A multidisciplinary collection of essays examining the influence of Mexican American religion on Mexican American literature, art, politics, and popular culture.

The Latino community in the United States is commonly stereotyped as Roman Catholic and politically passive. Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States challenges and revises these stereotypes by demonstrating the critical influence of Latino Catholics, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Mainline Protestants, and others on political, civic, and social engagement in the United States and Puerto Rico. It also revises the ostensibly secular narrative of Latino history and politics. The authors analyze the critical role that institutional, popular, and civil religion have played in Latino activism. This timely book offers readers a new framework by which to understand and to interpret the central importance of religious symbols, rhetoric, ideology, world-views, and leaders to Latino religions and politics over the past 150 years.

Why has Los Angeles been a hotspot for religious activism, innovation, and diversity? What makes this Southern California metropolis conducive to spiritual experimentation and new ways of believing and belonging? A center of world religions, Los Angeles is the birthplace of Pentecostalism, the site of the largest Roman Catholic diocese in the United States, the home of more Buddhists anywhere except for Asia, and home base for myriad transnational, spiritual movements. Religion in Los Angeles examines historical and contemporary examples of Angelenos’ openness to new forms of belief and practice in congregations, communities, and civic life. Case studies include Latino spiritualities and social activism Hybrid Jewish identities Capitalism and fundamentalism in early twentieth-century Los Angeles The impact of the 1960s on Roman Catholic Angelenos Christianity through a Hindu lens. Highlighted throughout the work are themes including the impact of the city’s diversity on religious experimentation, the importance of Los Angeles’ location in relation to the Mexican border and as a gateway to the Pacific, and the impact of local politics, social trends, and cultural change on religious innovation. The volume also examines the creative pull between change and continuity and the recognition that religious communities participate in civic and global conversations. Religion in Los Angeles includes contributions by leading sociologists, anthropologists, and historians. This cutting-edge work will be of interest to students and scholars of religious history, religion in America, sociology of religion, American studies, urban studies, and race/ethnic studies.

In this pioneering collection of essays, experts from various disciplines examine the remarkable contribution of Hispanic churches to U.S. society and the common challenges church leaders face in serving the country’s growing Latino population.

Religion and social action is both empowering and limiting for women. This study shows the Guadalupanas' awareness of themselves as agents for change and their difficulties in understanding and maintaining their limited gendered roles within church and community.