Latino Mennonites

Hinojosa adeptly examines how African American civil rights struggles, relations with Latin Americans, and trends in evangelical religion shaped the faith and activism of U.S. Latino Mennonites. Latino Mennonites is both a superb narrative history and a model for the scholarly analysis of religion within its wider social context. -- Timothy Matovina, University of Notre Dame Deftly weaving together stories of everyday life with analysis of economic and political structures, Hinojosa reconstructs the spaces where the identity 'Latino Mennonite' took shape. Moving from South Texas to Chicago to Puerto Rico, from Bible studies in homes to social justice protests in the streets, Hinojosa illustrates the complex manner in which Latinos and blacks were able to claim belonging-and in the process transform-the historically white Mennonite Church. -- Jane Juffer, Cornell University, author of Intimacy Across Borders: Race, Religion, and Migration in the U.S. Midwest Latino Mennonites is a pathbreaking study of the hidden history of Latinos in the United States-the role of religion and politics. With masterful historical skills and a nuanced historical perspective, Felipe Hinojosa unearths the history of Latino Mennonites and contributes to the developing historiography of Latino religious studies and to a more inclusive history of American religions. -- Mario T. Garcia, University of California, Santa Barbara, author of Catolicos: Resistance and Affirmation in Chicano Catholic History

In Latino Mennonites, Hinojosa has interwoven church history with social history to explore dimensions of identity in Latino Mennonite communities and to create a new way of thinking about the history of American evangelicalism.Felipe Hinojosa's parents first encountered Mennonite families as migrant workers in the tomato fields of northwestern Ohio. What started as mutual admiration quickly evolved into a relationship that strengthened over the years and eventually led to his parents founding a Mennonite Church in South Texas. Throughout his upbringing as a Mexican American evangelico, Hinojosa was faced with questions not only about his own religion but also about broader issues of Latino evangelicalism, identity, and civil rights politics. Latino Mennonites offers the first historical analysis of the changing relationship between religion and ethnicity among Latino Mennonites. Drawing heavily on primary sources in Spanish, such as newspapers and oral history interviews, Hinojosa traces the rise of the Latino presence within the Mennonite Church from the origins of Mennonite missions in Latino communities in Chicago, South Texas, Puerto Rico, and New York City, to the conflicted relationship between the Mennonite Church and the California farmworker movements, and finally to the rise of Latino evangelical politics. He also analyzes how the politics of the Chicano, Puerto Rican, and black freedom struggles of the 1960s and 1970s civil rights movements captured the imagination of Mennonite leaders who belonged to a church known more for rural and peaceful agrarian life than for social protest. Whether in terms of religious faith and identity, race, immigrant rights, or sexuality, the politics of belonging has historically presented both challenges and possibilities for Latino evangelicals in the religious landscapes of twentieth-century America. In Latino Mennonites, Hinojosa has interwoven church history with social history to explore dimensions of identity in Latino Mennonite communities and to create a new way of thinking about the history of American evangelicalism.