• The Conference
  • Home
  • Programme
  • Venue & directions
  • Organizing Committee
  • Scientific Committee
  • Exhibitors & sponsors
  • Satellite events
  • Conference Party
• Past & future
  • Previous symposia
  • Finland 2014
  • Spain 2016
• About FU Berlin
  • University homepage
  • Humanities at FU

Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 868

Part of Session 116: God in the City (Other abstracts in this session)

Faith, language and identity in Latino Churches in the United States

Authors: Münch, Christian
Submitted by: Münch, Christian (RWTH Aachen University, Germany)

Churches in the United States have been synonymous with ethnic communities, their religions and languages for most of the history of the United States. Churches of immigrants from Latin America were no exception to the rule, yet throughout the last twenty years the increase in immigration from Latin American countries has brought about changes in the organization of churches that use Spanish as a medium of communication, religious ceremony and cultural expression. Waves of immigration from the Caribbean, Central and South America, and most importantly from neighboring Mexico have mixed up the social fabric of many Latino neighborhoods, often dominantly monoethnic in character at the time. Churches as a consequence began to attract an increasingly diverse Latino community in places like Chicago, Florida or New York. Yet often the sheer number of the biggest immigrant group, Mexicans in need of spiritual and social support, forced Latino churches of formerly monoethnic Puerto Rican, Dominican or Cuban communities to redefine the cultural identity of their church and accomodate new Spanish-speaking members with somewhat different cultural and religious identities.

Such processes of cultural accomodation and integration are more than common between English-speaking communities and immigrants in cities around the world. In the case of the Latino churches in US cities, however, integration happens among speakers of Spanish speaking different varieties of Spanish, thus adding a particularly rich dimension of linguistic interaction that allows members of a church to mark their ethnic identities while taking part in the collective religious discourses and language practices of their particular community. Language and identity are thus intricately interwoven on various levels of linguistic interaction, giving room to share religious and linguistic practices while maintaining a strong sense of identity  and cultural belonging among the community.