Abstract
Based on ethnographic research that Hidalgo conducted among Latinx, especially Cuban, immigrant practitioners at Claremont’s Calvary Chapel in the fall of 2003 through the winter of 2004, this chapter examines the social and psychological relationships formed by, with, in relationship to, and through the Christian Bible. Examining worship services, Bible studies, and life story narrative interviews, Hidalgo, drawing on Sara Ahmed’s terminology, specifically examines the Bible as a homing device, a basis from which to mediate and negotiate senses of home, especially for Cuban exiles in Claremont.
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Notes
- 1.
This title is not its official name. As of the writing of this chapter, the name has become “The Branch Christian Ministry, Inc.” though sometimes it appears online as “The Branch Calvary Chapel in Claremont.” Marco Alvarez, letter to author, June 14, 2018.
- 2.
Calvary Chapel of Claremont was a multicultural congregation with people of all backgrounds, especially at the English service in 2003, and this trend has become all the more obvious in the years since I did the ethnographic work for this project. I am focusing on the Cuban congregants because they are the people I encountered most and whom I interviewed, the pastor is Cuban, and in my survey in 2003, they appeared to represent the largest of the different ethnic populations. To be clear, the words and thoughts expressed in this chapter are mine, and not those of the members of Calvary Chapel Claremont unless they are directly claimed to be so.
- 3.
Throughout this chapter I underscore the temporal distance between the time of data collection and the present. Since I left California to work in New England in 2008, and as my research interests took me elsewhere, I have not returned to Calvary Chapel to see what has changed, especially in light of the changed US relationship with Cuba. I describe some of the changes since 2005 in further footnotes below.
- 4.
Robert D. Maldonado, “La Conquista? Latin American (Mestizaje) Reflections on the Biblical Conquest,” Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology 2, no. 4 (May 1995), 5–7.
- 5.
Maldonado, 10.
- 6.
For this term I am reliant on theoretical frames coming out of ethnographic work on a Filipino/a immigrant community in San Diego. For reasons of history, I believe that the comparison of the experiences of these two groups would also be fruitful. Yen Le Espiritu, Home Bound: Filipino American Lives Across Cultures, Communities, and Countries (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 14.
- 7.
María de los Angeles Torres, In the Land of Mirrors: Cuban Exile Politics in the United States (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999), 37.
- 8.
As discussed in the introduction to this volume, many fraught politics surround the naming of diasporic/immigrant/migrant/émigré communities. Throughout this chapter, I emphasize ideas of diaspora and I describe my interlocutors as migrants because of how they underscored their relationship to their Cuban homeland and to other Cubans in the U.S.A. Cubans at Calvary Chapel may frame themselves as exiles, and indeed Alvarez affirmed his view that Cuban migrants to the U.S.A. saw themselves as “exiles” because they had not intended to leave Cuba and certainly had not intended to settle here. For Alvarez, it took years of living in the U.S.A. to realize he may not be returning to Cuba immediately (Alvarez, letter to author, June 14, 2018). However, such labels as “exile” may (un)intentionally distance Cubans in the U.S.A. from how the U.S.A. has politically treated other Latinx migrant communities from Mexico and Central America in particular. One might argue that the economic and political privileges the US government granted the first waves of Cuban migrants in the 1960s has dictated their labeling as “émigrés” or “exiles” whereas other Mexican migrants have been depicted as “immigrants.”
- 9.
In Sara Ahmed’s argument about social-cultural-political orientations in time and space, she attends also to how migrants make “home” away from home: “If orientations are as much about feeling at home as they are about finding our way, then it becomes important to consider how ‘finding our way’ involves what we could call ‘homing devices.’ In a way, we learn what home means, or how we occupy space at home and as home, when we leave home.” In this way, then certain objects become the devices by and through which people come to be “at home” in spaces and make those spaces “like home.” See Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 9. I further discuss how scriptures as broader phenomena may serve as homing devices in my book, Revelation in Aztlán: Scriptures, Utopias, and the Chicano Movement (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
- 10.
As Fernando F. Segovia suggested when I presented a version of this paper at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in 2012, one might view these congregants as working out their own political theology, using religion to articulate alternative discourses of citizenship. Alvarez argues quite adamantly that the citizenship that truly matters to him is that he is “a citizen of heaven … born in Cuba and now living in the U.S.A., soon moving to our real and permanent dwelling that Jesus promised to all who trust in His death and resurrection” (Alvarez, letter to author, June 14, 2018).
- 11.
“Otherworldly” is an admittedly complicated terminology that I have chosen for two reasons. The first is to reflect the perceptions of the divine realm that were expressed by the congregants with whom I spoke. The second is out of deference to the ideas expressed in an article by Fernando F. Segovia, ideas which have been formative for this paper. See Fernando F. Segovia, “‘In the World but Not of It’: Exile as Locus for Theology of the Diaspora,” Hispanic/Latino Theology: Challenge and Promise, ed. Ada María Isasi-Díaz and Fernando F. Segovia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 195–217.
- 12.
Alvarez asked that I be quite clear that access to God comes through faith and not through the actions of reading and praying (Alvarez, letter to author, June 14, 2018). His point is a theological one whereas I am trying to make more of a comment on how the Bible and prayer are functioning socially and materially.
- 13.
For an examination of the enduring ways that racial difference continues to mark Cuban self-understanding, especially during the early days of Castro’s revolution, see Devyn Spence Benson, Antiracism in Cuba: The Unfinished Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016).
- 14.
Miguel González-Pando, The Cuban Americans, The New Americans (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1998), 1–2.
- 15.
González-Pando, 4–21.
- 16.
Interview with Marco Alvarez, Claremont, CA, October 28, 2003.
- 17.
Alvarez, letter to author, June 14, 2018.
- 18.
María Elena Fernández, “Flights From LAX to Cuba to begin in April,” Los Angeles Times, Metro Section, B-1, January 14, 2000.
- 19.
de los Angeles Torres, 9.
- 20.
Rone Tempest, “Curbs on Travel to Cuba Feared: Tour and Charter Operators Say Bush’s Push for Restrictions Will Hit Them Hard,” Los Angeles Times, Home Edition, California Section, B-1, Oct. 18, 2003.
- 21.
Rosemary McClure, “Journey to Havana and Beyond: Cuba, Suspended in Time,” Los Angeles Times, Home Edition, Travel Section, L-1, Jan. 15, 2006.
- 22.
Interview with Marco Alvarez, Claremont, CA, January 12, 2005. Also letter to author, June 14, 2018.
- 23.
The question on the 2000 census asked if you were Hispanic, and then asked you to choose a race, not a nation of origin.
- 24.
Interview with Alvarez, 10/28/03.
- 25.
Blanca G. Silvestrini, “‘The World We Enter When Claiming Rights’: Latinos and Their Quest for Culture,” Latino Cultural Citizenship: Claiming Identity, Space, and Rights, ed. William V. Flores and Rina Benmayor (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997), 53.
- 26.
Frank del Olmo, “English Only Rules are Un-American,” Los Angeles Times, Home Edition, Metro Section, May 15, 1985.
- 27.
Suzanne Oboler, Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives: Identity and the Politics of (Re)Presentation in the United States (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 27–28, see especially the whole chapter, “So Far From God – So Close to the United States,” for its discussion of the legal history surrounding race and US citizenship.
- 28.
Renato Rosaldo, “Cultural Citizenship, Inequality, and Multiculturalism,” in Latino Cultural Citizenship: Claiming Identity, Space, and Rights, ed. William V. Flores and Rina Benmayor (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997), 31.
- 29.
Ed Morales, Living in Spanglish: The Search for Latino Identity in America (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002), 228–229.
- 30.
Miller, 119. In my October 2003 interview with Alvarez, he described one of the draws of Calvary Chapel as being the “love” he felt upon first entering the doors.
- 31.
Espiritu, 47.
- 32.
de los Angeles Torres, 23.
- 33.
I spoke with Alvarez just before sending this chapter to publication; he is now 79 (at the time of writing) and no longer pastoring, though he keeps busy; indeed he has been chronicling his family history for his children and grandchildren. Alvarez notes that much has changed for Cubans in the U.S.A. in the last 50 years. He thought it particularly relevant to observe the distinctions between his experiences as a first-generation Cuban and the experiences with citizenship and belonging that shape the lives of his children and grandchildren. Marco Alvarez, in telephone conversation with the author, June 13, 2018.
- 34.
Alvarez argues that this flag is “required on public platforms” (letter to author, June 14, 2018).
- 35.
de los Angeles Torres, 35.
- 36.
Gauri Viswanathan, Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 215.
- 37.
Segovia, “World,” 199.
- 38.
Segovia, “World,” 203. In some ways this is a reformulation of phrasing found in an earlier article. See Fernando F. Segovia, “Two Places and No Place on Which to Stand: Mixture and Otherness in Hispanic American Theology,” Hispanic Americans in Theology and the Church, ed. Fernando F. Segovia; special issue of Listening: Journal of Religion and Culture 27 (Winter 1992): 26–40.
- 39.
Segovia, “World,” 213.
- 40.
Interview with Marco Alvarez, Claremont, CA, January 14, 2005.
- 41.
Alvarez emphasized that this iteration of home was the most important one for him. Marco Alvarez, in telephone conversation with the author, June 13, 2018.
- 42.
Justo González, Santa Biblia: The Bible Through Hispanic Eyes (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1996), 27.
- 43.
González, 92.
- 44.
Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), 35–37.
- 45.
Randall Balmer and Jesse T. Todd, Jr. “Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, California,” American Congregations, vol. 1 of Portraits of Twelve Religious Communities, ed. James P. Wind and James W. Lewis (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 681 and 685. Balmer and Todd identify Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa’s views as premillenialist dispensationtionalism; Alvarez disagrees with this description because he teaches dispensations differently than Darby and Scofield. Interview with Alvarez, 1/14/05.
- 46.
Randall Balmer, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey Into the Evangelical Subculture in America, expanded ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 18–19.
- 47.
Alvarez frequently used the term “fellowship” in his interview when describing the congregation.
- 48.
Donald E. Miller, Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity in the New Millennium (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 34. According to Alvarez, there were over 1200 congregations worldwide. Interview with Alvarez, 1/14/05.
- 49.
Interview with Alvarez, 1/14/05. Alvarez was quite adamant that his words and the views expressed in his congregation are his alone and do not stand for any other member of the Calvary Chapel fellowship. When I spoke with Alvarez about publishing this chapter in 2018, he reminded me of how much has changed in 15 years. After Chuck Smith passed away in 2013, “two directions developed within the Calvary Chapel movement, and Alvarez now fellowships at an Evangelical Free Church” (Alvarez, letter to author, June 14, 2018).
- 50.
Vincent L. Wimbush, “Introduction: And the Students Shall Teach Them … The Study of the Bible and the Study of Meaning Construction,” The Bible and the American Myth: A Symposium on the Bible and Constructions of Meaning, ed. Vincent L. Wimbush, Studies in American Biblical Hermeneutics, 16 (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1999), 3–4. It is important though that such Christian texts are not seen as the only texts shaping US culture, and one does not have to read or know the Bible to be part of US culture.
- 51.
I discuss this later in the context of the “otherworldly” as home.
- 52.
Martin E. Marty, Religion and Republic: The American Circumstance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 141.
- 53.
New King James Version: Luke 21:27 “Then they will see the son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” 1 Timothy 2:1 “Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men.”
- 54.
When I went to the women’s Spanish Bible study of Psalm 111 on October 21, 2003, she mentioned how in the KJV the term in verse 9 was reverendo or “reverend,” though it was not translated that way in the Spanish. She also mentioned that “reverend” only appeared there, in reference to God, in the entire Bible. Thus only God, no person, could be “reverend.”
- 55.
Miller, 37. Alvarez’s approach to the Bible is quite directly rooted in Calvary Chapel’s training. Calvary Chapel founder Chuck Smith’s work adds an extra-canonical circle: his writing frames the language with which the current pastor and the congregants speak about the Bible. This can be observed when one compares the language of the congregants to that of Alvarez, and then one compares his language to that of Chuck Smith as can be found especially in his books.
- 56.
Susan F. Harding, The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), x.
- 57.
Again, Harding likewise noticed this element in Falwell’s rhetoric. See Harding, Book, 51.
- 58.
Interview with “Ana,” October 28, 2003. She emphasized that growing up as a Catholic in Cuba, she did not really read the Bible. Then she became involved with the Presbyterian church but found they spent too little time on the Bible. Then she talked about having done some studying with a Jehovah’s Witness before finding Calvary Chapel and she described how misguided her interpretations were because she looked at things “out of context.”
- 59.
Pablo A. Jiménez, “The Bible: A Hispanic Perspective,” Teología en Conjunto: A Collaborative Hispanic Protestant Theology, ed. José David Rodríguez and Loida I. Martell-Otero (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 66.
- 60.
Jiménez, 68–69.
- 61.
In Alvarez’s sermon on Ephesians 6, he emphasized how “the Bible wants to go deeper than just the problems that we have on earth, and it’s a very earthly relationship. Which means, it’s a temporal thing, whatever it may be, just like a physical illness, it’s a temporal thing on this earth. Social injustices on this earth are also a temporal thing. It will come to an end. Not when we change the system, but when the hearts are changed. Or one day when Jesus reigns and there will be absolutely no injustice at all.” Marco Alvarez, Labor Relation, pt. 2: Ephesians 6:5–9, audiotape of sermon by Marco Alvarez at Calvary Chapel, Claremont, November 23, 2003.
- 62.
Jiménez, 66–67.
- 63.
Miller, 132.
- 64.
When his students ask Cuban American theologian Miguel de la Torre whether he has a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” he answers by stating that he has “a public relationship with Jesus Christ.” In de la Torre’s estimation, a private relationship with Jesus is antithetical to Latinx cultural norms. In Spanish, privación means both privacy and deprivation. In other words, it is not a positive affirming characteristic as it is in the U.S.A. See Miguel de la Torre, Reading the Bible from the Margins (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2002), 136–137. Although Calvary Chapel’s congregants would affirm the import of a private relationship with Jesus, worship in community is still very important to them.
- 65.
Interview with Alvarez, 10/28/03.
- 66.
Efraín Agosto and his research team also demonstrated that the divine character of the Bible and other scriptures, such as the Qur’an, can be critical for Latinx communities who have some feelings of alienation and displacement with regard to dominant US culture. Efraín Agosto, “Reading the Word in America: US Latino/a Religious Communities and Their Scriptures,” MisReading America: Scriptures and Difference, ed. Vincent L. Wimbush with the assistance of Lalruatkima and Melissa Renee Reid (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 136–137.
- 67.
The words are my translation from the Spanish. Marco Alvarez, “‘Viviendo La Vida Cristiana en un Mundo Anti-Cristiano’ o ‘Tomando a Cristo Jesús en Serio’: Pensamientos sobre el Sermon del Monte, En Mateo 5,6,7,” [“Living the Christian Life in an Anti-Christian World” or “Taking Jesus Christ Seriously”: Thoughts about the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5,6,7] Revista Edificación – Calvary Chapel, Vol. 1 (2003): 23.
- 68.
Interview with Ana.
- 69.
Interview with Ana.
- 70.
The promise here is that of the new body described by Paul in 1 Cor. 15. As Giovanni DiRusso reminded me, it is intriguing that she imagines the future of that promise as one in which her grandson’s body would change to a more ideal body. She does not seem to imagine a future where others would change so that they do not misjudge her grandson’s body.
- 71.
Interview with Ana.
- 72.
Interviews with both Ana and Alvarez (10/28/03) who discuss how often they read the Bible. Alvarez makes an effort to read the whole Bible once a year, each year in a different translation, both in Spanish and English.
- 73.
Both Alvarez and Ana emphasized how important it was that the Bible was the “Word of God” and not just something some person had said. See interview with Alvarez, 10/28/03 and interview with Ana.
- 74.
Discussion at a Wednesday Bible Study, December 3, 2003, and interview with Ana.
- 75.
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 11.
- 76.
Sara Molsener, Virgin Nation: Sexual Purity and American Adolescence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 4–5.
- 77.
I also witnessed Alvarez’s discussion of Ephesians 6:5–9, which reflected a more complicated negotiation of the household codes because of the passage’s discussion of slavery. Alvarez’s interpretation regarding the deeply spiritual nature of the Bible seemed to critique slavery and systems of enslavement while also refusing to challenge existing systems through policy. In relationship to this passage, Alvarez both critiqued Cuban Communism and displaced US arrogance in naming itself “American,” while at the same time refusing to work on altering any social system because ultimately he argues that “You got to begin with the heart of man because you can change the system, but changing the system will not change the man.”
- 78.
In Alvarez’s Bible study on Malachi 2:10–17, he tied the end of nations and empires specifically to the decline of family morality: “the spiritual health of the land related to the break-up of the family.” This connection between the decline in family morality and the approaching end was often made both explicitly and implicitly.
- 79.
Sally K. Gallagher, Evangelical Identity and Gendered Family Life (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 174.
- 80.
Harding, 181.
- 81.
Marco Alvarez, Husbands and Wives, pt. 1: Ephesians 5:21–33, audiotape of sermon by Marco Alvarez at Calvary Chapel, Claremont, October 5, 2003.
- 82.
Richard T. Rodríguez, Next of Kin: The Family in Chicano/a Cultural Politics (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010), Chapter One: Reappraising the Archive, section “Sifting through the Archive,” particularly 36/257, Nook edition.
- 83.
Alvarez, Husbands and Wives.
- 84.
Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books/Random House, Inc., 1994 [1993]), 326–336.
- 85.
Roland Boer, Last Stop Before Antarctica: The Bible and Postcolonialism in Australia, 2nd ed., Semeia Studies, 64 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), 80–107.
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Hidalgo, J.M. (2018). The Bible as Homing Device Among Cubans at Claremont’s Calvary Chapel. In: Agosto, E., Hidalgo, J. (eds) Latinxs, the Bible, and Migration. The Bible and Cultural Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96695-3_2
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