This exploration of Iberian, Latin American, and US-Hispanic representations of Christ focuses on outliers in art, literature, and theology: Spanish painter Salvador Dalí, Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, Spanish existentialist Miguel de Unamuno, Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff, and Mexican philosopher José Vasconcelos, some of the most brilliant stars in the Spanish and Latin American firmament. Their work, and that of others, stands out from the conventional and the traditional, stretching our imagination by opening our eyes to what we do not want to see. The author also reflects on such significant lesser-known writers as New Mexican author, painter, and priest Fray Angélico Chávez; Argentine writer and political leader Ricardo Rojas, author of The Invisible Christ; Mexican American theologian Virgilio Elizondo; and Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa, author of Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. He shows how artists project their concerns onto representations of Christ and how the perceptions of the reader and viewer reflect their culture and their psychology. Along the way, Candelaria explores the philosophical issues of representation in aesthetics and the problems of hermeneutics and identity.

This first-of-its-kind collection reveals U.S. Latino/a theological scholarship as a vital terrain of study in the search for better understanding of the varieties of religious experience in the United States. While the insights of Latino/a theologians from Central and South America have gained attention among professional theologians, until now the role of U.S. Latino/a theology in the formation of North American theological identity has been largely unacknowledged. Nonetheless, the four-centuries old Latino/a presence in the United States has been forming a rich, creative, and distinctively North American Latino/a Christology. Exploring both constructive theology and popular religion, this collection of essays from top U.S. Latino/a scholars reveals the varieties of religious experience in the United States and the importance of Latino/a understandings of Christ to both academy and community.

In the late 1960s, the American city found itself in steep decline. An urban crisis fueled by federal policy wreaked destruction and displacement on poor and working-class families. The urban drama included religious institutions, themselves undergoing fundamental change, that debated whether to stay in the city or move to the suburbs. Against the backdrop of the Black and Brown Power movements, which challenged economic inequality and white supremacy, young Latino radicals began occupying churches and disrupting services to compel church communities to join their protests against urban renewal, poverty, police brutality, and racism. Apostles of Change tells the story of these occupations and establishes their context within the urban crisis; relates the tensions they created; and articulates the activists' bold, new vision for the church and the world. Through case studies from Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and Houston, Felipe Hinojosa reveals how Latino freedom movements frequently crossed boundaries between faith and politics and argues that understanding the history of these radical politics is essential to understanding the dynamic changes in Latino religious groups from the late 1960s to the early 1980s.

Salvador Dalø: nuclear mystical Christ -- Fray Angelico Chavez: the Virgin of Port Lligat -- José Clemente Orozco: Christ Prometheus -- Miguel de Unamuno: the Quixotic Christ -- Jorge Luis Borges: the fictional Christ -- Richard Rojas: the invisible Christ -- Liberation theology: Christ the liberator -- The Mestizo Christ -- Coda.

A sequel to the popular Mujerista Theology that addresses themes relevant at the beginning of the 21st century.Mujerista theology begins with personal experience and moves toward a theology that advances the dignity and liberation of all Hispanic/Latino women. This collection of essays combining personal narratives and theological discourse brings together important insights into the concerns of Hispanic women, the ways in which they can help shape theology, and the roles they can take on in the church.Divided into two sections, Part 1, The Personal Is Political, presents three essays on the author?s religious-theological experiences, showing how they help form her theology. The eight essays in Part 2, In God?s Image--Latinas and Our Struggles, focus on theological understandings essential for justice.

Liberation Theologies in the United States reveals how the critical use of religion can be utilized to challenge and combat oppression in America. In the nascent United States, religion often functioned as a justifier of oppression. Yet while religious discourse buttressed such oppressive activities as slavery and the destruction of native populations, oppressed communities have also made use of religion to critique and challenge this abuse. As Liberation Theologies in the United States demonstrates, this critical use of religion has often taken the form of liberation theologies, which use primarily Christian principles to address questions of social justice, including racism, poverty, and other types of oppression. Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas and Anthony B. Pinn have brought together a stellar group of liberation theology scholars to provide a synthetic introduction to the historical development, context, theory, and goals of a range of U.S.-born liberation theologies: Black Theology—Anthony B. Pinn Womanist Theology—Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas Latina Theology—Nancy Pineda-Madrid Hispanic/Latino(a) Theology—Benjamín Valentín Asian American Theology—Andrew Sung Park Asian American Feminist Theology—Grace Ji-Sun Kim Native Feminist Theology—Andrea Smith Native American Theology—George (Tink) Tinker Gay and Lesbian Theology—Robert E. Shore-Goss Feminist Theology—Mary McClintock Fulkerson “An extraordinary resource for understanding the vitality of liberation theologies and their relation to social transformation in the changing U.S. context. Written in an accessible and engaged way, this powerful and informative text will inspire beginners and scholars alike. I highly recommend it."—Kwok Pui-lan, author of Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology “A delight to read . . . [and] an exemplary account of the genre of liberation theologies." ―Religious Studies Review

Predominantly Catholic for centuries, Latin America is still largely Catholic today, but the religious continuity in the region masks great changes that have taken place in the past five decades. In fact, it would be fair to say that Latin American Christianity has been transformed definitively in the years since the Second Vatican Council. Religious change has not been obvious because its transformation has not been the sudden and massive growth of a new religion, as in Africa and Asia. It has been rather a simultaneous revitalization and fragmentation that threatened, awakened, and ultimately brought to a greater maturity a dormant and parochial Christianity. New challenges from modernity, especially in the form of Protestantism and Marxism, ultimately brought forth new life. In The Rebirth of Latin American Christianity, Todd Hartch examines the changes that have swept across Latin America in the last fifty years, and situates them in the context of the growth of Christianity in the global South.

The Latina/o culture and identity have long been shaped by their challenges to the religious, socio-economic, and political status quo. Robert Chao Romero explores the "Brown Church" and how this movement appeals to the vision for redemption that includes not only heavenly promises but also the transformation of our lives and the world.

This comprehensive history of the church in Latin America, with its emphasis on theology, will help historians and theologians to better understand the formation and continuity of the Latin American tradition.

The dynamic relationship between art and theology continues to fascinate and to challenge, especially when theology addresses art in all of its variety. In Architecture and Theology: The Art of Place, author Murray Rae turns to the spatial arts, especially architecture, to investigate how the art forms engaged in the construction of our built environment relate to Christian faith. Rae does not offer a theology of the spatial arts, but instead engages in a sustained theological conversation with the spatial arts. Because the spatial arts are public, visual, and communal, they wield an immense but easily overlooked influence. Architecture and Theology overcomes this inattention by offering new ways of thinking about the theological importance of space and place in our experience of God, the relation between freedom and law in Christian life, the transformation involved in God's promised new creation, biblical anticipation of the heavenly city, divine presence and absence, the architecture of repentance and remorse, and the relation between space and time. In doing so, Rae finds an ample place for theology amidst the architectural arts.