Editors’ Notes: New Directions: Latinx Studies for a Twenty-First-Century Church

Abstract

This special issue of the Anglican Theological Review is dedicated to launching a scholarly discussion of Latinx studies within and with reference to the Anglican/Episcopal tradition. Our issue includes the work of senior and emerging scholars who offer research-based reflections on culture, ritual and liturgy, social justice activism, music, history, lay practice, models of leadership, and gender and sexuality. We note that the academic study of Latinx religion in the Episcopal context is still a nascent field. Ten years ago, contributing author Rev. Dr. Juan Oliver published the first work of its kind: Ripe Fields: The Promise and Challenge of Latino Ministry (2009). Oliver established an important, critical foundation: interrogating the racial structures of the church with respect to Latinx and Latin American people, he described the faulty foundations upon which Episcopal models of ministry in Latino communities have traditionally rested. We imagine this issue as honoring the tenth anniversary of Ripe Fields, and as picking up the conversation that Oliver began. Few (if any) published scholarly works since have taken up Episcopal Latino experience. In order for the church to transcend its current racialized structures, it must come to see Latinx communities not only as objects of mission but also as producers of theological knowledge. The Episcopal Church (TEC) has identified Hispanic/Latino communities as key to its future growth, even to its survival, yet this labor remains underanalyzed and undertheorized in the absence of formal scholarship. The growing numbers of Latino/as represent one of the few areas of growth in The