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>> 25 Chapter 2 The Diversity-Affirming Latino Ethnic Options and the Ethnic Transcendent Expression of American Latino Religious Identity Gerardo Marti I was surprised how Jose, a 36-year-old third-generation Mexican American, described his background before coming to Mosaic, a multiracial church in Los Angeles. I had known Jose for several years as a faithful husband and gentle father, but the smiling man talking to me suddenly seemed unrecognizable from the person he revealed himself to be before arriving at Mosaic. “I grew up in El Monte,” he told me. “And I grew up racist, La Raza.” The area of El Monte is heavily Hispanic and one of several sources of gang violence in Los Angeles. Jose’s radical identification with his Mexican heritage through “La Raza” (an ethnic movement among descendants of Mexico who rally under the Spanish term for “The Race”) was not in itself unusual. What was unusual is that by joining Mosaic this “racist” Latino who had worked for the civil rights of his “people” left behind the distinctively ethnic interests of his Latino ancestral heritage to join one of the largest multiethnic Protestant churches in America. Jose described his first experience with the diversity of Mosaic’s church service. “I came into the church, and right away I noticed people were here 26 > 27 United States, and then suggest a new, third option for Latino religious identity , which I label the “Ethnic Transcendent Latino Identity.” Examining Race, Ethnicity, and Religious Identity among Latinos An ethnographic, “lived religion” approach to the study of religion pays close attention to history and context and provides an opportunity to see the variety of ways race, ethnicity, and identity commingle among Latino ethnic groups.4 It is tempting among researchers to cluster all Latinos together as a single category, to assume they remain among themselves, and to isolate sets of dominant characteristics about them.5 However, Manuel Vasquez points out that “the label ‘Hispanic’ is a term imposed by U.S. bureaucracies that, as it has made its way into the civil society, has accumulated all sorts of pejorative connotations.”6 “Hispanic” is therefore more of a bureaucratic than a descriptive term. Nevertheless, despite the inherent diversity among Hispanics , the stigma and segregation that often accompanies the label “Hispanic” for the broad Hispanic population in Los Angeles results in many Latinos isolating themselves as Latinos and maintaining Latino exclusive religious and relational networks. Hispanics constitute 48% of the Los Angeles County population (2010 Census), so it is quite possible for Jose and other Latinos at Mosaic to ethnically isolate themselves and associate with each other as Latinos. Yet because they do not, the experience of Latinos at Mosaic has the potential to add nuance to our understanding of alternative dynamics between identity, ethnicity, and religious community among Latinos. To recover the complexity of ethnic options operating among Latinos in U.S. congregations, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork between 2001 and 2002 at Mosaic, a large, Southern Baptist, multiethnic church in Los Angeles founded by White midwesterners and southerners in 1943. Mosaic became a Latino-majority congregation in the mid-1970s, located in what became known as the “barrios of East L.A.”7 East Los Angeles is famous for the relative isolation, oppression, and impoverishment of Latinos, and the congregation itself was located a few hundred yards away from Garfield High School, the site of Jaime Escalante’s famous struggle to provide exceptional educational opportunities to Latino students.8 In the mid-1990s, the church further transitioned from being a Latino-White congregation to becoming an equally mixed Latino, White, and Asian congregation, with a smaller proportion of Middle Eastern and African American attendees. Even with this diversification, the congregation remained “Latino-centric” in its atmosphere and leadership until the early 2000s. This chapter therefore gives special attention to the life of the Latinos who attend there. 28 > 29 of other racial and ethnic groups in the following decade. As Brother Phil stated, In the early stages there was definitely a White/Latino thing. But it was beautiful to see that any issues can all be overcome in genuine love and just made irrelevant. From this experience it became easy for us to accept people from other groups. The core of the church had already experienced that you could completely overlook and overcome any kind of ethnic differences , even admire them and enjoy them. . . . So it became an agreeable kind of environment, a pleasant environment to be. You’re...

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