Between Basilea and Utopia: Exploring the Impact of Kingdom Theology in US Latinx Pentecostalism

This article is a general exploration of US Latinx Pentecostalism’s explicit and implicit theology of the Kingdom of God and how it can contribute to US Latinx Pentecostalism’s socio-political engagement. An overview will be provided of traditional, US Pentecostal Kingdom theology and Kingdom theology in Latin American Liberation Theology. These will be contrasted with US Latinx Pentecostal perspectives. To locate US Latinx Pentecostal theology of the Kingdom of God, this paper will first provide a wide-ranging description of a traditional evangelical hermeneutical process. Afterward, an understanding of the Kingdom that is generally taught and accepted in most evangelical contexts will be discussed. This will be followed by a survey of dominant US Pentecostal theology of the Kingdom of God through the lens of the Assemblies of God doctrinal statements and Pentecostal scholars. The life and work of various Pentecostal ministers and author Piri Thomas will provide a Kingdom perspective of US Latinx Pentecostal practitioners. I will provide an analysis based on their life experiences and some of their writings. The writings of Orlando Costas will set the stage in order to examine the works of other US Latinx Pentecostal scholars. Thereafter, the theologies of Latin American Liberation Theologians Clodivis and Leonardo Boff and others will be surveyed. Before concluding, the article will provide a historical overview of Latinx Pentecostal social engagement in the northeast US with the goal of identifying Kingdom values and priorities.

QUEERING AMERICAN SPACE IN PIRI THOMAS’ DOWN THESE MEAN STREETS: A GLISSANTIAN APPROACH TO KINSHIP.

This paper reconsiders the Chicana girlhood narratives of Mary Helen Ponce and Norma E. Cantú, Hoyt Street and Canícula respectively, as instances of the ambiguous gender identities that lie at the core of much post-Borderlands theory. Drawing on Jose Esteban Muñoz’s theory of disidentification, Jennifer Ayala’s concept of “mothering in the borderlands” and Gloria Anzaldúa’s latest insights on liminality and fluidity, I contend that the female characters of the novels under analysis enter into a contradictory dialogue with the patriarchal archetypes of the mother, the virgin and the whore. Thus, this paper departs from previous feminist approaches to these texts, which have disregarded the characters’ allegiance and non-allegiance to patriarchal discourses on Chicana femininity. My aim with this essay is to advance new readings of these girlhood narratives as well as to contribute to research into the fragmentary and largely evasive character of Chicana identities.

Una falla geológica de fallas raciales: el Sur norteamericano en Piri Thomas y Manuel Zapata Olivella

En los años 1940 dos afro-latinos hemisféricos, el afro-puertorriqueño Piri Thomas y el afro-colombiano Manuel Zapata Olivella, viajaron al Sur durante la época de las leyes discriminatorias Jim Crow y los linchamientos de negros. ¿Por qué se pusieron en peligro? Mi respuesta adapta el concepto de los “movimientos continentales” inter-americanos del crítico John D. “Río” Riofrío al contexto de Jim Crow para mostrar que el Sur norteamericano era una “zona catastrófica” a la cual viajaron estos escritores en su juventud para fortalecer sus identidades afro-latinas y su compromiso con la comunidad. Las confrontaciones de estos autores y sus protagonistas con la zona de desastre del Sur son relevantes mientras América experimenta el Nuevo Jim Crow y la época de Trump.

Una falla geológica de fallas raciales : el sur norteamericano en Piri Thomas y Manuel Zapata Olivella.

En los años 1940 dos afro-latinos hemisféricos, el afro-puertorriqueño Piri Thomas y el afro-colombiano Manuel Zapata Olivella, viajaron al Sur durante la época de las leyes discriminatorias Jim Crow y los linchamientos de negros. ¿Por qué se pusieron en peligro? Mi respuesta adapta el concepto de los “movimientos continentales” inter-americanos del crítico John D. “Río” Riofrío al contexto de Jim Crow para mostrar que el Sur norteamericano era una “zona catastrófica” a la cual viajaron estos escritores en su juventud para fortalecer sus identidades afro-latinas y su compromiso con la comunidad. Las confrontaciones de estos autores y sus protagonistas con la zona de desastre del Sur son relevantes mientras América experimenta el Nuevo Jim Crow y la época de Trump.