Where to start?
For thousands of Christians who are trying to detangle their faith in Christ from the strangling knots of five hundred years of White Christian Nationalism, how does one even begin?
As discussed in an earlier blog post, such confusing experiences in the theological borderlands are not new, and Latinas/os across the decades, even the centuries, have left a theological roadmap which can help navigate the painful and disorienting process of spiritual deconstruction and reconstruction. This roadmap can be called, “Brown Theology”: the little known, five-hundred year old tradition of Latina/o theological reflection upon issues of justice. Like Orlando Costas, many Brown Theologians have had their “three conversions” and come out thriving and with vital faith on the other side. Sadly, many others have embarked on the journey and haven’t made it. Drawing upon the insights of Brown Theology elders and ancestors who have successfully traversed this rugged and perilous, yet exciting, terrain, over the past 50 years, this blog series (and the book manuscript which it forms) is like a theological topographical map for those seeking to backpack through the hills, valleys, plateaus, and waterways of the often dangerous journey of spiritual deconstruction and reconstruction.
This post is dedicated to Don Samuel Escobar, pioneer of the theology of Misión Integral and a father of the Brown Church.
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Several years ago I had the great honor of meeting and learning from indigenous pastoral leaders and community organizers of San Cristóbal de Las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico. For 500 years, Chiapas has been ground zero for European and Euro-American colonial and neo-colonial efforts, and to this day it is known as the most indigenous state of Mexico, with the highest rates of poverty, environmental pollution, and racial inequality. Perhaps not surprisingly, Chiapas is the birthplace of the Zapatistas, and was also notably the home of both Bartolomé de Las Casas and Bishop Samuel Ruiz, two of the most important advocates of the Brown Church over the past five centuries.
I’ll never forget visiting a Zapatista “caracol,” or community of resistance. This was such an honor for me because very few outsiders have ever seen the inside of a caracol because entrance is by invitation only. Our close friend Pastora Gloria, recognized as one of the leading activists of the city, gave us a tour.
The caracol which we visited was a job training center and originally founded by Bishop Samuel Ruiz. Ruiz was a noted liberation theologian pastor who negotiated the peace settlement between the Zapatistas and the Mexican government, and who to this day is revered by all as “Jtatik Samuel,” or “father Samuel,” in the Mayan dialect of Tseltal. In this caracol one could train to be a carpenter, beautician, artist, or textile weaver. A seminary was even housed on the grounds, and this seminary was a popular stop during the flourishing years of the liberation theology movement.
What stood out to me most was our visit to the workshop of a master textile weaver, Hector. Hector was a master of colorful handwoven Mayan textiles and had been honing his artistic craft for sixty years. Day after day, hour by hour, for sixty years, he was devoted to his art. Hector exudes inspiration. Every item he produces is one of a kind. He built all of his own equipment and looms with wood and string. And instead of choosing to become rich by selling his high-quality products in a wealthy gallery in Mexico City or exporting to curious customers in the United States or Europe, everything he makes goes to local Mayan communities.
Hector’s workshop runs on an apprenticeship model. He is a teacher who has chosen to pass on his knowledge, one student at a time. Surprisingly, when we visited, he had only one or two students. That day, these students were tasked with a single repetitive task, far removed from the loom itself. I would have expected such a master to have students lining up to overflowing outside the door. Instead, I imagine, Hector chose those two students because they were humble and eager to learn, truly committed to the years of hard, and often unglorious, work ahead. They had counted the extravagant but worthwhile cost of discipleship. Perhaps the commitment to be a disciple of Hector was just too much for most people. Why not just produce machine manufactured knock offs for tourists at a much cheaper price with much less effort and higher profit? Why devote decades to becoming a master artisan committed to ancient techniques and hand-made dyes only to live in simplicity?
This example reminds me of the development of Brown Theology in the United States and Latin America over the past fifty years. Largely out of the limelight of the mainstream workshops and publication houses of the theological and religious studies academy, and uninvited to fancy conferences and speaking circuits, Latina/o theologians-- Protestant and Catholic (and even a few Orthodox)--have labored and sacrificed all to untie the jangled knots of White Christian Nationalism from the original Christian faith established by Jesus Christ, the apostles, and the early church. Most also labored in small churches, proximate to the pain of the people. Like Hector, day after day, hour by hour, often without recognition or remuneration, they labored for their community. To borrow an expression which theologians use to describe the mother of Jesus, they have been the “untier of knots.” But they haven’t just stopped there, as important as that task may be.
As master weavers, Samuel Escobar, Justo González, Gustavo Gutiérrez, Maria Pilar Aquino, Orlando Costas, Elsa Tamez, Samuel Escobar, Elizabeth Conde-Frazier, Loida Martell-Otero, Edwin Aponte, Juan Martinez, Oscar Garcia-Johnson, and many others, have woven colorful and sturdy “hilos,” or threads, of Bible, history, and theology, into a beautiful, healing, and consoling pastoral “cobija” of Brown Theology.