Latino Mennonites: Civil Rights, Faith & Evangelical Culture by Felipe Hinojosa (review)

Interdisciplinarity is one of Latino Studies greatest assets. From works of literature, art, language, history, religion and everything in between, the presence of Latinos can be analyzed and understood in a wide range of fields. Felipe Hinojosa advances this field of study in his book Latino Mennonites: Civil Rights, Faith & Evangelical Culture. While there is a growing body of research focusing on the impact of protestant traditions among Latinos in the United States, Latino spirituality continues to be associated primary with Catholicism, indigenous religions or the fusion of both (syncretism). In this book, Hinojosa shows how Mennonites and other protestant traditions have been alive and thriving in places like Texas, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. His study opens up a new door into Latino faith, evangelical culture and civil rights, as the title suggests, and it also advances the recent need to document the Latino presence in the Midwest. Divided into three parts, Hinojosa’s study incorporates a historian’s perspective in his analysis of the emergence and growth of the Mennonite tradition within, primarily, the Chicano and Puerto Rican communities in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.

Starting with a study of missions and race in part I, the book outlines the desire of the Mennonite church to minister to the Mexican American community of South Texas by working and living among them. However, many Mennonites— deeply rooted in tradition—were hesitant about allowing Mexicans in their congregations. While there was a desire to reach both the Mexican American community in places like Texas and Illinois as well as Puerto Ricans, Mennonites quickly realized they did not have the language capabilities or cultural knowledge to be able to effectively engage Latinos. These missionary encounters with Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans raised important questions about social justice, race relations and even marriage, since many Mennonites were fearful of losing their own identity or allowing mixed race marriages. Such attitudes, Hinojosa points out, “hindered the early attempts to plant churches in South Texas” (27); additionally, Mennonite conservatism in dress and attitude and their position on peacemaking often contradicted many of the cultural traditions and realities of the Mexican American community in South Texas. This section unveils many of the attitudes Mennonites had about Mexicans and Puerto Ricans; for example, Mennonite saw Latinos as inferior people driven to vice and temptation, and, for the most part, treated them paternalistically. Hinojosa provides a balanced view of the attitudes of Mennonites who refused to integrate and those that spoke against racism. Mennonites lived among Puerto Ricans and Mexican Americans and Mennonite teachings and way of life were influential in these communities. Still, for Puerto Ricans and Mexican Americans, Hinojosa notes, “it did not eliminate a strong desire to remain tied to their ethnic identities” (46). In this section and throughout the book, the use of abbreviations of the different organizations the author refers to can be overwhelming; however, definitions are included on the page before the introduction.

Latino Mennonites shows how considerations about racial justice in the church were a primary concern for Latino and African American Mennonites as early as the late 1950s, but it wasn’t until the late 1960s that real conversations began to happen. Indeed, as Hinojosa points out in his introduction, ignoring the role of the evangelical churches’ interethnic alliances and the faith-informed social activism of many of its members, “leaves us with an incomplete picture of the civil rights struggle that emerged in Latino communities, especially for Latino evangelical leaders who resonated with the preaching and theology of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” (5). Hence, the presence of Latino Mennonites, and African Americans, demanded a new direction for the Mennonite church. In truth, if we are to thoroughly consider the participation of Latinos in the United States, we must explore every dimension and pay particular attention to the way the evangelical culture of Latinos has shaped, and continues to shape, the politics, religion, and gender relations of this country.

Part II describes the...