Uncompromising Positions

This edited volume utilizes multidisciplinary approaches to explore the infusion of Mexican American religions in political activism, literature, healing practices, and popular culture.Specifically, this work's application of poly-methodic approaches emphasizes social scientific orientations without marginalizing traditional methodologies such as liberation theology and church studies.As a result of taking a "nonnormative" hermeneutical stance, each of the fifteen chapters illustrates the ways in which religion operates in the everyday activities and practices of Mexican Americans.While K. Turner argues that home altars serve as vehicles of personal/familial agency for Mexican American Altaristas, L. Prez establishes a correlation between "hybrid spiritualities" of Chicana altar-based art and political protest against acts of dehumanization against Mexican Americans.In addition, intersections between religious commitments, capitalism, and healing as displayed curanderismo; mysticism and politics as seen in the activities of Csar Chvez; and redemption, resistance, and pop culture as expressed in the symbolic positioning of Selena are also contained within this volume.While this text highlights diversity among Mexican American religious experiences, this diversity falls within the categories of class, gender, and race.Hence, sexual orientation, both as a subject of dehumanization and as a methodology (queer theory), is not taken into consideration.Despite this concern, this text affords an expansion of interpretative lenses in which to examine the diverse religious experiences of Mexican Americans

Citation · Political science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law · Religion and Society Interactions