Open Plaza 10/18/21 Open Plaza 10/18/21

Migrational Religion

Daniel Montañez and Dr. João Chaves discuss his new book on context and creativity in the Latinx Diaspora

*Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer meets New York City’s Statue of Liberty. Image source: freakingnews*

Migrational Religion: Context and Creativity in the Latinx Diaspora (Baylor University Press, 2021) by Dr. João Chaves offers an account of the dynamics that shape the role of immigrant churches in the United States. Many scholars have documented how migration from Latin America to the United States shapes the interconnected spheres of religious participation, political engagement, and civic formation in host countries. What has largely gone unexplored is how the experiences of migration and adaptation to the host country also shape the ecclesiological arrangements, theological imagination, and communal strategies of immigrant religious networks.

Dr. Chaves’s work acts as a case study of a network formed by communities of Brazilian immigrants who, although affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, formed a distinctive ethnic association. Based on six years of ethnographic work in eleven congregations across the United States, dozens of interviews with Brazilian pastors, and extensive archival history in English and Portuguese, Migrational Religion documents how such churches adapted to unique challenges, and reveals how the diasporic experience fosters incipient theologies in churches of the Latinx diaspora.

In this OP Talks feature, HTI scholar and Boston University doctoral student Daniel Montañez engages Dr. Chaves in conversation as part of a book-launch event organized by the Mygration Christian Conference, an organization founded by Montañez that explores “God's heart through stories of immigration.”

Original air date: 11 October 2021

Migrational Religion: Context and Creativity in the Latinx Diaspora by João Chaves (Baylor University Press, 2021)

PURCHASE

“João Chaves understands his interlocutors as very few others do. He masterfully interweaves the stories of individuals, congregations, and transnational migrant networks, underscoring their impact across nations, cultures, and faith communities.”

—Raimundo C. Barreto
Associate Professor of World Christianity
Princeton Theological Seminary

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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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Daniel Montañez is a PhD student at Boston University in the area of theology, ethics, and philosophy, and an adjunct instructor for the Latino and Global Ministries Program at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Montañez’ research focuses on centering the voices of immigrants as an authoritative locus for theological reflection. He seeks to construct a social ethic of migration that can respond to the humanitarian crisis facing migrants in our modern world. He is the founder and director of Mygration Christian Conference, an organization that seeks to explore God’s heart through the stories of migration in the Bible. He also serves as Director for the Church of God Migration Crisis Initiative, a ministry that seeks to provide church leaders with the biblical, pastoral, and ministerial preparation to positively and proactively respond to the crisis facing our immigrant communities in the United States. Montañez holds an STM from Boston University, an MDiv from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and a BBA in Management from St. Mary’s University. Born in Visalia, CA to a Mexican mother and a Puerto Rican father, he is dedicated to serving his Latine community at the intersection of the Church, the academy, and the public square.

Open Plaza 7/12/21 Open Plaza 7/12/21

The Stories We Tell Each Other

Stephen Adubato talks to Angie Cruz about the theological themes and imagery in her novel Dominicana

Stephen Adubato talks to Angie Cruz about the theological themes and imagery in her novel Dominicana

A wedding in Washington Heights, New York City, 1971. Photo: Winston Vargas — *A wedding in Washington Heights, New York City, 1971.* *Photo: Winston Vargas*

Educator Stephen Adubato talks to Angie Cruz about the Catholic themes and imagery present in her novel Dominicana (Flatiron Books, 2019), recently published in Spanish (trans. Kianny Antigua; Editorial Siete Cuentos, 2021). The discussion also touches on how the migration story of Cruz’s mother served as inspiration for the main character Ana Canción. Adubato and Cruz explore how understanding inherited generational trauma can help us heal, and how media frames our view of the world, including visions of ourselves.

“When people speak about why we need more books being published by people of color, why we need more movies made by people of color,” says Cruz, “it's really because storytelling, narrative — even the stories we tell each other — really expand the possibility of how we can move in the world.”

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Stephen G. Adubato studied Spanish Literature and Religious Studies at Fordham University and went on to pursue graduate work in Moral Theology at Seton Hall. Since then, he has taught philosophy and theology at both the secondary and university levels. He is currently spending a year working as a Journalism Fellow for Compact Magazine through the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. He is a contributing writer for the National Catholic Reporter and has published with over forty other publications, including Newsweek, The New York Daily News, The Tablet, America: The Jesuit Review, Nylon, and The Hedgehog Review. He also hosts the Cracks in Postmodernity blog and podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @stephengadubato.

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Angie Cruz is a novelist and editor. Her novel Dominicana is the inaugural book pick for GMA book club and chosen as the 2019/2020 Wordup Uptown Reads. It was shortlisted for The Women’s Prize, longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction, The Aspen Words Literary Prize, a RUSA Notable book, and the winner of the ALA/YALSA Alex Award in fiction. Cruz is the author of two other novels, Soledad and Let It Rain Coffee, and is the recipient of numerous fellowships and residencies, including the Lighthouse Fellowship, Siena Art Institute, and the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Fellowship. She has published shorter works in The Paris Review, VQR, Callaloo, Gulf Coast, and other journals. She is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the award-winning literary journal Aster(ix). Cruz is an Associate professor at University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches in the MFA program and splits her time between Pittsburgh. New York, and Turin.

Open Plaza 2/15/21 Open Plaza 2/15/21

Cuban Literature in the Age of Black Insurrection

Dr. Elías Ortega-Aponte and Dr. Matthew Pettway discuss his debut book on how two 19th-century Cuban writers envisioned emancipation through the lens of African spirituality

"View of the Harbor and Town of Matanzas from the Hill," 1870. Source: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library Digital Collections — *"View of the Harbor and Town of Matanzas from the Hill," 1870. Source:* *Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library Digital Collections*

Dr. Elías Ortega-Aponte and Dr. Matthew Pettway discuss his debut book Cuban Literature in the Age of Black Insurrection: Manzano, Plácido, and Afro-Latino Religion (University Press of Mississippi, 2019). Dr. Pettway examines how the portrayal of African ideas of spirit and cosmos in otherwise conventional texts recur throughout early Cuban literature and became the basis for the antislavery philosophy of writers Juan Francisco Manzano and Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés (Plácido). With cultural roots in Puerto Rico and in Trinidad, respectively, Dr. Ortega-Aponte and Dr. Pettway engage in a conversation on AfroLatinidades that flows like, in the memorable words of 19th-century poet Lola Rodríguez de Tió, “two wings of the same bird.”

Official-Book-Cover-Dr.-Matthew-Pettway.jpg

This book is an original study on the influence of religion in the writings of two nineteenth-century Cuban writers, that although very recognized and studied, have not been analyzed from the point of view of religion (Catholicism and African influenced)…This book will be of interest to students and scholars in Cuban studies, Caribbean studies, religious studies and African Diaspora studies.

—Jossianna Arroyo-Martínez, Chair/Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin

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Dr. Elías Ortega-Aponte, a Professor of Religion, Ethics, and Leadership, is the President of Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago, IL. Dr. Ortega is an interdisciplinary scholar who received his MDiv and PhD (Religion and Society, Magna Cum Laude) from Princeton Theological Seminary (2005, 2011). He also holds a B.A. in Communications Arts & Sciences and Philosophy and Religion from Calvin College. Prior to Meadville Lombard Theological School, Dr. Ortega served as Associate Professor of Social Theory and Religious Ethics at Drew University Theological School. He is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Commission on Institutional Change.

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Dr. Matthew Pettway is Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of South Alabama, where he teaches Afro-Latin American, Caribbean, and Spanish literatures, and is associated with the Africana Studies Program. A native of Detroit, MI, Dr. Pettway holds a PhD in Hispanic Cultural Studies and an MA in Spanish and Latin American Literatures from Michigan State University. His research examines race, slavery, and African ideas of spirit and cosmos in nineteenth-century black Cuban literature. Dr. Pettway has a keen interest in how Afro-Latin Americans who endured extreme trauma in the colonial era took hold of the aesthetic and spiritual tools available to them to conceive a poetics of emancipation. His research is part of a broader project of literary and historical recovery, akin to what Toni Morrison has termed “a kind of literary archaeology.” Dr. Pettway’s work has appeared in American Studies Journal, PALARA, The Zora Neale Hurston Forum, The Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography, the Cuban journal Del Caribe, and his article “The Altar, The Oath and the Body of Christ: Ritual Poetics and Cuban Racial Politics of 1844” is the inaugural chapter in Black Writing, Culture and the State in Latin America, edited by Jerome Branche (Vanderbilt University Press, 2015). Dr. Pettway’s first book, Cuban Literature in the Age of Black Insurrection: Manzano, Plácido and Afro-Latino Religion (2019), is part of the Caribbean Studies Series of the University Press of Mississippi.