Race and Religion in the Bayou City: Latino/a, African American, and Anglo Baptists in Houston’s Long Civil Rights Movement
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Date
2017-05-30
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Abstract
While studies that examine religion in movements for social justice have
increased in recent years, the intersections of race and religion remain understudied.
Therefore, this dissertation is a relational and comparative study of Mexican American,
African American, and Anglo Baptists in the Houston area as they engaged the struggle
for civil rights through religious associations, churches, and leaders. It demonstrates that race and religion in Houston’s long civil rights movements produced changes in two
directions: religion influenced Baptists’ involvement with the movements, and the
movement itself influenced Baptists’ religious lives. I argue that from the 1910s through
the 1970s, religion played a central role in Baptist efforts to both uphold and challenge
the color line in Houston. Influential white Baptists attempted to protect white privilege
and power by using their influence, religious organizations, and doctrine to enforce and
protect the Jim Crow system toward both black and brown communities. At the same
time Mexican American and African American Baptist leaders attempted to use the
religious resources at their disposal to mitigate the effects of inequality and push back
against racism. However, the long civil rights movement opened a space, a window of
opportunity, for white, black, and brown Baptists to challenge racism in churches and in
their denominations and to find new and creative ways of taking religious identity
politics into the surrounding communities. And black and brown Baptists, sometimes
with the help of progressive white Baptists, capitalized on the moment to mobilize
religion and weaken the power of the color line and racial inequality.
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Keywords
Race, Religion, Mexican American, African American, Racism, Latina/o Protestantism, Baptists, Houston, History