violent approached was sustained by faith, fasting and servant leadership, until after 1975, when under the influence of the teaching of Synanon, he became increasingly self-focused and authoritarian and lost most of his following.
The final chapters take us through the social justice theologies of Latin America from Liberation Theology to evangelicos like Rene Padilla and Samuel Escobar and the Misión Integral that combined evangelism and social justice rooted in the authority of the Bible. He tells the story of Oscar Romero, his conversion and conscientization, as the once conservative priest who became the advocate for the poor against the powers of El Salvador, against the American backed military government, until executed during a mass. Finally, he chronicles contemporary Latina/o theological movements in the United States from Pentecostal theologians like Condé-Frazier, Maldonado-Peréz, Villafañe, and Garcia-Johnson to community organizers like Alexia Salvatierra, Noel Castellanos, and Ray Rivera.
Romero does what I find a rare thing in Christian scholarship. He offers a well-documented scholarly work that flows. He brings people and movements to life, and creates a narrative thread in developing the idea of the Brown Church that holds the whole together. Here is a scholar who can tell a story!
Romero concludes with nine statements that define the Brown Church. The strength of this work, summed up in these statements is that he gives identity and character to a people who have existed on the borderlands. He shows how this marginalized people have recaptured distinctives of the Galilean Gospel that shapes their lives, but is also a gift to the rest of the church, held captive to imperialism, the empty power of the colonizer, and to racist ideologies that divide the body of Christ rather than form the beloved community. Reading this for me opened my eyes to the riches of devotion, of action, and of theology within the "Brown Church"--a theology shaped by life on the margins reclaiming the world-changing witness of the "marginal Jew," Jesus Christ.
________________________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
Imagine you had grown up in a vibrant church that translated faith into community development and advocated for those who were marginalized by majority culture. How would you respond if a respected university teacher, or a justice movement on your campus told you that your religious experience had been shaped by colonial imperialists who used religion as an opiate to suppress your people?
That is the challenge, in various forms, that the author states faces Latinas/os from Christian backgrounds. Robert Chao Romero argues that there is another side to that history, a church born of resistance, that views Latina/o culture as a gift of God, that is awake to the racism and injustice of its history, and has brought together love for Christ and commitments to justice for a marginalized people.
Romero does that by taking us on the five hundred year journey of the Brown Church, "Brown" reflecting the mixture of descent that makes up Latina/o people, that is neither Black nor White, but has a distinctive history and character and contribution to the body of Christ.
He begins by rooting this account in God's Galilee strategy. Galileans were the marginalized of Israel when the real power was in Jerusalem and Judea. And Nazareth was on the margin of the margins. The people of Galilee were considered a "mixed" breed and inferior. This is the place Jesus called "home." This is where he formed his movement and called his followers. He proposes that this plan was co-opted by a European, colonialist, white supremacist outlook that corrupted the church.
Yet a movement of resistance has existed from the beginnings of Spanish colonialism, beginning with Friar Montesino's denunciation of colonial injustices on the island of Hispaniola in 1511. From here, he traces the growth of the Brown Church through the stories of Bartholomé de Las Casas and the visions of Juan Diego of La Virgen de Guadelupe, who witnessed that the oppression was not God's intent. He introduces us to Guaman Poman whose faith led him to advocate for indigenous autonomy, and Sor Juana, a great Latina scholar of humane letters who dared to rebuke the heresies of the established church.
Romero looks at the treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo in 1845 between the U.S. and Mexico, ceding the lands of the American Southwest, creating a group of people in these lands with a liminal status, neither black nor white, but "brown." Romero traces the Brown church in the US to an ex-communicate priest in New Mexico, Padre Antonio Jose Martinez and the lay orders he formed, los Penitentes and las Carmelitas, who provided spiritual and community leadership to Latinas/os in this liminal space, not quite yet American citizens.
He then jumps forward to the farm organizing work of César Chávez. He tells a story of the spiritual roots of Chávez's life often not included in the history, from his "Abuelita theology" to the Catholic social teaching and community development training he received with Fr. Donald McDonnell. Chávez's non-violent approached was sustained by faith, fasting and servant leadership, until after 1975, when under the influence of the teaching of Synanon, he became increasingly self-focused and authoritarian and lost most of his following.
The final chapters take us through the social justice theologies of Latin America from Liberation Theology to evangelicos like Rene Padilla and Samuel Escobar and the Misión Integral that combined evangelism and social justice rooted in the authority of the Bible. He tells the story of Oscar Romero, his conversion and conscientization, as the once conservative priest who became the advocate for the poor against the powers of El Salvador, against the American backed military government, until executed during a mass. Finally, he chronicles contemporary Latina/o theological movements in the United States from Pentecostal theologians like Condé-Frazier, Maldonado-Peréz, Villafañe, and Garcia-Johnson to community organizers like Alexia Salvatierra, Noel Castellanos, and Ray Rivera.
Romero does what I find a rare thing in Christian scholarship. He offers a well-documented scholarly work that flows. He brings people and movements to life, and creates a narrative thread in developing the idea of the Brown Church that holds the whole together. Here is a scholar who can tell a story!
Romero concludes with nine statements that define the Brown Church. The strength of this work, summed up in these statements is that he gives identity and character to a people who have existed on the borderlands. He shows how this marginalized people have recaptured distinctives of the Galilean Gospel that shapes their lives, but is also a gift to the rest of the church, held captive to imperialism, the empty power of the colonizer, and to racist ideologies that divide the body of Christ rather than form the beloved community. Reading this for me opened my eyes to the riches of devotion, of action, and of theology within the "Brown Church"--a theology shaped by life on the margins reclaiming the world-changing witness of the "marginal Jew," Jesus Christ.
________________________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
April 28, 2022
“If Jesus launched an empire-challenging, global transformative movement beginning with the poor and marginalized of Galilee, why does Christianity in the 21st-century share such close association with five hundred years of European colonization, genocide, and white nationalism in the Americas?”
Lots of things made me want to read a book like this: growing up/living in Texas (a majority minority state), reading Reading While Black by Esau McCaulley and wanting to read about the Latina/o experience, dating my lovely Mexican-immigrant boyfriend (hi Art), attending a church with a growing Spanish congregation, realizing I couldn’t name a single Latino/a theologian, etc…
In short, this book is a great starting point for the deep historical, theological, and anthropological waters of the Latino/a Christian experience. Not only is the content rich, but Chao Romero gives the audience so many additional resources.
Also, I don’t know who told me about the “theological boogey-man” of Liberation theology growing up, but I found Chao Romero’s discuss of it wise, discerning and helpful for someone like me who was initially tentative towards it.
Finally, what a baller Robert Chao Romero is — lawyer, historian, pastor — this man is living my dream.
Lots of things made me want to read a book like this: growing up/living in Texas (a majority minority state), reading Reading While Black by Esau McCaulley and wanting to read about the Latina/o experience, dating my lovely Mexican-immigrant boyfriend (hi Art), attending a church with a growing Spanish congregation, realizing I couldn’t name a single Latino/a theologian, etc…
In short, this book is a great starting point for the deep historical, theological, and anthropological waters of the Latino/a Christian experience. Not only is the content rich, but Chao Romero gives the audience so many additional resources.
Also, I don’t know who told me about the “theological boogey-man” of Liberation theology growing up, but I found Chao Romero’s discuss of it wise, discerning and helpful for someone like me who was initially tentative towards it.
Finally, what a baller Robert Chao Romero is — lawyer, historian, pastor — this man is living my dream.
January 4, 2021
Such an important book! Chao Romero demonstrates that Latina/o theology and concern for social justice goes back 500 years. His stories will make you want to weep over the history of racist oppression perpetrated by so-called Anglo Christians. But you will also have much to celebrate. Chao Romero lines up the heroes of Latin American history, showing us their courage in the face of empire.
I'm grateful for this book because it preserves the stories of Protestant, Catholic, and Pentecostal people of great faith from Latin America. These examples can help us to respond to the challenges facing our nations today with greater clarity and humanity.
I'm grateful for this book because it preserves the stories of Protestant, Catholic, and Pentecostal people of great faith from Latin America. These examples can help us to respond to the challenges facing our nations today with greater clarity and humanity.
August 8, 2025
The book covered 500 years of Latino/a Christianity and how resistance created a “Brown Church” in response to colonialism, dictatorships, imperialism, and worker/immigrant oppression. I’m not well versed on Latino/a history or figures so contextualizing different stories with the Bible was interesting. I think the main point was to create space for socially conscious Christians because #Godlovespoorpeople #blessedarethepoorinspirit!! “The entire Bible, beginning with the story of Cain and Able, mirrors God’s predilection for the weak and abused of human history. This preference brings out the grotesque or unmerited character of God’s love.” I learned that God’s concern for the poor is the second most discussed topic in the Old Testament, right behind idolatry. The two themes are of course related because “taking one’s eye off of God and God’s commandments leads to the oppression of immigrants and the poor.”
In emphasizing God’s mercy towards the marginalized, Romero criticized Western Christianity and the American government (special blows towards Spanish colonizers, Donald Trump and our immigration policies). The Spaniards missed the truth of the Bible and the gospel message because they were so focused on their racial colonization project :(. “Instead of celebrating and honoring the… indigenous African and Asian peoples they encountered, and respecting them as children of God in their own right and uniqueness, the Spanish idolized themselves and set themself up as the cultural standard for the image of God.” Today, many Brown Christians struggle to detangle the liberating faith of Jesus from the destructive legacy of colonial Christianity in Latin America and the United States.
Brown-ness refers to “a liminal legal, political, and cultural space that US Latinas and Latinos have inhabited since the US-Mexico War and the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo of 1848.” Non-white people have always been wanted for their land and labor, while at the same time rejected for their cultural and ethnic difference. Politics have further manipulated our sinful human nature and fallen tendency to hate those who are not like us in the name of nationalism. Micro and macro racist rhetoric and conservative media has appealed to “a wide range of voters from neonazis dawning khakis and torches, to disaffected working class white voters.” Many conservative fundamentalist Christians would never consider themselves racist, yet they have never severed their colonial ties with the destructive ideology of manifest destiny.
The solution? Liberation theology!
Liberation theology focuses on God as an active author and sustainer of all life… the liberator (Exodus 3:7-9, Acts 3:15). It promotes suffering, sacrifice, and love over violence. Counterintuitively, “The kingdom of God advances with a violence of love.” I think this violence of love is referring to the love that left Christ nailed to the cross. He loved us so fully that He endured all of our violence. Now we may become whole because of His broken body. Liberation theology also refers to the church as an ecumenical body spread around the world (ie. not just a building or denomination). It acknowledges diversity and pursues God’s kingdom on earth through the church (which once again, is the live body of Christ!)
God’s kingdom is both a present dimension and a future eschatological reality. It is “something much more than historical political revolutions, which will only find its full realization upon the return of Christ and the coming of the new heaven and the new earth.” Liberation theology reminds us that justice can’t come through human effort alone. Christ gave His life to pay for the sin of injustice and to open up the path toward human redemption. This is the gospel. Theologically, Romero divides the gospel into “vertical salvation, reconciliation of the individual with God through Christ, and horizontal engagement, with the pressing social concerns of the day.” He went on and on about how both aspects are like the wing of a plane… each side necessary to keeping liberation theology afloat…
When we do not practice this holistic gospel, “the racist can continue to be a racist; the exploiter can continue to be an exploiter.” In this Western reality, Christians (we) “oppose the violence of revolutions but not the violence of war.” We are tempted to condemn clothing and music choices but say nothing of multinational exploitation and genocide. However, we are commanded to transcend the borders of judgement or the blindness of privilege and instead, LOVE ONE ANOTHER.
Love sometimes implores us to take the side of the oppressed. It persuades us to stand in #solidarity and #celebration of those who are different than us. Down with the narrow religious understanding of a single ethnic racial community! Down with biblical nationalism! Because we each have a unique perspective and relationship with God, cultural diversity should reinforce unity in the church by encouraging us to lean on one another to see our Creator more fully.
In emphasizing God’s mercy towards the marginalized, Romero criticized Western Christianity and the American government (special blows towards Spanish colonizers, Donald Trump and our immigration policies). The Spaniards missed the truth of the Bible and the gospel message because they were so focused on their racial colonization project :(. “Instead of celebrating and honoring the… indigenous African and Asian peoples they encountered, and respecting them as children of God in their own right and uniqueness, the Spanish idolized themselves and set themself up as the cultural standard for the image of God.” Today, many Brown Christians struggle to detangle the liberating faith of Jesus from the destructive legacy of colonial Christianity in Latin America and the United States.
Brown-ness refers to “a liminal legal, political, and cultural space that US Latinas and Latinos have inhabited since the US-Mexico War and the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo of 1848.” Non-white people have always been wanted for their land and labor, while at the same time rejected for their cultural and ethnic difference. Politics have further manipulated our sinful human nature and fallen tendency to hate those who are not like us in the name of nationalism. Micro and macro racist rhetoric and conservative media has appealed to “a wide range of voters from neonazis dawning khakis and torches, to disaffected working class white voters.” Many conservative fundamentalist Christians would never consider themselves racist, yet they have never severed their colonial ties with the destructive ideology of manifest destiny.
The solution? Liberation theology!
Liberation theology focuses on God as an active author and sustainer of all life… the liberator (Exodus 3:7-9, Acts 3:15). It promotes suffering, sacrifice, and love over violence. Counterintuitively, “The kingdom of God advances with a violence of love.” I think this violence of love is referring to the love that left Christ nailed to the cross. He loved us so fully that He endured all of our violence. Now we may become whole because of His broken body. Liberation theology also refers to the church as an ecumenical body spread around the world (ie. not just a building or denomination). It acknowledges diversity and pursues God’s kingdom on earth through the church (which once again, is the live body of Christ!)
God’s kingdom is both a present dimension and a future eschatological reality. It is “something much more than historical political revolutions, which will only find its full realization upon the return of Christ and the coming of the new heaven and the new earth.” Liberation theology reminds us that justice can’t come through human effort alone. Christ gave His life to pay for the sin of injustice and to open up the path toward human redemption. This is the gospel. Theologically, Romero divides the gospel into “vertical salvation, reconciliation of the individual with God through Christ, and horizontal engagement, with the pressing social concerns of the day.” He went on and on about how both aspects are like the wing of a plane… each side necessary to keeping liberation theology afloat…
When we do not practice this holistic gospel, “the racist can continue to be a racist; the exploiter can continue to be an exploiter.” In this Western reality, Christians (we) “oppose the violence of revolutions but not the violence of war.” We are tempted to condemn clothing and music choices but say nothing of multinational exploitation and genocide. However, we are commanded to transcend the borders of judgement or the blindness of privilege and instead, LOVE ONE ANOTHER.
Love sometimes implores us to take the side of the oppressed. It persuades us to stand in #solidarity and #celebration of those who are different than us. Down with the narrow religious understanding of a single ethnic racial community! Down with biblical nationalism! Because we each have a unique perspective and relationship with God, cultural diversity should reinforce unity in the church by encouraging us to lean on one another to see our Creator more fully.
August 11, 2020
Desde las primeras palabras—"God calls me míjo"—supe que este libro fue escrito para mi.
Brown Church is a gift. It shines a light on the powerful work of Latinas/os over 500 years, spanning centuries, countries, and even denominations. For me personally, this book was at its best when grappling with scripture and the often deeply complicated characters of Christian history. The chapters on El Plan Espiritual de Galiee, Cesár Chávez, and Liberation Theology were my favorites. It's amazing how pro-life liberation theology is: "Poverty is a scandal to God because God desires all his children to flourish and live with dignity."
I cried in meditation on Christ's mestizaje. He knows what it is to be between worlds. El sabe. And for as much as I may have been reticent to wade into liberation theology, I was surprised at the primacy of discipleship in Christ for lasting change. In Profe Romero's words:
"Success in Christian social justice endeavors is not the product of human cleverness or carefully conceived strategies and tactics—it is first and foremost the fruit of God experienced in the lives of all who would cling to Christ."
Not to say the book is perfect. In tone, it is sharply critical against historic U.S. actions and the current President (justifiably so), which may deter some would-be readers. And though Dr. Romero gets into it at times, I would love to see him write more on how we as a culture (Latinas/os) could stand to improve.
The Brown church has much to offer the wider church in the U.S., including a better grasp of ecumenism, a very real understanding of Christ's marginality, and therefore, his personal presence. May we bring his presence to bear on this world in acts of justice and love.
Brown Church is a gift. It shines a light on the powerful work of Latinas/os over 500 years, spanning centuries, countries, and even denominations. For me personally, this book was at its best when grappling with scripture and the often deeply complicated characters of Christian history. The chapters on El Plan Espiritual de Galiee, Cesár Chávez, and Liberation Theology were my favorites. It's amazing how pro-life liberation theology is: "Poverty is a scandal to God because God desires all his children to flourish and live with dignity."
I cried in meditation on Christ's mestizaje. He knows what it is to be between worlds. El sabe. And for as much as I may have been reticent to wade into liberation theology, I was surprised at the primacy of discipleship in Christ for lasting change. In Profe Romero's words:
"Success in Christian social justice endeavors is not the product of human cleverness or carefully conceived strategies and tactics—it is first and foremost the fruit of God experienced in the lives of all who would cling to Christ."
Not to say the book is perfect. In tone, it is sharply critical against historic U.S. actions and the current President (justifiably so), which may deter some would-be readers. And though Dr. Romero gets into it at times, I would love to see him write more on how we as a culture (Latinas/os) could stand to improve.
The Brown church has much to offer the wider church in the U.S., including a better grasp of ecumenism, a very real understanding of Christ's marginality, and therefore, his personal presence. May we bring his presence to bear on this world in acts of justice and love.
July 23, 2021
A great theological reflection on the Brown Church's history of prophetic social justice. Romero does an excellent job of introducing us to a number of historical, and more contemporary, characters who saw their advocacy for the poor and marginalized as a necessary expression of Christ's gospel.
August 5, 2021
Using with students this fall, and I'm excited to hear what they think about these case studies of Theology in practice.
April 20, 2022
A tour de force of the history of the “brown church” as a consistent and faithful witness to the liberative work of Christ in Latin American communities. Almost all of the thinkers, activists, writers, and theologians explored in this book were new to me and I’m grateful to Romero for opening up this entire branch of the Christian Church to me!
July 13, 2020
Summary: A well-written overview of issues of Latina/o theology and spiritual practice of the past 500 years.
Like many, I have primarily focused on Black and White issues of race. And like many, I know the weaknesses of not paying more attention to the nuances outside the Black/White binary. Romero centers the title as Brown Church because Latinx or Hispanic or various other overview designations are not either White or Black and, as such, are in that 'liminal space between', therefore Brown.
Robert Chao Romero is a Latino scholar and is one of the few that have worked to keep an understanding of spiritual matters in the academy's perspective on Latinx Studies. Some of the problems of keeping religion in the academic study is the fault of the church, after all, there has been a distortion of Christian faith when it has essentially said, "It's okay for us to decimate and enslave millions of 'Indians' and thousands of African slaves because we are saving their souls by sharing Christianity with them. Without us they'd just go to hell." (pg 12)
The academy, on the other hand, tends to distort Christianity and see it only as an oppressive force and not see it as a force of change and empowerment. Romero opens up the book with several vignettes about actual people he knows (many of them students) that made writing the book salient. And those personal reasons for writing carry through in the passion of the book. Brown Church is easily in the top handful of books I have read this year, and I have highly recommended it.
Brown Church is broken into eight chapters and is only just over 200 pages. Romero packed an enormous amount of content into a relatively short book. The first four chapters are more historical overview while the last four chapters are more in-depth looks are particular aspects of biography (Oscar Romero and Cesar Chavez) and theology (Liberation Theology and social justice).
I am way too new to this discussion to offer any critique. Almost all of this book was new information to me, although I have some background in understanding liberation theology and some rough history. I want to point out a couple of points that I thought were particularly helpful.
Chapter six discussed the LIberation Theology (more Catholic oriented) and Misión Integral (more protestant oriented), and I was surprised at how several streams of White Evangelical theology had been impacted by these movements without me being aware of the origins of the ideas. It is clear appropriation without attribution, and I was glad that it was pointed out.
I was also glad to have something more on Cesar Chavez. I vaguely knew some of his story, but not enough. That being said, the clear look at him, recognizing his weaknesses and was helpful and prepared me as I picked up a biography of another flawed civil rights leader, Stokley Carmichael.
It is also essential to understand the gifts of the broader church. We are always Christians in a culture, the ability to see how other cultures express Christianity differently is important to understanding how Christianity is expressed in whatever culture we are in. No culture has Christianity expressed ideally. There are always distortions, and capitulations to culture and also areas where there should likely be more freedom, and there is not. The Brown Church, like the Black Church, has arisen mainly under oppressive forms of Christianity opposing their enculturation. Because of that, the Brown and the Black Churches have much to teach the US church today as it loses some of its cultural power and dominance. The inability of many White Christians to learn from the Black and Brown Church in areas where they have more experience and wisdom is an example of the ways that White superiority gets expressed.
Brown Church is not only informative but well written and intriguing. I am going to seek out more books by Robert Chao Romero.
December 6, 2021
This book was so educational for me, both historically and theologically. I've spent the last 10-15 years of my life attending workshops, reading books, and watching documentaries on the racial injustices committed in the United States against blacks. I've known about the atrocious genocide of Native Americans during the United States' colonization period. I had no clue that such a similar thing happened to the native people of Latin America. I did not know about the complicated ethnic history Latinx people share today stemming from the mixing of ethnicities of their colonization and attempted genocide. Worst of all, I did not know how Christians and official Church edicts were at the center of raping and theft of Latin American native people's lives and land (much like the United States and Native Americans). There is so much depth in this book and is a must read for thoughtful Christians. It is a sobering book, but is laced with hope from beginning to end. I also found some new heroes of the faith as I'm sure you will to, who I'm indebted to Romero for bringing to my attention. As a white, Western Christian, reading this book helps me understand how lopsided and warped our faith and theology is if we do not include and listen to our Latinx theologians and brothers and sisters in Christ.
August 26, 2021
This is a synthesis of information about Christianity in central and South America. Romero’s stated goal is to help Latinx students understand their faith can be compatible with anti-imperialism and strong identity in the face of Anglo-homogenization. He wants to root Spanish/Portuguese Christians in the justice movement. The scholarship is thin, especially in rhe 17th and 18th century—it feels like it jumps from the first centuries of Christianity in The Americas to the 20th century and both Protestant missions and liberation theology. A little more acknowledgement of the official role of the Church in economic exploitation would have felt more honest, even if that’s not his main point. Still, the stories here deserve to be better known and I totally support the argument that folks can keep their identity as Brown Christians and be all about the justice work of the Kingdom’s calling. It’s very readable.
February 5, 2025
Brown Church is a great resource for those seeking a lesson in liberation theology and interested in marginalized histories. It is well researched and full of fascinating details regarding important Latina/o social leaders throughout centuries and their personal motivations. I can see myself pulling this off the shelf every few months to refresh my memory on certain figures.
Primarily, however, it is a call to action rallying the Latina/o Christian community around shared language. Romero seeks to shatter the false divide between political left and the Christian movement, especially in the Latina/o community, and especially in 2020. It is interesting reading in 2025, in a new Trump presidency, where some issues are less relevant, and some return with greater vengeance. Brown Church is ultimately a manifesto that slots in well with other timely works that seek to reclaim Christian tradition.
Primarily, however, it is a call to action rallying the Latina/o Christian community around shared language. Romero seeks to shatter the false divide between political left and the Christian movement, especially in the Latina/o community, and especially in 2020. It is interesting reading in 2025, in a new Trump presidency, where some issues are less relevant, and some return with greater vengeance. Brown Church is ultimately a manifesto that slots in well with other timely works that seek to reclaim Christian tradition.
September 20, 2022
This is a great read for understanding the history of the Latin X struggle and the theology that birthed out of their culture. There is much to learn and lament from this perspective and history but sadly too many evangelicals will likely not even give this a look because it uses language like CRT, woke, and liberation theology. I would urge evangelicals to read this with an open mind. His conclusions are anti-Marxist.
November 25, 2020
This book was very helpful to me! I appreciated his focus on telling the stories of major figures in Latino/a church history, many of whom I had heard of but knew little about. I have been reading books here and there by Latino/a authors but this book gave me a broader perspective for understanding what I've been reading and how it fits into a bigger picture.
March 21, 2021
This was a gem. Romero's model of "El plan ESpiritual de Galilee" was brilliant. The overview of Latina Church history and social justice theology was intelligent, well researched but very accessible for a diversity of readers. Loved it.
March 27, 2022
A wonderful intro to the history and theology of the Latin church
August 2, 2023
Wow—so much I don’t know. Very accessible history of “the Brown church”, which includes some uncomfortable history. But then, much of history is uncomfortable and we need to acknowledge wrongs done and work towards a better future.
July 30, 2020
The best part of this work was the exposition and attention dedicated to Latina/o thinkers through the centuries, and their articulation of issues that continue to remain relevant today. It is especially significant that most of the figures explored are generally without acknowledgment in most Christian treatments of justice and social inequalities. So this work is a valuable introduction.
My only critique is that the author seems to indicate that the validity of the arguments held by Latina/o theologians is dependent on their social location, rather than their biblical one. While I appreciated the sentiment of representation present in these pages, I’d hoped for more in the areas of theological method.
My only critique is that the author seems to indicate that the validity of the arguments held by Latina/o theologians is dependent on their social location, rather than their biblical one. While I appreciated the sentiment of representation present in these pages, I’d hoped for more in the areas of theological method.
October 7, 2020
A great overview of Latin American church history. I wish it was longer & went into more of the nuances within the people and topics to show even more of the complexities that exist for Latin Americans. However, Chao Romero also was careful not to make everyone out to be perfect. People are complex—especially Church people.
There were times when the writing felt too broad or too Christian-speak, but Chao Romero makes up for this as he does not shy away from bold theology and calls out issues such as sexism within the Latin American church. It’s refreshing to see this kind of theology statements—but as he proves, his bold theology is not necessarily “new” to the Brown Church, just forgotten about.
Chao Romero accomplished his goal of providing a road map overview for the past 5 centuries of the Latin American church & their fight for Brown people because of Brown Jesus.
There were times when the writing felt too broad or too Christian-speak, but Chao Romero makes up for this as he does not shy away from bold theology and calls out issues such as sexism within the Latin American church. It’s refreshing to see this kind of theology statements—but as he proves, his bold theology is not necessarily “new” to the Brown Church, just forgotten about.
Chao Romero accomplished his goal of providing a road map overview for the past 5 centuries of the Latin American church & their fight for Brown people because of Brown Jesus.
July 20, 2020
Roberto Chao explains the five hundred year of history of the Brown church that has been overlooked in the western evangelical church for decades. Christianity has played an important role in social justice within the Brown Church from the deliverance of oppression and exploitation caused by colonizers. The books covers so many avenues on how the Western American church would be enrich by learning from the Brown church. This book is a true treasure to of understanding the church, truth, and justice.
November 4, 2020
Christianity came to the Americas essentially at the beginning of the sixteenth century as the Roman Catholic Church followed the Conquistadors, colonizing first the Caribbean islands and then the mainland. Early on the church largely aided and abetted the conquest, supporting the enslavement and dispossession of the indigenous population. There would be, however, church leaders, such as Bartolome de las Casas and others who would speak in defense of the indigenous people, calling for their protection and affirming their full humanity. The story of the Brown church, its origins, and evolution, is a complicated one that needs to be told and heard.
Robert Chao Romero is a professor of Chicano/a Studies at UCLA writes this book both as a Christian minister and as an academic working in a field that often holds to the belief that Christianity is a "White Man's religion," and thus should be rejected in the name of justice. He wants to address this concern because it affects his students who are Christians. he believes that just as there is a Black Church, so there is a Brown Church, a church that is "a prophetic ecclesial community of Latinas/os that has contested racial and social injustice in Latin America and the United States for the past five hundred years." (p. 11). He suggests that over time the Brown Church has developed a "unique and consistent body of theology based on the Christian Scriptures." This story emerges over a five hundred year period, beginning early in the sixteenth century.
Romero speaks of the Brown Church as composed of those who may not be literally Brown, though many are. H writes that Latinas/os come in all colors and hues---some are moreno (dark-skinned), some are gueritos (light-skinned), some are subtle in-between shades, and quite a few, like myself, are even Asian. In this sense, Brown is symbolic of the cultural and biological mestizaje, or mixture, in Latin America." (pp. 13-14). The complexity of this reality is drawn out in helpful ways, so we understand what it means to be Latinx. It is offered as a macro-history, and thus not exhaustive. Nevertheless, he covers a lot of ground.
Romero begins by setting the story of the Chicanos/as in the spiritual context of Galilee. This is an alteration of sorts of the El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan, the manifesto of the Chicana/o movement in the United States. Since Jesus was from Galilee, which was a borderlands, just like the region of the United States that once belonged to Mexico. The people he speaks of are those who have faced marginalization in the United States, and while they might be rejected by humans, God has embraced them as God's own. (p. 37). The Spiritual plan here is one of liberation and justice, something that stands at the center of the Brown Church.
With the plan laid out, we begin the historical movement toward the present. We begin with Las Casas, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and other early voices in defense of the indigenous population. From there we move forward to the next generation of multicultural voices of colonial resistance, most of whom were mestiza/o. These voices challenged the Spanish racial imperialism of the day and made sure the story of the indigenous peoples was told.
The story moves onward toward the Treaty of Guadalupe that ended the US-Mexico War, a war that was unjust and took much of Mexico's territory, ultimately leaving many residents of the region landless and poor, all in exchange for fifteen million dollars. This treaty left thousands of Mexicans in a murky lego status, with promises made but few kept. This, Romero notes "set in motion a pattern of structural injustice against Mexicans and other Latina/o groups that continues to the present day" (p. 99). As the territory passed into US hands, so did the Catholic Church pass into the jurisdiction of the American Church, which largely disenfranchised the existing churches, including the religious leadership. This, despite over four-hundred years of presence in the region. But, resistance emerged, and though those who resisted including Padre Antonio Jose Martinez, were suppressed, their voices were not silenced. This chapter on the "Birth of 'Brown'" in America is a really important chapter. From the 19th century, we jump to the 20th and the emergence of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Worker's Movement, which at least in its origins was deeply rooted in Chavez's Catholic faith. This chapter will flesh out a movement that many White Christians don't understand. While Chavez was not a perfect vehicle, he was an important one., who drew his commitment to nonviolence from his faith.
Even as Chavez was emerging in the United States, Liberation Theology was emerging in Latin America. Romero provides a helpful chapter on this movement, noting the core themes including orthopraxis and the kingdom of God. The chapter not only introduces the largely Roman Catholic Liberation theological tradition, but also what is known as Mision Integral, a largely evangelical movement that sought to bring together evangelical theological commitments with commitments to social justice -- so we have figures such as Rene Padilla, Mortimer Arias, Justo Gonzalez, and Orlando Costas. While chapter six introduces us to these movements, in chapter seven he focuses on the story of Oscar Romero, who put this theology into practice, dying a martyr's death. Chapter 9 lays out recent social justice theologies, bringing the story up to date.
This is one of those books that needs to be read closely so that we understand the realities of our Christian history, both the good and the bad. Since the conversation often turns on Black and White, this book reminds us that the Christian community is even more diverse. So, I highly recommend this book to all, especially those who seem uncomfortable with conversations about the complexity of US history and the role of White Christianity in it.
Robert Chao Romero is a professor of Chicano/a Studies at UCLA writes this book both as a Christian minister and as an academic working in a field that often holds to the belief that Christianity is a "White Man's religion," and thus should be rejected in the name of justice. He wants to address this concern because it affects his students who are Christians. he believes that just as there is a Black Church, so there is a Brown Church, a church that is "a prophetic ecclesial community of Latinas/os that has contested racial and social injustice in Latin America and the United States for the past five hundred years." (p. 11). He suggests that over time the Brown Church has developed a "unique and consistent body of theology based on the Christian Scriptures." This story emerges over a five hundred year period, beginning early in the sixteenth century.
Romero speaks of the Brown Church as composed of those who may not be literally Brown, though many are. H writes that Latinas/os come in all colors and hues---some are moreno (dark-skinned), some are gueritos (light-skinned), some are subtle in-between shades, and quite a few, like myself, are even Asian. In this sense, Brown is symbolic of the cultural and biological mestizaje, or mixture, in Latin America." (pp. 13-14). The complexity of this reality is drawn out in helpful ways, so we understand what it means to be Latinx. It is offered as a macro-history, and thus not exhaustive. Nevertheless, he covers a lot of ground.
Romero begins by setting the story of the Chicanos/as in the spiritual context of Galilee. This is an alteration of sorts of the El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan, the manifesto of the Chicana/o movement in the United States. Since Jesus was from Galilee, which was a borderlands, just like the region of the United States that once belonged to Mexico. The people he speaks of are those who have faced marginalization in the United States, and while they might be rejected by humans, God has embraced them as God's own. (p. 37). The Spiritual plan here is one of liberation and justice, something that stands at the center of the Brown Church.
With the plan laid out, we begin the historical movement toward the present. We begin with Las Casas, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and other early voices in defense of the indigenous population. From there we move forward to the next generation of multicultural voices of colonial resistance, most of whom were mestiza/o. These voices challenged the Spanish racial imperialism of the day and made sure the story of the indigenous peoples was told.
The story moves onward toward the Treaty of Guadalupe that ended the US-Mexico War, a war that was unjust and took much of Mexico's territory, ultimately leaving many residents of the region landless and poor, all in exchange for fifteen million dollars. This treaty left thousands of Mexicans in a murky lego status, with promises made but few kept. This, Romero notes "set in motion a pattern of structural injustice against Mexicans and other Latina/o groups that continues to the present day" (p. 99). As the territory passed into US hands, so did the Catholic Church pass into the jurisdiction of the American Church, which largely disenfranchised the existing churches, including the religious leadership. This, despite over four-hundred years of presence in the region. But, resistance emerged, and though those who resisted including Padre Antonio Jose Martinez, were suppressed, their voices were not silenced. This chapter on the "Birth of 'Brown'" in America is a really important chapter. From the 19th century, we jump to the 20th and the emergence of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Worker's Movement, which at least in its origins was deeply rooted in Chavez's Catholic faith. This chapter will flesh out a movement that many White Christians don't understand. While Chavez was not a perfect vehicle, he was an important one., who drew his commitment to nonviolence from his faith.
Even as Chavez was emerging in the United States, Liberation Theology was emerging in Latin America. Romero provides a helpful chapter on this movement, noting the core themes including orthopraxis and the kingdom of God. The chapter not only introduces the largely Roman Catholic Liberation theological tradition, but also what is known as Mision Integral, a largely evangelical movement that sought to bring together evangelical theological commitments with commitments to social justice -- so we have figures such as Rene Padilla, Mortimer Arias, Justo Gonzalez, and Orlando Costas. While chapter six introduces us to these movements, in chapter seven he focuses on the story of Oscar Romero, who put this theology into practice, dying a martyr's death. Chapter 9 lays out recent social justice theologies, bringing the story up to date.
This is one of those books that needs to be read closely so that we understand the realities of our Christian history, both the good and the bad. Since the conversation often turns on Black and White, this book reminds us that the Christian community is even more diverse. So, I highly recommend this book to all, especially those who seem uncomfortable with conversations about the complexity of US history and the role of White Christianity in it.
January 29, 2025
I was recommended this book by one of my besties, and in general, there’s a part of me that does miss the clarity of a holy sense of purpose in the world in the religious sense, so I entered the book an eager participant, but was somewhat quickly and maybe rather unsurprisingly spat out. Romero is attempting to straddle several different audiences: ethnic studies peeps, theology peeps, homies in the pews, and other Christians at large. If you are a white Christian or a person of color assimilated into the white Christian experience looking to understand the Latino Christian experience, this is an excellent book for you. Hopefully, you’ll love it and consider it a 4 to 5/5. If you are on the dangerous path of thinking Ted Cruz makes a lot of sense, hopefully this book can pull you back into a more Christlike path. That’s because what the book does most excellently and the thing that truly makes it worthwhile is the genealogy it carves out for the Latin American/Latinx churchgoer. Romero traces the social justice legacy of the Latinx church going as far back as Bartolomé de las Casas through Sor Juana to Santo Romero and the sanctuary movement. Gathering the stories of these Latin American Christians and articulating their shared legacy and inspiring contributions is necessary work in the canon building of our history. Here, Romero does an excellent job also holding these saints to task for their missteps. He mentions De Las Casas anti-Black mistakes, for example. In a similar move, he doesn’t sugarcoat the tragedy of Sor Juana’s last years and death, where she repudiated her past feminism and died silenced and shamed into submission by the Catholic church, erased by history until her work was rediscovered in the 1950s by feminists. While Romero is invested in weaving a narrative meant to inspire not just cultural interest, but also Christian conversion, you can feel him strain against these messier moments. For me at least, these messier moments reveal so much more about the people and Christianity’s institutions. Is Sor Juana’s story an inspiring story about a woman’s bravery fighting against patriarchy in Christianity? Or is it a crushing tale about the feminist freedom that is yet to be possible and perhaps literally impossible within the Catholic church and similar structures?
If you are like me-- interested but already damaged by and thereby suspicious of religion--you will likely be disappointed. One of the most baffling and egregious missteps where Romero truly lets down all of his audiences comes from his omission of syncretism. Syncretism is “the amalgamation or attempted amalgamation of different religions, cultures, or schools of thought.” Syncretism is a crucial part of the story of Latin American Christianity-- for both Black and Native people-and Romero just doesn’t bother even mentioning it. I’m left to conjecture here, but I believe he does this 1) because he doesn’t want Latin American Christianity to seem “less” Christian than Western Christianity and 2) because he’s a bit anti-indigenous and antiblack. This misstep is gigantic because it’s just common knowledge in ethnic studies and becomes emblematic of his other missteps, such as when he fails to talk about the indigenous history behind Juan Diego and La Virgin de Guadalupe and in effect erases Chichimeca deity Tonantzin. A more honest engagement with non-Christian folk traditions and the cosmovision of Mexico Profundo (again another common knowledge text in ethnic studies) would have been so much more interesting and fruitful for understanding the so-called brown church. Romero buys into the outdated conception of mestizaje, referring to himself as la raza cosmica in the book and literally detailing his DNA results in a move that flattens identity and belonging to mere blood. Although he acknowledges the anti-Black history of the mestizaje elsewhere, Romero fails to rigorously conceptualize race throughout the project. Romero tries (in maybe two pages) to theorize a “brown” identity somehow uniting all Latinos with Natives, Arabs, Asians, presumably some Black folks, and even Eastern Europeans. The sheer arrogance and carelessness of this move is stunning. By the end of the book, the word “brown” is still rather empty of significant meaning and seems mostly there to portray a false unity between disparate people with different relationships to Christianity and their own non-whiteness. My global south peers, especially in South Asia, take issue with being asked to identify themselves against whiteness when their shades of brown aren't conspicuous where they're from. They don't think about themselves against a white backdrop the way Latinos do. Romero proclaims this book to be about “the global Brown Church” then leaves out rich Black, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, and Asian Christian thought. It is stunningly slipshod for a so called academic text.
While I can appreciate framing Jesus as a brown man from the hood, his constant mapping of Galilee onto LA has strong disconnected youth pastor vibes. He might as well had sat with his baseball cap backwards and talked about how Lin-Manuel Miranda is his favorite rapper. If he could keep this attempt at inclusivity consistent, I might not have faulted him on it, but he calls the Virgin Mary a single mother, something which is both factually incorrect and a slap in the face of Joseph and other adoptive parents. He uses ableist metaphors unbecoming of an ethnic studies scholar. And worst of all, he fails to ever explicitly mention LGBTQ+ communities. This last omission especially practically guarantees the failure of his project because homophobia is a major reason young people abandon religion. For me, this book was a 2 out of 5 at best. I'm still waiting on the day for Christians to forsake the colonizer logic behind their missionary work and be more Christlike.
If you are like me-- interested but already damaged by and thereby suspicious of religion--you will likely be disappointed. One of the most baffling and egregious missteps where Romero truly lets down all of his audiences comes from his omission of syncretism. Syncretism is “the amalgamation or attempted amalgamation of different religions, cultures, or schools of thought.” Syncretism is a crucial part of the story of Latin American Christianity-- for both Black and Native people-and Romero just doesn’t bother even mentioning it. I’m left to conjecture here, but I believe he does this 1) because he doesn’t want Latin American Christianity to seem “less” Christian than Western Christianity and 2) because he’s a bit anti-indigenous and antiblack. This misstep is gigantic because it’s just common knowledge in ethnic studies and becomes emblematic of his other missteps, such as when he fails to talk about the indigenous history behind Juan Diego and La Virgin de Guadalupe and in effect erases Chichimeca deity Tonantzin. A more honest engagement with non-Christian folk traditions and the cosmovision of Mexico Profundo (again another common knowledge text in ethnic studies) would have been so much more interesting and fruitful for understanding the so-called brown church. Romero buys into the outdated conception of mestizaje, referring to himself as la raza cosmica in the book and literally detailing his DNA results in a move that flattens identity and belonging to mere blood. Although he acknowledges the anti-Black history of the mestizaje elsewhere, Romero fails to rigorously conceptualize race throughout the project. Romero tries (in maybe two pages) to theorize a “brown” identity somehow uniting all Latinos with Natives, Arabs, Asians, presumably some Black folks, and even Eastern Europeans. The sheer arrogance and carelessness of this move is stunning. By the end of the book, the word “brown” is still rather empty of significant meaning and seems mostly there to portray a false unity between disparate people with different relationships to Christianity and their own non-whiteness. My global south peers, especially in South Asia, take issue with being asked to identify themselves against whiteness when their shades of brown aren't conspicuous where they're from. They don't think about themselves against a white backdrop the way Latinos do. Romero proclaims this book to be about “the global Brown Church” then leaves out rich Black, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, and Asian Christian thought. It is stunningly slipshod for a so called academic text.
While I can appreciate framing Jesus as a brown man from the hood, his constant mapping of Galilee onto LA has strong disconnected youth pastor vibes. He might as well had sat with his baseball cap backwards and talked about how Lin-Manuel Miranda is his favorite rapper. If he could keep this attempt at inclusivity consistent, I might not have faulted him on it, but he calls the Virgin Mary a single mother, something which is both factually incorrect and a slap in the face of Joseph and other adoptive parents. He uses ableist metaphors unbecoming of an ethnic studies scholar. And worst of all, he fails to ever explicitly mention LGBTQ+ communities. This last omission especially practically guarantees the failure of his project because homophobia is a major reason young people abandon religion. For me, this book was a 2 out of 5 at best. I'm still waiting on the day for Christians to forsake the colonizer logic behind their missionary work and be more Christlike.
March 8, 2024
This book is a wealth of historical knowledge and hopeful inspiration. Incredible interdisciplinary survey of history as it relates to Latin America, the Church, and social justice. I was deeply moved by every example of how godly Christ followers have stood up against injustice in Latin America throughout history. BROWN CHURCH gives me hope that I can make a difference as well.
December 13, 2021
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 which
I 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 Chavez
I have zero complaints here, and I think this was extremely fair.
Chapter 6: Social Justice Theologies of Latin America
I 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 Romero
I have zero complaints here.
Chapter 8: Recent Social Justice Theologies
I 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).
Conclusion
Anecdotes 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.
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 which
I 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 Chavez
I have zero complaints here, and I think this was extremely fair.
Chapter 6: Social Justice Theologies of Latin America
I 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 Romero
I have zero complaints here.
Chapter 8: Recent Social Justice Theologies
I 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).
Conclusion
Anecdotes 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.
August 4, 2020
Author Robert Chao Romero was born in East Los Angeles to a Mexican immigrant father and Chinese immigrant mother. He was raised in the small San Gabriel Valley town of Hacienda Heights. In Brown Church, Romero introduces us to his rich spiritual and cultural history as he guides us through five centuries of Latina/o social justice, theology, and identity.
The Brown Church
Romero defines the brown church as 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. It encompasses ethnic, historical, theological, spiritual, and socio-political dimensions.
Romero engages the study of Latina/o spirituality utilizing the critical race theory framework of community cultural wealth. He asserts that spiritual capital has served as a crucial component of Latina/o community cultural wealth from Latin American colonial times to the present.
Critical Race Theory
In addition to the critical race theory, I was also introduced to several new concepts. For instance, Romero uses the language of E. Rene Padilla and Samuel Escobar to describe the gospel imperative as one of “mision integral,” or holistic mission. Jesus came to heal all of the brokenness in our world and salvation encompasses our fractured human family.
He uses the words of Asian American theologian Sang Hyun Lee to describe the experience of being Brown as liminality: The situation of being in between two or more worlds, and includes the meaning of being located at the periphery or edge of a society. In fact, Romero describes Jesus as fitting in this definition of brown. He writes, “When God chose to dwell among us to take on human flesh, to make our suffering his own, he chose to be brown.”
In chapter 1, Romero lays the groundwork for helping us see the Biblical basis for the theology of the brown church. Chapter 2 looks at Las Casas, La Virgin de Guadalupe, and how they gave rise to the birth of the brown church. In chapter 3, Romero addresses how thousands of Asians came to Mexico during the colonial period as slaves, servants, and sailors. He calls out the sin of idolatry, including that if the Spaniards, for cultures that idolize themselves as the supreme manifestation of the image of God.
Liberation Theology
History plays a prominent part in this book. The “birth of brown” started with the US - Mexico war and the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Due to the theology of manifest destiny, the brown church in the United States was born. Chapter 5 focuses on Cesar Chavez. While he is revered as the most highly regarded Latino civil rights icon of the 1960s, his critical role as an activist of the brown church has been largely overlooked. Romero clearly respects Chavez, but he does not ignore his faults.
The year 1968 was critical as the poor became the priority for Oscar Romero of El Salvador. Liberation theology was brought to the forefront of Latin America. Interestingly, Romero goes into detail on how to read the Bible from a community and cultural perspective distinct to Latina/o theology. Mujerista theology and Pentecostal Latina/o theology are included.
Perfect for the Present Moment
This book is perfect for the present moment. It is clear how Romero feels about President Donald Trump and his policies. For me, the cultural and spiritual legacy of the Brown Church has become personal since my adopted son, Linus, is Hispanic. The issues here have always been important, and I plan to share this book as well as what I learned.
I received a media copy of Brown Church, and this is my honest review.
The Brown Church
Romero defines the brown church as 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. It encompasses ethnic, historical, theological, spiritual, and socio-political dimensions.
Romero engages the study of Latina/o spirituality utilizing the critical race theory framework of community cultural wealth. He asserts that spiritual capital has served as a crucial component of Latina/o community cultural wealth from Latin American colonial times to the present.
Critical Race Theory
In addition to the critical race theory, I was also introduced to several new concepts. For instance, Romero uses the language of E. Rene Padilla and Samuel Escobar to describe the gospel imperative as one of “mision integral,” or holistic mission. Jesus came to heal all of the brokenness in our world and salvation encompasses our fractured human family.
He uses the words of Asian American theologian Sang Hyun Lee to describe the experience of being Brown as liminality: The situation of being in between two or more worlds, and includes the meaning of being located at the periphery or edge of a society. In fact, Romero describes Jesus as fitting in this definition of brown. He writes, “When God chose to dwell among us to take on human flesh, to make our suffering his own, he chose to be brown.”
In chapter 1, Romero lays the groundwork for helping us see the Biblical basis for the theology of the brown church. Chapter 2 looks at Las Casas, La Virgin de Guadalupe, and how they gave rise to the birth of the brown church. In chapter 3, Romero addresses how thousands of Asians came to Mexico during the colonial period as slaves, servants, and sailors. He calls out the sin of idolatry, including that if the Spaniards, for cultures that idolize themselves as the supreme manifestation of the image of God.
Liberation Theology
History plays a prominent part in this book. The “birth of brown” started with the US - Mexico war and the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Due to the theology of manifest destiny, the brown church in the United States was born. Chapter 5 focuses on Cesar Chavez. While he is revered as the most highly regarded Latino civil rights icon of the 1960s, his critical role as an activist of the brown church has been largely overlooked. Romero clearly respects Chavez, but he does not ignore his faults.
The year 1968 was critical as the poor became the priority for Oscar Romero of El Salvador. Liberation theology was brought to the forefront of Latin America. Interestingly, Romero goes into detail on how to read the Bible from a community and cultural perspective distinct to Latina/o theology. Mujerista theology and Pentecostal Latina/o theology are included.
Perfect for the Present Moment
This book is perfect for the present moment. It is clear how Romero feels about President Donald Trump and his policies. For me, the cultural and spiritual legacy of the Brown Church has become personal since my adopted son, Linus, is Hispanic. The issues here have always been important, and I plan to share this book as well as what I learned.
I received a media copy of Brown Church, and this is my honest review.
December 6, 2025
This is a good book, but I didn't click with it in the same way I have clicked with other books covering very similar topics. Rather than try to be coherent, I'll just make a few notes:
1) The introductory chapter was very engaging - seeing testimonies from some of Romero's students and their own internal grappling between their faith and political identities was fascinating and struck a resonant chord with me. I only wish we would have been able to "follow up" with those students throughout the book, or at least at the end, but apart from one brief mention at the conclusion, all of those stories were dropped.
(Our Migrant Souls... by Hector Tobar is a good example of how to introduce and flesh out individual stories, even with space constraints and within a wider story of Latina/o suffering under American "occupation")
2) There were several moments when Romero elected to "name-dump", and lament that he did not have space or time to cover the additional subject matter; or, list off a series of men and women who had done work relating to the topic of the chapter, but who were not covered. This is fine a couple times, but it seemed to happen over and over and over. By the end of the book, every time I came upon more than two names in a list, I skipped the list (especially since some of the names were repeats). Again, this is not bad, but it probably belonged in the footnotes rather than in the main body.
3) The first three chapters were really captivating, but especially the histories of de Las Casas and Sor Juana. Seeing how the Church has persisted in true, Christ-like fashion even in the midst of deep-rooted, widespread sinfulness in part through the acts of the saints was reassuring and convicting.
4) The chapter on Cesar Chavez was engaging, but I wish that a stronger decision would have been made about covering his post-Resolution 14 activism. The recognition that Chavez "fell off" (as the kids would say) seemed half-hearted in its execution... I wish that the space would have been dedicated more to a deeper analysis of Chavez's spirituality during the strikes, or that more space would have been dedicated to expanding upon the ramifications of holding near absolute power in a union- or community-organizing context.
5) I liked Romero's chapter on the Mexican-American War, and the religious conflict in New Mexico after the war's end. That's not a history that seems widely known, and it provides a good foil to what I see happening across some denominations today; namely, a deep desire to ecumenical unity as opposed to strife and animosity.
This reads like more of a history book that was explicitly informed by the author's spiritual background. That is actually pretty awesome, but some of the choices in organization and its remaining academic-y tone made this less captivating for me to read as compared to, say, The Anti-Greed Gospel by Malcolm Foley. I would still recommend this to white, American Christians interested in learning about the theological and historical backgrounds of the Latina/o ("Brown") church.
1) The introductory chapter was very engaging - seeing testimonies from some of Romero's students and their own internal grappling between their faith and political identities was fascinating and struck a resonant chord with me. I only wish we would have been able to "follow up" with those students throughout the book, or at least at the end, but apart from one brief mention at the conclusion, all of those stories were dropped.
(Our Migrant Souls... by Hector Tobar is a good example of how to introduce and flesh out individual stories, even with space constraints and within a wider story of Latina/o suffering under American "occupation")
2) There were several moments when Romero elected to "name-dump", and lament that he did not have space or time to cover the additional subject matter; or, list off a series of men and women who had done work relating to the topic of the chapter, but who were not covered. This is fine a couple times, but it seemed to happen over and over and over. By the end of the book, every time I came upon more than two names in a list, I skipped the list (especially since some of the names were repeats). Again, this is not bad, but it probably belonged in the footnotes rather than in the main body.
3) The first three chapters were really captivating, but especially the histories of de Las Casas and Sor Juana. Seeing how the Church has persisted in true, Christ-like fashion even in the midst of deep-rooted, widespread sinfulness in part through the acts of the saints was reassuring and convicting.
4) The chapter on Cesar Chavez was engaging, but I wish that a stronger decision would have been made about covering his post-Resolution 14 activism. The recognition that Chavez "fell off" (as the kids would say) seemed half-hearted in its execution... I wish that the space would have been dedicated more to a deeper analysis of Chavez's spirituality during the strikes, or that more space would have been dedicated to expanding upon the ramifications of holding near absolute power in a union- or community-organizing context.
5) I liked Romero's chapter on the Mexican-American War, and the religious conflict in New Mexico after the war's end. That's not a history that seems widely known, and it provides a good foil to what I see happening across some denominations today; namely, a deep desire to ecumenical unity as opposed to strife and animosity.
This reads like more of a history book that was explicitly informed by the author's spiritual background. That is actually pretty awesome, but some of the choices in organization and its remaining academic-y tone made this less captivating for me to read as compared to, say, The Anti-Greed Gospel by Malcolm Foley. I would still recommend this to white, American Christians interested in learning about the theological and historical backgrounds of the Latina/o ("Brown") church.
June 22, 2022
There was a lot that I appreciated about this book. I am a novice when it comes to the history of the Latino/a Church, and I am thankful to be able to about learn about their stories and saints. This book tries to do a lot of things: it attempts to summarize Chicano history, outline the key moments in the Brown church since the 1500s, highlight the biographies of several significant Latino/a theologians and advocates, and offer commentary about the weaknesses of Western Christianity and the American government. I think the breadth made the book less effective overall, while still helpful reading!
I really appreciate the section on Rene Padilla and Samuel Escobar, who Romero credits with the “reintegration of evangelism and social action” (159). Although the church at its best has always held these two practices together like the two wings of an airplane (Padilla’s illustration), it is lamentable that Western evangelicals had lost this dual commitment and worth celebrating Padilla and Escobar’s rediscovery. I didn’t appreciate some of the figures Romero chose to spotlight that, I would argue, fall outside of historic Christian orthodoxy. At risk of falling into his category of those that “insist that its own interpretations of the Bible are ‘objective’ and ‘official’” (182) while blind to my own social location and the Spirit’s work in other global communities, I do believe there is a “Great (Global) Tradition” that defines the “faith once delivered to the saints” that we ought to contend for. A theologian who deems the Holy Spirit the “wild child of the Trinity” is significantly outside the bounds of historic Christian teaching on the doctrine of God in my opinion. While Romero does a good job noting the orthopraxy failures of some of the people he discusses, he does not seem to find it necessary to make the same qualifications when the figure rejects classical orthodoxy.
I really appreciate the section on Rene Padilla and Samuel Escobar, who Romero credits with the “reintegration of evangelism and social action” (159). Although the church at its best has always held these two practices together like the two wings of an airplane (Padilla’s illustration), it is lamentable that Western evangelicals had lost this dual commitment and worth celebrating Padilla and Escobar’s rediscovery. I didn’t appreciate some of the figures Romero chose to spotlight that, I would argue, fall outside of historic Christian orthodoxy. At risk of falling into his category of those that “insist that its own interpretations of the Bible are ‘objective’ and ‘official’” (182) while blind to my own social location and the Spirit’s work in other global communities, I do believe there is a “Great (Global) Tradition” that defines the “faith once delivered to the saints” that we ought to contend for. A theologian who deems the Holy Spirit the “wild child of the Trinity” is significantly outside the bounds of historic Christian teaching on the doctrine of God in my opinion. While Romero does a good job noting the orthopraxy failures of some of the people he discusses, he does not seem to find it necessary to make the same qualifications when the figure rejects classical orthodoxy.
September 6, 2020
Christianity is not just a colonizing tool and oppressive force in Latino/a history. In fact, Latino/s have been empowered by the gospel to know the love of God, and from that assert their own dignity, resist oppression, set the captives free, and the other things Jesus proclaims as good news in Luke 4:18-19.
Romero sets out a provocative introduction to this history, from Bartolemé de Las Casas who was convicted by scripture about the evil of colonization, to Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin who had a revelation of the Virgin Mary in Nahuatl, to René Padilla and Samuel Escobar who were convinced US evangelicals were not preaching the whole gospel and developed the theology of misión integral. This book is gift and will undoubtedly serve as the starting place for people interested in this deep and broad history.
There are limitations--some distinctive seem lost in the idea of a "Brown church" that likely were important to the people he's writing about. In Romero's telling, we move from Catholics to Pentecostals and back pretty fluidly. There is also a normative definition of "Brown church" which doesn't seem to belong in a history book. It works fine as a proscriptive theological claim, but is presented as a description of something that exists in the world.
Nevertheless, very solid work, great teaching resource, and a really useful introduction to a kind of Christianity in the Americas that a lot of people know about without knowing any specifics.
Romero sets out a provocative introduction to this history, from Bartolemé de Las Casas who was convicted by scripture about the evil of colonization, to Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin who had a revelation of the Virgin Mary in Nahuatl, to René Padilla and Samuel Escobar who were convinced US evangelicals were not preaching the whole gospel and developed the theology of misión integral. This book is gift and will undoubtedly serve as the starting place for people interested in this deep and broad history.
There are limitations--some distinctive seem lost in the idea of a "Brown church" that likely were important to the people he's writing about. In Romero's telling, we move from Catholics to Pentecostals and back pretty fluidly. There is also a normative definition of "Brown church" which doesn't seem to belong in a history book. It works fine as a proscriptive theological claim, but is presented as a description of something that exists in the world.
Nevertheless, very solid work, great teaching resource, and a really useful introduction to a kind of Christianity in the Americas that a lot of people know about without knowing any specifics.
January 12, 2025
A well-written macro-level history of the brown church. Great work by Romero here. He's more friendly to the Roman Catholic church than I would've liked, but I love the lessons he draws from Latino Roman Catholics who are vital to the Brown church's history. His chapter on César Chávez is gold given many have ignored the faith that built him up. I love that Romero also points out blind spots of different figures. What an honest scholar!
Favorite quote:
“If Jesus launched an empire-challenging, global transformative movement beginning with the poor and marginalized of Galilee, why does Christianity in the twenty-first century share such close association with five hundred years of European colonization, genocide, and white nationalism in the Americas? What happened between the time of Jesus and the present moment, such that the radical message of El Plan Espiritual de Galilee became co-opted by colonialism and half a millennium of white supremacy cloaked in the raiment of Christianity?” (47)
Favorite quote:
“If Jesus launched an empire-challenging, global transformative movement beginning with the poor and marginalized of Galilee, why does Christianity in the twenty-first century share such close association with five hundred years of European colonization, genocide, and white nationalism in the Americas? What happened between the time of Jesus and the present moment, such that the radical message of El Plan Espiritual de Galilee became co-opted by colonialism and half a millennium of white supremacy cloaked in the raiment of Christianity?” (47)
November 21, 2021
In this book, Robert Chao Romero takes his readers through the history of the "Brown Church," which, as he defines it, is "a prophetic ecclesial community of Latinas/os that has contested racial and social injustice in Latin America and the United States for the past five hundred years" (11). Romero follows the history of the Brown Church, from its birth in 1511 to present-day theologies from Latinas/os in Latin America and the U.S. I found most enlightening Romero's chapters on social justice theologies arising from the Brown Church in the last century; for example, Romero surveys Liberation Theology, Misión Integral, Mujerista Theology, and Latina/o Theology. Romero's chapter on Archbishop Oscar Romero, who showed the world what Liberation Theology can look like in practice, was also fascinating and inspiring. All in all, this book is an excellent resource for all readers, and it opened my eyes to a piece of Church history that is not normally touched on in most books or classes.
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