Brown in Red Orange County

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Written By Open Plaza

Dr. João Chaves talks to Dr. Jonathan Calvillo about his research on faith and ethnicity in Santa Ana, a Mexican majority city in one of California’s most conservative counties

Mural at the former Guest Inn and Suites hotel, now The Orchard, a permanent housing community for the homeless in Santa Ana, California, 2017. Art: Brian Peterson (Founder of Faces of Mankind) and Damin Lujan (Santa Ana street artist). Photo: Brian…

Mural at the former Guest Inn and Suites hotel, now The Orchard, a permanent housing community for the homeless in Santa Ana, California, 2017. Art: Brian Peterson (Founder of Faces of Mankind) and Damin Lujan (Santa Ana street artist). Photo: Brian Peterson, courtesy Faces of Santa Ana

 
 

Dr. João Chaves talks to sociologist Dr. Jonathan Calvillo about his research and about life in Santa Ana, a hub of Latinx activity in one of the most conservative counties of California—a city once dubbed by the media as the hardest place to live in the U.S. Dr. Calvillo’s most recent book, The Saints of Santa Ana: Faith and Ethnicity in a Mexican Majority City (Oxford University Press, 2020), explores the role of faith in shaping the experiences and identities of Catholic and Evangelical Mexican immigrants within multigenerational Latinx neighborhoods. “To tell the story of Santa Ana,” Dr. Calvillo insists, “you must not discount the religious communities that are for and by Latinos.”

 
 
 

"Drawing on years of ethnographic inquiry, Jonathan Calvillo provides a fascinating picture of the routine and sacred ways that Catholicism and Evangelicalism structure daily life and understandings of group boundaries among Latinx immigrants. Breaking new ground with its analytical rigor and impressive empirical scope, The Saints of Santa Ana is beautifully written and is essential reading for race, religion, and immigration scholars alike."

—G. Cristina Mora, Associate Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley

 
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Jonathan Calvillo

Dr. Jonathan Calvillo is Assistant Professor of Sociology of Religion at Boston University School of Theology. His teaching and research center on the sociological study of religion, race and ethnicity, and immigration. His scholarship examines how religious affiliation influences ethnic identity construction among Latinxs. His new book, The Saints of Santa Ana, from Oxford University Press, examines how practices of lived religion shape ethnic identity among Catholic and evangelical Mexican immigrants. Through his ethnographic research at numerous churches, Dr. Calvillo has contributed to the Latino Protestant Congregations project, which spotlights themes of worship practices, ethnic identity, and community engagement in Latinx churches. Additionally, he has conducted neighborhood-based research within urban, Latinx communities, examining how lived religion shapes collective identities. Alongside his qualitative research, he is currently conducting archival research on Latinx congregations and religious movements. Finally, Dr. Calvillo is conducting an oral history project on hip hop, ethnoracial identities, and spirituality among Latinxs. Born and raised in Southern California, Dr. Calvillo is a second-generation Mexican American. He resides with his partner Nani and their three children in the city of Boston, MA.

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João Chaves

Dr. João Chaves is Assistant Professor of Evangelism and Mission at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and Associate Director for Programming at the Hispanic Theological Initiative (HTI). He holds a PhD in Religion from Baylor University, and has presented and published his research broadly, both in English and in Portuguese. Dr. Chaves is the author of four books, including Migrational Religion: Context and Creativity in the Latinx Diaspora (Baylor University Press, 2021) and The Global Mission of the Jim Crow South: Southern Baptist Missions and the Shaping of Latin American Evangelicalism (Mercer University Press, 2022). His forthcoming book, co-written with Mikeal Parsons, is titled Remembering Antônia Teixeira: A Story if Missions, Violence, and Institutional Hypocrisy (Eerdmans, 2023). He has contributed to numerous book reviews, peer-reviewed articles, and chapters in larger works. His ongoing projects include editing “Christianity, Race, and Ethnicity: Latinx Critical Conversations on Identity Construction and Religious Participation” for Perspectives in Religious Studies (Winter 2022) and co-editing, with T. Laine Scales, the forthcoming book Baptists and the Kingdom of God (Baylor University Press, 2023). Dr. Chaves is also co-editor for the Perspectives on Baptist Identity book series, published by Mercer University Press, and works with the Editorial Board for the HTI Series on Religion and Theology En Conjunto, a book series published by Baylor University Press.

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