Many Latina/o Christians wrestle with balancing their personal commitments to both faith and racial justice. They find themselves in a “spiritual borderlands” because their concern for social justice issues is often misunderstood in institutional religious spaces, while in activist spaces their faith is often rejected. This talk explores the little- known history of the Brown Church: a prophetic ecclesial community of Latinas/os which has contested racial and social injustice in Latin America and the United States for the past 500 years.
Robert Chao Romero is an associate professor in the UCLA departments of Chicana/o Studies and Central America Studies, and Asian American Studies. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA in Latin American History and his Juris Doctor from U.C. Berkeley, and is the author of several books, including The Chinese in Mexico, 1882–1940 and Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity. Romero is also an ordained minister and faith-rooted community organizer.
Part of the Kennedy Center's Winter 2023 lecture series, "Building a Civil Society."