Occupying the Church

While most studies on Latina/o religious politics center on clergy or religious leadership, this chapter investigates the role of activists outside of the church (nonclergy) with little or no real strong ties to the institutional church. Rather than assume that Latina/o religious politics begins with religious leadership, this chapter proposes a narrative framework for religious politics in the civil rights era that outlines how both religious insiders and outsiders together came to shape, influence, and in many ways undergird what historian Anthony M. Stevens Arroyo has called the “Latino religious resurgence” in the 1970s. This chapter investigates the period from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, an era that saw the rise—theologically and culturally—of Latina/o religious politics. The chapter argues that to understand this era we must move beyond the walls of the church and the religious leadership that is so often at the center of these narratives. Instead, we must include the broad range of religious experiences in the Latina/o community, both formal and informal, religious and nonreligious, that have pushed back against urban renewal, racial discrimination, and anti-immigrant/refugee policies.