Unmasking Latinx Ministry for Episcopalians by Carla E. Roland Guzmán

Author:Carla E. Roland Guzmán
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Church Publishing Inc.
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

This is the crux of the matter: until we can accept those whom we hate and those who hate us, no one truly has a place at the table. Even in writing this, what I want to write is “those whom we dislike and those who hate us,” so that it is softer and reduces the reality of our sinfulness. We have to work hard at not absolving ourselves of the love imperative. Love, forgiveness, and reconciliation are aspects of the same commandment. Hate requires some aspect of judgement. It is difficult to judge someone whose story you have truly heard.

In January of 2018, I attended a national conference. During one of the panels, I felt my circles of inclusion expanding, creating a place for more people at my table. The people on the panel were some of the most marginalized people in our society and they spoke of their resilience and survival. I began my sermon the following Sunday by talking about a woman who had immigrated to the United States and suffered violence and hate, yet now provided shelter for dozens of people every night and employed a number of other marginalized people. She was feeding the hungry, sating the thirsty, clothing the naked, housing the homeless, employing the poor.

You may ask why I would be stretched by her story. She was a LATINX trans woman who had survived through sex work. Hearing her story and her playfulness around sex work was uncomfortable for me, but my desire for comfort did not override the love I felt and the love I know Jesus felt for her and the other panelists that day.

Welcome and belonging are values of the Episcopal Church. Achieving them is inherently not comfortable. If church is not a place where welcome and belonging matter more than feeling comfortable, we need to listen to the gospel in a new way. The way of the Cross is not comfortable; speaking truth to power is not comfortable; loving those we judge as sinners (or less than) is not comfortable. All these actions are part of being followers of Jesus. I wish we had congregations in which we were continually stretched, all the while being strengthened by a sense of welcome and belonging. One of our mottoes or values should be “Uncomfortable for Jesus.” Or, perhaps, “Putting Aside Comfort for the Sake of the Gospel.” The 1981 report of the Theological Consultation states:

At the same time, we view ourselves and our future with fear and trembling, knowing that every culture needs self-criticism and the transforming power of the Gospel. We believe that the presence of Hispanics is a God-given opportunity for traditional Anglo-Episcopal congregations to escape a dangerous self-centeredness and complacency and to encounter a more fully authentic life and valid ministry in the name of the Risen Lord.

Unmasking the Demographics: Who Are We Talking about

When We Talk about LATINX People and Communities?

According to the United States Decennial Census, in 2010, LATINX people accounted for 16.3 percent of the total population of the United States, or over fifty million people.

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