This is the amazing untold story of the Los Angeles sanctuary movement's champion, Father Luis Olivares (1934–1993), a Catholic priest and a charismatic, faith-driven leader for social justice. Beginning in 1980 and continuing for most of the decade, hundreds of thousands of Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees made the hazardous journey to the United States, seeking asylum from political repression and violence in their home states. Instead of being welcomed by the "country of immigrants," they were rebuffed by the Reagan administration, which supported the governments from which they fled. To counter this policy, a powerful sanctuary movement rose up to provide safe havens in churches and synagogues for thousands of Central American refugees. Based on previously unexplored archives and over ninety oral histories, this compelling biography traces the life of a complex and constantly evolving individual, from Olivares's humble beginnings in San Antonio, Texas, to his close friendship with legendary civil rights leader Cesar Chavez and his historic leadership of the United Neighborhoods Organization and the sanctuary movement.

The Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s was a movement led by white religious liberals that housed Central Americans fleeing dictatorships supported by the United States government, giving them a platform to speak about the situation in their countries of origin. This book focuses on the movement's whiteness by centering the voices of recipients of sanctuary and taking their critiques seriously. The result is an account of the movement that takes seriously the agential limitations of sanctuary and the struggles for agency by recipients. Using interviews with participants in the movement as well auto-ethnographic research as the white pastor of a church in the New Sanctuary Movement, this book situates the sanctuary as site for theological reflection on some of the most pressing issues facing the Church today – the possibilities of testimony, the Holy Spirit, ecclesiology, and mercy. In doing so, it proposes a new theoretical framework for thinking about practice by introducing readers to Judith Butler's theories of subjectivation and arguing for ethnographically engaged theology that is able to think beyond virtue and excellence towards an understanding of fugitivity.

"This handbook is organized by various themes with the study of U.S. Latina/x/o Christianities. Keeping in mind that the Oxford Handbooks are geared toward graduate students and professors, the organization and layout of this handbook provides a thorough examination of interlocking themes within the academic study of Latina/x/o Christian histories, sociologies, and anthropologies. These essays, taken individually and collectively, pay attention to both the diachronic (over time, historical) as well as the synchronic (contemporary). Moreover, the essays cover the major U.S. Latina/x/o ethnic groups as well as major Christian denominations and movements. Finally, essays in the handbook attend to important intersectional realities that include empire, migration, diaspora, hybridities, borderlands, and gender"--

This volume brings together a number of critical essays on three selected topics: biography, nationhood, and globalism. Written exclusively for this book by specialists from Mexico, Germany, and the United States, the essays propose a reexamination of Mexican American cultural history from a twenty-first century standpoint, written in English and approached from different analytical models and critical methods, but free of theoretical jargon. The essays range from biographies and memoirs by leading Chicano historians and studies of globalism during the rule of Imperial Spain (1492-1898), to the modern rise and global influence of the United States, particularly in Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean. Also included are critical studies of novels by Chicano, Latin American, and Caribbean writers who narrate and represent the dominant role played by the United States both within the nation itself and in the Caribbean, thus illustrating the historical parallels and relations that bind Latinos and Americans of Mexican descent. This book will be of importance to literary historians, literary critics, teachers, students, and readers interested in stimulating and unconventional studies of Mexican American cultural history from a global perspective.

At the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century, the Latino minority, the biggest and fastest growing in the United States, is at a crossroads. Is assimilation taking place in comparable ways to previous immigrant groups? Are the links to the countries of origin being redefined in the age of contested globalism? The Oxford Handbook of Latino Studies reflects on these questions, offering a sweeping exploration of Latinas and Latinos' complex experiences in the United States. Twenty-four essays discuss various aspects of Latino life and history, from literature, popular culture, and music, to religion, philosophy, and language identity.

City of Dignity illuminates how liberal Protestants quietly, yet indelibly, shaped the progressive ethics of postwar Los Angeles. Contemporary Los Angeles is commonly seen as an American bulwark of progressive secular politics, a place that values immigration, equity, diversity, and human rights. But what accounts for the city’s embrace of such staunchly liberal values, which are more hotly contested in other parts of the country? The answer, Sean Dempsey reveals, lies not with those frequent targets of credit and blame—Democrats in Hollywood—but instead with liberal Protestants and other steadfast religious organizations of the postwar era. As the Religious Right movement emerged in the 1970s, progressive religious activists quietly began promoting an ethical vision that made waves worldwide but saw the largest impact in its place of origin: metropolitan Los Angeles. At the center of this vision lay the concept of human dignity—entwining the integral importance of political and expressive freedom with the moral sanctity of the human condition—which suffused all of the political values that arose from it, whether tolerance, diversity, or equality of opportunity. The work of these religious organizations birthed such phenomena as the Sanctuary Movement—which provided safe haven for refugees fleeing conflict-torn Central America—and advocacy for the homeless, both of which became increasingly fraught issues amid the rising tides of neoliberalism and conservatism. City of Dignity explores how these interwoven spiritual and theological strands found common ground—and made common impacts—in the humanitarian ecosystem of one of America’s largest and most dynamic metro areas.