Predicadores

Hispanic Preaching and Immigrant Identity

Tito Madrazo

• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781481313926
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Hispanic Protestants have been one of the most rapidly growing demographic groups in the United States over the last few decades. Sociologists have written about the cultural and political identities of this group, and theologians have reflected on theology and ethics from Hispanic Protestant perspectives, but considerably less attention has been paid to the predicadores /preachers in Hispanic Protestant congregations and the messages they proclaim on a weekly basis.

In Predicadores: Hispanic Preaching and Immigrant Identity, Tito Madrazo explores the sermons of Hispanic Protestant preachers within the context of their individual and communal journeys. Formed by overlapping experiences of migration and calling and rooted in their own bilingual and bicultural realities, the first-generation preachers who collaborated in this study interpret and proclaim Scripture in ways that refuse easy characterization. What is certain is that their preaching—which incorporates both traditional and liberative elements—resonates deeply with their immigrant congregations. Madrazo contends that the power of these preachers lies in how they consistently proclaim the characteristics of God that have been most significant to them in their own migrations.

Based on four years of collaborative ethnographic research, Predicadores reveals the richness of everyday preaching in local Hispanic Protestant congregations. Madrazo utilizes contemporary sociology, history, and theology in order to situate this study's preachers within broader discourses. The witness of Hispanic Protestant predicadores is a reminder of the homiletical importance of understanding and proclaiming the gospel from within particular cultures.

1

Introduction

No one arrives at Iglesia Agua Viva1 by accident. The building in which the church meets is one of a dozen identically nondescript brick boxes slotted along a main traffic corridor in the Raleigh-Durham area behind a Super Walmart.2 Most of the units are occupied by dry cleaners, nail salons, and the occasional start-up restaurant. As I weave my way through them for the first time, I fail to see any sign of a church, so I stop at a small café and ask if they know of a Spanish-speaking church in the area. They suggest there might be one in the final unit, by the storage buildings.

Emboldened by this new information, I set out again toward the back of the development where most of the buildings are vacant. I park by the only one that has any cars around it, walk up to the nearest door, and read the white lettering on the glass. It signals the presence of a Pentecostal congregation, but nothing about that church’s name or the name of its minister suggests that it is a Hispanic3 community of faith. I turn to walk back to my car when I notice a small sign sticking up out of the flowerbed. In cursive lettering against a blue sky, it reads, Iglesia Agua Viva.

I open the door and step into a small entry area with a decorative table. In the corner to my left is a metal folding chair. Having spoken with one of the pastors previously only by phone, I do not want to walk in any further and cause a disruption. I sit down on the chair, from which I can see down a narrow hallway into the main space used for the worship service. A small group of musicians appears to be practicing the songs to be used in that afternoon’s worship service. Young people (middle- and high-school age) drift in and out of the main classroom to my right, speaking mostly English and playing on smart phones and tablets. The narrow entrance hallway, which turns immediately right and then left, forces people to come into contact with one another. Adults, teenagers, and children are constantly greeting one another in Spanish and English and excusing themselves as they navigate the congested space.

The one difficulty for these people milling around prior to the 2:30 p.m. start of the worship service is what to do about me. Only Pastor Esteban is expecting me, so the other members of Iglesia Agua Viva are somewhat startled by my presence there in the entryway. I am dressed as many of them are in khaki slacks, a collared shirt, and a light jacket, but all of them—young and old—treat me as someone out of place. Many of them walk by quickly or wave to make up for the fact that they have been staring. Several say hello with native North Carolina accents (the young) or with less-native accents (their parents). One gentleman in his mid-fifties even goes so far as to let me know his name is “Ma-ark.” Though I was born in Venezuela and grew up speaking a substantial amount of Spanish at home, these people recognize me as “other” on this Sunday. I am treated politely, but superficially—previously lively conversations die in my presence.

After a few more minutes, one of the copastors of the congregation, Esteban Pérez, arrives. He of course also recognizes me as an outsider, but because of our previous conversation, he knows who I am and welcomes me warmly with a doble abrazo / double embrace.4 We step into the classroom to my right, and I repeat to him what I had told him on the phone—that I have a scholarly interest in learning more about life and practices in a Hispanic immigrant congregation. Esteban still seems somewhat surprised that participating and observing in his church could be part of genuine academic work, but he also appears to be somewhat flattered. He begins to tell me more about his own experience—immigrating from the Dominican Republic as a young adult with his wife, living in New York, and ultimately settling in the Raleigh area. He had served as a volunteer youth minister at a church in another community for several years before sensing a call to begin a new church in this community. Iglesia Agua Viva had begun four years before and had already met in three different locations. The forty to fifty members include immigrants from seven different Latin American countries.

Esteban suddenly excuses himself. His high-school age son was unable to be there to play the drums, so Esteban is filling in for him. As I follow him through the door of the classroom, I decide to enter the sanctuary and take a less conspicuous spot near the rear. The group that I had heard practicing includes Octavio, a large man of Afro-Caribbean descent who stands as he plays the keyboard; Teodora, one of the church leaders who is directing the singing from the pulpit; and several teenage girls who are standing between them.

As more people enter the worship space from the door at the rear, they leave a wide margin of empty chairs between themselves and me. Gradually, almost all of the chairs are occupied except for the one on my right and the two on my left. The musicians complete their practice, and Teodora begins to speak a word of greeting from the pulpit. Having noticed the young people’s widespread use of tablets, I take out my own iPad and begin taking notes as unobtrusively as possible.

Following her welcome, Teodora invites those present to join her in prayer. Some people stand, while others remain seated. Some kneel on the floor facing the back of the room, their elbows on their seats. Teodora introduces various topics of prayer, and members of the congregation fill in the gaps with their own concurrent prayers. During longer stretches of extemporaneous prayer by Teodora, others chime in with brief words of assent or petition like “Sí, Senor / Yes, Lord” or “Por favor / Please.” This time of prayer lasts approximately twenty-five minutes.

When the prayer time ends, Octavio begins to play the keyboard. Esteban comes in on the drums, and Teodora and the three young girls begin leading the singing of contemporary praise songs. One of the middle school boys operates a laptop hooked up to a projector that displays the words on a screen above the drum set. The music shakes the furniture in the small space, but no one but me appears to notice. Everyone sings, and several members of the congregation raise their hands and sway to the merengue-flavored beat. Each song has several movements back from verse to chorus and occasionally to a bridge. The songs are approximately five minutes long each, and Octavio and Teodora lead the congregation in six of them. Octavio plays chords by ear without the use of written music and gives the others visual cues when beginning a new song or when moving back and forth within a given song.

When the singing ends, Esteban stands up from behind the drum set and comes to the pulpit, perspiring heavily. He offers up one more prayer as the remaining musicians go to their seats. When his eyes open, he looks directly at me and begins to talk about who I am and what I am doing there. The people glance at me as he speaks. Then Esteban asks me to come to the pulpit and share a few words about my work. I can see the looks of curiosity in the eyes of the congregation when I address them in fluent Spanish, but I begin to notice something else as well. Immediately after I speak, I can feel that the members of Iglesia Agua Viva are noticeably less stiff in their interactions around me. They now know that I am, at least to some degree, one of them.5 As Esteban begins his sermon by directing our attention to various passages of Scripture, one of the women steps across the two empty spaces that separate us and offers to let me use her Bible. After the service, “Ma-ark” apologizes to me for not having properly introduced himself as “Marco,” and we have a good conversation about his job as a long-haul trucker.

Hispanic Protestant Growth

My first experience at Iglesia Agua Viva (IAV) provided an entrée into the rapidly expanding world of Hispanic Protestantism in the United States. This growth, of course, parallels the similarly striking growth of the total Hispanic population in this country. According to the Pew Research Center’s tabulations, the Hispanic population of the United States continues to grow at an incredibly rapid pace, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of the overall population. From 2000 to 2015, the Hispanic population of the United States increased from 35,204,480 to 56,476,777.6 This increase of more than 21 million, or just over 60 percent, in fifteen years was driven largely by the rapidly expanding native-born population of Hispanics, which grew by roughly 16 million and represented 75.2 percent of the overall growth. Continuing immigration from Latin American countries, in comparison, only accounted for 24.8 percent of the growth in the Hispanic population. Compared to the total population of the United States, the Hispanic segment of society expanded from 12.5 percent in 2000 to 17.6 percent in 2015, increasing their share of the overall population by 40.8 percent in just fifteen years.

In the state of North Carolina, where I conducted my research, the growth of the Hispanic population has been even more stunning. As recently as 1990, the U.S. Census showed only 76,726 individuals identified as Hispanic out of a total state population of 6,628,637. At that point, the Hispanic share of the state population was barely more than 1 percent. Over the subsequent twenty-five years, the Hispanic population demonstrated remarkable growth. Between 1990 and 2015, the number of individuals self-identified as Hispanic increased from 76,726 to 913,895, a growth rate of 1,091.1 percent. Their share of the total North Carolina population has also increased markedly over the course of those years. Between 1990 and 2015, the total population of North Carolina expanded dramatically from 6,628,637 residents to 10,042,802, for a total growth rate of 51.5 percent. Even so, the Hispanic share of the population still grew more than sevenfold over the same period—from 1.2 percent to 9.1 percent. Much of the research on Hispanics and religion has focused on areas like the Northeast, Southwest, Florida, or California with their long-established Hispanic populations, but the phenomenon of immigration “to new areas, largely situated in more religious regions such as the U.S. Southeast, offers a unique opportunity to refocus” the lens through which Hispanic religious practices are viewed and understood.7

Table 1.1: North Carolina Hispanic Population Growth8

	1990	2000	2010	2015
Hispanic population	76,726	378,963	800,998	913,895
Hispanic population percentage increase from 1990	—	393.9%	943.9%	1091.1%
Total population	6,628,637	8,049,313	9,535,692	10,042,802
Hispanic population as a percentage of total population	1.2%	4.7%	8.4%	9.1%

Within the larger narrative of Hispanic growth in the United States is the often-underreported increase of the Hispanic Protestant population in both absolute and relative terms. As recently as 1970, Leo Grebler, Joan Moore, and Ralph Guzman, authors of The Mexican American People: The Nation’s Second Largest Minority, wrote that “statistically, Protestantism is not important in the Mexican American population.”9 This is no longer the case either for Mexican Americans or for the Hispanic population as a whole. The 2007 Pew study “Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion” showed that although 68 percent of Latinos in the United States still identify as Roman Catholics, 20 percent of them now identify as Protestant—15 percent as born-again or evangelical Protestants and 5 percent as members of mainline Protestant denominations.10 These percentages equate to more than 11 million Hispanic Protestants in the United States.

Hispanic Protestant Preachers and Preaching

The growing population of Hispanic Protestants has generated significant interest among social scientists who have explored the role of congregations in cultural assimilation and ethnic identity maintenance.11 Historians have chronicled the growth of the Hispanic Protestant population within specific denominations12 and regions,13 and missiologists from various Protestant traditions have taken greater notice of the social concerns of Hispanic communities that represent the growing edge of their denominations in the United States. Yet scholars have paid little if any attention to the preachers or the preaching within Hispanic Protestant congregations such as Iglesia Agua Viva.

What is the nature of preaching in Hispanic Protestant churches? What are its predominant themes and goals? These questions assume a universality to the Hispanic-American experience that simply doesn’t exist. Upon which Hispanic population should we base our answer? A well-established Presbyterian congregation in New York composed of descendants of the Puerto Rican diaspora? A United Methodist church in South Texas made up of Mexican Americans who have identified as Protestants for five generations? A storefront Pentecostal church in Florida whose members all came from a parent church in Colombi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Viajes Concurrentes / Overlapping Journeys
• 3. Identidades Multiples / Multiple Identities
• 4. La Predicación Misma / The Preaching Itself
• 5. Predicadoras / Female Preachers
• 6. Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index