Tempted to Silence

Stage Setting

To borrow a line from Willie James Jennings, “The things I tell are precise accounts while being exact fabrications…everything I tell you, everything, is the truth. It is the truth in service of moving us to a new place of gathering.”

Here is a temptation story. Does it sound familiar?

---

En El Parque

We sipped our coffees between sympathetic sighs and pain-laced chuckles. We had suffered greatly and we knew it. That’s why we agreed to grab café and walk to a park where we could talk freely. We knew our colleagues wouldn’t be there. We knew the police rarely patrolled it; no need to worry about “inquiries.” Sometimes you must escape modes of surveillance so you can be—so you can listen and cry en conjunto.

Our visit did not start with sipping and sighs. Because our coffees were too hot to drink and our stories too agonizing to share without the security of a secluded space, we carried our coffees and swapped fun family updates while we walked to the park. We had much to celebrate. We had jokes to tell. Smiles adorned our faces and joyous laughter filled the space between us as we spoke. These laughs were divine gifts. We needed them and we knew it.

We reached the park and scanned the grounds. No one was there. Relieved, we selected a place to sit. Some burdens demand stillness. Sometimes movement fosters avoidance.

Our moods changed as we began discussing our personal pains. So did our cadence. Nervous, trauma-infused laughter filled the space between us. We had suffered greatly and we knew it. The brown bench bowed under our weight.

“Remember the racist meme?” I ask.

“Of course. How could any Latino or Latina forget it?”

“During a conversation, an institutional leader asked me if I had to use the word ‘victim’ when I talked about being pictured in that anti-Latin@ meme. ‘Perhaps another word is more appropriate?’ If I’m not a victim for being pictured in a racist meme that hundreds of people viewed on the internet, when would I be a ‘victim’?”

“Right? Sometimes these attempts to ‘reframe’ things to appease the constituents of historically white Christian spaces like ours leave you wondering: ‘Did I just hear that, or am I going crazy? You can’t be serious. Is it still the 1950s or something?’”  

“Exactamente. The subtle efforts to nudge Latinx folks into more ‘respectable’ speech—the kind that won’t rock the Anglo boat—infuriate and terrify me. They require so much vigilance! I’m telling you: It’s easy to become a cooked frog, assimilating to every minor temperature adjustment designed to keep ‘certain’ Anglo constituents appeased.”

“And when you resist, when you ask, ‘Why are you adjusting the water temperature?” they look you in the eyes and say, ‘What are you talking about?’”

“Preach.”  

“You see their hand on the nob. You watch them turn up the heat. But when you ask them why they’re doing that, they say they aren’t doing anything. The blatant gas-lighting is gross.”  

“Sure is.”

“Ever notice how often these leaders gas-light you right before charging you with being a troublemaker?”

“Ah—the dreaded T-word. Not sure any racialized minority can recover from being labeled a ‘troublemaker’ in a historically or predominately white institution.”

I sip my coffee; my friend is silent. No one sighs. Our muscles tense. Apprehension fills the space between us.

“Nathan, you know people are calling you a troublemaker, right?”

“I know some people are calling me much worse than that!”

“I’m serious.”

“I am too…”

“Okay, but hear me. I’m worried about you. People are labeling you a troublemaker, hermano—and some are trying to keep you from getting a seat at important institutional tables.”

“I know…and I’m grateful for your loving concern. You unfortunately have good reasons to worry.”

“Yes I do. We both do.”

“This reminds me of a line from Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction. Du Bois says that the U.S. will never have a truthful history ‘until we have in our colleges men [and women] who regard the truth as more important than the defense of the white race.’ What Du Bois says about U.S. higher education generally holds for U.S. Christian higher education in particular—especially in historically white institutions. My speaking out against the histories of racism, white supremacy, and U.S. Anglo-Saxon imperialism has upset some folks.”

“Sí; it has.”

“Fans of white Christian Nationalism are outraged. Some have called for my job. ‘He’s racist and a liar!’ they say. ‘Fire him, or I’ll stop financially supporting your institution!’”

 “Got to love the financial power plays coming from the very people who decry ‘cancel culture.’ I wish you never faced those threats. It must be anxiety inducing.”

“You know they are, because you get them too. Nothing like having to trust God for your daily bread when people are calling for your job or labeling you a troublemaker.”

We both look down. The bench remains bowed. My hands start to sweat as I raise my coffee to drink with my friend. We sip. We shake our heads and sigh. Then we look at each other. My friend continues.

“If you dialed it back—and I’m not saying you should—I suspect you could shake the label ‘troublemaker.’”

“I can’t dial it back. We both know that. If anything, I have been too quiet. Mi gente in Puerto Rico are the world’s oldest colony. They continue to suffer from U.S. white supremacy and economic exploitation. God has called me to bear witness to their miseries and amplify their voices in places where they have gone unheard.”

“You and your people have suffered greatly. And I agree about your calling. But I worry that your pace and the labels you carry may keep you from amplifying these voices in the halls of power. I mean, just look at how I’ve been ostracized and disrespected—and I’ve said far less ‘incendiary’ things than you have.”

Pain radiates from my friend’s eyes. Psalm 35 comes to mind as I consider my next words.

“I hear you,” I begin. “And I’m sorry you’ve suffered so much for confronting institutional racism. I hate it. I wish yours wasn’t a vocation of agony.”

“Thanks, Nathan. Me too.”

“The ‘reprimands’ and gas-lighting you’ve faced have been egregious. Simply egregious.”

“Seeing the institutional underside has been rough. I’ve shed many tears while crying out to Jesus. You’re right: It’s been a vocation of agony.”  

“I got that phrase from MLK. He says promoting justice is a vocation of agony in ‘Beyond Vietnam.’”

“I haven’t read that.”

“It’s so good. That’s where King says there comes a time when silence is betrayal.”

“Some Latinx folks justify their institutional silence by saying that we need to go poco a poco.”

 “Yeah. I’ve received this counsel several times. It flies in the face of history. And it’s eerily similar to the gradualism King denounces in ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail.’”

“Ever the race scholar…But you’re right: Those are good connections.”

“Thanks...I wish they weren’t. I wish those pieces weren’t relevant to our lives.”

“If only…”

“Silence and gradualism remain enticing temptations. But often silence is betrayal and gradualism is an ideology that sooths flawed consciences while it perpetuates exploitation and oppression. ‘Don’t worry: We’re moving prudently—with ‘all deliberate speed.’”

“But Nathan, don’t you see, ‘We’re making big strides: We’ve written statements. You should be impressed—and grateful.’”

“You and I have heard those lines time and time again, haven’t we?”

“Yep.”

“So many evangelical institutions and institutional leaders repeat this mantra. It’s painfully predictable.”

“And it often accompanies gas-lighting.”

“You’re right.”   

We pause to sip our coffees. They’re nearly empty.

“Even when we do the work God’s given us,” my friend says, “promoting justice for and amplifying the voices of Latinx folks, we still end up in a position where we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“If we promote justice and amplify our people’s pains, people ostracize us, removing us from institutional or societal places of power. But if we’re silent or play the institution’s desired gradual game, we’ll get accolades and mammon—but we and our people suffer, though in different ways.”

“I hear you. That’s it, isn’t it? Nothing like being stuck between a rock and a hard place while you’re trying to stand firm upon the Rock.”

“It’s exhausting.”

“It sure is. Racial battle fatigue is no joke. We must recognize it. We need to take time to recover from it. I say this knowing that, for some reason, the LORD keeps preparing a table for us in the presence of our enemies, keeps calling us to a Eucharistic feast in which we participate in Christ’s sufferings.”

“In these circumstances, it is easy to succumb to the temptation to remain silent or ‘work’ for ‘gradual change.’” Those paths are less painful and the fast tracks to fame, money, and power. ‘Forget all this misery. Isn’t Christ’s yoke supposed to be light? This isn’t light—it’s heavy!”

“You got me thinking about Jesus’s temptation. We face something similar. ‘If you just bow an assimilated knee,’ figures in historically or predominately white institutions tell us, ‘all these kingdoms can be yours. No need to suffer.

And why not better position yourself to empower your people?’ As if we could have those kingdoms and advance the Kingdom. As if we could support our people by selling them out.”

“Can’t serve God and mammon. No wonder some of the nudges and calls to assimilate feel satanic.”

“Now that’s a word.”

We wrap up our conversation expressing our gratitude for friendship. We stand and the brown bench creaks in relief. It is no longer holding our burdens. Our burdens aren’t gone; our coffee cups are empty. Still our cups runneth over.  

---

About Dr. Nathan Luis Cartagena

A son of the US South (Mom) and Puerto Rico (Dad), Dr. Cartagena is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College (IL), where he teaches courses on race, justice, and political philosophy, and is a fellow in The Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies. He serves as the faculty advisor for Unidad Cristiana, a student group working to enhance Christian unity and celebrate Latina/o cultures, a scholar-in-residence for World Outspoken, and a co-host for the forthcoming podcast From the Underside. He’s also writing a book on Critical Race Theory with IVP Academic.

---

Articles like this one are made possible by the support of readers like you.

Donate today and help us continue to produce resources for the mestizo church.

Donate

No Context, No Gospel

“If the gospel is not contextualized, the Word of God will remain a logos asarkos (unincarnate word), a message that touches our lives only tangentially.”—C. René Padilla 

Una Tradición

For over fifty years, Latin@ theologians have stressed that divine-human relations, theologies, and Christian practices are culturally laden. For example, Elizabeth Conde-Frazier writes, “the nature of God is contextual and bearing witness to [the] gospel is a contextual matter.” When considering theological education, Conde-Frazier adds, “The loci of our theological education are the lakes and oceans of our lives, the intersection of the practical and the theoretical as we move toward pastoral action. Our theology never comes from a blank space.” Thus, Conde-Frazier echoes a tradition of Latin@s including C. René Padilla, Ada María Isasi-Diaz, Orlando Costas,  Justo González, and Elsa Tamez.

Like many Latin@s, I knew nothing about this tradition for most of my life. No one shared it with me; no one passed it down. In an effort to break this cycle of erasure, let me share some of what I have learned by listening to the Latin@ call for contextual theologies. 

The Word Became Enculturated 

The Son of God’s incarnation is one of the great mysteries Christians celebrate. The Son is the one “through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Corinthians 8:6); the “appointed heir of all things, through whom [God] also created the worlds” (Hebrews 1:2); and the “first born of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:15-16). Put succinctly, the Son of God is the Word (John 1:1-5). And this Word “became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14). The Son of God became Jesus of Nazareth.

When the Son assumed human flesh, the Son assumed a cultural identity and context. As René Padilla writes, “The Word became flesh. It was acculturized, since humans are cultural beings.” Understanding or proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ necessarily requires referring to a human culture. Again Padilla: “The climax of God’s revelation is Emmanuel. And Emmanuel is Jesus, a first-century Jew! The incarnation unmistakably demonstrates God’s intention to make himself known from within the human situation. Because of the very nature of the gospel, we know it only as a message contextualized in culture.” Padilla’s point about the necessity of a culture for people to know the gospel echoes Orlando Costas’s insight about revelation. “Biblical contextualization is rooted in the fact that the God of revelation can only be known in history. Such a revelation comes to specific peoples in concrete situations by means of particular cultural symbols and categories….Theology in the Old Testament appears as a culture-bound, historically situated reflection on the God who is known in human language. In the New Testament, however, this revelation reaches its peak: God is known in human flesh.” We can summarize Padilla and Costas thus: The Son assumed a first-century Jewish culture and revealed the image of the invisible God through it (Colossians 1:15).

Scripture equips us to say more about God’s enculturation in Christ. When the Son became Jesus of Nazareth, the Son became a colonized a Jew under Roman imperial occupation in the northern lands of Galilee, a backwater region far from Rome and Jerusalem. Moreover, some regions of Galilee were seen as worse than others. Nazareth is a case in point. This small town was a backwater within a backwater. Hence when Nathanael received an invitation to meet “Jesus son of Joseph of Nazareth,” Nathanael mockingly asked, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (John 1:46). Nathanael asked this question without knowing that Jesus and his parents were poor and former refugees. As René Padilla observes, “The offering Joseph and Mary [Jesus’ parents] brought on the occasion of his presentation in the Temple was the one that the Old Testament stipulated for poor people—namely, two doves or pigeons (Luke 2:23). Quite early in his life Jesus was a refugee.” The Son of God did not assume a privileged culture. He assumed a multiply marginalized one. Emmanuel carried a culture forged in oppression. And within this culture he “grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him” (Luke 2:40). 

All Theologies are Culturally Shaped

If the incarnate Son of God assumed a multi-oppressed culture, it is also true that people can only know him from their own particular cultural locations. Consider the practice of reading Scripture. Justo González observes that all theologies arising from an interpretation of Scripture “are contextual, and therefore express the gospel as seen from a particular perspective.” González notes that this truth follows from another: “If there is anything we have learned during these last decades of modernity, it is that knowledge is always perspectival.” We all read scripture from a certain perspective, a particular place. And as Oscar García-Johnson argues, “the place in which theology is formed matters. Place matters because language, culture, and traditions are never neutral carriers of ideas; they always shape what they receive according to the values and inclinations of that place and its people.” In the U.S., for example, many Anglo evangelicals summarize “the gospel” in four words, “Jesus in my place.” Translation: “Jesus taking my (substitutionary) legal place.” This linguistic shorthand neglects many components of the gospel, including its cosmic scope. Paul writes: “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:20-21). Jesus of Nazareth’s redemptive work accomplished creation’s liberation from the curse of Genesis 3. U.S. Anglo evangelicals carrying the truncated conception of the gospel in their interpretive tool kit are likely to misread or overlook passages that stress the gospel’s cosmic breadth.

The previous example illuminates how traditions mediate readings of Scripture. Oscar García-Johnson writes, “theology develops in a particular place out of the interaction, not simply between the Scriptures and culture, but between some version of the Christian tradition and the indigenous traditions of that place—both cultural and religious.” The “Jesus in my place” conception of the gospel that many Anglo evangelicals in the U.S. champion is common among U.S.-based, historically white Baptist denominations; it is largely absent in the U.S.’s historically Latin@ or Black Catholic communities. Hence, members of these different Christian traditions bring contrasting tradition-shaped lenses to their readings of Scripture and the theologies constructed from them.

Because everyone engages Scripture and constructs theology from particular cultural and tradition-shaped perspectives, Justo González argues that we should beware theologies that fail to note the social locations from which they arise.

Precisely because perspective cannot be avoided, when it is not explicitly acknowledged the result is that a particular perspective takes on the aura of universality. Thus it happens that theology from a male perspective claims to be generally human, and that North Atlantic white theology believes itself to be “normal,” while theologies from the so-called Third World or from ethnic minorities in the North Atlantic are taken to be contextual or perspectival.

There are no “universal” interpretations or theologies from nowhere. Presumptions that there are correlate strongly with historic modes of racist and nationalist hegemony. They also correlate with interpretations that fail to confront mammon.

James’ epistle frequently chastises the materially rich and offers encouragement to the materially poor. Chapter 2 is a case in point. “Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?” (James 2:5-7). Elsa Tamez notes that the “poor” in 2:5 are the πτωχοι (ptochoi), “those who have absolutely nothing, not even a job; they depend on alms.” C. Leslie Mitton neglects this basic point in his commentary. Instead, Mitton identifies the poor as the spiritually devout and claims that this term refers to “the class of people for whom prosperity means little since obedience to God means everything.” This reading cannot account for the Greek term’s actual meaning, nor the role that meaning plays within James’ discussion of how the materially wealthy oppress the materially poor. And as Tamez writes, “Only someone with a job, food, and shelter could affirm such a thing. The hungry, the exploited, the jobless want at least to satisfy their basic necessities, and they turn to God with those hopes.” Many “universal” interpretations of Scripture are corrupted artifacts of the middle to upper-middle class that fail to account for God’s special concern for the poor.

Nothing we have considered excludes the possibility that a particular contextualized reading is evil. It may be. A self-conscious proponent of machismo may note this commitment and offer a misogynistic reading of Hagar’s experiences. Of course, flagging this commitment prepares readers for what they will find and keeps their claims out of a “universal” register. Interpretations or theologies with unconscious contextualization perform neither of these functions. Moreover, they consistently prove divisive. As González writes, “Unconscious contextualization…will certainly lead to fragmentation, because it is by nature sectarian, not recognizing that it is but part of the whole.” González continues:

What leads to fragmentation is not the existence of a black theology, a Hispanic theology, or theologies that explicitly take into account the theologian’s gender. What leads to fragmentation is the lack of recognition that all these theologies, as well as all expressions of traditional theology, are contextual, and therefore express the gospel as seen from a particular perspective.

As M. Daniel Carroll Rodas’s puts it, we must strive to be “self-aware contextualized interpreters” and theologians. Such awareness, Conde-Frazier writes, requires an ever-growing consciousness of “the cultural blinders and ideological filters through which we interpret the world.” Though such self-awareness is insufficient for an accurate reading or theology, it is a key component of Christian discipleship and the Christian commitment to resisting and remediating oppression. As Ada María Isasi-Díaz argues, “Who I am, where I am coming from, and where I wish to go shapes the method and content of my theological work. Though such self-revelation is always dangerous, I have entered upon it because I believe that the pretense of objectivity by theologians indicates complicity with the status quo, a status that for me and my Hispanic sisters is oppressive.” 

Contextualizing with and for Latin@ Eyes 

Latin@s should be particularly aware of the need to consider the oppressive influences that shape people’s reading of Scripture. The Iberians who colonized present-day Latin American championed biblical interpretations and theologies that justified imperial conquest and murder. The Spanish’s El Requerimiento makes this clear. And it confirms Elizabeth Conde-Frazier’s liberating insight: “Colonizers presented their own readings as the only possible readings, and it can seem that disagreeing with colonizing readings is disagreeing with the Bible itself. But this is not so, for there is a gap between the colonizers’ interpretation of the Bible and the Bible as the living Word of God.”

Of course, what is true of the Iberian colonizers is also true of twentieth-century missionary endeavors in Latin America. Again Conde-Frazier: “The seeming inflexibility of the interpretation of the Word beyond the ‘truths’ prescribed by the missionaries has created confusion for the Latin@ church in a time of crisis for the community as well as many changes in the present society, including generational changes of perspectives within her own families.” Many missionaries to Latin America proclaimed and formed Latin@s in imperial, Euro- or U.S.-centric, middle-class, whitewashed conceptions of the gospel. Yet they perpetually failed to see the cultural baggage they added to the gospel and discipleship. For them, what they offered was Christianity, pure and simple. Similar patterns hold for Latin@ evangelicals in the U.S. Most reside in congregations, parishes, and denominations draped in ropaje anglosajón with U.S.-style imperial, nationalist, racist, classist, and sexist embroidering. Even Latin@ evangelicals who avoid fellowship in these ecclesiastical communities face the reality that they dominate Christian publishing, Christian radio, and Christian film and television media. “Even if we have not come from Anglo-run church structures,” Conde-Frazier writes, “the theological ideological structures still proliferated throughout our lives.” Regardless of its pervasiveness, ropaje anglosajón is not the gospel nor a part of the biblical witness. Moreover, it is unfit for the task of helping Latin@s faithfully navigate the distinctive challenges they face. Indeed, it typically baptizes and advances beliefs, narratives, and images that legitimize these exact challenges.

Despite this evil legitimizing function, Latin@s and Latin@ communities frequently find it difficult to shed and resist ropaje anglosajón. For them, the cultural clothing is the tradition through which they understand Christianity. As Conde-Frazier observes, “The tradition has become the filter through which we read the Scriptures. When the Spirit breathes new life into the interpretation of the text, we are not always ready to hear what it says to us. If it doesn’t sound familiar, we are quick to believe that it is unorthodox or not sana doctrina (sound doctrine).” Who will shed or resist what they believe is sana docrtina? Some recognize that interpretations and theologies covered with ropaje anglosajón are not sana doctrina. Yet they also recognize that prominent people, communities, and institutions advancing these interpretations and theologies hold a disproportionate amount of money and power. Consequently, parting with the ropaje is likely to land these individuals and communities in an extremely vulnerable position. Still others are willing to take this risk, but they hesitate because they have internalized beliefs about their inferiority that decorate the ropaje.

René Padilla spoke of the Latin@ challenge to redress the problems of ropaje anglosajón in terms of “theological dependence.” He writes, “An examination of all these aspects of our church situation will show that our ‘theological dependence’ is just as real and serious as the economic dependence that characterizes the countries of the Majority World.” For Padilla, this dependency is profoundly problematic. Speaking about the gospel, Padilla declares, “as long as the gospel does not attain a profound contextualization in the local culture, in the eyes of people in that culture it will continue to be a ‘foreign religion.’” This point returns us to the epigraph. “If the gospel is not contextualized, the Word of God will remain a logos asarkos (unincarnate word), a message that touches our lives only tangentially.”

The Latin@s in the tradition we are listening to call upon Latin@s and Latin@ communities to construct interpretations and theologies that, informed by the truths about the Son’s enculturation and the contextualization of human knowing, contextualize the gospel and biblical witness to their particular social locations. These theological constructions must account for what Ada María Isasi-Díaz calls lo cotidiano—the everyday lives of Latin@s and Latin@ communities. The goal, Padilla explains, is to have ecclesiastical communities that “through death and resurrection with Christ [embody] the gospel within its own culture.” This does not entail that the gospel differs across groups, nor exclude listening to and learning from the Church catholic. Padilla is clear on both counts.

This is not to say that the message of the gospel should be one thing here and another one there. It has been given “once and for all,” and its proclamation is faithful in the degree to which it manifests the permanence of the revealed data, either here or there. Nor am I suggesting that there is a need for an “indigenous theology” characterized by local folklore and completely conditioned by the historical situation. Even less would we wish a theology that, in an effort to “contextualize” the gospel, superciliously ignores the results of long years of work in the field of biblical research carried on by theologians in Europe or North America.

Padilla and the other Latin@ theologians we have heard encourage us to learn from the Church catholic and other sources to determine the particular contextual “relevance of biblical revelation to our culture, the relation between the gospel and the problems that the church is facing in our society.”

Some will object that the emphasis on contextualizing the gospel and bible to current, concrete cultures and situations will produce syncretism—a settling for something that is the mixture of pure Christianity and a polluted culture. To this argument, Padilla offers this reply. “When there is no conscious reflection on the form that obedience to the Lordship of Jesus Christ must take in a given situation, conduct can quite easily be determined by the culture rather than by the gospel.” The resonances between Padilla, Isasi-Díaz, and González are striking. 

Una palabra final 

Latin@ theologians have taught me that we all love, follow, and learn about the enculturated Son of God from a particular context. They taught me of the need to be a self-aware interpreter and theologian working to contextualize the gospel and biblical witness to my social location and my ecclesiastical community’s. They taught me I must do this work en comunidad. And they taught me that C. René Padilla is right: “The contextualization of the gospel can only be a gift of grace granted by God to a church that is seeking to place the totality of life under the Lordship of Christ in its historical situation.”

About Dr. Nathan Luis Cartagena

A son of the US South (Mom) and Puerto Rico (Dad), Dr. Cartagena is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College (IL), where he teaches courses on race, justice, and political philosophy, and is a fellow in The Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies. He serves as the faculty advisor for Unidad Cristiana, a student group working to enhance Christian unity and celebrate Latina/o cultures, a scholar-in-residence for World Outspoken, and a co-host for the forthcoming podcast From the Underside. He’s also writing a book on Critical Race Theory with IVP Academic.

---

Articles like this one are made possible by the support of readers like you.

Donate today and help us continue to produce resources for the mestizo church.

Donate

We Speak Spanglish ¿Y qué?

My parents are from Mexico but they have lived in the U.S. for over 35 years. I was born and raised in Los Angeles and have lived most of my life in a predominantly Latino community. I am also a Spanish professor. This is the lens from which I am writing.[1]

My dearest Spanglish, 

They despise you. They think you’re an abomination, a creature birthed from insufficiency and miseducation. They punish you in Spanish class and beat you in English class. Dicen que eres un bastardo, un malparido.  

“¡Habla bien! ¿Por qué hablas mocho? No se dice aplicación, se dice solicitud. No se llama librería, se llama biblioteca. Deja de decir esas barbaridades – jangear, mapiar, lonchar, marketa – Dios mío, le vas a provocar un paro cardiaco a la grandísima, estimadísima y respetuosísima Real Academia Española. ¿Qué diría tu abuela? Mira como se ríen de ti tus tías en México. Tu existencia es un insulto, una vergüenza. No maltrates a nuestra hermosa lengua con tus medias palabras. El idioma se respeta y tú, mentado Spanglish, eres un irrespetuoso”. 

That’s what they say, querido Spanglish. But I… I love you. You’re the language of my people, birthed from love and sacrifice. Tu existencia brotó in our communities como las estrellas brotan en el cielo. And when I hear you, I recognize myself and when I utter your words, I know I’m at home, en esa casa that my parents built con tanto sacrificio en una tierra desconocida.  

They insist, querido Spanglish, que no existes, but languages are not formed in the cradle de las academias reales. You are not held hostage by official institutions; you are held in the arms of your people and rest on the lips de tu gente.  

Tu descendiente, 

La Chicana.

Ask ten people in the U.S. Latina/o community what they think of Spanglish and you might obtain ten different answers, but their responses will never be dull. The use of Spanglish provokes emotionally-charged reactions that elicit everything from joyful expressions to furious replies. Renowned Mexican author Octavio Paz once said that Spanglish was, “neither good nor bad, but abominable” (Ni es bueno, ni es malo, sino abominable). Carlos Varo, a Spanish-Puerto Rican author called Spanglish a chronic illness, and Eduardo Seda Bonilla claimed that it was a colonial crutch, a linguistic form that is “characteristic of colonial situations where there is an attempt to eradicate and lower the language and culture of a subjugated nation”[2]. Still today, for many people, Spanglish represents just another form in which colonial English is encroaching into our space. Spanglish, perceived in this vein, is a contaminated form of Spanish that is no longer recognizable, one that bears the violence of colonial traces.

Nevertheless, there are those who vehemently support the use of Spanglish and claim that it enhances their linguistic repertoires. When the question, “Why do some people speak Spanglish” was posed on Quora, a person responded, “Because it’s fun! I enjoy saying that my daughter is malcriada, she had a huge berrinche this morning’ rather than ‘my daughter is badly behaved, she had a huge tantrum this morning’ Spanglish is more fun than either language by itself.”[3]

So, what is Spanglish? Well, linguistically, Spanglish has different manifestations. Perhaps the one most distinguishable is code-switching, when the speaker alternates between English and Spanish in a single conversation. Calques and loan words are also common in Spanglish phraseology.

1. Code-switching: Fíjate que ayer I went to the store y me compré muchas cremas that were on sale

2. Calques are literal translations, such as te llamo pa’tras (I’ll call you back; te llamo después), tener buen tiempo (to have a good time; pasarla bien), hacer decisiones (make decisions; tomar decisiones)

3. Loan words: lonchar (to have lunch; almorzar), el mol (the mall; el centro comercial), friser (freezer; congelador) mapear (to mop; trapear), checar (to check; revisar), breik (break; descanso), brecas (car brakes; frenos)

Regardless of whether you personally love or hate Spanglish, it is important to acknowledge that Spanglish, similar to all languages, is rule-governed, guided by grammatical and social principles. Speakers of Spanglish abide by certain rules, albeit unconsciously, just as native speakers of Spanish and English construct sentences with ease without being cognizant of the grammatical rules that guide their speech. Read the following examples:

1. Fernanda wants el ice cream from the casa de my madre.

2. José se enojó and he gritó.

3. Lorena me va dar un raite once she’s done with work.

4. Estoy jugando soccer with Blanca.   

I surveyed twenty Spanglish speakers, asking them to identify the ones that sounded “wrong” to them and their answers revealed a high degree of consensus, as was expected. Although the four examples given above are all written using hybrid speech, not all sound right. Numbers one and two are not natural Spanglish expressions, while three and four represent normal incidences of code-switching. Interestingly, two people responded that all sentences were problematic because they were written in Spanglish, perhaps echoing what they’ve heard their whole lives – that Spanglish is incorrect.

In reality, Spanglish isn’t wrong or right, it just is, and perhaps that’s the beauty of it. Spanglish is patterned but these patterns can change over time and are extremely malleable. People can’t correct you in your Spanglish, the way they would with Spanish or English, for example. Spanglish is not a made-up language either. We didn’t make up Spanglish – Spanglish is a natural expression of who we are as bilingual and bicultural individuals living in liminal spaces. I can’t tell you how I learned Spanglish. I can tell you that I learned Spanish at home and English at school and that my life was not as linguistically compartmentalized as some might think because my friends spoke English, but also Spanish and my family spoke Spanish, but also English and I embraced that through Spanglish.

Spanglish, similar to formally recognized languages, has distinct varieties, or dialects. Ilan Stavans, who wrote an adaptation of Don Quixote in Spanglish and authored Spanglish: the Making of a New American Language (2004), explains,

“There is no one Spanglish, but a variety of Spanglishes that are alive and well in this country and that are defined by geographical location and country of origin. The Spanglish spoken by Mexican Americans in, say L.A., is different from the Spanglish spoken by Cuban Americans in Miami or the Spanglish spoken by Puerto Ricans in New York. Each of these Spanglishes has its own patterns, its own idiosyncrasies.”[4] 

Moreover, Stavans indicates that generational and geographical differences also impact the type of Spanglish that is spoken by each group. Similar to English and Spanish, Spanglish has many dialects that are influenced by a myriad of factors, including communities of contact, age, and social status.

I remember my cousins in Mexico exclaiming, ¿cómo pueden hablar así? when my cousins from the U.S. and I visited Mexico and spoke to each other in our comfort tongue. It wasn’t a question that denoted disgust, but admiration. They thought it was fascinating that we could switch between languages in the same sentence with such ease and they asked us to teach them, the same way they had taught us to speak “el idioma de la F”[5] but we couldn’t teach our Spanglish because we had acquired it organically as part of our identity as U.S. Latina/os.

I know many people in Mexico that speak English as a second language and Spanish as their native tongue, but they cannot produce Spanglish. Similarly, many native English speakers who learned Spanish as a second language are unable to speak Spanglish. Simply knowing both languages does not guarantee Spanglish proficiency. So, what is the breeding ground of Spanglish? Spanglish was born in the United States. It is in this country, in Latino communities, where it flourishes.

Dr. Almeida Jacqueline Toribio, a professor at UT Austin who has been studying bilingualism for decades claims that, “CS [code-switching] remains a stigmatized bilingual behavior, viewed as a failure on the part of the speakers to ‘control’ their languages […] Some see it as a lack of competence or even poor manners”.[6] Often times, the assumption is that speakers of Spanglish are lazy, deficient or ashamed of the Spanish language.

There’s a constant safeguarding of dual spaces and we are asked to split ourselves and to not “cross-contaminate.” This is an impossible request and one that should not be made. “To survive the Borderlands, you must live sin fronteras,” affirmed Gloria Anzaldúa. English says, “Spanish is prohibited in my land” and Spanish replies, “Este es mi territorio, fuera el inglés” and Spanglish thrives, sin fronteras. Spanglish does not attempt to usurp either language; it is its own mode of expression. Do you criticize burritos for not being taco enough?

I told you earlier that I’m a Spanish professor pero yo no respeto el español because languages are not meant to be respected – people are. When you tell people that Spanglish es una forma incorrecta de hablar, you’re really telling them that who they are is a “wrong” version of themselves, one that should be rejected. I know it can be difficult for a lot of immigrant parents to accept that their children are culturally and linguistically different from them and, to a certain extent, I understand why so many first-generation Latina/os are resentful of Spanglish. However, we can’t forget the fact that there are millions of individuals who identify as Latina/o but were born and raised in the U.S. We were not raised in our family’s countries as monolinguals. We do not have the same culture as our parents, but mainstream U.S. culture does not represent us either. We’ve created our own spaces and have formed new cultural expressions that should not be viewed as tainted versions but as unique creations. Hablamos espanglish because it’s who we are.

“Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate.
”

— Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera (1987)

ABOUT DRA. ITZEL meduri soto

As an academic from el barrio, Dra. Meduri Soto strives to engage in scholarly work that honors and gives visibility to her community. Her faith drives her passion for justice as she seeks to reveal the ways in which certain language ideologies are constructed to operate unjustly against our communities. Her work acknowledges language as a powerful tool and promotes linguistic diversity in its different manifestations. Bicultural and bilingual identities are at the center of Dra. Meduri Soto’s work. She is a Spanish professor at Biola University where she teaches second language and heritage language learners. To learn more about her work, follow her on Instagram: @la.dra.itzel

---

Footnotes

[1] Poem titled, “Querido Spanglish” by Itzel Reyes (2021)

[2] “Réquiem por una cultura: Ensayos sobre la socialización del puertorriqueño en su cultura y en ámbito del poder neocolonial” (1970).

[3] https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-people-talk-spanglish

[4] As quoted here: https://people.howstuffworks.com/spanglish.htm 

[5]  “El idioma de la F” is not an actual language. It is a playful way in which children could speak “in code” by adding the letter F to every vowel. For example, “te amo” would be “tefe afamofo”. I learned how to speak this “language” in Mexico and it was mainly used when we didn’t want the adults to understand our dialogue.

[6] As quoted on, “Love it or hate it, Spanglish is here to stay and it’s good exercise for your brain”  (2018).

---

Articles like this one are made possible by the support of readers like you. Donate today and help us continue to produce resources for the mestizo church.

Donate

Believe Me When I Say it Hurts

I saw her smile slowly disappear. She pressed in hard, frantically gliding the ultrasound, searching for a heartbeat that would never again beat. “Keep trying!” I screamed at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “there’s no heartbeat.”

“Keep trying,” I sobbed.

The well-intentioned doctor offered me several explanations that were intended to extinguish my sorrow. She explained that this was a normal occurrence, that it happens to nearly 1 in 4 women, that I was young, and that I would surely become pregnant again soon. She said that miscarriage was a protective mechanism that the body uses when disposing of unhealthy organisms and what I heard was, “You should be grateful that your body is so smart.” She tried to bury my pain in scientific reasoning and normalcy. Normal, normal, normal. Normal, as in trivial, as in my life should not be altered and my heart should not ache. Her words felt cold, the type of cold that burns.

I was convinced that my doctor was not Christian, or she would understand the meaning of sanctity of life and surely know why I was in so much pain.

“She’s desensitized,” I thought. “She’s had to deal with so many miscarriages that she has convinced herself that these are not human lives but a conglomeration of cells with little to no human value.” I believed that her lack of faith had caused her insensitivity so I instinctively sought refuge in my community of faith. To my dismay, Christians also minimized my pain. They wanted to subdue my pain and transform it into something nicer, like hope or gratitude, as if hope and gratitude were the only sentiments allowed to be felt by a Christian woman who had just experienced great loss. “At least you are already a mother,” “You’re young, you can have more kids,” “At least you were not further along,” were some of the comments that pierced me open.

The legitimacy of my pain came into question and I was led to believe that I was foolish for carrying this pain. I only carried my child for nine weeks, yet I carried this pain everywhere I went. I carried it to my bedroom, to my office, and to my car. I carried it in my dreams and in my prayers. The pain accompanied me everywhere and filled spaces that my child could no longer fill. It’s true that your heart physically aches when the pain is too overwhelming, but the heart is not the only part of your body that suddenly feels too heavy. Walking, even the shortest distance, absorbed all of my energy, and eating became a laborious task. It’s odd how the heaviness can be accompanied by an emptiness. The pain becomes so unbearable that your body turns numb, but it’s not the type of numb where you feel nothing; it’s the kind of numb where you feel everything.

My pain was slowly being coupled with something even more isolating – shame. The general perception was that my pain was rather unreasonable or exaggerated. I could hear it in their tone; nine weeks wasn’t enough for me to feel this sorrow. My loss was being compared to the suffering of a woman who lost her baby girl to SIDS[1] and of another whose daughter was stillborn.[2] I think people assumed that this would give me “perspective” and alleviate my pain. I’m sure they weren’t trying to hurt me – they thought these stories would help me heal, but shame is no antidote to pain. 

“I should feel better because someone else’s tragedy is worst” was the message being conveyed by people who truly thought were helping me.

Toxic positivity is defined by therapists Samara Quintero and Jamie Long as, “the overgeneralization of a happy, optimistic state that results in the denial, minimization and invalidation of the authentic human emotional experience.[3]” This seemingly helpful mindset, actually produces more harm and trauma because it encourages silencing and transforms pain into a “dirty secret.” In Christian circles, toxic positivity disguises itself as faith and hope and can make individuals feel inadequate in their faith.  

One in four women have suffered a miscarriage.[4] “Because it’s so common, medical professionals tend to dismiss pregnancy loss, and friends and family members often fail to register its impact,” explains Dr. Janet Jaffe, director of the Center for Reproductive Psychology. However, the fact that so many women experience miscarriages does not mitigate the suffering. A recent study found that 29% of women who had experienced a miscarriage before 12 weeks, suffered post-traumatic stress disorder. The study also showed that 24% of these women had moderate to severe anxiety and 11% had moderate to severe depression.[5] I soon discovered that several of my own family members had suffered miscarriages. They quietly shared small pieces of their stories with me, almost hesitantly and I wondered if shame had silenced them too. I suspected that the lack of empathy that their stories had been met with transformed their accounts into a hasty narrative. They recounted their experiences in a way that seemed rather frivolous, though their glistening eyes revealed a different truth. “This is what pain looked like under submission,” I thought.  

Our sufferings are often placed on a hierarchy constructed by cultural understandings that determine which events should hurt more. Certain tragedies are automatically considered more sorrowful than others. Some griefs are “top-rated,” while other losses are rendered unimportant or are even stigmatized – the pain caused by a son being incarcerated or the death of a loved one due to drug overdose, for example. Society invalidates certain pains at the expense of the sufferer, and we don’t tend to pains that we think do not or should not exist.

Neglecting pain based on prejudices is a phenomenon that is also present in the medical industry. Pain bias negatively impacts women as their pain is often dismissed or minimized.[6] Gender bias in medicine leads to a dismissive attitude that often times, causes misdiagnosis. Christin Veasly, director at the “Chronic Pain Research Alliance,” explains that, “women have been more often referred to psychologists or psychiatrists, whereas men are given tests to rule out actual organic conditions.” A study revealed that women are 50% more likely than men to be misdiagnosed following a heart attack.[7] Maya Dusenbery, author of Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed and Sick (2019), identified two principal reasons for which women experience significatively higher levels of misdiagnosis than men: 1) there’s a long-standing legacy of women being underrepresented or completely excluded from medical research, which means that medical professionals do not know as much about the female body as they do the male body and 2) women’s accounts about their pain are often met with distrust.

Gender bias contributes to the idea that women are hysterical, making it easy to dismiss their pain, and racial bias insists that certain bodies can withstand more pain. A 2016 study revealed that, “a substantial number of white laypeople and medical students and residents hold false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites and demonstrates that these beliefs predict racial bias in pain perception and treatment recommendation accuracy.[8]” These beliefs date back to the 19th century when Thomas Hamilton, a plantation owner and physician obsessed with medically justifying the enslavement of Black people, conducted torturous experiments on John Brown, an enslaved Black man. Hamilton claimed that Black people had thicker skin and less sensitive nerve endings. This myth, plagued with racist conjectures, seems to persist in today’s medical community. According to a 2019 study, Black and Hispanic patients are significantly less likely to receive pain medication, compared to White patients[9]. In short, medical practitioners are less likely to believe us when we say it hurts if we happen to be women or people of color.   

The lack of empathy expressed by people changes the manner in which you are able to tell your story. Truth and transparency become marred and you are left with remnants, carefully curated words that vaguely resemble what you feel. The way we listen to people’s stories can help them heal or it can cause more trauma. L.J. Isham describes listening as, “an attitude of the heart, a genuine desire to be with another which both attracts and heals.” To exercise sympathy and compassion and to adopt the type of listening described by Isham, it is not a requirement to have experienced every single type of pain imaginable to the human condition. We don’t even have to agree with the pain, its cause, duration or intensity. Our holy responsibility is not to rate each other’s pain, but to listen lovingly and to believe one another when we say it hurts. 

The way we listen to those in pain can have life-altering consequences. Pain is a real, intense sentiment that is often difficult to characterize using words, and culture can also influence the modes of expression adopted by each individual. This is why, it is important to listen with an open heart. I felt that my pain was delegitimized to such an extent that, even as I write this now, I have the lingering impulse to justify my pain to you. I am tempted to convince you that my pain was real. I want to explain what this pregnancy meant to me and detail the agonizing moments with such rawness that you would not be able to sanitize my pain. However, I will not do that. That is too much of a burden for a suffering person. I wrote this piece, not with the intention of putting my pain on display, allowing readers to dissect it and examine it thoroughly until they can recognize its validity, but to address the fact that we should believe people when they say it hurts. We can stand with people in their pain without understanding it. We can come alongside suffering people without having had to experience that specific pain ourselves. We can accompany people in their sorrow and console them without any “words of advice” or proposed “solutions.” We can pray for these individuals without even knowing the full story. The Bible tells us that when one member suffers, we all suffer (1 Corinthians 12:26). It is pain that unites us, and that propels us to love one another as we understand our interconnectedness in God.

We have a tendency to run away from pain and in reality, it is all too easy, especially if it is not our own pain. We look away and cover our ears and hearts with much ease. Indeed, it is much more difficult to stand with someone who is in pain. However, pain is not alien to the human condition, nor is it unfamiliar to Jesus. Our Savior experienced immense pain. In fact, it was the shortest verse[10] in the Bible that brought me the greatest consolation in my moments of sorrow; “Jesus wept” (John 11:35).  I was reminded that He didn’t weep because he was overwhelmed by joy and gratitude; He didn’t shed happy tears. He wept in suffering. He wept in loss. Profound pain caused those precious tears, and it was His pain that ultimately brought salvation to the world. Pain, generated by His everlasting love, is central to the gospel message, yet we often try to disguise it or swiftly move past it in our understanding of Him. In fact, “in early Christian times, the belief that Jesus Christ suffered pain was usually not accepted […] freedom from emotion was something to strive for at that time. Only after the acceptance of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire in 380 AD did the pain of Christ again stand in the centre of the Christian doctrine of salvation.[11]” When all trace of pain is removed from the gospel, we are left with an anemic version, one that represents God as just a happy character, incapable of being in the midst of our grief and our suffering. When we attempt to alienate our pain from God, we are inadvertently supporting a theological vision that believes that God is incapable of understanding our pain. When we try to hide our pain away from our Creator, we undervalue His love and grace for us. In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis wrote, “Pain insists on being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain.” The Bible does not say that God ignores our pain and pretends it does not exist; Psalm 147:3 reminds us that, “God heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (NIV). Our pain does not condemn us or separate us from God; on the contrary, it draws us closer to our Maker and to each other. 

About Dra. Itzel meduri soto

As an academic from el barrio, Dra. Meduri Soto strives to engage in scholarly work that honors and gives visibility to her community. Her faith drives her passion for justice as she seeks to reveal the ways in which certain language ideologies are constructed to operate unjustly against our communities. Her work acknowledges language as a powerful tool and promotes linguistic diversity in its different manifestations. Bicultural and bilingual identities are at the center of Dra. Meduri Soto’s work. She is a Spanish professor at Biola University where she teaches second language and heritage language learners. To learn more about her work, follow her on Instagram: @la.dra.itzel

---

Footnotes

[1] Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

[2] “A still birth is the birth of a baby who has died any time from 20 weeks into the pregnancy through to the due date of birth. The baby may have died during the pregnancy or, less commonly, during the birth” (Pregnancy Birth & Baby).

[3] https://thepsychologygroup.com/toxic-positivity/

[4] American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

[5] “Posttraumatic stress, anxiety and depression following miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy: a multicenter, prospective, cohort study” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (2019).

[6] “‘Brave Men’ and ‘Emotional Women:’ A Theory Guided Literature Review on Gender Bias in Health Care and Gendered Norms Towards Patients with Chronic Pain” Pain Research and Management (2018).

[7] “Impact of Initial Hospital Diagnosis on Mortality for Acute Myocardial Infarction: A National Cohort Study” European Heart Journal – Acute Cardiovascular Care (2018).

[8] “Racial Bias in Pain Assessment and Treatment Recommendations, and False Beliefs about Biological Differences Between Whites and Blacks” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[9] “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Management of Acute Pain in US Emergency Departments: Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review” The American Journal of Emergency Medicine.

[10] It is the shortest verse in many translated versions. 

[11] Markschies C. Der Schmerz und das Christentum. Symbol für Schmerzbewältigung? [Pain and Christianity. A symbol for overcoming pain?] (2007). 

---

Articles like this one are made possible by the support of readers like you. Donate today and help us continue to produce resources for the mestizo church.

Donate

The God Who Hears

God is a liberating listener. I first grasped this truth while reading Walter Brueggemann’s classic The Prophetic Imagination. In the opening chapter, Brueggemann unpacks a key contrast in the book of Exodus: Pharaoh does not hear Israel’s cries; God does. Pharaoh ignores Israel’s pleas for liberation from slavery, exploitation, and oppression. He is a cruel ruler who orders Egyptian slave drivers and overseers to worsen Israel’s misery (Ex. 5). God, however, hears Israel’s cries and enters into their sufferings. “And the people of Israel groaned under their bondage, and cried out for help, and their cry under bondage came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant…And God saw the people of Israel, and God knew their condition” (Ex. 2:23-25). Likewise, when God calls Moses to liberate Israel, God connects hearing Israel cries to calling Moses. “I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians…And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come, I will send you” (Ex. 3:9-10). Pharaoh’s refusal to listen reinforces and extends Israel’s oppression. God’s listening initiates Israel’s liberation.

Brueggemann is not the first Christian to spot this contrast. Scholars such as Eddie Glaude, Jr. and J. Laurence Cohen have detailed myriad ways African Americans identified and employed the difference between God’s liberating listening and Pharaoh’s oppressive non-listening before, during, and after the U.S. Civil War. Yet as Delores Williams argues in Sisters in the Wilderness, many of these interpretive traditions have proven male-centered, principally conceiving of God’s liberating actions in terms of Moses. Such interpretive traditions obscure another tradition that highlights the biblical witness about God’s hearing, speaking, and liberating oppressed women. This second tradition begins with Hagar.

A Sister in the Wilderness

Whereas Exodus 1-15 recounts Gods liberating Abraham’s descendants from Egyptian slavery, Genesis 16-21 recounts God’s liberating Hagar, a female Egyptian enslaved in Abraham’s household. It is likely that Hagar became enslaved to Sarah and Abraham when the two were “Abram and Sarai” and living in Egypt rather than the land to which God called them (Gen. 12). During this time, Pharaoh believed the false report that Sarai was Abram’s sister—a lie Abram crafted to protect himself despite Gods promising to protect him (Gen. 12:2-3)—took Sarai into his harem, and lavished Abram with “sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels” (Gen. 12:15-16). Perhaps one of these slaves was Hagar. 

Either way, Genesis 16 recounts that Hagar became enslaved to Sarai and the victim of sexual assault. Desperate to have the divinely promised child, Sarai blames God for her barrenness and persuades Abram to have sex with Hagar so that Sarai “can build a family through her” (vv.1-2). Sarai seizes Hagar and gives her to Abram to be his wife. Abram then forces Hagar to copulate with him, and she conceives a child. Throughout this grievous process, Sarai and Abram treat Hagar as little more than sexualized chattel capable of producing their children. This is unadulterated domination.

Sexually dominated, exploited, and pregnant, Hagar despises Sarai. Sensing Hagar’s righteous rage, Sarai complains about her to Abram and calls upon God to judge Abram if he does not rectify the situation. Despite being his pregnant wife, Abram calls Hagar “your slave” when speaking with Sarai. Rather than protect Hagar or their unborn child, Abram tells Sarai “Do with her whatever you think best” to both. For Abram, Hagar is not bone of his bone or flesh of his flesh (Gen. 2). She is Saria’s problem—Sarai’s slave. Within this evil family structure, Sarai again abuses Hagar, who resists her oppressors by fleeing to the desert.   

In the desert’s bareness, God visits Hagar. Unlike Abram, God addresses Hagar by name. Unlike Sarai and Abram, God invites Hagar to talk, to disclose her sufferings. Unlike Sarai and Abram who dominate and plunder Hagar, God blesses her. Indeed, God’s blessing upon Hagar is similar to the Abrahamic blessing: “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count” (v.10). God then names the child in Hagar’s womb Ishmael—“God hears”—emphasizing, “the LORD has heard of your misery” (v.11). God sees, hears, validates, and enters into Hagar’s sufferings. These are divine acts of liberation.

A Liberation Delayed

Though the LORD hears, sees, and speaks with Hagar, the LORD does not yet fully liberate her. Preceding Hagar’s divine blessing is a divine command: “Go back to your mistress and submit to her” (Gen. 16:9). Hagar obeys. After bearing Ishmael, Hagar and Ishmael live in servitude to Sarah and Abraham for over fourteen years (see Gen. 16:16; 21:5, respectively). The text never suggests Hagar’s treatment improves. Despite God visiting, blessing, and renaming Sarah and Abraham, we only read of the patriarch’s affection for Ishmael (Gen. 17). Hagar’s abusive marginalization continues.

Sarah eventually conceives and bears a son, Isaac. Sometime later, Abraham celebrates Isaac’s weaning with a party. During the festivities, Sarah sees Ishmael mock Isaac. Outraged, Sarah commands Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac” (Gen. 21:10). For Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael are potential threats whose names—one of which is God-given—she still does not utter; Hagar is the “slave woman” and Ishmael the slave woman’s “dangerous” son; they are not family; son personas desechables. Sarah’s old patterns of dehumanization and domination persist. So do Abraham’s.

After God assures Abraham that Ishmael will become a great nation, the chosen patriarch sends Hagar and Ishmael out from his household. We read nothing about Abraham voicing concern over Hagar’s fate—not even a parting word of sorrow or blessing. Abraham still does not see nor treat Hagar, his long-time wife, as bone of his bone or flesh of his flesh. In his eyes, Hagar is the slave woman, a disposable commodity.

A functionally divorced and single mother without social support, Hagar quickly faces the unspeakable: She may witness Ishmael’s death, for they have run out of water. Desperate and profoundly grieved, Hagar and Ishmael cry. God hears them and intervenes, providing them water and dwelling with them throughout their life-long pilgrimage. This is the path of Hagar’s final liberation from Sarah and Abraham, her cruel, exploitive oppressors. Its parallel with God’s care of liberated, sojourning Israel are striking (see Exodus 15, 17).

Listening Like God   

Delores Williams is right: God “made a way out of no way” for Hagar. But this way was long and painful. And unlike Israel’s bondage in Egypt, the source of Hagar’s oppression was the covenant community, those chosen by God to bless the nations. Abraham and Sarah never utter a word of blessing to Hagar. Instead, they ravage her in word and deed. Together, Exodus and Genesis teach that sometimes nations rage against the people of God, and sometimes the people of God rage against the vulnerable in their midst.

Yet Exodus and Genesis also reveal that God hears the cries of these victims, of oppressed communities and individuals. God enters into their sufferings. And God, the liberator of the oppressed (see Ps. 9:9; 10:18; 68:5-6; 103:6; and 146:3), promotes their freedom.

God’s liberative listening and work culminate in Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Abraham who is a greater liberator than Moses and defender of enslaved and sexually abused women. In Luke 4, Jesus publicly declares in the backwater, colonized town of Galilee that he came to usher in a new age of justice—the ultimate Jubilee year. As C. René Padilla writes, “the mission of the Messiah [i.e., Jesus of Nazareth] in the power of the Spirit is oriented toward the most vulnerable persons in society: the poor, the prisoners, the blind, the oppressed.” Jesus announces that he came to preach good news to the poor, proclaim freedom for prisoners, provide recovery of sight for the blind, and release for the oppressed. As Padilla again observes: “Jesus was convinced that his ministry was to promote radical socioeconomic changes big enough to be regarded as signs of the coming of a new era of justice and peace—‘the year of the Lord’s favor,’ the Jubilee year (Lev 25)—a metaphor of the messianic era initiated in history by Jesus Christ, in other words, the Kingdom of God.” The saver of sinners like Abraham and Sarah is the listening liberator of oppressed communities and individuals like Israel and Hagar.

Jesus calls his disciples to enter into his divine work of liberation. Christians are to listen to and act for and with the least of these—those with whom Jesus identifies (Mt. 25). We are to care for widows and orphans in their distress (Jas 1). Like God, we should meet Hagar in the desert. Like God, we should listen to oppressed peoples and champion their deliverance from evil systems and regimes. Let us hunger and thirst to participate in the divine life through these Spirit-empowered works.

For more about hermano Nathan, visit his website.

About Dr. Nathan Luis Cartagena

A son of the US South (Mom) and Puerto Rico (Dad), Dr. Cartagena is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College (IL), where he teaches courses on race, justice, and political philosophy, and is a fellow in The Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies. He serves as the faculty advisor for Unidad Cristiana, a student group working to enhance Christian unity and celebrate Latina/o cultures, a scholar-in-residence for World Outspoken, and a co-host for the forthcoming podcast From the Underside. He’s also writing a book on Critical Race Theory with IVP Academic.

---

Articles like this one are made possible by the support of readers like you. Donate today and help us continue to produce resources for the mestizo church.

Donate

Taking Off Ropaje Anglosajón

This month we are featuring two pieces by student writers who are engaging theologically with their cultural identity. We are thrilled to give platform to these up and coming voices who will surely shape the trajectory of the mestizo church. -The Editors

I sensed a call to ministry from very early in my life, although I had no idea what that meant. Hoping to find clarity about this calling, I moved from Costa Rica to the United States to attend Bible college. Among all the options that crossed my mind about what ministry would look like, being a theologian was never one of them, mainly because I had never heard of Latinos doing theology. Until this point in my life, the only theologians I had heard about were American or European, so I subconsciously assumed they were the only people with something worth saying in this area. When during my first semester, a professor told a group of Latino students and me that Latinos in theology were not saying anything white people haven’t said before, I felt like I had no option but to believe him. Then, I came across The Story of Christianity by Justo González in my Christianity and Western Culture class. In a meeting where I expressed my surprise and joy at seeing a Latino name among my reading list for the semester, my (non-Latino) professor was the first person to tell me about the valuable voice of Latinos in theology. He encouraged me to find my voice in this theological legacy and recommended I started this journey reading González’s Mañana.

Mañana was written in English, but this was theology in a language that I was able to understand more than just cognitively; it was theology con sabor Latino. After two years in Bible college, I was not sure I wanted to be a Christian anymore. I could understand English perfectly, yet I was learning about God in a foreign language I could not grasp. The Euro-American theological language offered me dichotomies and neatly organized categories that didn’t resonate with the faith I had inherited - a faith that didn’t fit into the complementarian versus egalitarian or Arminian versus Calvinist debates. Recovering my faith meant going back to my theological hogar to sit with my theological foremothers and forefathers and discover the rich well of theology the Latino community has to offer.

Mañana was the starting point of my journey back to my theological home. To my surprise, the next stop in this pilgrimage was a look into the Catholic roots of Latin American Christianity (an unexpected place to begin as an evangélica). I wrestled through the role of the church in colonization and the pain my Spanish ancestors inflicted upon my indigenous ancestors, all in the name of Christ. In this, I discovered the second church that formed shortly after the arrival of the colonizers. In the 16th century, this second church was led by people like Antonio de Montesinos and Bartolomé de las Casas. These Spanish missionaries devoted their lives to the true gospel that protected the dignity of the indigenous peoples, even when this meant being persecuted and rejected by the church of the hierarchy. In the following century, the mestiza Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz spent her life educating herself in theology, philosophy, literature, and more, becoming “the first Latina feminist intellectual and theologian of the Americas.”[1] Sor Juana was forced to write a statement of repentance for her views a few years before her death, but not satisfied with that, those in the church of the hierarchy that felt threatened by the truth she spoke, suppressed her works for three hundred years.[2]

Later, in the 20th century, we encounter the birth of liberation theology in 1968. This movement that has expanded and adapted to contexts outside of Latin America has as its hermeneutical hinge the perspective of the poor. In other words, liberation theology is concerned with providing pastoral and theological answers to the issues of injustice and oppression that riddle this world. Liberation theology is deeply concerned with the historical dimension of salvation, with how Christ’s salvation is reflected in the here and now through material liberation.

The next stop on my journey opened the door to a movement within the iglesia evangélica, the tradition I call home. With similar concerns to those of liberation theology but from an evangélica perspective, the Fraternidad Teológica Latinoamericana (FTL) was formed in the 1970s. The theologian Ruth Padilla DeBorst explains that the founders of the FTL “were people who sought to remain faithful to Scriptures and, at the same time, incarnated in the Latin American socio-political reality.”[3] The FTL proposed a vision of misión integral (holistic mission), a practice that “integrates the proclamation of the Kingdom of God and its justice with the demonstration of its presence in history through the action carried out by the people of God.”[4] In this way, misión integral offers a paradigm that transcends the false dichotomy of gospel proclamation versus the pursuit of justice and liberation for all people.

One of the challenges I faced during my first year learning theology in a different language was the repeated message I received from several of my professors who believed true theology is not affected by or even concerned with life experiences. In other words, they proclaimed there was such a thing as universal theology, while every other expression of theology that considered the experiences of people was a contextual theology. Justo González explains that in this framework, “North Atlantic male theology is taken to be basic, normative, universal theology, to which women, other minorities, and people from the younger churches may add their footnotes.” He adds, “White theologians do general theology; black theologians do black theology. Male theologians do general theology; female theologians do theology determined by their sex.”[5] On my journey back to my theological hogar, I found Latino theologians recognize that, in fact, all theology is contextual, and so they seek to faithfully honor their contexts by producing theology that speaks to and from them.

Padilla DeBorst argues that the radical evangélicos of the FTL, “…recognized the need to differentiate between biblical content and the ropaje anglosajón (anglo-saxon clothing) in which North-Atlantic versions of the Gospel were wrapped and exported to the rest of the world.”[6] The journey to recover my faith led me to evaluate the ropaje anglosajón I had been trying to fit into. This process of evaluation was the second of the three conversions Orlando Costas identified in his own spiritual journey. Costas’ first conversion was when he first came to saving faith in Christ, the second when he rediscovered his Latino cultural roots, and the third when he experienced a “conversion to the world” that led him to become an advocate for justice and to work towards a holistic theology that would account for the necessity these three conversions.[7] My third conversion began when I found my calling in the academic practice of theology. I found my hogar in the legacy of Latinos who have been doing theology for over 500 years, and I am humbled and honored to join this “great cloud of witnesses” from de las Casas and Sor Juana to Ruth Padilla and the FTL. I will not pursue a supposedly universal theology that speaks a language I cannot comprehend, but a contextual, specifically Costa Rican theology, a theology con sabor Latino, which is what we, Latinos in theology, have been doing desde hace rato.[8]

---

About Wendy Cordero rugama

Wendy is a Costa Rican theology student and WOS Instructional Designer. Her life in the US has brought her to reflect more deeply on issues of race, gender, and Latinidad. Wendy is passionate about studying how theology impacts all areas of life, especially through its intersections with the social sciences. She hopes to become a theology professor and, through that, build bridges between the academy and the church, inviting students to do scholarship embedded in their particular places.

---

Footnotes

[1] Chao Romero, Robert. Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity. IVP Academic, 2020. 97

[2] Ibid. 97

[3] Padilla DeBorst, Ruth. Integral Mission Formation in Abya Yala (Latin America): A Study of the Centro de Estudios Teologícos Interdisciplinarios (1982-2002) and Radical Evangélicos, 2016. Boston University, PhD dissertation. 29

[4] Padilla, René qtd in Padilla DeBorst. 54

[5] González, Justo L. Mañana: Theology from a Hispanic Perspective. Abington Press, 1990. 52

[6] Padilla DeBorst. 45

[7] Escobar, Samuel. “The Legacy of Orlando Costas.” International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 2001. 50.

[8] For a long time.

Pressure Cooker

This month we are featuring two pieces by student writers who are engaging theologically with their cultural identity. We are thrilled to give platform to these up and coming voices who will surely shape the trajectory of the mestizo church. -The Editors

When I was a little girl

I would get up in the morning to get ready for school

Amma was already up, 

showered and dressed before the sun 

She had prepared breakfast, lunch and dinner 

before the day had begun

The monotonous routine of the Indian woman

Was the pillar of our household

When everything else was falling apart

The rich spices were strong and bold 

like coffee, the daily aroma functioning as an alarm

Flavors that burnt my nose 

but comforted my heart

The clunky metal pressure cooker was on the stove,

Yet again

Just like me, it was imported all the way from India

And just like me, it existed as a daily functioning member of this household

And just like me, it cooked consumed rice everyday

Not a day went by in my first 11 years of existence

that white basmati rice did not enter my system

The clunky metal pressure cooker became my nemesis

As it’s whistle blew it reminded me of a train

That had the capacity to steal me and take me faraway

Reminding me of how nothing ever felt safe

Amma.

Why do you let the pressure cooker get so hot that it screams?

Surely the rice is cooked now and we can eat.

Day after day, the pressure builds up and the whistle screeches

Make it stop.

And just like the white rice it cooked

The whiteness boiled inside of me

Pressurizing into a pristine product for others pleasure

I bathed in the waters of the pressure cooker thinking it would cleanse me

But now I feel dirtier than ever

pain was the corpse that i buried thinking it was dead

but pain isn’t a corpse it’s a seed

once it's in the ground and nourished

it sprouts up into nasty weeds and surprises you

There is value in my culture and I don’t want to throw it away

Throw it into the melting pot to let it boil and disintegrate 

A one way ticket to a faraway place

The train is waiting. 

The whistle is screeching. 

Next stop--your life long American dream.

Amma, I never was strong enough to open the lid and escape

Why couldn’t I have been strong enough?

Why couldn’t you have been strong enough for me?

Amma. 

Why do you let the pressure cooker get so hot that it screams?

Surely the rice is cooked now and we can eat.

Day after day, the pressure builds up and the whistle screeches

Make it stop.

White rice is not enough flavor for some

But paired with too much and suddenly 

you are overwhelming

A dangerous game people play

When they control their intake

Thinking they can tolerate more spice than they can handle

The aftertaste

Leaves an unpleasant mark on their face

Eyebrows furrowed

Lips puckered

Confusion is uncomfortably sour 

Regret floods in 

as they reach for a glass of water

Foreign flavors to them

But savory memories to me

That train will take them to a museum

Where they can gawk and gaze in amazement

But walk out the minute their eyes get tired of looking

Like a field trip where the kids have to go for school credit

But the minute they get off the bus

They are no longer at school

And therefore, 

done learning

Foreign concepts to them

But second nature to me

But if only that train were taking me to my utopia

Where nothing has to be sacrificed

And I wave goodbye to all my fears as they fade off in the distance

Fear of man

Fear of exclusion

Fear of abandonment

In this faraway land, 

chickappa and chickamma will send me Indian care packages

And I open them up with excitement instead of remorse 

In this faraway land,

I never get tired of eating Indian food

And I never complain

Because this time I won’t have to learn the hard way

What I had when I had it

In this faraway land,

The nuances of my culture are known and understood by all those around me

Like we were watching an old movie we had seen a hundred times

Nobody is even wondering what will happen next

But from memory, they annoyingly recite the next character’s lines 

In this faraway land,

My heritage is defended by my loved ones 

like one would argue their favorite superhero or sports team

And instead of our culture being like a set of clothes we could donate once it didn’t fit anymore

it would be our precious keepsake we tucked away to pass down to future generations

It would be intrinsically woven inside of us

Amma. 

Why do you let the pressure cooker get so hot that it screams?

Surely the rice is cooked now and we can eat.

Day after day, the pressure builds up and the whistle screeches

Make it stop.

You see, the white rice is boiling to be plain and simple

Affordable and safe

I am made into something digestible

Spicy flavors are dangerous and to be placed on the side

Eaten in the tiniest increments only if one so chooses

We put Jesus into the pressure cooker

And cook him into a white, fluffed up rice

steamed of any unnecessary and extra components

Now He is digestible

Culturally gnosticizing the gospel 

Extracting Him of his ethnicity 

A palatable Jesus, 

we take Him in aculturally

Generational sin has the nastiest fruit

Because the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree

the tree that was planted must uproot itself and leave

far away from getting entangled in the same old roots

of the same old trees

and if all i am to you is red on the outside and white on the inside

than you just picked the wrong apple

and there begins your sin cycle

And we produce safety

Because once the rice is cooled down it's safe to eat, right?

Because they are safe,

I have to be pressurized

Day after day

Laughing and playing the same game

To protect myself in this melting pot we call tasty

Give up the charade

It's not a melting pot where every flavor stays the same

But a pressure cooker where whatever was left disintegrates

Washed away

Washed white

White washed

The American pressure cooker

Has lost its taste

And now I am the whistle screaming

---

About Shreya Ramachandran

Shreya Ramachandran is a sophomore at Moody Bible Institute, studying Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). She was born in India and moved to the United States when she was two years old. After many life transitions, Shreya is beginning to embrace her identity in Christ as an Indian-American woman. Being mestizo resonates with Shreya, as she has always lived on the borderlands of culture. Shreya shares: “I am blessed by the ministry at WOS, one that deals delicately with the nuances of culture in order to equip the Church and be the Church.”

You Can Call Me by My Name

The dreaded first day of school was especially frightening for me. The fear of being called on to introduce myself and the anticipation of meeting new people was accompanied by the terror of seeing my teachers’ faces at the exact moment in which they encountered my name. Their reactions often reminded me of the expressions of movie characters in sci-fi films when a UFO was seen descending to earth.  

Itzel y su papá. See footnotes for a correct pronunciation of the name.

Itzel, a beautiful Mayan name carefully chosen by my parents for their primogeniture. Itzel, a name that claimed my heritage and honored my indigenous ancestors. Itzel, a name gifted to me while I was still in the womb. Itzel, a name that painfully alienated me. Itzel, a name that I hated and often fantasized of changing. Itzel, a name that I daydreamt of transforming into something more “palatable;” my notebook filled with the names that I yearned to have. While most of the girls my age would write the name of the boy they liked, I used to obsessively write the names that would render me normal. They were always generic names, names that would not cause attention, names that would appear on “the most popular list of baby names.”  

To the dismay of many, my parents did not give me a middle name. They thought my first name was so beautiful that they could not possibly pair it with anything else. “Do you have a middle name?” I was commonly asked. “Do you have a nickname?” was usually the follow-up question. My dad and other family members often called me “Itzelita,” the Spanish diminutive form of “Itzel,” but I did not think “Itzelita” posed a solution. They were grasping at straws and I, too, was desperately searching for a name that would resolve their confusion. Sometimes my teachers would not ask me for a middle name or a nickname but would directly resort to usurping an authority that did not belong to them by asking if they could rename me: “Can we call you something else?” At that moment, I wanted desperately for the attention to be diverted away from me and I would hastily reply, “Call me whatever you want.” I convinced myself that my name was unimportant and that my parents were to blame for giving me such a difficult name.  

And so, I became “It-soul” for many years. Every single time my name was mispronounced I cringed internally but silence and shame prevailed. My beautiful name was ripped to pieces and what remained was ugly and hostile, unrecognizable. I avoided saying my own name, and when I found myself in an unavoidable situation, I said it quickly and quietly, hoping that it would go undetected.   

What still bewilders me is the fact that I attended schools in a Latino neighborhood in Los Angeles, where most of the children had Spanish names and a strong linguistic background in Spanish. Why were they unable to pronounce my name? I suspect that it had little to do with my classmates’ ability or lack thereof to say my name. We imitated the pronunciation adopted by our teachers and authority figures at our schools and somehow convinced ourselves that we could not pronounce our own names.  

Some names are indeed difficult to pronounce for the unaccustomed tongue. I, myself, have had trouble pronouncing multiple names. I cannot, in good conscious, blame people for not knowing how to pronounce my name. What is disheartening is not that people don’t automatically know how to pronounce my name but that they do not even attempt. They glance at it once and decide that they are incapable. They find renaming me an easier endeavor than learning how to properly pronounce my name. They overuse pronouns as a cover-up and whenever possible, prefer to ignore my existence. To evade my name, they resort to sophisticated jugglery that ironically requires more cognitive work than learning how to say my name.  

Individuals of all different ethnic backgrounds have their names chronically mispronounced, including Whites. This phenomenon is not exclusive to the Latino population in the United States. However, mispronouncing the names of people of color is especially harmful. In their article, “Teachers, Please Learn Our Names!: Racial Microaggressions and the K-12 Classroom” (2012), Kohli and Solorzano contend that mispronouncing the names of students of color is a racial microaggression that, “supports a racial and cultural hierarchy of minority inferiority […] that can negate the thought, care, and significance of the name, and thus the identity of the child” (444). Mispronouncing or changing the name of a student becomes an additional form of othering: “Often unconscious and unintentionally hurtful, when these comments are made to Students of Color, they are layered insults that intersect with an ‘othering’ of race, language and culture” (448).  

To fully capture this idea, one must take into consideration the historical and political contexts in which mispronouncing and changing the names of people of color are situated. As a symbolic manifestation of disregarded humanity and stripped personhood, enslaved Africans were forcefully renamed according to the names of their masters. Seen as property with no real human value, their names were exterminated. Today, many white families enthusiastically excavate their family’s history using their names as tools and proud cultural markers, while many African Americans are only able to trace their lineage back to the masters of their ancestors. Indigenous people also suffered the violence of name modification as a vehicle of racist practices and forced assimilation. According to anthropologists David H. French and Katherine S. French[1], in Native American societies, "names have a dual role, serving also as signs (or symbols) of social identities, relationships, categories, or positions, and as vehicles for modes of social interactions. They make statements, significant ones, both about persons and about groups” (200). In a grotesque disregard of indigenous identity, indigenous people were reassigned Anglicized names for the comfort of the English-trained tongue and as part of their efforts to forcefully assimilate them into White society. As Liliana Elliott explains:

“Anglo-American names were an initial step that marked social death […] Teachers, officials, and administrators expected Native children to fully inhabit their new names by the time they emerged out of industrial school and assumed daily life in white civilization. Indeed, much of the rhetoric of assimilation reflects a belief that true personhood remained impossible until assimilation was complete[2]” (59).

Indigenous names were mocked, considered odd and incomprehensible. Rather than learning about the cultural richness and significance of these names, they were confronted with animosity and torn apart.  

Latina/o names suffered a similar fate in schools. It was a common practice for teachers to change their students’ names to an Anglicized version: Ramón became Raymond, Juanita became Jane and María became Mary, for example. As Orlando Patterson argues, "the changing of a name is almost universally a symbolic act of stripping a person of his former identity[3]" (55). A man that went by the name of Jesse told a story of how his birth name, Jesús, was permanently transformed. The nun of the religious school where he attended refused to call him Jesús, asserting that his name was blasphemous. Operating within the limits of her cultural lens, the nun failed to understand that Mexican families tend to name their children after people they consider admirable or important to their family’s legacy. Jesús, a very common name amongst Mexican families, is a way to honor Christ and not an act of defilement. That day, terrified at the “realization” that his name was profane, young Jesús went home and told his parents to call him Jesse.  

“Non-Western names are perceived as an unwelcomed inconvenience and whiteness seems to believe itself deserving of ridding individuals of their identity for the sake of its convenience.  ”

The insistence that names must be “easily pronounced” in English is linked to the idea that English is the superior language. The linguistic dexterity that seems to be demanded of people of color is ironically not pursued by the people making these demands. Speakers of other languages are expected to pronounce English names with ease as if English was an inherently “easy” language to learn as compared to other languages. Texas Representative Betty Brown boldly stated in the matter of voter identification legislation: “rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese – I understand it’s a rather difficult language – do you think it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here.” Non-Western names are perceived as an unwelcomed inconvenience and whiteness seems to believe itself deserving of ridding individuals of their identity for the sake of its convenience.  

Names are of high importance in the Bible and serve a variety of functions. Jacob’s name was changed to Israel in Genesis 32:28: “Your name will no longer be Jacob,” the man told him. “From now on you will be called Israel, because you have fought with God and with men and have won” (NLT). God also changed the names of Abram and Sarai to Abraham and Sarah after God made a covenant with them. The names Jesus (he will rescue people from their sins) and Immanuel (God with us) were meaningfully chosen and their significance explained. One of the greatest gifts that God gave Adam was the power to name. Naming is a necessary component of creation, as God literally spoke the world into existence. Our names comprise a fundamental aspect of our identity. As parents, we have been entrusted with the power to name our children and as individuals, we have been given authority over our own names. Forcefully anglicizing names seems to be one of the various ways in which whiteness tries to mold people of color into their image.  

The study conducted by Kohli and Solorzano found that the social-emotional well-being of children is negatively affected when their names are mispronounced in the classroom which, in turn, harms their learning. The National Association for Bilingual Education and the Santa Clara County Office of Education in California partnered to establish an initiative titled, “My Name My Identity” with the objective of raising awareness about the importance of names. Under this initiative, students and teachers are able to present their learning at school, parent and district board meetings. Some of the sample lessons that they recommend include discussion questions such as: Is there a story behind your name? Who gave you your name? What does your name mean? What is something positive about you or your name that no one can forget. While these initiatives represent a step forward in recognizing the impact of names on student learning, they must become a critical component of teacher training.  

Learning how to correctly pronounce someone’s name is an act of love. When someone takes interest in learning how to say my name correctly, I have the certainty that they care about me as a person and value me. As a child, I did not have the words nor was I aware of the scholarship that gave voice to my experience. I could not articulate why I felt the way I did, but I knew exactly how I felt – I felt small and unimportant like a piedra en un zapato; an inconvenience, a discomfort. My name was trampled every single day of the school year. I had thousands of opportunities to correct my teachers, but I was too embarrassed, afraid of “offending them.” I like to think that if I would have said something and explained how deeply it affected me, they would have corrected themselves. The truth is that my name is not inherently difficult to pronounce as many people had

led me to believe; the truth is that they had a hard time pronouncing my name but they also had the ability to learn it. Now, when people ask what they can call me, I firmly reply, “You can call me by my name.”

---

ABOUT DRA. ITZEL Meduri Soto

As an academic from el barrio, Dra. Meduri Soto strives to engage in scholarly work that honors and gives visibility to her community. Her faith drives her passion for justice as she seeks to reveal the ways in which certain language ideologies are constructed to operate unjustly against our communities. Her work acknowledges language as a powerful tool and promotes linguistic diversity in its different manifestations. Bicultural and bilingual identities are at the center of Dra. Meduri Soto’s work. She is a Spanish professor at Biola University where she teaches second language and heritage language learners. To learn more about her work, follow her on Instagram: @la.dra.itzel

---

Footnotes

[1] Goddard, Ives and William C. Sturtevant. “Personal Names,” Handbook of the North American Indians: Language. vol. 17, Smithsonian Institution, 1978. 

[2] Elliott, Liliana. Names Tell a Story: The Alteration of Student Names at Carlisle Indian Industrial School, 1879-1890. 2019. University of Colorado Boulder, History Honors Thesis. https://www.colorado.edu/history/sites/default/files/attached-files/elliott_thesis.pdf

[3] Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Harvard University Press, 2018.

Cuida tu testimonio: A public theology of repentance

When I was a child, my mother would always say to me, cuida tu testimonio (watch, or take care of, your testimony). Whether she was dropping me off at school or going to a friend’s house, this dicho served as a reminder to always be on my best behavior. As the years have passed, this saying has become a guiding principle in my life, and my understanding of it has grown more profound. While as a child it only meant to not do anything that would embarrass myself or my parents, today it represents living in a manner that is worthy of my God. Mi testimonio is my Christian witness. It is the evidence of the supernatural work of Jesus in my life and my most powerful evangelistic tool for a suffering world in need of a Savior.  Mi testimonio is an expression of the image of God in me. It is my attempt to live as God’s royal representative on this side of eternity. 

I have also come to believe that while this principle applies to individuals, it also applies to collectives such as businesses, organizations, and even religious institutions. When an individual or institution fails to abide by the principle cuida tu testimonio, the integrity of their testimony is compromised, and often discredited. I believe this is the crisis of the evangelical church that has resulted in the loss of the credibility of the Church’s prophetic witness in the public square today. Ed Stetzer observes that, “tempted by power and trapped within a culture war theology, too many evangelicals tied their fate to a man who embodied neither their faith nor their vision of political character. As a result, we are finally witnessing an evangelical reckoning.”[1]

My mother also used to say, dime con quién andas y te dire quién eres (tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are). The apostle Paul similarly warned the Church at Corinth, “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’”[2] In the evangelical church’s desperate attempt to gain power, influence, and control through the veins of American democracy, it has lost the hearts of its people and in turn, compromised its public witness. And while not all evangelicals have engaged in these practices, we collectively bear the name and consequences of those who have. How then can the evangelical church regain its credibility so that it can once again be a transformative agent for the American conscience and the public square? I believe the answer lies in a public theology of repentance. 

The reality of the saying, cuida tu testimonio, is that while we seek to live in a manner worthy of God, there are times that we fall short of Gods calling on our life. In the same way, just as individuals sin from time to time, so also do religious institutions, as they are comprised of individuals. To this, mi iglesia pentecostal (my Pentecostal church) taught me that the Church’s altars are always open for anyone and everyone who is willing to repent for their sins, and that Jesus is ready to meet them in that sacred place to renew and restore them once again. It is in our brokenness and not our perfection that the confidence of nuestro testimonio lies. 

For the individual, the decision to repent from one’s sin is a central element of the gospel message; it is necessary to transform the human heart. For the collective, it serves to jumpstart the process of systemic and institutional change, which can be theologically understood as a form of “social sanctification.” The evangelical church’s adoption of a public theology of repentance has the potential to result in the restoration of the integrity of its public witness by living consistently with the very message it proclaims: “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”[3]  

I imagine some Christians might have reservations about the evangelical church taking a position of humility by acknowledging its sins as counterproductive to the Church’s witness to the world. After all, the Church is meant to reflect the Kingdom of God as holy and set apart from the world. Therefore, to admit any type of fault would tarnish its character. However, I believe there is no act more Christian then that of repentance, whether individual or communal. In fact, the majority of the Bible is about a loving God who restlessly calls a rebellious people to repent from their sinful ways. Furthermore, if the Church does not model the central message of the Kingdom of God to this world, how then will the world ever learn what it means to repent from one’s sins and believe in Jesus Christ? 

Therefore, the most Christian response the evangelical church can practice to cuidar su testimonio and the credibility of the gospel message it proclaims is to repent. It must repent for placing its hope in false messiahs and partisan politics, for neglecting and suppressing the cries of black, brown, and minoritized communities, and for its companionship with white supremacy and its supporting leader(s) as exemplified at the Capitol insurrection. In embracing a public theology of repentance, the evangelical church has the opportunity to demonstrate to the world what it means to turn from sin, and even teach the world how to acknowledge and address its own historical evils through Christ’s message: “repent and believe.” In doing so, the evangelical church creates room for the Spirit to renew the credibility of the Christian message, restore the testimonio of the evangelical church, and enable the gospel message to produce spiritual transformation and social change. 

The people of Israel demonstrated this firsthand, as they knew that their public repentance would lead to the spiritual and social transformation of their community. It was only the righteous kings of Israel who were brave enough to acknowledge and properly respond to Israel’s sinful condition by removing the high places, tearing down the idols, cleansing the temple, and reestablishing their covenant relationship with God. This in turn led to the restoration of their community and the blessing of their nation. Repentance attained through the purging of evil, and belief proclaimed through the renewal of covenant relationship, the message of Christ to “repent and believe” is a timeless characteristic of what it means to be a Christian community. Should the evangelical church receive the call to “humble themselves, pray and seek God’s face, and turn from their wicked ways,”[4] perhaps then, the world will believe the gospel message they proclaim as good news indeed.

---

About Daniel Montañez

Daniel Montañez was born in Visalia, CA to a Mexican mother and a Puerto Rican father. He is a Ph.D. student at Boston University in the area of Theology, Ethics, and Philosophy, and an adjunct instructor for the Latino and Global Ministries Program at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is the founder and director of Mygration Christian Conference, a non-profit organization that seeks to explore God’s heart through the stories of migration in the Bible. He is also the national director for the Church of God Migration Crisis Initiative, a ministry that seeks to provide church leaders with the biblical, pastoral, and ministerial preparation to positively and proactively respond to the crisis facing our immigrant communities in the United States. Daniel is dedicated to serving his Latino/a community at the intersection of the Church, the academy, and the public square.

---

Footnotes

[1] Stetzer, Ed. “Evangelicals Face a Reckoning: Donald Trump and the Future of Our Faith.” USA Today. Gannett Satellite Information Network, January 11, 2021. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/01/10/after-donald-trump-evangelical-christians-face-reckoning-column/6601393002/?fbclid=IwAR2rJ3hrI0ld4HHRUCok788ZvoPD6B7k3lkbU3UylAVed17ZAT9NUYNchJ8. 

[2] 1 Cor 15:33 (NIV)

[3] Mark 1:15 (NIV)

[4] 2 Chr 7:14 (NIV; paraphrased)

Another White Nod to MLK?

Summer of 2020 inspired more conversation around the topic of performative justice. You need only look as far as social media influencers to see simple evidence of prevalent performative justice in our nation. Who spoke up, who listened, and who is continuing the work of pursuing equality and justice in large or small ways? 

Today is Martin Luther King Day. On this day influencers, marketers, educators, non-profits, and others will promote Dr. King’s ethos of peace, hope, equality, and justice. If you attended primary school in the US, you likely listened to or read King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech and wrote a reflective essay on the themes found therein, year after year. Good students had a proper respect for King; He was an American hero. Your experience in the US church also portrayed King as a man of faith, increasing his validity. Quite possibly, as a white, Christ-following American you will be sharing something from or about MLK on your social media feeds today. You will mention his memory to your young children. You will send a text of solidarity to your friends of color. And then you will move on. 

Performative justice is easiest to succumb to as white people when we are given a set of simplistic actions to justify our beliefs about what it means to be good and helpful. Holidays, monuments, and moments can become rote in both faith traditions and in our nation. Sacred remembrances can turn into mere performances of right action, actions done for self-preservation or gain. 

This was the case in Arizona. A failure to instill MLK Day as a paid state holiday led the National Football League to disqualify Phoenix as a host city for the 1993 Super Bowl.[1] This meant a projected revenue loss of over 200 million dollars for the southwest city; the game ended up going to Los Angeles.[2] In November 1992, Arizona finally approved the state holiday, nearly ten years after Ronald Reagan signed to declare the national observation of the day. I can’t help but wonder if financial gain was the tipping motivation for the state of Arizona to finally support remembering Dr. King and the civil rights movement he was killed leading. 

In his speech The Other America King spoke to the needed repentance of white Americans in this way: 

“What it is necessary to see is that there has never been a single solid monistic determined commitment on the part of the vast majority of white Americans on the whole question of Civil Rights and on the whole question of racial equality. This is something that truth impels all men of good will to admit.”[3]

We have a flawed approach toward inequality and injustice in both our nation and the American church. Our commitment to change, as King said, is limited. When we do take action, Arizona proves that it is often performative--a well placed nod driven by self-preservation.

For white people of faith, Martin Luther King Day is an opportunity to evaluate if the gospel of peace King championed is something we only give nod to on a national holiday. This day is a moment where we should consider our belief of the image of God in humanity, and how that belief informs our ministry structures, educational values, financial decisions, voting, and the voices we include when developing our theology. 

As a white, Christ-following woman, I ask you today, not to share another MLK post on your Facebook page. Instead, take intentional time to listen to King’s The Other America speech, see yourself in the narrative, ask how his words bear truth for our nation today, and reflect on your role in cultivating a culture of justice and unity in the US church. Not falling into performative justice, begins with creating space for sacred remembrance.

---

About Emily C. Alexander

A first generation college graduate of a rural working class family, Emily completed her BA in Ministry to Women at Moody Bible Institute. She writes on the rural-urban divide, and issues at the intersection of faith and culture. Her hope is to contribute to the flourishing of the church through thoughtful theological engagement.

---

Footnotes

[1] https://www.library.pima.gov/content/martin-luther-king-holiday-in-arizona/

[2] https://theundefeated.com/features/when-arizona-lost-the-super-bowl-because-the-state-didnt-recognize-martin-luther-king-jr-day/

[3] https://www.crmvet.org/docs/otheram.htm

What We Forget

Advent is the season encompassing the four Sundays which precede Christmas. Traditionally for Christians these weeks mark the beginning of our year and are defined by themes of remembering and waiting. While these weeks are latent with meaning for all Christians, I want to suggest that, for white Christians who are growing to care deeply about racial justice and reconciliation, Advent can provide an especially helpful starting point for our discipleship.

Remembering and waiting. We remember the lineage of faith to which we belong, including the generations of God’s people who anticipated the coming of the Messiah. We hear the longing in Isaiah 40:10-11, “See, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.” And we wait as a people who expect our Savior’s return. We understand that life as we know it in a world groaning under sin will not last forever. A day will come when the will of God will be done on earth as in heaven.

What is it about these Advent themes that can help white Christians grow in our commitment to racial justice and reconciliation? Before exploring this question, we ought to acknowledge why so many of us need to mature in these areas. For as long as there have been white churches and Christians in this country, there has been a deficit in our discipleship. Time and again, we chose racial exclusion over embodied solidarity with the rest of Christ’s body. The segregation in our churches today is not the benign result of personal or cultural preference; its roots run deep through the soil of racism and racial supremacy.

Of course, this isn’t how most of us think about ourselves or our churches. But over the years, many Christians of color have warned us about our captivity to segregation and complicity with racial injustice. For example, in 1898 Rev. Francis Grimke, the African American pastor of Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., pointed to the silence of most white Christians in response to the lynchings that ran rampant throughout the country. In his sermon he asserted, “Another discouraging circumstance is to be found in the fact that the pulpits of the land are silent on these great wrongs. The ministers fear to offend those to whom they minister… This is the charge which I make against the Anglo American pulpit today; its silence has been interpreted as an approval of these horrible outrages.”

Why has it been so hard for white Christians to confess our conformity to this wicked status quo? In large part, it has to do with what it meant to become racially white. When my ancestors arrived in this country, they did not think of themselves in racial categories. They were immigrants from Sweden and Germany and they brought with them the particularities of their histories, culture, language, etc. But upon landing on these shores, they faced a new racialized reality in which those who were white had the greatest access to the American Dream. On the other end of that hierarchy were African American and indigenous people, those most likely to experience racial oppression.

In order to assimilate, my ancestors had to discard their cultural characteristics and pick up the more recent social construct of race. They had to become white. This exchange away from cultural particularity to racial homogeneity carried innumerable consequences. As Isabel Wilkerson writes in Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, “Each new immigrant had to figure out how and where to position themselves in the hierarchy of their adopted new land. Oppressed people from around the world, particularly from Europe, passed through Ellis Island, shed their old selves, and often their old names to gain admittance to the powerful dominant majority.” Because the country’s racial hierarchy was built on the plunder and exploitation of Black and Native people, newly arrived immigrants internalized these forms of racism as a necessary feature of the path toward the country’s promises. But there were other implications as well which bring us back to Advent.

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash

When my ancestors became white, they were engaging in an act of forgetfulness. They set aside some of the important attributes which had defined previous generations in order to access power and privilege. This was the price of admision required by the racial hierarchy and it continues to exact its toll today.

We see this legacy of forgetfulness in how many white people struggle to talk about race and racism. When I facilitate racial reconciliation workshops, it is always the white participants who stumble when asked to describe their racial identity. The difficulties only increase when we begin considering the impact of the racial hierarchy. Rather than coming to these conversations with curiosity and humility, white Christians have often reverted to defensiveness, deflection, and denial: I never owned slaves! I have Black friends! I don’t have a racist bone in my body! We’re all Christians so we shouldn’t focus on our differences!

The forgetfulness of our race engenders a false sense of innocence. Because we have not remembered the cost - to ourselves and to our neighbors of color – of becoming white, we interpret our society with the kind of boot-strapping possibility only available to the privileged. If we think about racial segregation and oppression at all, it’s with a vague evaluation of someone else’s choice. We certainly don’t assume responsibility in this story; we are but innocent bystanders.

Only we’re not. And as Christians we ought to be quick to confess not our innocence but our susceptibility to sins of all kinds, including pernicious racial ones. As Isaiah admits in another common Advent passage, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” (Isa. 64:6) Why, for a people whose hope is so rooted in the grace of God which meets us as we confess our sins, is it so painful to acknowledge that we have, in the Apostle Paul’s language, conformed to the pattern of the world? We have forgotten.

Advent, with its invitation to remember, is the antidote that many of us need. As we approach our Savior’s birth, we are reminded of the danger posed to our faith by forgetfulness. We hear the stories of those like Simeon and Anna who recognized God’s Messiah precisely because they remembered. We hear the prophets pleading with God’s people to remember who they were - a sinful people in need of God’s comprehensive salvation.

If we listen closely enough, we’ll also hear the summons to remember our own troubled stories and histories. Advent beckons us to cast off our innocence and self-righteousness, to be done with the defensiveness, deflection, and denial which keep us from unity and solidarity with our sisters and brothers of color.

Remembering is not easy; there are reasons we’d rather forget. But as with every generation who has preceded us, when we choose to remember our histories – the losses, the complicities, the sins – we will also encounter the God has not never forgotten his people, who remembers his covenant with us. And with this memory newly refreshed, we can resolutely turn to the work of justice and reconciliation, freed of the forgetfulness and false innocence which has long kept us from our family in Christ.

---

About David W. Swanson

David is the founding pastor of New Community Covenant Church, a multiracial congregation on the South Side of Chicago. He also serves as the CEO of New Community Outreach, a non-profit organization working to reduce causes of trauma and raise opportunities for equity.

David’s book, Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Discipleship, is available now. Read more from David at his website, dwswanson.com.

On 'Bad Mothering'

His words infuriated me. I reacted instantaneously and clearly agitated, I replied, “I decide how to spend my time.” He had unknowingly struck a nerve – a deep wound inflicted by the tendencies of machismo[1]. It was a reflex response; the words slipped out of my mouth without pause or hesitation. He apologized and I hurriedly hung up the phone.

“I’ll let you go now so you can go be with your son,” had been his exact words. He was a romantic interest and I identified the cause of my anger almost immediately. I became a mother at nineteen. My eight-month pregnant-self waddled across the stage of my community college graduation. I had a plan. My son would be born in July and in late August, I would begin state college. And I did just that (a 19-year-old healthy body could perform such miracles). I had a whole village that supported me, and thanks to them, I eventually completed my doctoral studies. My son was nine years old when I became a doctora. 

As a single, Latina mom and first-generation college student from a low-income community, the obstacles were many. There were real challenges placed before me. My body was constantly exhausted from attending school full-time, working part-time, and raising a child. My mind attempted to juggle numerous tasks simultaneously and every second of the 24-hour period was carefully planned. My workload was unimaginable but, with the help of the abuela/os and tías, achievable. The unbearable burden was not the physical labor itself but the constant criticisms and accusations dressed as innocuous questions: “¿y cómo dejas a tu hijo tantas horas? Yo no podría” and frequent, “Y tu hijo, ¿con quién lo dejas?” paired with, “pobrecito, ¿y no lo extrañas?” I wish that at that moment I would have immediately identified them as fallacious statements upheld by the violence of patriarchy. But I didn’t.

Instead, I wept. I wept in the shower – in the place where your tears merge with the shower droplets, in the place where the noise can muffle your cries, in the place where solitude accompanies you. There were times when my tears would refuse to respect this sacred place and would instead travel to my bedroom or my car. “I am not a good mom,” I told myself. I despised myself for loving school, for loving my job. I ritualistically apologized to my son quietly as he slept every night and obsessively reminded him of how much I loved him during his waking hours. In reality, I was not trying to comfort him; I was trying to soothe myself. I was atoning for my bad mothering.

Society promotes absurd and unrealistic mothering scripts that are unsustainable. A good mother cannot have hobbies, should not enjoy a night out with friends, cannot spend money on eyelash extensions, oh, and God forbid she dates. It is ironic and almost comical that single mothers are antagonized for being single but are simultaneously forbidden from dating. If you are a Latina mother, you are also expected to ser buena cocinera, maestra, enfermera, chofer, costurera, y mucho más. La madre latina is, in reality, a mythical figure that is half human, half goddess. She is one that morphs into many things and does so willingly, effortlessly and enthusiastically. If you are a Christian Latina mother, these beliefs tend to be exacerbated by erroneous and domesticated interpretations of biblical womanhood put forth by male-dominated narratives[2]. Our love for our children seems to only be acceptable when it is self-consuming. The Latina mother is idealized, but women pay a high price for this veneration. There is nothing glorious about withstanding abuse and being disempowered, but marianismo[3] appears in the Latina/o culture masked as love and admiration. Marianismo is, in reality, a toxic ideology that stems from machismo and demands that mothers sacrifice their selfhood in service of patriarchal ideals. All those who deviate in any way from these prescriptive mothering norms are immediately deemed bad mothers.     

“75% of mothers with children are employed full time.”

— U.S. Department of Labor (2016)

The image of the traditional housewife whose primary and sole responsibility is to take care of the home and children while the father “brings home the bacon” seems to have been irreparably imprinted in the minds of many individuals. However, the reality is that 71% of U.S. mothers are formally employed[4] (Pew Research 2014). Sound judgement would lead one to conclude that since the majority of modern mothers do, in fact, work outside the home, gender expectations regarding tending the home have shifted. Regrettably, this is not the case. Women, particularly women of color, have long endured the “double shift,” working full-time as paid employees and spending considerably more time than men in unpaid labor in the form of childcare and housework. According to the U.S. Department of Labor (2019), men work an average of 7 hours and 54 minutes in paid work per day, while women labor a total of 7 hours and 20 minutes. The number of paid hours worked amounts to a 34-minute difference. In the household, however, women work an average of 120 minutes more than men and Latina women work more than men as compared to women of other ethnicities. These statistics reflect normal circumstances: that is, pre-COVID 19. The pandemic exacerbated these conditions, leading to what is now known as the “double double shift.”

During the coronavirus lockdown, women with full-time employment, a partner and children worked 20 hours a week more than men in domestic labor. The consequences of the unequal division of home duties are manifold and produce a domino effect that affects nearly every aspect of a woman’s life. Carrying a larger workload means less sleep, no time for a jog, or coffee with friends. Enjoying a TV show, attending a Bible study or reading daily devotionals might seem impossible. Leisure and spiritual activities promote mental wellbeing by providing a balanced life that can help reduce stress, anxiety and depression. In a poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation in the midst of the pandemic, 53% of women reported feeling worried or stressed, versus 37% of men. The gender gap is even more pronounced among parents of children under the age of eighteen: 57% of mothers versus 32% of fathers reported that their mental health has deteriorated due to the pandemic.

“Women will have achieved true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.””

— Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Moreover, increased household obligations impact women’s economic growth. The economic disadvantage that women have historically suffered has worsened since the pandemic. In September alone, approximately 865,000 women left the U.S. workforce, compared to 200,000 men (UN Women 2020). These figures are not coincidental; they reflect the heavy burden placed upon women’s shoulders who are forced to renounce paid employment in order to devote themselves to unrewarded and underappreciated unpaid care work. Women’s monumental efforts and hard work are not only undervalued, they are overtly punished. Formally employed mothers suffer monetarily in the form of reduced wages through what is known as the “motherhood penalty.” Women of color, who are disproportionately at the bottom of the pay scale, are punished the most. Conversely, fathers are rewarded with a “fatherhood bonus.” “Fatherhood is a valued characteristic of employers, signaling perhaps greater work commitment, stability and deservingness,” explains Dr. Michelle J. Budig. Professor Budig’s research shows, “That is the opposite of how parenthood by women is interpreted by employers. The conventional story is they work less and they’re more distractible when on the job.” In short, fatherhood is seen as an asset whereas motherhood is considered a liability.

“In 40% of all households with children, women are the breadwinners.”

— Pew Research Center (2013)

We analyze the statistics and they are disconcerting. We hear women’s first-hand experiences and we are disturbed. We live out these injustices in our own flesh and yet we continue to do the bidding of an oppressive system that pollutes our soul. I want to be transparent, but it pains me to write this: my most fervent accusers were not men – they were women. Machismo tactically utilizes us, women, as weapons against ourselves and each other. We become machismo’s most faithful little soldiers. We point the gun at each other and shoot relentlessly, not realizing that those bullets are ricocheting and piercing our own bodies. We surveil each other, we play the comparative game, destroy each other in hopes that machismo will honor us as la más santa – mejor que fulanita o zutanita. I, too, have internalized sexist mothering notions, not only by allowing guilt to completely consume me but also by being highly critical of other mothers. I attempted to liberate myself from the shame and guilt that suffocated me by condemning other mothers, as if obstructing their airways would help me breath. I sought liberation, not by destroying my shackles, but by placing them on someone else. This is perverse. “Being female doesn’t stop us from being sexist, we’ve had to choose early or late at 7, 14, 27, 56 to think different […] act different […] to change other women’s minds, to change our own minds, to change our feelings, ours, yours and mine […] The basis of our unity is that in the most important way we are all in the same boat, all subjected to the violent, pernicious ideas we have learned to hate, that we must all struggle against them.[5]” Sexism is the norm; it is how we are socialized. However, God did not create us to be oppressors of each other; our prosperity as God’s children is not based on how much suffering and punishment we inflict on one another. On the contrary, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26, NRSV). We must labor daily against our own social conditioning that incites us to endorse and perpetuate sexist ideals.

In order to overcome our conditioning, we (men and women) need to become aware and be intentional. We should, for example, examine the ways in which our daily expressions unconsciously sustain sexist assumptions. Mi esposa me ayuda con los niños (My wife helps me with the kids) is a phrase that I have never heard in my life. Mi esposo me ayuda con los niños (My husband helps me with the kids) is one that I hear often. The message that we transmit is that fathers “help” mothers while mothers simply fulfill their “motherly” duties. In the church, women are overrepresented in children’s ministry and vacation bible school and underrepresented as preachers and teachers. This rigid division of labor based on gender disadvantages everyone by restricting individuals from utilizing the fullness of their spiritual gifts.

Perfect mothering does not exist and “good mothers” come in many different shapes and sizes. The same can be said about fathers. Humans have an innate desire to be socially accepted but this approval should not cost us our livelihoods. One of my father’s parenting strengths was that he himself rebelled against cultural scripts that commanded him to place his two daughters in a gendered box. He refused to “play his part” and by doing so, allowed us to flourish and taught us a valuable lesson: to question and vigorously resist toxic gender scripts. About two years ago, I was in the car with my dad on our way to our favorite restaurant and I don’t recall the full context of our conversation but I vividly remember him saying something that no one had ever said to me explicitly, “Itzel, you’re a great mom.” A tear rolled down my cheek and I believed him.

---

About Dra. Itzel meduri soto

As an academic from el barrio, Dra. Meduri Soto strives to engage in scholarly work that honors and gives visibility to her community. Her faith drives her passion for justice as she seeks to reveal the ways in which certain language ideologies are constructed to operate unjustly against our communities. Her work acknowledges language as a powerful tool and promotes linguistic diversity in its different manifestations. Bicultural and bilingual identities are at the center of Dra. Meduri Soto’s work. She is a Spanish professor at Biola University where she teaches second language and heritage language learners. To learn more about her work, follow her on Instagram: @la.dra.itzel

---

Footnotes

[1] The Mexican National Commission to Prevent and Eradicate Violence Against Women (Comisión Nacional para Prevenir y Erradicar la Violencia Contra las Mujeres) defines machismo as, “certain behaviors and beliefs that promote, reproduce and reinforce various forms of discrimination against women. It is constructed through the polarization of gender roles and stereotypes that [strictly] define masculinity and femininity. Its main characteristic is the degradation of the feminine; its major form of expression, violence in any of its types and forms against women” (2016).  

[2] In Vindicating the Vixens: Revisiting Sexualized, Vilified and Marginalized Women of the Bible, Sandra Glahn states, “In addition to maligning some Bible women, we have marginalized others wrongly downplaying or even ignoring their contributions” (15).

[3] “In many Latin American or Hispanic cultures, an idealized traditional feminine gender role characterized by submissiveness, selflessness, chastity, hyperfemininity, and acceptance of machismo in males” (APA Dictionary of Psychology).

[4] I use “formally employed” as opposed to “working mothers” because the latter term erroneously implies that mothers who take care of the home are not, in fact, “working.”

[5] Rosario Morales, We’re All in the Same Boat (1981).