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EDITED BY
EFRAÍN AGOSTO & JACQUELINE M. HIDALGO
Latinxs, the Bible,

and Migration
THE BIBLE AND

CULTURAL
STUDIES
The Bible and Cultural Studies
Series Editors
Hal Taussig
Union Theological Seminary
New York, NY, USA
Maia Kotrosits
Religion Department
Denison University
Granville, OH, USA
The Bible and Cultural Studies series highlights the work of established
and emerging scholars working at the intersection of the fields of biblical
studies and cultural studies. It emphasizes the importance of the Bible in
the building of cultural narratives—and thus the need to intervene in
those narratives through interpretation—as well as the importance of
situating biblical texts within originating cultural contexts. It approaches
scripture not as a self-evident category, but as the product of a larger set of
cultural processes, and offers scholarship that does not simply “use” or
“borrow” from the field of cultural studies, but actively participates in its
conversations.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14449
Efraín Agosto • Jacqueline M. Hidalgo
Editors
Latinxs, the Bible,

and Migration
Editors
Efraín Agosto Jacqueline M. Hidalgo
New York Theological Seminary Williams College
New York, NY, USA Williamstown, MA, USA
The Bible and Cultural Studies

ISBN 978-3-319-96694-6 ISBN 978-3-319-96695-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96695-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018954651
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Contents
1 Introduction: Reading the Bible and Latinx Migrations/

the Bible as Text(s) of Migration 1
Efraín Agosto and Jacqueline M. Hidalgo
2 The Bible as Homing Device Among Cubans at

Claremont’s Calvary Chapel 21
Jacqueline M. Hidalgo
3 Gendering (Im)migration in the Pentateuch’s Legal Codes:

A Reading from a Latina Perspective 43
Ahida Calderón Pilarski
4 Channeling the Biblical Exile as an Art Task for Central

American Refugee Children on the Texas–Mexico Border 67
Gregory Lee Cuéllar
5 “Out of Egypt I Called My Son”: Migration as a Male

Activity in the New Testament Gospels 89
Gilberto A. Ruiz
6 The Flight to Egypt: Toward a Protestant Mariology in

Migration 109
Nancy Elizabeth Bedford
v
vi Contents
7 Whence Migration? Babel, Pentecost, and Biblical

Imagination 133
Eric D. Barreto
8 Islands, Borders, and Migration: Reading Paul in Light

of the Crisis in Puerto Rico 149
Efraín Agosto
9 Border Crossing into the Promised Land: The

Eschatological Migration of God’s People in Revelation
2:1–3:22 171
Roberto Mata
10 Reading (Our)Selves in Migration: A Response 191

Margaret Aymer
Author Index 203
Subject Index 207
Notes on Contributors
Efraín Agosto is Professor of New Testament Studies at New York

Theological Seminary in New York City. Previously, he was Professor of New
Testament (1995–2011) and Academic Dean (2007–2011) at Hartford
Seminary. He is the author of Servant Leadership: Jesus and Paul, 2005 and
a Spanish-language commentary on 1–2 Corinthians, Corintios, 2008.
Margaret Aymer is Associate Professor of New Testament at Austin
Presbyterian Seminary. Previously, she taught at the Interdenominational
Theological Center in Atlanta. She is the author of James: Diaspora
Rhetorics of a Friend of God, 2014 and First Pure, Then Peaceable: Frederick
Douglass Reads James, 2008. She is also a co-editor of Fortress Commentary
on the Bible: The New Testament, 2014 and Islanders, Islands and the Bible:
Ruminations, 2015. In 2013, she was the Robert Jones Lecturer at Austin
Seminary, offering a discourse on the “New Testament as Migrant
Writings.”
Eric D. Barreto is an ordained Baptist minister and the Weyerhaeuser
Associate Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary.
The author of Ethnic Negotiations: The Function of Race and Ethnicity in
Acts 16, 2010, the co-author of New Proclamation Year C 2013: Easter
through Christ the King, 2013, and editor of Reading Theologically,
2014 and Thinking Theologically, 2015, he is also a regular contributor
to ONScripture.org, the Huffington Post, WorkingPreacher.org, and
EntertheBible.org.
vii
viii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Nancy Elizabeth Bedford, Dr. theol., was born in Comodoro Rivadavia,

Argentina. She has been Georgia Harkness Professor of Theology at
Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary (Evanston) since 2003.
Previously, she taught theology at Instituto Universitario ISEDET and
Seminario Internacional Teológico Bautista (both in Buenos Aires). She
has written or edited 8 books and written over 70 book chapters and jour-
nal articles, which have appeared in five languages. Her latest book is
Galatians, A Theological Commentary, 2016. Her current project is on
Christology from Latin American and Latino/a perspectives.
Gregory Lee Cuéllar is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Austin
Presbyterian Seminary. Previously, he was Curator of Rare Books and
Manuscripts and the Colonial Mexican Imprint Collection at Cushing
Memorial Library and Archives at Texas A&M University. Cuéllar is
author of Voices of Marginality: Exile and Return in Second Isaiah 40–55
and the Mexican Immigrant Experience, 2008, as well as numerous journal
articles and book chapters. He has two forthcoming books titled The
British Museum and the Bible: The Indexes of Subjectivity in Modern Biblical
Criticism and Borderlands Hermeneutics: Transgressive and Traumatic
Readings of Scripture. He is also working on an art-based social action
project called Arte de Lágrimas: Refugee Artwork Project.
Jacqueline M. Hidalgo is Associate Professor of Latina/o Studies and
Religion at Williams College. The author of Revelation in Aztlán:
Scriptures, Utopias, and the Chicano Movement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016,
this series), her research examines the power of scriptural imaginaries, nar-
ratives, and material cultures in shaping relations of race and gender in the
American West. She also studies religion, scriptures, and culture
among Latin@s in the United States more generally.
Roberto Mata is Assistant Professor of Contextual Biblical Studies at
Santa Clara University. His research explores the intersections of colonial
power, ethnicity/race, and civic rhetoric in the Book of Revelation. In his
analysis of biblical texts, Mata not only employs critical race, postco-
lonial, and borderlands theories, but also uses the current struggles
and geopolitical situations of marginalized communities in the United
States as loci of theoretical reflection. His forthcoming article, “Self-
Deporting From Babylon? A Latino/a Borderlands Reading of Revelation
18:4,” reads the text from the location of undocumented Mexican
communities in the United States, and their current struggle against

“attrition through enforcement” strategies.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ix
Ahida Calderón Pilarski is Associate Professor in the Theology

Department at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Her research focuses on the intersection of gender and culture/ethnicity/
race in the interpretation of the Bible. Areas that inform her analysis
include Biblical Hermeneutics, Gender Studies, Feminist Theory, Latina
Studies, Cultural Studies, Ethnicity, and Race. She is the co-editor of
Bread Alone: Reading the Bible Through the Eyes of the Hungry, 2014 and
Pentateuco. Introducción al Antiguo Testamento/La Biblia Hebrea en
Perspectiva Latinoamericana, 2014.
Gilberto A. Ruiz teaches at Saint Anselm College (Manchester, NH) as
Assistant Professor of Theology. His research interests include studying the
New Testament gospels in light of first- and second-century Judaism and
life in the Roman Empire, and interpreting biblical texts through analytical
approaches that foreground the experiences and identities of modern read-
ers, especially from minoritized perspectives and Latino@ perspectives in
particular. He is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, the Catholic
Biblical Association, and the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of
the United States, and on the topic of migration and biblical interpretation
published an article in the Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology that exam-
ines the Christology of John’s Gospel in light of questions that arise from
the immigration debate in the United States (“A Migrant Being At Work:
Movement and Migration in Johannine Christology,” 2011).
List of Figures
Fig. 4.1 Genesis, “El Centro de Detención,” marker and crayon, 2015,
9 × 12, Arte de Lágrimas. Gallery. Courtesy of Arte de Lágrimas:
Refugee Artwork Project 77
Fig. 4.2 Photograph of “El Centro de Detención” being made.
Courtesy of Arte de Lágrimas: Refugee Artwork Project 78
Fig. 4.3 Genesis, “Prefiero estar en mi casa,” marker and crayon, 2015,
9 × 12, Arte de Lágrimas. Gallery. Courtesy of Arte de
Lágrimas: Refugee Artwork Project 82
Fig. 4.4 Photograph of “Prefiero estar en mi casa” being made.
Courtesy of Arte de Lágrimas: Refugee Artwork Project 82
xi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Reading the Bible and Latinx

Migrations/the Bible as Text(s) of Migration
Efraín Agosto and Jacqueline M. Hidalgo
This book represents several years of reflection and writing on this inexo-
rable fact: Migration remains a topic of political controversy and subaltern
urgency in the United States of 2018. We currently reside under a presi-
dent who launched his campaign by attacking Mexican migrants, and
extending that attack to encompass migrants from all Latin America and
the Middle East.1 On the day we submitted this introduction, US President
Donald J. Trump stated that the United States was deporting immigrants
who “aren’t people. These are animals.”2 We share these comments to
underscore the dehumanizing perceptions that migrants encounter and
live with daily. Although it can be easy to vilify only Trump or only the
United States, antagonism to migrants has been a global problem even as
migration—impelled by war, politics, economics, and human-caused cli-
mate change—has increased dramatically. The chapters in this volume do
E. Agosto (*)
New York Theological Seminary, New York, NY, USA
e-mail: eagosto@nyts.edu
J. M. Hidalgo
Williams College, Williamstown, MA, USA
e-mail: jh3@williams.edu
© The Author(s) 2018 1

E. Agosto, J. M. Hidalgo (eds.), Latinxs, the Bible, and Migration,
The Bible and Cultural Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96695-3_1
2 E. AGOSTO AND J. M. HIDALGO
not strictly grapple with our contemporary migration crises; rather we

consider the Christian Bible as a space of migrant urgency.3 Fundamentally,
we read with migrant humanity, alongside migrant perspectives, and for
the humanization of migrants in broader discourse.
The focus of this collection then is not on those whose acts of domina-
tion continue to push migrants to risk their lives in the Arizona desert or
the Mediterranean Sea. Rather, this collection plays with and around the
Bible with a focus on those persons—historical and contemporary—who
have undertaken migration as well as their descendants living in a land that
is no longer quite the land of their ancestors. We have drawn together
some Latinx biblical critics who reconsider the Bible and the people who
read it through the lens of migration, exile, and diaspora with a focus on
migrants and the children of migrants.
Who Is Latinx? Why Migration?

In order to frame this collection of chapters, a brief clarification of terms
is required.
“Migration” is the broad term for what Jean-Pierre Ruiz has called
“people on the move.”4 It has been much in the news lately, along with
the term “immigration,” because of a variety of complex issues. For
example, war and strife in Syria has compelled migrations across the

region, migrations which have been chronicled in the news, including
with stirring visual images of thousands of refugees risking their lives
across the Mediterranean Sea and other crossings, fleeing war, and vio-
lence. As one report put it, “The Syrian war has displaced millions who are
desperately seeking an existence free from barrel bombs and chemical
weapons. Others travel thousands of miles over land and water to escape
poverty and authoritarian governments.”5 These forced migrations from
Syria are not the only tragedies, of course; the flight and plight of Rohingya
Muslims from Myanmar after military violence against them comes to
mind, along with all too many other examples of people forced to move
because of a range of injustices.6
In the United States, “immigration” across the Southwestern border
has occupied the attention of the current presidential administration in
the most harmful of ways. Most recently, an order from US Attorney
General Jeff Sessions has called for arrests of families attempting to cross
into the United States including the separation of children from their
parents. Even though border crossings have decreased in recent years, the
INTRODUCTION: READING THE BIBLE AND LATINX MIGRATIONS… 3
anti-immigration rhetoric of the current US president and his supporters

unduly demonizes the efforts of families from Central America in particu-
lar to escape difficult circumstances. In fact, before the actions of the
Trump administration, US policy has been to support migrant refugees
from both Syria and Central America, as a broader strategy to bring a mea-
sure of stability to these regions and in particular those affected refugees
who have “hit the road” to save their lives and those of their families.7
Indeed, even before the current Trump administration and its “build
the wall” mentality, similar proposals and other “draconian measures”
were being proposed in Congress, state houses, and local governments
across the country.8 For example, one of the failures of the pre-Trump era
Congress was to pass legislation to protect young immigrants that came
here as children, brought by their parents, who lacked proper documenta-
tion. These so-called Dreamers, the narrative about them insists, were
“American” in every sense of the term, but could be deported without
such protections. President Barack Obama enacted executive orders to
protect them, which, of course, have since been rescinded by his successor.
Still, Congress, despite various promises and attempts, has been unable to
enact legislation to permanently protect the Dreamers, and, except for
court orders, they stand in limbo.9 In short, migration and immigration
are issues of vital import and impact, especially in our contemporary politi-
cal moment in the United States. Given the complexities of political
weight that different terms carry, we have chosen to employ the terms
“migrant” and “migration” because we understand migration as a univer-
sal human activity irrespective of the definitions wielded by particular
modern nation-states or ancient regimes. The term “migrant” allows us to
think globally and in historically comparative ways, putting Puerto Rican
histories in conversation with Mexican ones, African Americans alongside
Cubans, and all of them alongside ancient communities.
This volume focuses on the import and impact of the migration of dif-
ferent Latinx populations.10 The very term “Latinx” itself is contested in
meaning and usage, coming out of a fraught history in terms of US politics
and naming practices, and we have let each author broadly choose their
own approach to this term.11 Whatever its fraught history, the term is gen-
erally taken to encapsulate people who trace their descent to territories
conquered by Iberia—Spain and Portugal—in the Americas during early
modernity. This term includes ethnic Mexicans who lived in Texas before
it was part of the United States as well as Brazilians. The oft-used govern-
ment term “Hispanic” includes people from Spain and the Philippines,
who are not included in the understanding of “Latinx” in this volume.

Others might argue for an even more expansive sense of Latinx (see, for
example, the critical questions Margaret Aymer raises in the conclusion to
this volume), that perhaps all descendants of the Caribbean—both the
islands of the Antilles and the continental regions that border the
Caribbean Sea—also share some of the histories in relationship to Europe
and the United States that should require the incorporation under this
shared term. Recognizing a kinship among varying migration histories
from the Caribbean, we therefore asked Margaret Aymer to respond to
the volume, but our authors have mostly retained a more focused atten-
tion on particular Latinx histories and experiences that fit with dominant
definitions of “Latin American” descent. It is the methodological conten-
tion of those who work in Latina/o/x biblical studies that attention to
particularities is more important than trying to make universal summaries
that incorporate everyone. We hope that other Latinxs, however broadly
the term is construed (indeed we hope all migrants or children of migrants),
can find a way to converse with the diverse readings here.
Partially, the scope of this volume is limited simply on account of who
has training in biblical studies. There are few Latinx scholars in the United
States, so voices even from sizable Latinx communities, such as Salvadorans,
Brazilians, and Dominicans, are absent because the structures of biblical
studies as a field have not fostered much of their membership in our guild.
Latinx communities in the United States are often members of the work-
ing class, and broader structural challenges with education impact all
working class communities. Latinxs of greater European descent and
especially Latinxs of Cuban heritage tend to belong to better educated
and better paid middle classes, and thus class is a significant and under-
studied variable in Latinx migration narratives. Moreover, women consti-
tute a remarkably low proportion of biblical scholars, and this truth holds
among Latino/as in biblical studies. Numbers on LGBT+ biblical scholars
are not available for discussion, but they also constitute a low proportion
of Latinx biblical scholars.
The absence of many critical Latinx perspectives in this volume speaks
to another challenge around the term “Latinx.” What does it mean to
delimit around a larger, almost hemispheric, ethnic label? What about the
racial and ethnic differences internal to Latin America? Here we are not
concerned only with the quite distinct histories of, for instance, Puerto
Rico and Mexico both in this hemisphere and with the United States, we
are also concerned about the distinct experiences of, for instance, Zapotec
and Afro-Mexicans. On the one hand, we must bear in mind the diverse
histories of migration that different Latinx communities have in the
United States, some dating back to the nineteenth century, with others
living in lands that were conquered as a consequence of US Manifest
Destiny and expansionary imperialism in the nineteenth century.12 On the
other hand, we must also bear in mind the histories of internal ethnic and
racial differences within distinctive Latinx cultures. Practically absent from
the broader biblical studies guild are Afro-Latinx and Asian-Latinx schol-
ars as well as Native Latinx scholars who identify primarily with an indig-
enous community rather than with belonging to a category of mestizaje.13
Also broadly absent is an attention to the increasing numbers of mixed
Latinxs—those who have one Latinx parent and one non-Latinx parent as
well as those whose parents are Latinxs of different ethnic backgrounds.
These complexities can make it difficult to know of whom we speak when
we speak of Latinxs. It also means that no one book or essay can do justice
to the full diversity of Latinx experiences with migration, or even to the
full diversity of one community’s (i.e., Cuban, etc.) experiences.
Bearing in mind the challenges of defining who falls under the umbrella
term “Latinx,” demographics vary and are ever-changing, but recent sta-
tistics indicate close to 50 million Latinxs present in the United States,
constituting almost 18% of the overall US population. Luis N. Rivera-
Pagán, writing in 2014, reports that in 1975, the Latinx population stood
at 11 million, just over 5% of the US population.14 Thus, there has been a
major increase in the presence of Latinx populations in the last 40 years,
such that it is now the largest minoritized community in the United States.
By the year 2050, Latinxs could be 26–32% of the country’s population.
These numbers include so-called undocumented Latinxs, although the
numbers for those groups are difficult to ascertain, but it is estimated that
undocumented immigrants in the United States—who are not only
Latinx—may be anywhere between 11 and 12 million individuals.
As Rivera-Pagán points out, such statistics lend themselves to the ongo-
ing “xenophobia” that has long been evident in US history. While more
recent dimensions of such fear include even more restrictive policies and
police actions on the border, this country has historically exhibited the fear
that “open borders” could lead to “disease and criminality,” which has
consistently racialized immigration.15 Such attitudes, writes Rivera-Pagán,
result in the harsh rhetorics of “xenophobia and scapegoating of the
‘stranger in our midst.’”16 Thus, Rivera-Pagán calls for “xenophilia”
instead, in the form of “a biblical theology of migration.”17
Yet others caution against a “one-size fits all” theology of migration.18

The migratory experience is just too varied and each story different. Thus,
“no single theology of migration can make sense of the whole range of
what people on the move experience.”19 Indeed by the end of his own call
for a theology of migration that reflects the consistent biblical picture of
love for the stranger (“xenophilia”), Rivera-Pagán himself concludes that
because “migration is an international problem, a salient dimension of
modern globalization,” communities of faith should respond with more
global perspectives that transcend one faith, one theology, or especially
one nation and its own borders. In addressing global issues and opportu-
nities of migration—people on the move—“the main concern is not and
should not be exclusively our national society, but the entire fractured
global order.”20
This volume does not purport to address the “entire fractured global
order,” but does recognize that Latinx migrants who come to the United
States, with or without authorized “papers,” do so for a complex set of
reasons that are in fact a function of global realities. These include US
imperialism and neo-colonial policies in their countries of origin that com-
pel their migration. So, for every person that migrates to the US border,
and through it, there are myriads of persons, including their family mem-
bers, who stay home. For example, the recent decisions of the Trump
administration to rescind the Temporary Protected Status for Hondurans,
Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, and Haitians, which includes tens of thousands
of individuals, impact the efforts of longer-term US economic and diplo-
matic policy to stabilize the region. As one diplomat involved in the efforts
during the Obama administration put it, “We finally had a bipartisan con-
sensus in Congress that we needed to invest in Central America and to get
at the push factors, the root causes, of immigration. We’re going to set
back our efforts.” In the case of many of the Hondurans affected by a
rescinded T.P.S., they “won’t have places to live when they return, …
there is virtually no chance that they’ll find gainful employment.” Indeed,
“sending them back will also hurt Honduras’s already struggling econ-
omy; twenty percent of the G.D.P. there comes from remittances sent by
immigrants working in this country.”21 Thus, one set of policies, or the
lack thereof, nixes the impact of another. And so it goes in the global real-
ity represented by the phenomenon of migration, in all its dimensions—
immigration, emigration, exile, and diaspora. Imperialism and colonization,
as well as the internal struggles that often develop in relationship to these
realities and histories, are root causes of migration.
Latinx Biblical Scholars and Their Roots

and Realities
What this volume does engage most directly is the role of the Latinx bibli-
cal scholar in addressing the myriad of issues represented by the complex
dynamics of migration. Yet, there are relatively few biblical scholars of Latin
American descent in the United States and Canada, as we pointed out
above. Most of us are called upon to teach the discipline, sometimes in
traditional ways that counter our instincts (and in some cases training, espe-
cially the more recently trained scholar in biblical studies), especially if we
have to teach in theological schools in which certain expectations of biblical
training are required for aspiring religious leaders. Increasingly, however,
the dynamics of teaching biblical studies in the broader context of the
humanities and liberal arts, as well the more critical approaches to biblical
studies in theological education, afford biblical scholars who care about
these themes—of migration, imperialism, coloniality and the global, politi-
cal and economic study of religion in general and the Bible in particular—a
space in which to work. We will address the latter more specifically below.
Yet the question remains, who is addressing the issues of migration from
the perspective of the Bible, and who among them are Latinx biblical schol-
ars? In the most recent (2018) “Member Profile” of the Society of Biblical
Literature (SBL), the professional organization of Bible scholars, 206 mem-
bers self-identified as being of “Latin American descent.” Of those, only 108
are current in their membership.22 Also, it is not necessarily clear who this
number represents: those US born members who identify as Latin American
in ancestry, or Latin Americans born in South America, Central America, or
the Caribbean, but who now live and work in the United States, or interna-
tional members of SBL who reside in Latin America. Certainly, if we included
the latter group, the numbers would be much higher. However understood,
Latinx biblical scholars, given a total SBL membership of 8465, represent
3.44% of all members and 2.89% of current members. Since only 22% of all
SBL members are female, we can assume the numbers of Latinas are simi-
larly small, although the statistics of those of “Latin American descent” are
not broken down by gender.
Obviously, these are considerably small numbers, radically dispropor-
tionate to their portion of the US population and lower even than Latinx
academic proportions in most other fields in the humanities. It would be
interesting to ascertain how many see their biblical scholarship as needing
to be in dialogue with the critical issues of the current day, both nationally
and globally, rather than a more historicist approach that much of biblical
scholarship was known for until the last several decades.23 Certainly, the
scholars represented in this volume could all be considered Latinxs (perhaps
not in the case of our respondent, who was born in Barbados, and raised in
the United States, but whose ancestry does hail from a Caribbean with
shared experiences under European and US imperialism), all living and
working in the United States. Two of our authors were born in Latin
America (Peru, Argentina) and came to the United States as adults. The rest
were either born in the United States or were born in Latin America but
grew up in the United States, with roots in Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, and
Puerto Rico. Their scholarship focuses on biblical texts in dialogue with the
concerns and needs of the world today, including the Latinx community.
Thus, we turn in this introduction to the broader concerns of scholarship in
religion and biblical studies in light of our theme of migration.
Religion as a Migrant Tradition

Most contemporary scholars and students of religion assume that religion
cannot be neatly disentangled from the embodied and material experiences
of daily life; as theologian Orlando Espín has argued about Christianity in
particular, religion is “a way of living, of being human” and not just some
set of pristine textual teachings or doctrines that exist in a realm com-
pletely isolated beyond this world.24 In this regard, religion cannot be sim-
ply segregated from other human social spheres and activities: labor, class,
gender, race (in our case, as Latinxs vis-à-vis dominant US culture but also
within and in relationship to Latin American racial h ierarchies which are
related to but distinct from US black-white racial binaries and colorist
hierarchies). Yet religion’s capacity to speak to and/or from something
beyond this world has often been crucial to how people engage with the
world, especially in the contexts of migration in the United States.
Scholars of religion in general and of Latinx religions in particular have
considered how religions are often deeply intertwined with, shaping of,
and shaped by human migrations. Not all religions migrate in the same
ways with their practitioners, and some religious traditions are more
mobile than others. Nevertheless, religions often provide frameworks that
migrants turn to in making sense of, justifying, surviving, and thriving
amid migration. In this way, we can think of religions as among those
human social structures that are used to interpret migration, that change
with the humans who migrate, and that, because of religious traditions’
own internal power dynamics, also incorporate structures that can pro-
duce the borders people cross when migrating.
The study of religion in the United States has particularly underscored
the importance of place.25 Because the United States is a settler colonial
state, the various peoples who have migrated here or who were forcibly
brought to these shores have had to grapple with either making home or
surviving in this new land. Meanwhile Native populations were forced to
transform their religious relationships with the landscape, and settler colo-
nists forced many Native populations to migrate to regions of this conti-
nent far from their ancestral homelands.26 Even as dominant Euro-diasporic
settler colonists sacralized their homemaking processes in this hemisphere,
minoritized communities in particular have turned to religion as they
struggled to make home. Religious traditions have often supplied crucial
practices, material cultures, and mythic traditions for this space making. As
scholar of religion Thomas A. Tweed, for instance, has shown in his study
of Cuban migrant engagements with la Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre,
religious symbols and material cultures drawn from the homeland of Cuba
become critical to the politics of placemaking in another nation only
90 miles away.27
Scholars of Latinx religions have shown how religious ideas and frame-
works can help Latinxs to make place especially when they can struggle to
feel at home in this world. Edwin David Aponte observes how Latinxs
engage with diverse traditions, including many traditions beyond the
Christian fold as well as traditions that blend with Christianity, in ways that
can often create safe and sacred spaces outside of institutional churches,
mosques, and synagogues. He shares the story of a Latina who found her
own private space in a basement where “she would cry out to God, pray,
spit out her frustrations and anger, asking for help, wisdom, and strength
to persevere” in the midst of daily struggles.28 As Desirée A. Martín’s work
on non-traditional saints in the borderlands has shown, migrants often
seek spaces and stories that fall beyond institutional confines because they
need a form of sanctity that reflects (as a mirror of and a mirror upon) the
ambiguities of their daily lives.29 Further, Aponte depicts how Latinxs
make sacred spaces through the stories they tell about those places, around
those places, and in those places, something that is crucial for understand-
ing the role of the Bible in migration as we discuss below.30
Although religion can fulfill a range of interpretive roles for migrant
individuals and communities, religion can provide a utopian framework
for homemaking. Several scholars have observed how often migrants turn
to religious communities in the hopes of belonging and religious practices

in the hopes of making themselves and their worlds better.31 Indeed,
Jonathan Z. Smith has theorized religion in diasporic contexts as particu-
larly “utopian in the strictest sense of the word, a religion of ‘nowhere,’ of
transcendence.”32 As Fernando F. Segovia has argued about his own theo-
logical experiences under migration, exiles come to live in the porosity
between worlds where “the experience of ‘otherness’ and the sense of
‘belonging’ gradually turn into one and the same reality […] The exile
ends up living in two worlds and no world at the same time, with a twofold
voice from no-where.”33 The religious “nowhere,” particularly as it pro-
vides access to an “other world” and a better one, can become a crucial
site not only for meaning making but also for experiencing—for feeling—
the meaning of belonging.
Yet, in understanding Latinx migrant religion in particular, it is impor-
tant to underscore the histories of colonial and imperial violence that have
compelled Latinx migration, particularly for those Latinxs who hail from
indigenous and Afro-diasporic backgrounds. The violence of colonialism
has marked the religious traditions of colonizers, colonized, enslaver,
enslaved, and those in between. Tweed, in part drawing on his ethnographic
study of la Caridad in Miami, became concerned with a broader theory of
religion that addressed the tensions of transnational religious experiences,
especially when those experiences also often embodied a conflict between a
“public” Roman Catholic religion that proclaimed strict doctrinal lines
dividing Catholicism off from Afro-Cuban traditions such as Lucumí and
“domestic” practices, which often reflected a combination of multiple peo-
ple’s texts and traditions.34 In order to make sense of this conflicted and
dynamic nature of religion amidst transnational migration, Tweed offers a
theory of religion that underscores fluidity: “Religions are confluences of
organic-cultural flows that intensify joy and confront suffering by drawing on
human and suprahuman forces to make homes and cross boundaries.”35
In short, religions do many things, but they are strikingly used in mak-
ing home as well as in enabling and making sense of various “crossings”
for migrants. As Tweed argues, “Religions interpret limits and promote
crossings.”36 People use religious frameworks to make meaning, but reli-
gious practices also do work besides making meaning: they make home.
Yet, students of the Bible recognize quite clearly that religious traditions
and frameworks are themselves contested spaces; they too have power
structures that create and enforce limits (say, e.g., doctrinal teaching that
restricts Lucumí’s official impact on Cuban American Roman Catholicism),
but people live those traditions in ways that enable the crossing of those
constructed borders. Perhaps the most contested loci of Latinx Christian
traditions of crossing and dwelling is the Bible itself. The Bible, itself a
product of migration, has been the framework for interpreting limits,
making homes, and promoting crossings in crucial ways, but it has also
served as a border and boundary that incites practices of transgression,
practices that seek to challenge the Bible’s own borderlands.
The Bible and/as the Border

The Christian Bible is a collection of texts of and about migration. The
Christian religions central to this volume (Roman Catholic and Protestant)
first arrived in the New World as the migrating faiths of settler colonists
from Europe. Indeed Christian myths, practices, and religious texts, espe-
cially biblical texts such as Exodus and Revelation, provided important
fuel for the ways that Europeans justified and made sense of their place in
the New World.37 Although Europeans imposed Christianity onto Native
Americans, enslaved—and later freed—African populations, and imported,
laboring migrants from Asia in modes of attempted “cultural genocide,”38
Native, Afro-Diasporic, Asian Diasporic, and mixed race populations
throughout the Americas took up and transformed Christianity for
themselves. For all these populations, the Bible has functioned as a “lan-
guage world,” as a “store-house of rhetorics, images, and stories,”39
though the exact nature of the relationship with biblical imagination and
authority has varied greatly within and between groups and over time.
Though this is a scholarly volume that focuses on meaning, it is impor-
tant to consider how biblical imaginations have partially been employed in
ways that are not always just about meaning, but sometimes they are about
“structures of feeling” as Raymond Williams has termed them.40 In this vein,
it is vitally important to remember that people do not just read the Bible for
making meaning, but biblical texts become embodied in buildings, images,
dances, and songs, all of which fill migrant sensory landscapes in ways that
cannot simply be distilled to the contestation of meaning that we focus upon
in this volume.41 To some extent Jacqueline M. Hidalgo’s chapter in this
volume reveals how the Bible is more than just a text of private reading
when she examines the Bible as a homing device for Cuban Americans in
California. Gregory Lee Cuéllar’s chapter investigates this issue most seri-
ously when he looks at how migrant children in Texas produce visual art in
grappling with their own experiences of exile and migration.
Cuéllar’s chapter not only examines the contemporary world but also
grapples with the Hebrew Bible as an aesthetic experience of migration
and exile. His chapter in particular points to how experiences of migration
and exile shaped the historical writing and formation of biblical texts and
traditions we have inherited, and we should approach them by not only
attending to how these texts try to make meaning of exile but how biblical
texts are sensory and affective responses to migration and exile. Through
reading Cuéllar’s chapter, we are compelled to consider how migration
and imperial domination are critical matrices that form and inform biblical
texts: historical events such as the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem,
the Babylonian empire’s deportation of a population that remained incar-
cerated in Babylon only to return to ancestral homelands generations
later, and the wide-ranging Jewish diaspora who survived successive forms
of imperial domination all leave their marks on biblical material.
Most of the chapters in this volume address this issue—how we witness
migration’s impact on the historical formation and narrative inside biblical
texts; often because of a conversation with Latinx contexts of migration,
these chapters look at the formation of biblical texts and reveal how cen-
tral histories of Jewish and “Christian” migration, exile, and diaspora have
been in shaping the texts we inherit. In some ways they point to an argu-
ment Hidalgo raised in her book Revelation in Aztlán, that we understand
how scriptures can serve as “homing devices,” as texts that get produced
out of experiences with displacement and then become loci through which
and around which displaced populations seek and make “homes.”42
Through a variety of ritual practices, scriptures then also become their
own centers for varied practices of homing.
Hidalgo looked at the Book of Revelation in particular and argued for
rethinking the articulation of the new Jerusalem and the formation of
Christian canons themselves as projects of homing for displaced popula-
tions. In this volume, Hidalgo makes the case that we can see this legacy
continue in how contemporary readers turn to biblical texts in order to
make home in the world. In this volume, Efraín Agosto’s chapter particu-
larly carries forward this consideration; by reading Paul with and alongside
Puerto Rican histories of migration, Agosto demonstrates how the very act
of writing enacts survival. Writing also provides a means for migrants to
debate the meanings of their migration and the aspirations they have for
how their communities will survive and thrive in the new worlds in which
they live. Both Hidalgo’s book and Agosto’s chapter suggest that scrip-
tures as we know them may in large part exist because of diasporic subjects.
Scriptures are the products of diasporic struggles; they do not necessarily

resolve those struggles, but they provide a window onto the various strate-
gies diasporic subjects have taken up in negotiating movement, displace-
ment, and multiple belonging and unbelonging in different places.
Understanding the Bible as a homing device provides a space for think-
ing about the Bible as an object, as an imaginary, as a set of and as produc-
tive of migration-impelled experiences and feelings. Yet, it is important to
not see the Bible as a homing device that can work in only one way or that
is univocal about making home in the world. The chapters in this volume
reveal how biblical texts do not understand migration or its consequences
in only one way. Indeed, where content meaning is concerned, we might
best understand biblical texts as sites where people have wrestled with dif-
ferent responses to migration and its experiences. Roberto Mata’s chapter
wrestles with how the diasporic practices of the earliest communities
behind Revelation often engaged in a coercive rhetorical struggle against
seemingly more “accommodative” diasporic subjects. In his reading, then,
the Bible provides a model for understanding the problematic histories of
violence migrant subjects have enacted against other migrants. But other
scholars are also interested in how the Bible might provide a more gener-
ous and generative resource for migrant survival. For instance, Eric
D. Barreto’s chapter rethinks Acts and Babel, and sees in it an attempt
among early Christian communities to affirm the beauty of human differ-
ence, to live in the world after so many migrations by affirming the human-
ity of all migrants.
Here Barreto’s work is consonant with another trend in the study of
migration and the Bible among Latinxs. The scholars in this text are
invested readers of biblical texts, and they admit they read from particu-
lar contexts with particular concerns in mind. As conservative anti-
immigration activists in the last two decades have supported the
increasingly violent militarization of the United States-Mexico border
and a consequent increased incarceration of migrants, biblical scholars
with Christian commitments have often responded by showing how the
Bible was not only produced by migrants but also affirms that settled
communities are obligated to welcome, love, and affirm the humanity of
migrants. One of the most prominent examples of this sort of work may
be found in M. Daniel Carroll R.’s Christians at the Border, and indeed
his book was an important impetus behind the initial panel discussions at
the SBL that led to this edited volume.43 Carroll wholeheartedly
acknowledges that he is “concerned about how the Bible can orient the
way the broader Christian community, denominations, local churches,

and individual Christians understand their identity and role in the world
today.”44 Akin to Barreto, he turns to the notion of imago dei, that all
humans are formed in the image of the divine and argues that the Bible
affirms this humanity of migrants.45 Even as Carroll is attentive to the
diversity of human experiences discussed in the Bible, he sees both the
Christian Old and New Testaments as overwhelmingly affirming an ethic
of hospitality, and he argues that those in power are called to be hospi-
table to immigrants.
Carroll portrays the Bible as a text of migration but also as text to help
non-migrants grapple with contemporary migration; the immense diver-
sity of biblical voices can provide a source of identification and connection
for multiple sides of the migration experience. Yet, the scholars in this
volume are more concerned with reading biblical texts from, as, and along-
side migrants, and thus they do not center the ethics of hospitality as much
as they center the strategies by which migrants navigate and have navi-
gated the changed and power-laden world that confronts those in dias-
pora. One way scholars in this volume accomplish this task is by challenging
any perceived univocality within biblical texts. Ahida Calderón Pilarski and
Gilberto A. Ruiz both reveal gender as a critical category through which
migration experiences and texts about migration must be read. By starting
with Latina farmworkers and their experiences of rape, and then turning to
Torah legal traditions around the “stranger,” Calderón Pilarski challenges
the ways that Latino interpreters have tended to privilege male and mascu-
line experiences of migration depicted in the world of the text and the
world in front of the text. G. Ruiz shows how studies of the New Testament
in particular have also privileged male migration. Biblical scholars have
often focused on male characters in discussing New Testament migrations,
and he wonders what differences we might find if we were to center women
migrants in our attempts to read the New Testament. Nancy Elizabeth
Bedford in her chapter in this volume offers a feminist Protestant perspec-
tive on the travels of Mary, the mother of Jesus, to Egypt, as a paradigm
for the migrations of women across borders, especially in the Southwestern
United States. What would have happened, Bedford suggests at one point
in her argument, if Mary and her child were treated like migrant mothers
and their children are treated on the border today, including their separa-
tion! This attention to varying women’s experiences of migration in both
the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament Gospels makes some important
inroads on the theme of Bible and migration.
The sorts of interpretive moves made in this volume then perhaps find
more consonance with Jean-Pierre Ruiz’s book, Readings from the Edges.
In that book, J.P. Ruiz reads from and with contemporary Latinx migra-
tions, and he uses those histories to frame a hermeneutical approach. Not
only does he refuse to read the Bible as univocal about migration, he does
not employ only one approach in reading the Bible. Sometimes he uses
migration experiences to reread biblical texts, for example, in his chapter
on “Matthew’s Parable of the Day Laborers,” where he reads Matthew
through the experiences of undocumented day laborers in the United
States, and in so doing challenges previous interpretations. Yet he also
shares a chapter that interprets Columbus’s reading of the Apocalypse,
modeling an approach that reads the deep reception histories of the Bible.
Although not a focus of this volume, it is important to remember how
the Bible itself has been a text of domination in this hemisphere, and bibli-
cal imaginaries have not just provided sustenance to migrants. Biblical
imaginaries have been generative of the violence that has impelled much
Latinx migration, and biblical imaginaries have also been implicated in
violence within migrant communities and have structured the uneven
power dynamics experienced by women and LGBT + migrants. In this
way, J.P. Ruiz’s concluding chapter to Readings from the Edges reminds us
that sometimes the Bible too is a border that must be crossed, and thus the
scholars in this book engage in an interpretive play that transgresses the
Bible’s own borders, taking contemporary struggles in lo cotidiano as
sacred sources of wisdom.46 That said, out of a refusal to constrain the
possible thematic meanings of these chapters, we have organized the rest
of this book by following the organization of the books in the Christian
Bible to which these chapters refer, with Hidalgo’s coming first because
she refers to the “Bible” more generally and Aymer’s coming last as a
response to the collection. This book attempts to honor the diverse read-
ing strategies and concerns of the still-too-few Latinx scholars on this
topic. Thus, this volume plays amid and between all these ways of reading
the Bible with and alongside migration.
Notes
1. Donald J. Trump, “Presidential Announcement Speech,” Time, June 16,
2015. Several of the chapters in this book were presented at a conference
in New York on the eve of the 2016 Presidential election, when we were
hopeful for a result that would lead to more just actions and policies on
behalf of migrants and refugees. It was not to be.
2. “Trump Compares Illegal Immigrants to ‘Animals,’” The Washington Post,

video 0:28, May 16, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/
politics/trump-compares-illegal-immigrants-to-animals/2018/05/16/3
442ddf2-5948-11e8-9889-07bcc1327f4b_video.html?utm_
term=.73da970be6ef.
3. Here we are drawing upon Vincent L. Wimbush’s arguments from “read-
ing darkness, reading scriptures,” in which he argues for “a greater sensitiv-
ity to the Bible as manifesto for the exiled, the un-homely, the marginal,
the critics and inveiglers.” See Vincent L. Wimbush, “Introduction:
Reading Darkness, Reading Scriptures,” African Americans and the Bible:
Sacred Texts and Social Textures, ed. Wimbush with the assistance of
Rosamond C. Rodman (New York: Continuum, 2000), 16.
4. Jean-Pierre Ruiz, Reading from the Edges: The Bible and People on the Move
(Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2011). See his volume also for a
broader discussion of the range of terminology.
5. Seema Jilani, “What Refugees Face on the World’s Deadliest Migration
Route,” New York Times, April 26, 2018.
6. See recent Associated Press report on efforts to resolve that refugee crisis,
as hundreds of thousands have fled to refugee camps in nearby Bangladesh:
“UN Team, in Bangladesh Vows to End Rohingya Crisis,” New York
Times, April 29, 2018.
7. On the decision to arrest and separate families on the Southwest borders,
see Miriam Jordan and Ron Nixon, “Trump Administration Threatens Jail
and Separating Children from Parents for Those Who Illegally Cross
Southwest Border,” New York Times, May 7, 2018, and Caitlin Dickerson,
“Hundreds of Immigrant Children Have Been Taken from Parents at
U.S. Border,” New York Times, April 20, 2018. In a related development,
the suspension of Temporary Protection Status for 60,000 Honduran refu-
gees, among others, many of whom had legal status in this country for
years, threatened to send them back home to volatile situations, even
though overall US policy in Central America had been trying to resolve
economic and political turmoil in Honduras before forcing such return
migration. See Jonathan Blitzer, “The Battle Inside the Trump
Administration Over T.P.S.,” The New Yorker, May 11, 2018.
8. See Luis N. Rivera-Pagán, “Xenophilia or Xenophobia: Towards a
Theology of Migration” in his Essays from the Margins (Eugene, Oregon:
Cascade Books, 2014), 88–89, in which he cites various proposed and
enacted policies, before the Trump era.
9. For an updated report on the situation of the “Dreamers” (at the time of
the writing of this chapter), see Miriam Jordon and Sonia Patel, “For
Thousands of ‘Dreamers,’ It Has Been a Wild Ride. And It’s Not Over
Yet,” New York Times, April 25, 2018.
10. In this volume, we have incorporated the increasingly accepted use of the
term “Latinx” to refer to the complex realities of the peoples, nationalities
and sexualities represented by US Latina, Latino, and transgender, non-
binary individuals, many of whose ancestors migrated to the confines of
current US borders or were already “here” when the “border crossed us,”
and many of whom are more recent immigrants. See the forthcoming essay
by Carla Roland Guzman, “Liberating Vulnerable Bodies,” Perspectivas,
Spring 2019, which makes the case for the need to adopt “Latinx” as a
term in critical and theological usage more broadly. See also Jacqueline
Hidalgo, Revelation in Aztlán: Scriptures, Utopias and the Chicano
Movement (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 25, n.5.
11. For a thorough history of the struggles to invent terms that could capture
a broader pan-ethnic minority of those descendants of lands that were
under Spanish imperial domination in the early modern Americas, see
G. Cristina Mora, Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and
Media Constructed a New American (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2014).
12. For a concise and accessible summary of key Latinx migrations to the
United States, see Edwin David Aponte, ¡Santo! Varieties of Latino/a
Spirituality (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2012), 58–67. Aponte’s
broader chapter also engages with many of the problematic tensions that
adhere to the umbrella term “Latino/a” even as he ultimately advocates
for the import of thinking pan-ethnically within this label about the reli-
gion. See Aponte, 67–77.
13. For a robust discussion of the complex history of the term “mestizaje” and
how it has problematically incorporated logics that suppress and denigrate
Native and Afro-diasporic Latin Americans while erasing Asian-diasporic
Latin Americans, see Néstor Medina, Mestizaje: (Re)Mapping Race,
Culture, and Faith in Latina/o Catholicism (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis
Books, 2009).
14. Rivera-Pagán, 86.
17. Which he details in Rivera-Pagán, 93–99, calling for, nonetheless “an ecu-
menical, international and intercultural theological perspective” (in
99–103).
18. Jean-Pierre Ruiz, citing an unpublished paper by Carmen Nanko-
Fernández (“A Hybrid God in Motion: Theological Implications of
Migrations, A Latin@ Perspective”) in his Reading from the Edges, 4.
19. Ruiz, Reading from the Edges, 5.
20. Rivera-Pagán, 101–102.
21. Blitzer, “The Battle Inside the Trump Administration Over T.P.S.”
22. This information is available in the “2018 SBL Membership Report,” accessed
at https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/sblMemberProfile2018.pdf.
23. This was the argument of the Presidential address of Fernando Segovia, the
first Latinx SBL President in the 135-year history of the organization.
Segovia argued for a biblical scholar consistently in dialogue with the criti-
cal issues of the day in his address, published as “Criticism in Critical
Times: Reflections on Vision and Task,” Journal of Biblical Literature
Volume 134, No. 1(2015), 6–29.
24. Orlando O. Espín, Idol & Grace: On Traditioning and Subversive Hope
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2014), xxiv.
25. Especially the heterogeneity of “sacred” space in relationship to “profane”
space, has been a central theme for many classic theorists of “religion,”
from Émile Durkheim to Mircea Eliada.
26. See, for instance, discussion in David Chidester and Edward T. Linenthal,
“Introduction,” American Sacred Space, ed. Chidester and Linenthal
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 6–10, 18, 23.
27. Thomas A. Tweed, Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban
Catholic Shrine in Miami (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
28. Edwin David Aponte, ¡Santo! Varieties of Latino/a Spirituality (Maryknoll,
NY: Orbis Books, 2012), 115.
29. Desirée A. Martín, Borderlands Saints: Secular Sanctity in Chicano/a and
Mexican Culture (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2014),
15–16.
30. Aponte, 117.
31. See, for instance, arguments about Pentecostal conversions in the border-
lands found in Leah Sarat, Fire in the Canyon: Religion, Migration, and the
Mexican Dream (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 193–205.
32. Jonathan Z. Smith, Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), xiv.
33. Fernando F. Segovia, “In the World but Not of It: Exile as Locus for a
Theology of the Diaspora,” Hispanic/Latino Theology: Challenge and
Promise, ed. Ada María Isasi-Diaz and Fernando F. Segovia (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1996), 203.
34. Thomas A. Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008), 6.
35. Tweed, Crossing, 54.
36. Tweed, Crossing, 138.
37. See God’s New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny, ed.
Conrad Cherry, Revised and Updated edition (Chapel Hill: The University
of North Carolina Press, 1998); also Eddie Glaude, Exodus! Religion,
Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2000). For an examination of the import of
the Old Testament to early US politics, see Eran Shalev, American Zion:
The Old Testament as a Political Text from the Revolution to the Civil War
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2013). For a thorough atten-
tion to contrasting African American traditions, see Rhondda Robinson
Thomas, Claiming Exodus: A Cultural History of Afro-Atlantic Identity,
1774–1903 (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2013). Osage literary
critic Robert Allen Warrior has also provided a clear critique of the settler
colonial tendencies in Euro-US conquest readings of Exodus, whereby the
Euro-US population was the new Israel and Native Americans were cast as
Canaanites. See Robert Allen Warrior, “A Native American Perspective:
Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians,” Voices from the Margin: Interpreting
the Bible in the Third World, ed. R. S. Sugirtharajah, New Edition
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis/SPCK, 1997 [reprint of 1989 essay]), 277–285.
38. See George E. Tinker, Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native
American Cultural Genocide (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993).
39. Vincent L. Wimbush, The Bible and African Americans: A Brief History
(Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2003), 4.
40. Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (Broadview Press, 2001 [1961]).
41. For instance, see the import of sonic practices among Pentecostals as
described in Daniel Ramírez, Migrating Faith: Pentecostalism in the United
States and Mexico (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015).
42. Hidalgo, Revelation, 4. The notion of a “homing device” is drawn specifi-
cally from Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006), 9.
43. M. Daniel Carroll Rodas, Christians at the Border: Immigration, the
Church, and the Bible (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic Press, 2008).
44. Carroll, 19.
45. Carroll, 67.
46. Here we are all indebted to the work of mujerista theologian Ada-María
Isasi-Díaz and Latina feminist theologian María Pilar Aquino who draw
attention to the important of the struggles of daily life as locus theologicus.
CHAPTER 2
The Bible as Homing Device Among Cubans

at Claremont’s Calvary Chapel
Jacqueline M. Hidalgo
In the fall of 2003, during my first semester of graduate school, I enrolled

in a course on the “Bible and the Margins.” This course required us to
complete an ethnographic examination of the practices surrounding
“sacred texts” within a particular community. Having just moved to
California from New York City, I was not yet comfortable driving so I had
to find a place near my graduate institution. Claremont is a small, well-to-
do suburban college town 35 miles east of Los Angeles, so finding a space
to observe the “Bible” among the “marginalized” was not a simple task.
Calvary Chapel of Claremont1 sat in a suburban office complex just to the
northeast of the Consortium of the Claremont Colleges. I first attended
services at this Calvary Chapel in September of 2003.2 Many of the 50 or
so regular congregants were Cuban migrants, including the pastor and his
wife. When I revisited Calvary Chapel again in 2006, the congregation had
added a college Bible study program and diversified its membership some-
what, especially during the English service, but it was still predominantly
Latinx in its ethnic composition.3 This congregation initially challenged me
J. M. Hidalgo (*)
Williams College, Williamstown, MA, USA
e-mail: jh3@williams.edu
© The Author(s) 2018 21

E. Agosto, J. M. Hidalgo (eds.), Latinxs, the Bible, and Migration,
The Bible and Cultural Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96695-3_2
22 J. M. HIDALGO
to think about the complex interactions between religion and migration,

and thus when I was first invited to participate in this conversation about
Latinx migrations and the Bible, I thought I should return to some of what
I learned in those first few months of doctoral work spent with the Calvary
Chapel community in Claremont.
Although I am also Latina, this community fell reasonably far from my
context as a woman who was born in Costa Rica but raised Roman
Catholic in the U.S.A. Nevertheless, many Latinxs (but not all) and many
of Calvary Chapel’s congregants share in the complex history of Latin
American identity and in a long-term exile from their nation of origin.
Robert Maldonado has argued that the complex history of Latin American
identity is circumscribed by the canonical texts of two traditions.4 Not
only did the Iberian colonization leave Latin America as a world of mixed
ancestry and “ambiguous” identity, but US colonialism and Manifest
Destiny also made Latin Americans feel like “strangers” in their own
homeland.5 Once in the U.S.A., people of Latin American descent gener-
ally have to face an “enforced ‘homelessness’” because of the differences
in languages and changes in status often related to complex constructions
of racial and ethnic identities for people of Latin American origin living in
the U.S.A.6 As Latino/a Studies’ scholar María de los Angeles Torres
argues, this estrangement is further accentuated when this “homelessness”
is double-edged; once life in the U.S.A. becomes more permanent, people
of Latin American background and descent face a certain “rejection” by
both the nation of origin and the U.S.A.7
This “unhomeliness,” to reactivate Homi Bhabha’s (who is retranslat-
ing Sigmund Freund’s unheimlich) term for a different context, the strange
feeling of being unhomed in the world, characterized the experiences of
many of the congregants at Calvary Chapel in 2003. Thus “unhomeli-
ness” becomes a useful frame of reference for understanding the encoun-
ter between the Diasporic Cubans8 at Calvary Chapel and their sacred
texts. During my time at Calvary Chapel, I noted some of the particular
biblical passages that were popularly read among congregants, but this
chapter does not focus on interpreting biblical texts. I became more inter-
ested in the social and psychological relationships formed by, with, in rela-
tionship to, and through the Bible. By the close of that semester, I came
to see that the practices surrounding biblical texts and ascriptions of sacred
authority to the Bible also served to situate the Bible as a homing device,9
a basis from which to mediate and negotiate senses of home, especially for
marginalized and migratory peoples.
THE BIBLE AS HOMING DEVICE AMONG CUBANS AT CLAREMONT’S… 23
Cuban migrants at Claremont’s Calvary Chapel deployed the discourse

of “home” in at least three directions that matter for a topical focus on the
Bible and migration. (1) Home as in “nation” and “country.” Most of the
congregants had felt “unhomed,” at some point, still imagining Cuba as
home, but recognizing their growing distance from Cuba as they became
more settled in the U.S.A. Yet, being settled in the U.S.A. did not neces-
sarily correlate with perceiving the U.S.A. as home. The Bible sometimes
served as a pivotal text in reflecting on national belonging, and the con-
gregants felt ambivalently connected with and misaligned with two
national homes at the same time. They also came to build another home
in the church, in and through their scriptures.10 (2) Thus, home was also
a place beyond national confines, an otherworldly11 utopia, a site of
belonging in a world beyond this one. The congregants believe they
belong to this otherworldly home on account of Jesus’ death and resur-
rection; knowledge of this home is accessed specifically through the Bible
and prayer.12 (3) Home as in the earthly, domestic—specifically
household—space. Here, the first two understandings of home—as nation
and otherworldly belonging—inscribe and implicate the household sphere
alongside readings of scriptures, forcing the household to bear the load of
“home-making” in the U.S.A.
The (Trans)National Home

Cuba itself is an island with a complex history of colonialism and enslave-
ment, with people from multiple racial and ethnic backgrounds living
together, often under terms of great inequality, since the time of Spanish
colonization.13 At the end of the nineteenth century, Cuba and Puerto
Rico fought Spain for independence.14 The U.S.A. entered the war in
1898 after the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana’s harbor, which
many read as a justification for US interventionism and hemispheric impe-
rial expansion. This war inaugurated 60 years of US intervention in Cuba
until it withdrew its support of President Batista in 1958. After 1961,
those who chose to leave Cuba were forced to surrender all their property
to the Castro regime.15 Most of Calvary Chapel’s Cuban congregants
came to the U.S.A. between 1962 and 1969.
Most migrants arrived destitute, though, partially because of the
U.S.A.’s comparatively welcoming policies to Cuban migrants and a dense
network of relatives surviving together, some still managed quite a bit of
success in a short time as is apparent from the story of Marco Alvarez,
pastor of Calvary Chapel in Claremont, and his wife Mirta:
24 J. M. HIDALGO
We had some relatives here, and we came with them. I found a job within a
week working with an architect, and of course, my goal was to obtain my
license here in California, which I did; I do have it. At that point, and of
course to raise a family. We were young. She was only 20. I was 25, and we
had a child, 2 years old, so we started our way, and you know, spent a few,
about a month staying with our relatives to get settled, get a job, and you
know find an apartment for us. And we moved to an apartment after a little
while and we began our lives that way.16
For Alvarez, this moment of leaving Cuba and settling into life in the
U.S.A. represents a fundamental break in the narrative of his life, one that
initiates the telling of a whole new life that begins in this geographical
zone. Nevertheless, his story also encodes educational and class privilege
that helped him adjust—he was a trained but unlicensed architect.17 He
could then stay with relatives for a time, become licensed, and find work.
While still imagining that he had built a new home in the U.S.A.,
Alvarez also described the challenges of being caught between the bureau-
cratic unfriendliness of two nations. In 2003, Fidel Castro was still in
power in Cuba, and only in 2000 had commercial flights resumed to Cuba
from the U.S.A., along with postal mail and limited money transfers.18
Generally the abilities of migrants to return to Cuba and see family have
been greatly affected by the “foreign policy” of both nations.19 The Bush
administration returned some of the travel restrictions that had been
removed under the 1990s Clinton administration.20 At that time, Cuban
immigration officials often helped US citizens who traveled to Cuba from
other countries by not stamping their passports, but US citizens who trav-
eled to Cuba in the early 2000s, if discovered, could face up to a $65,000
fine.21 Alvarez returned to Cuba throughout this period, specifically to do
“religious/charitable” work, but in addition to observing the tensions of
navigating US law, he expressed concern that the Cuban government
could keep him from returning if somehow they came to view his ministe-
rial activities as politically or religiously threatening.22
Cuban migrants in Calvary Chapel also had to negotiate local Californian
stereotypes about Cuban and broader Latinx cultures. Despite the unique
qualities and experiences of Cuban identity within the Latinx community
in the U.S.A., dominant US categories still, (and problematically, as was
discussed in the introduction to this book) lump all those of Latin
American background together.23 This similarity in association is most evi-
dent in the field of language, something evidenced in Alvarez’s own
experience. Immediately after he moved to the U.S.A., he and his wife

began working with the church and started to work not specifically with
Cubans but with “Spanish-speaking people”:
We became active in the Church right away; we thought that was an impor-
tant part of our lives, and our family, our children, and we believed in God,
and so we got involved right away. And right away we started to teach a class
in Spanish for some Spanish-speaking people.24
The use and retention of Spanish by people of Latin American descent liv-
ing in the U.S.A. was, in the late twentieth century, perceived by domi-
nant culture as one of Latinxs’ most socially destabilizing characteristics.25
A wave of “English-only” legislation spread in response to Latinx immi-
gration in the 1980s.26 Moreover, US citizenship, especially in the history
of its legal construction, has often been written particularly to exclude and
differentially include those who are not European and not white in ori-
gin.27 In the context of California with its influx of unauthorized migrants
from Mexico, Central, and South America, from the 1980s through the
early 2000s, Californian perception of Latinxs has often involved a sense
of their unifying “illegality,” regardless of status28; such a perception would
have been more strongly associated with native Spanish speakers.
Although something of those stereotypes have shifted in California in
the last decade, in 2003, a sensitivity to larger cultural perceptions perme-
ated congregational life. In addition, because they settled in California,
many of these Cuban migrants quickly became involved with other Latinx
and non-Latinx groups. Though Cuban migrants are often portrayed as
elite, white, wealthy, and well educated (qualities that one might ascribe to
the pastor and his wife),29 Cuban migrants at Claremont’s Calvary Chapel
in 2003, were educationally, economically, and racially diverse. Hence,
they care that Calvary Chapel explicitly stresses its opposition to racism.30
Most of the congregants I interviewed all emphasized this opposition to
racism and the welcoming experiences they first had upon entering a
Calvary Chapel as being the moment that led them to join the church.
As Asian American Studies’ scholar Yen Le Espiritu has argued, certain
immigrant groups come to participate in US life through a process of dif-
ferential inclusion within which they never fully belong to the larger
national imaginary and yet they perceive themselves as part of that larger
nation.31 Rhetorics of citizenship often assume that exiles cannot truly
grant a singular “loyalty to [a] single state.”32 Almost every service at
26 J. M. HIDALGO
Calvary Chapel involved prayers for Cuba and hopes that Castro would
find Jesus. Most of the interviewees still referred to Cuba as “my country”
while infrequently using the first-person pronoun with regard to the
U.S.A.33 Still, a US flag sits in the pulpit,34 not a Cuban flag, and Alvarez
always started the services I attended by praying to God and thanking God
for the blessing of being in the U.S.A., where he is free to worship.
Alvarez’s own life proves the impossibility of a unitary and “fixed” national
identity for many migrants.35 Gauri Viswanathan argues that conversion to
different religions can serve as a “critique of the failure of secular ideolo-
gies to extend full political rights”36 because religious communities grant
a sense of full inclusion to people who experience the “differential inclu-
sion” described by Espiritu. Is there some way in which the Bible mediates
a sense of belonging amid Cuban migrants’ experiences of double-edged
homelessness and differential inclusion?
The Bible as Otherworldly Home

In Cuban American biblical critic Fernando F. Segovia’s essay, “‘In the
World but Not of It’: Exile as Locus for Theology of the Diaspora,” he
examines how his own experience of exile informs “socioreligious dis-
course about the world, the otherworld, and the relationship between
such worlds.”37 Segovia explains how “the exile ends up living in two
worlds, and no world at the same time, with a twofold voice from no-
where.”38 For Segovia, this experience necessitates a “construction” of
“the human world, the divine otherworld, and the interchange between
these two worlds.” According to Segovia, this construction also necessar-
ily involves “ambiguity.”39 This feeling resonates with the Cuban congre-
gants of Claremont’s Calvary Chapel in their own turn to the Bible and
the otherworldly. When I discussed the concept of “unhomeliness” with
the pastor, Alvarez himself recognized what I meant by the experience of
unhomeliness and argued that faith in Jesus “as revealed in the Bible”
grants him a “strong sense of identity and being.”40 In some ways, Alvarez’s
relationship to the otherworld may be distinctive from Segovia’s
construction; the otherworld as mediated through the Bible is what allows
Alvarez to resolve his experience of unhomeliness in this world.41
Cuban American scholars of religion Justo González and Ada María
Isasi-Díaz both exegete Psalm 137 as a rubric for reading and understand-
ing their exiles from Cuba; they take a text that they view as about another
people and their other world, and see it as also helping them to make sense
of this world. Despite some similarities in approach, González and Isasi-

Díaz focus on very different elements in the text and in their identities as
Cubans in the U.S.A. For González, who describes himself as someone
who moved “from being a Latin American living temporarily in the United
States to being a Hispanic in the United States,”42 Psalm 137 reflects “all
the ambiguities and ambivalence of such dislocation” from “the center”
that the experience of exile entails. González views his migration experi-
ence as a way of “life in which one is forced to revolve around a center that
is not one’s own.”43 Isasi-Díaz, on the other hand, sees herself as a refu-
gee; for her Psalm 137 captures “the pain I was experiencing being away
from my country against my will.” Though she is a “USA citizen,” she
continues to feel that she lives in exile, and that she would happily return
to Cuba if she could.44 Both González and Isasi-Díaz reveal the import of
the Bible for reading and making sense of the struggles of Cuban migra-
tion, but even two academics reading the same biblical text also demon-
strate how no one has the same experiences or interacts with the Bible in
the exact same way. Similarities in geographical background cannot
account for individual constellations of living, and yet the struggle with
home making when one has multiple homes and unhomes persists in both
accounts.
The Bible as “Language World” for Migrant Experience

Isasi-Díaz and González both reflect Christian traditions with less commit-
ment to literalist reading strategies, and so their approaches also diverge
from those found at Calvary Chapel. Biblical inerrancy and pre-tribulationist,
premillenialist theology are strongly promulgated doctrines at Calvary
Chapel.45 Given the complicated relationship of Cuban migrants with the
U.S.A., and with California in particular, the appeal of Calvary Chapel may
not be that surprising. Its breed of Christian evangelicalism was, after all,
born in Orange County, originating with Chuck Smith, whose distaste for
the denominational politics of a Pentecostal group known as the
International Church of the Four Square Gospel led him to leave the
denomination. Calvary Chapel grew out of the 1960s and the 1970s “Jesus
movement” of “Jesus freaks”—former hippies who were disillusioned with
other forms of religion and found security in Smith’s church.46 During his
life, Smith did not consider Calvary Chapel a denomination47 despite its
over 600 congregations worldwide.48 In 2005, Alvarez emphasized the
independence of each individual church from the larger fellowship.49
28 J. M. HIDALGO
Smith’s pattern of preaching worked straight through the Bible with

expository sermons on the Bible reading selected for the day. Following
that pattern, Alvarez would go through the Bible every five years.
Calvary Chapel places a strong emphasis on the Bible, which has long
maintained a special place in the textual field that surrounded life in the
“New World.” In the U.S.A. biblical texts became intertwined with US
culture, civil society, and identity.50 Biblical rhetoric has performed a sig-
nificant role in the enterprise of “Manifest Destiny,”51 a project that par-
tially accounts for US interest in Cuba, and biblical rhetoric often structured
anti-Soviet, thereby also anti-Communist, rhetoric. Historian of religion
Martin Marty argues that the Bible is such a part of US history and culture
that it forms part of a set of “binding customs … that have a hold much
stronger than that which law can impose.”52 In particular, the Bible has
played a significant role in US nationalism and imperialism, especially
through the lens of fundamentalist and end-time rhetorical readings.
Deployment of the Bible at Calvary Chapel grants the congregants par-
ticipation within the dominant textual field and can thus destabilize domi-
nant US portrayals of Latinxs as “illegal” citizens, while at the same time
the Bible helps the Cuban migrants here forge a new identity that provides
them security in the face of instability. The Bible itself acts as a language
world for the congregants’ home formation in the space of the church.
For example, the physical sanctuary within Calvary Chapel had two bibli-
cal quotations running along the eastern and western walls, and these
quotations were the walls’ only decoration.53 Mirta learned English by
listening to Smith’s sermons on the old King James Version. She even
applied KJV English to Spanish translations of biblical texts during Bible
studies I attended.54 Smith’s own teaching also serves as an unofficially
canonical text for guiding biblical interpretation.55
In anthropologist Susan Harding’s study of Jerry Falwell’s Virginia
congregation, she identified something else I observed at Calvary Chapel,
the profound ability “for Bible-based language [to be] the medium and
the ritual practice through which born-again Christians are formed and
reformed.”56 Biblical language and stories provide a frame for understand-
ing their lives and the world around them. As such playing with biblical
stories creates and sustains a particular community, giving those inside a
particular shared narrative turn while carefully demarcating those on the
outside. Even though their ministry and lives often require a certain
engagement with the dominant culture of the world around them, the
biblical rhetoric and the emphasis on proper Christian characteristics pro-
vides ways of drawing their own borders—borders that exclude some

while at the same time more firmly including those who subscribe to that
particular code.57 In my interview with another Cuban American congre-
gant, whom I call “Ana,” she suggested that it was precisely the way peo-
ple read the Bible that placed certain others, namely Catholics,
Presbyterians, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, as outsiders who did not share in
the relationship with God that could be found at Calvary Chapel.58 The
Bible and the “canonical” teachings of Chuck Smith function as the textual
lens through which the congregants of Calvary Chapel encounter life in
California and the U.S.A., and it is this textual lens that defines their iden-
tity as a community and as Christian, Cuban, and American.
The Bible and the Otherworldly Home

The textual importance of the Bible for discourse in the Americas also
exists in Latin America, where the Bible was from the time of colonization
perceived to be radically sacred, “supernatural” even in its otherworldly
origin and orientation. Pre-Vatican II Latin American Catholicism “dis-
couraged parishioners from reading the Bible, highlighting both the
sacredness and the complexity of the text.”59 The rich Spanish and Latin
American Catholic mystical tradition has also had a significant impact on
the emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit in reading the Bible.60 Protestant
missionaries to Latin America then granted access to this mystical Bible
but still stressed its radically “supernatural character,” which granted the
Bible ultimate divine authority.61 This assumption has in turn yielded, in
some strains of Latinx Protestant biblical reading, a belief that the “aim of
the biblical message is to facilitate a personal relationship between the
‘heart and soul’ of the individual with God.”62 This personal devotional
piety is also a view shared by Calvary Chapel,63 and it may account some-
what for the appeal of Calvary Chapel’s approach to the Bible for Cuban
migrants.64 Repeatedly in my interview with her, Ana emphasized the
importance of that “personal relationship with God.”
What seems to be required for this home-building at Calvary Chapel is
the otherworldly authority of the Bible. For them, the Bible’s true power
comes precisely because it is not an earthly product and thus not nationally
bound. Alvarez argued that the whole point of teaching the Bible at all is
to help people to see its non-human quality: “And the ultimate end of
teaching the Bible verse by verse is to let them know that the Bible is not
… man-centered, but it is Christ-centered, is God-centered.”65
30 J. M. HIDALGO
In sermons, Bible studies, conversations, and interviews, the Bible was

held up as God’s word, as the place where God is revealed.66 However, the
Bible also helps Alvarez and the Calvary Chapel congregants to imagine a
better world, one where they will feel at home. In the first volume of
Calvary Chapel’s Spanish-language magazine, Alvarez reflected on the
Sermon on the Mount as Jesus’ portrayal of the millennial kingdom. He
argued that Jesus shared these teachings “so that we may live as citizens of
the Kingdom of heaven in a hostile and difficult world.”67 While the lan-
guage of citizenship could appear to be a straightforward part of evangeli-
cal Christianity, I would argue that it had particular resonance for this
community who had to leave the citizenship of their birth and whose US
national citizenship was experienced only through differential inclusion.
Moreover, otherworldly biblical rhetoric also structures much of the cri-
tique of dominant not specifically Christian US culture. Most importantly,
though, to these congregants, the otherworldly orientation of the Bible
provides an authoritative, safe, personal space in which to negotiate
identity.
Not surprisingly, the congregants of Calvary Chapel take a specifically
otherworldly view in their personal interaction with the Bible. Ana argues
that all other forms of writing lacked the divine origin she found in the
words of the biblical text.
A lot of people love to read different books. But I say the only book that I
like is this one … I don’t want to because look at how many studies I have
to have and I don’t want to take my time to read a book that was written
even if it has the verses of the Bible, but it is that guy’s thoughts, and is the
Holy Spirit teaching? I would like to read the Bible because the Holy Spirit
can teach me straight from the Bible. That’s my thinking.68
The Bible was held up as God’s word, as the place where one encounters
God directly.
Partially the import of this encounter with God and the Holy Spirit
rests on a utopian understanding of the otherworld as a world standing in
contrast to the struggles of this one that is lauded by many of the congre-
gants. Ana left Cuba in the 1960s at age 24 with her husband and eldest
daughter. A second daughter she had while in the U.S.A. later died at the
age of 24. Ana looks forward to being “called home” by “the Lord” so
that she can be with her family, especially her daughter who died. This
double promise of the otherworld, the imagined world of peace that also
contains within it some of the memorialized earlier home is part of its

great power. I share now a quotation that illustrates the importance of this
otherworldly home for Ana:
My daughter … was 24 years old when the Lord called her home … My life
has not been easy but because I have Him I can go through all these valleys
of sorrows and tribulations and I know that whatever happens in here is
temporary. This world is temporary, but we will have eternal life forever …
And I know that one day He’s going to come for me, and I’m going to be
there with Him. And that’s pleasure for me; I will see my daughter.69
She elaborated further when talking about her grandson who has a condi-
tion similar to Down’s syndrome:
Always rejoice in the Lord because He give me not only strength, He gives
me hope … I know that one day [my grandchild’s] going to be so beautiful
when he be in the Lord’s presence and nobody’s going to give him the looks
that they give him now … when he’s in the presence of the Lord he’s going
to be so beautiful because he’s going to have a new body like in the
promise.70
She connected this otherworldly home to finding home in this world

when she mentioned how grateful she was to have come to this country
because it was here that she found the Lord: “So many times I thank the
Lord that I came to this country because here is where I have my relation-
ship with Him. I learned here what it is like really to know the True God
you know, through Jesus.”71 Thinking back on the situation of “unhome-
liness,” it would seem that the exiled Cubans use this otherworldly orien-
tation as a potent resource for carving out their own “home” space here
on Californian soil.
Its “otherworldly” nature grants the Bible a special status as something
constantly read, beloved, and thereby used to construct the congregants’
home, in the here-and-now.72 This spiritual nature also grants the Bible a
particular authority for how the congregants should live their lives.73 Many
of the congregants often speak of how desperately they want everything
they do to “glorify the Lord.” That authoritative Lord is personally
encountered thanks to the Bible. The reverence granted that text is seen
in the way that the congregants always pray for guidance before even read-
ing the Bible.74
32 J. M. HIDALGO
The Domestic Home

Bhabha proposes that the unhomely has become the norm, and, as a con-
sequence, the “domestic space” is necessarily redesigned “as the space of
the normalizing, pastoralizing, and individuating techniques of modern
power and police: the person-is-political; the world-in-home.”75 The
domestic home has necessarily become the space where constructions of
national identity must be enforced and perpetuated. My first two under-
standings of home, the national and the otherworldly, inscribe and impli-
cate the domestic sphere, forcing it to bear the load of “home-making” in
the present and the local.
The first Sunday I attended services at Calvary Chapel the text upon
which the sermon was based was Ephesians 5:21–33. I suspect that the
first encounter with this church through a text that, at least on its surface,
focuses on a hierarchal and highly gendered ordering of domestic house-
holds, may also have shaped my attention to the complexities of “home”
at work in this congregation’s engagement of the Bible. Over the course
of my repeated encounters with Calvary Chapel, I realized that the meta-
phor of submission found in Ephesians 5 applies to the relationship of
Calvary Chapel congregants to the biblical texts and to the authoritarian
God they perceive lies behind them, but also, more specifically, to the fam-
ily home. I would like, by way of conclusion, to raise some questions about
the importance of family and domestic relationships—that more intimate
space we call home—as it relates to the textual field of Calvary Chapel.
The issue of how the domestic home should function pervaded many
of the sermons and Bible studies I attended. As historian of religion Sara
Moslener argues, apocalyptic concerns with sexual purity, right gender
relations, and family structure have been critical facets of US evangelical
Christian discourse for a long time, intertwining with political and cultural
imaginaries since at least the nineteenth century.76 At Claremont’s Calvary
Chapel, one easily found pamphlets that address abortion and homosexu-
ality. Alvarez’s sermon on Ephesians 5:21–33 was greatly concerned with
the notion of a biblically based family home.77 Such a family, understood
in patriarchal and heteronormative terms, is the foundation for their
Christian counterculture, for that identity that enables them to be “in the
world but not of it.” For Alvarez, the Christian home is meant to stand in
stark contrast to divorce and other marital problems found in US culture,
but it is also meant to be a kind of warm and ordered household contrast-
ing to the disorder of Castro’s Cuba. Most discussions I observed about
the end-of-the-world were significantly tied to the structure of the family

home.78
In Sally K. Gallagher’s survey of evangelicals on issues of “husbands’
headship,” she argues that “gender hierarchy” is critical as “the central
metaphor for the ontological worldview” of the evangelical subculture.79
Indeed, Harding also found that for Falwell’s congregation “the kind of
speech mimesis between preacher and congregation that fashions and sus-
tains fundamentalist and conservative evangelical communities” was reli-
ant upon an assumed divinely ordered hierarchical family structure, in
large part because it is the hierarchical family that trains the members in
the practices of the larger culture.80 Even Alvarez himself points toward
the connection between certain constructions of the family and the main-
tenance of culture by trading upon long-standing evangelical anxieties
that connect civilizational decline to sexual mores and the domestic sphere:
“That is why Gibbons says that the breakdown of Roman Empire wasn’t
from the outside, but from the inside; the breakdown of the family took
down the mighty Roman Empire.”81
While these historically inaccurate rhetorics place Alvarez within a cer-
tain US evangelical mainstream, might the import placed on building a
biblically shaped household matter more for this congregation than many
others? National belonging may be an ongoing negotiation, but the
Cuban immigrants have limited agency in shaping how others perceive
their belonging. Denigrations of “degenerate” Latinx families in the pop-
ular media also have long histories in the U.S.A.82 Thus, these congre-
gants’ household homes become the spaces where they can try to bring
something of the other world into this one even as they refute dominant
cultural stereotypes. The domestic household could be perceived as the
one site where congregants have the power to create the space of belong-
ing, the home beyond this world that can only be accessed through the
mediation of biblical texts. The Bible serves as not just a tool for negotiat-
ing home but also as a model for building home, and thus the Bible is a
homing device along an entirely different trajectory.
For Alvarez, the family home should be one of ultimate security and
loving acceptance, of the promised belonging on earth that works pre-
cisely because of the influence of the otherworld to order it.
And so what God created originally, and the intent of His heart, is that in
marriage, family, home, is an orderly institution, there’s an order in it, where
love and respect and humility and harmony and justice and holiness and
34 J. M. HIDALGO
grace and mercy and servanthood exists. There’s a love that reigns in this
home. It’s a love that sacrifices and serves. A love that takes place based
upon the previous context, being filled with the Holy Spirit … It doesn’t
mean in any way that the wife is inferior to the husband or that the husband
is superior to the wife in any way intellectually, morally, spiritually, in any
way, that is not the meaning. It has nothing to do with that … God is a god
of order, and every time that God creates an institution, there is an order to
that institution … What is the family for, this first institution? Simply to raise
godly offspring. Malachi says that God did this so he could have a man and
a woman becoming one so that he could have godly offspring, godly chil-
dren, children are raised in the fear and the knowledge and the admonition
of the Lord, living there, and there they learn to be civilized people, to be
sociable, to get along one with one another.83
For Alvarez, and his congregants, ultimately, the domestic family home is
meant to reflect and produce both otherworldly and national orders. The
struggles of exilic existence harmonize in the domestic home because an
otherworldly order controls that space. Unlike the U.S.A. or Cuba, this
otherworldly order provides security and comfort in love; it is a place
where unhomeliness has ideally been eradicated because a strong sense of
“being and identity” should be socialized into the home’s family members
and produce “civilized people.” Yet, the heteropatriarchal structure of this
home has necessarily led others to feel unhomed from this domestic space.
Postcolonial theory has long reflected a certain ambivalence toward
home precisely because of the rhetorical, metaphorical, and literal vio-
lences that can surround people’s struggles for home. Edward Said’s
Culture and Imperialism concludes with the suggestion that it is perhaps
best to feel unhomed.84 Yet Roland Boer, in Last Stop Before Antarctica,
has also critiqued this sort of romanticization of itinerancy, and the way
that it reflects the privileged position of interpreters whose income and
citizenship status allow them to practice a very different kind of migration
than the subjects of this chapter.85 All the constructions of home that the
congregants of Calvary Chapel mobilize still seek to eliminate the ambigu-
ity and struggle that, as Segovia argued, is so inherent to the exilic experi-
ence in the national home. Eliminating ambiguity has costs, but I hope
this chapter can tell us something about why the congregants of Calvary
Chapel sought to live with clear, ordered, unambiguous belonging that
does not appeal to all of us. Whether home refers to a house, to a nation,
or to another divinely infused world, home in all these locations is some-
thing more than tangible or physical; rather it is an ongoing conceptual
construct where, for the congregants at Calvary Chapel, the Bible works
as the imagined scaffolding through which one produces a location of
ordered belonging.
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 peo-
ple 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 ethno-
graphic 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 ethno-
graphic 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 sur-
round 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 relation-
ship to their Cuban homeland and to other Cubans in the U.S.A. Cubans
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that venerable humbug to exhibit the contents to his guests. The
sight of so much riches naturally inflamed the already excited
cupidity of the Wa’G’nainu. The next step was easy. In spite of Bei-
Munithu’s lukewarm remonstrances, they helped themselves liberally
and departed, exulting, to their villages. The next day El Hakim
unexpectedly arrived, and, entirely unaware of what had taken place,
asked that his trade goods should be brought out for his inspection,
as he wanted to take them over to M’thara. Bei-Munithu, with many
excuses and much wringing of hands, detailed the events of the
preceding day. El Hakim was exceedingly wroth, and he there and
then wrote me the note which had brought me over.
After Bei-Munithu had retired to his village we talked matters over.
El Hakim was very much annoyed at the turn of affairs, and assured
me that this was only one of the unpleasant results of our reverse in
Embe. What others were in store for us, time alone would disclose.
We decided before we turned in that we would go early on the
morrow to G’nainu and demand our goods. We wished to proceed
on the principle of suaviter in modo rather than fortiter in re, but if the
former failed we were determined to apply the latter without
hesitation. El Hakim had taken an inventory of the missing goods,
and found that more than four loads had disappeared. Bei-Munithu’s
conduct in the affair was not above suspicion, but we could not
afford to quarrel with him just then.
At night a bed of banana leaves was made up for me on the
ground in El Hakim’s tent, which, with the addition of a couple of
blankets, made me as comfortable as possible under the
circumstances. My well-earned rest, however, was soon disturbed by
the field-rats, which used me as a playground, and continually
skipped and jumped over my body and face, to their own infinite
amusement and my extreme discomfort. Two or three times during
the night I woke up and found a large rat curled up fast asleep in the
hollow of my neck or under my arm. El Hakim awoke at my frequent
and somewhat profane exclamations, and gently inquired what was
the matter. When I held forth on the drawbacks of slumber in the
savage wilds, he feigned polite incredulity, and remarked, “Shocking,
shocking! Most unfortunate delusions! Very regrettable, Hardwick,
very;” and turning over in his blankets, he added insult to injury by
chuckling audibly at intervals for an hour afterwards, in a most
aggravating manner.
At four o’clock next morning we roused our fourteen men, and set
out for G’nainu, some twenty or thirty of Bei-Munithu’s men
accompanying us. It was rather a rough tramp, the country being
very hilly and much cut up by ravines and streams. We crossed the
river Kazeta (which flows in a south-easterly direction through Zura
at an average altitude of 5000 feet) by a tree-trunk bridge, and at
seven o’clock reached the first village of the Wa’G’nainu and halted
outside. Our men waved green branches as a sign that we came in
peace, but got no answer, the village, which was very strongly
fortified, seeming to be entirely deserted. It was situated on the crest
of a forest-covered hill, and was surrounded by a very massive outer
stockade of roughly hewn tree-trunks with pointed tops. Inside there
were two additional stockades of pointed logs, and the huts within
were also stockaded one from the other, the whole forming a position
almost impregnable to an enemy without firearms. We waited for a
while, but were unable to get any answer to our signals, and held a
consultation to decide on our next move, but in the middle of the
discussion a shower of poisoned arrows from the surrounding bush
winged their destructive way into our midst, killing three of Bei-
Munithu’s men outright; at the same time the now familiar war-cry
rose on all sides, and resounded from hilltop to hilltop in a manner
which showed us that we were fully expected.
The natives, we found afterwards, had driven off most of the stock,
which, with all their women and children, was safely out of the way
on the hills, while their husbands and fathers contentedly settled
down to a comfortable day’s fighting with the Wasungu, with the
prospect of a nice little massacre afterwards as a fitting conclusion to
a most enjoyable day.
We were compelled to quickly decide upon our course of action,
as the Munithu men were wavering, and their desertion would have
meant disaster, they alone knowing the paths. Retreat was not to be
thought of, as, taken in combination with the Embe reverse, it would
have confirmed the natives in their opinion of our helplessness, and
our prestige would be hopelessly lost. Our men summarily settled
the question by firing a volley into the surrounding bush in reply to
fresh showers of arrows. We were now in for a large-sized quarrel,
and as we did not see any immediate prospect of recovering our
pillaged goods by pacific means, we determined to avail ourselves of
the opportunity to recover at least their value, and also to punish the
treacherous Wa’G’nainu for their unprovoked attack. Accordingly we
gave the word of command, and our little force advanced at the
double and captured the village without encountering any serious
opposition. Inside were a few goats and sheep that had been left
behind in the general stampede which occurred when our arrival was
first signalled. The enemy had drawn off for reinforcements, and
meanwhile contented themselves, after the native fashion, with
shouting insulting remarks, together with a list of the various surgical
operations they later on intended performing upon our persons.
El Hakim mustered our men in the village, and divided them into
two parties, one of which he placed under my command, with orders
to forage round for more live stock, while he, at the head of the other,
held the village as a fortified base.
When I was about to select the men I required, we discovered, to
our consternation, that there were only nine instead of fourteen!
Questions elicited no information as to the whereabouts of the
absentees. It was that firebrand Sadi ben Heri and three or four of
his particular cronies who were missing. I had seen them only ten
minutes before, but where they had gone after we captured the
village I could not ascertain; however, we trusted they would turn up
all right. I took five men of our own and about a dozen of the
Wa’Munithu to try to capture some more stock in order to balance
our account with the Wa’G’nainu.
They certainly made me work for what little I captured. They
disputed every plantation and every village till I began to run short of
ammunition. Two or three of my Munithu contingent were killed, so
when I reached the next village I burnt it, just to show the enemy that
they had in no way intimidated us by their opposition; a proceeding
which heartened my men wonderfully. It was very hard work. Every
village was perched on an eminence, and in most cases reached by
only one, or at the most two, almost inaccessible paths. I proceeded
all the time at the double, so that my men should not have time to
think about the danger, and after racing up and down several hills as
steep as the roof of a house, I was fairly pumped and streaming with
perspiration, in spite of the comparatively low temperature. I
captured a few head of cattle and a hundred or so sheep and goats
in the course of an hour or two, and burnt four villages in the
process; which proceeding greatly facilitated my safe retirement to
the base held by El Hakim, when I was forced both by lack of breath
and ammunition to turn my footsteps thither.
During my retirement the enemy concentrated in force along my
route, but a few well-directed shots from my ·303 persuaded them
that it was safer to scatter and take cover. I rejoined El Hakim, and
found that he had also gathered a couple of dozen or so additional
goats and sheep, and three or four head of cattle. It was then nine
o’clock in the morning. There was no sign of the five missing men.
The war-cries and howls of the enemy were increasing rapidly in
volume, and it became more and more evident that a determined
effort was to be made by them to prevent our return. Our Munithu
contingent showed unmistakable signs of wavering, so we concluded
that in the interests of our own lives and those of our remaining men
we had better put on a determined front, and fight our way back to
Munithu. We therefore burnt our temporary headquarters, and retired
in good order, trusting that the misguided Sadi ben Heri and his
equally misguided companions had already safely retired by another
route.
After leaving the village the path abruptly descended into a narrow
valley and ascended the opposite slope, winding amid thick bush, in
which large numbers of the enemy had congregated. Our first view
of them was by no means encouraging. The bush seemed alive with
them. We were at once greeted with a shower of poisoned arrows at
long range, which, though they did no bodily harm, badly shook the
nerves of the men; but El Hakim and I put in a little fancy shooting at
200 yards, and order was soon restored. We got safely through that
particular part, but several times in the next mile or so we were
greeted with showers of arrows from concealed natives. A few shots,
however, generally persuaded them that discretion was the better
part of valour.
After a tiring march, with intervals of skirmishing, we reached
Munithu with our captures intact. When we reckoned them up,
however, they barely covered the value of the trade goods stolen, to
say nothing of the expenditure of ammunition and the personal risk
entailed in the collection. We were very tired and very hungry, but
before eating we dispatched native spies to try to obtain news of the
missing men. After lunch we retired for an hour to sleep off the
effects of our unusual exertion.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Should the reader be inclined to consider my language to be
somewhat theatrical, it must be remembered with whom I was
dealing. I knew my man, and pointed my remarks accordingly.
CHAPTER VII.
RETURN TO M’THARA.
An ivory “shauri”—Death of Sadi ben Heri and his companions—

Purchasing ivory—El Hakim and I return to M’thara—A night in
the open—George ill—The Wa’M’thara at their old tricks—Return
of the Somalis from Chanjai—They refuse to return to Embe—I
interview an elephant.
In the afternoon Bei-Munithu paid us a visit in order to hear our
version of what had happened at G’nainu. He listened attentively to
our recital without making any comment. When we had concluded he
informed us that he also had sent spies back to G’nainu, as, in
addition to our five men, eleven of his own who had accompanied
them were missing.
We learnt further that the natives of a village about two hours’
march distant wished to sell us a tusk of ivory. We heartened
considerably at that, and asked Bei-Munithu to bring the owner along
to talk it over. He thereupon withdrew, presently returning with a very
aged and decrepit man, who tottered forward by the aid of a staff,
whom he introduced to us as the owner of the tusk. We politely
begged the venerable gentleman to seat himself, and waited till it
pleased him to open negotiations. In a few moments he had
collected enough energy to speak, and producing a reed some six
feet long, indicated that that was the measurement of the tusk.
“Very well,” we said. “It seems a good tusk. How much do you
want for it?”
After a little thought he remarked that one cow and three sheep
would be considered a very fair return.
“All right,” said we; “if the tusk is all it is represented to be, we will
give even the price asked, in order to save the trouble of a long
‘shauri.’ But first let us see the tusk.”
He assented to this, and in a little while rose and retired,
presumably to bring the tusk. For over two hours we waited
expectantly, but he did not return, and we were just thinking of
sending over to Bei-Munithu for an explanation when that gentleman
himself appeared, leading forward a native still more ancient than
our former visitor. This latter individual slowly seated himself in front
of our tent and solemnly chewed a twig which he drew from a bundle
of similar ones carried in his belt.[6] The ancient gentleman munched
away for some minutes, and finally condescended to speak. He
announced, between chews, that he owned a tusk of ivory which he
wished to sell us. We, metaphorically, hugged ourselves. Two tusks
in one afternoon! But we received a rude shock when the interpreter
informed us that the old gentleman was referring to the same tusk.
“Why,” we explained, “the owner has already called upon us, and
we have completed the bargain.”
“Oh no,” said the old savage, “that was a young man sent to
bargain with you” (practically testing the market). “I am the owner.”
“Very well,” said we. “We don’t care whom it belongs to so long as
it is sold to us; and the sooner the better.”
“But,” said the old savage, “I want a cow and four sheep!”
We grew heated, and told him to go to Heligoland, or words to that
effect; but he refused to depart thither.
“The other man,” he said, “like all young men, was very rash, and
exceeded his instructions. I myself could not think of letting such a
beautiful tusk go for less than one cow, a good cow, and four sheep.”
We remained firm, however, and he finally agreed to let us have
the tusk at the original price. He then retired, while we wiped our
perspiring foreheads and took a nice long drink of brackish water.
At that moment a messenger arrived from M’thara with a note to
me from George, asking me to return as soon as possible, he being
very ill with fever. El Hakim had intended returning on the morrow,
since we were still waiting for news from G’nainu of our missing men,
though we had lost all hope of their being still alive.
Next morning, therefore, we rose early, and sent a messenger
over to the people who had the tusk, inquiring why they had not sent
it over the day before as they had promised. The messenger
returned saying that they were close behind him bringing the ivory.
We waited with what little patience we could muster till nearly
midday, when a deputation of elders turned up leading a withered,
tottering skeleton, which on closer inspection proved to be an
extremely ancient native. He looked more like a fossil than a human
being, but, as we found, he still possessed, in a high degree, the
native cunning and keenness in a bargain. The deputation carefully
seated the fossil before us, and, grouping themselves respectfully
round it, relapsed into a dead silence, only interrupted by the clicking
of their jaws as they chewed their everlasting twigs. The fossil
moved, woke up, and for some time gazed at us out of its bleared
eyes, expectorating thoughtfully at intervals, while we in turn looked
at it with some interest. After we had satisfied our mutual curiosity
we spoke to the fossil, politely inquiring its errand. It gazed at us
once more, expectorated, coughed, and announced that it was the
owner of the much-disputed tusk, and had come to arrange the
purchase price!
“What!” we cried, “is this tusk owned by a syndicate? We have
already had two ‘shauries,’ and wasted two days over it. Who is the
owner, anyhow?”
The deputation assured us, with the utmost simplicity that this was
the real owner; the other two were only friends. We resigned
ourselves to the inevitable, and prepared to engineer yet another
bargain.
The fossil again condescended to speak, and declared that the
precious tusk should not go out of his possession except in
exchange for one very good cow, and three female sheep with
lambs! We refused to entertain any such advance on the original
price, and the matter was discussed with considerable animation and
some heat for an hour or more. At the end of that time, when our
patience was almost at vanishing-point, we agreed on a
compromise. We argued that we had not yet seen the tusk, and
consequently did not know if it was really as good as it was
represented to be. We would therefore send a man over to their
village, and on his return with a favourable report would give the
price last demanded. On the contrary, if it were not such a good tusk
as we had been led to believe, we would only give the original price
asked. This plan they eventually agreed to. Resarse ben Shokar was
ordered to accompany them to their village and report on the ivory.
The deputation then rose and withdrew, taking the fossil with them.
We retired to our tent, but had not been seated more than a few
moments when the sound of excited exclamations from the men
caused us, ever on alert for news of our missing men, to spring to
our feet. We rushed outside and saw an excited, heaving group of
our men volubly discussing some object in their midst. I shouted an
order, and the group separated and led towards our tent a man
apparently in the last stage of exhaustion. Commanding silence, we
called Ramathani to interpret. The man straightened himself, and we
were horrified to observe a great gaping wound in his right arm, that
looked like a sword-cut, which had been roughly stitched up with
fibre. He announced amid breathless silence that he was the sole
survivor of our five Swahilis and the eight native allies who had
accompanied them. Our men groaned and wept at the news, but we
again commanded silence, and bit by bit, by dint of careful
questioning, we extracted the whole wretched story.
“Your four Zanzibaris,” said the native, “Sadi, Hamiz, Abdullah, and
Marazuki, and one M’kamba, with eight of we Munithu people,
slipped away from Wa’sungu so that we might collect cattle and
sheep. We went very far and got many cattle. Presently we crossed
the border of G’nainu into Nimbere, and there Sadi ben Heri, who
commanded, seized many cattle and sheep from the Wa’Nimbere,
who at once attacked us; but your men drove them away with their
guns. We could not turn back, as the Wa’G’nainu were behind us,
and Sadi ben Heri said, ‘Let us go on through this country, and so
come to Munithu, where we shall be safe.’ We therefore crossed
Nimbere, being many times attacked by the ‘Washenzi’ (savages) on
the way, but the Zanzibaris always drove them off with their guns; but
afterwards they had not many cartridges left.
“We then got into N’dakura, where there are many people, and
there Sadi ben Heri said, ‘Let us take even more cattle and sheep
from these people.’ So we took many cattle and sheep from the
Wa’N’dakura, who then attacked us very fiercely; but your men again
drove away the Washenzi with their guns. But their cartridges were
very nearly finished, while the paths were narrow and the bush very
thick. The Wa’G’nainu and Wa’Nimbere were behind us, and the
Wa’N’dakura were in front. They came so close that we had to leave
all the cattle and sheep that we had taken, so that we might try to
save our lives. The enemy came closer and closer to us in the
plantations and the bush, and then your men fired their last cartridge.
Soon after that Abdullah was speared in the stomach, then Sadi was
killed with spears, while the M’kamba was killed with a sword, and
Marazuki and Hamiz were also killed with spears. There were very
many of the ‘Washenzi.’ I was cut on my arm with a sword, and I ran
away and hid in the forest. The other seven Munithu men were killed
while trying to run away. Some were killed with spears and others
with swords, and some with arrows. I waited till it was night, and then
I came here.”
Such was the story of the missing man, and a ghastly business it
was. It was entirely due to the disobedience of Sadi and his
companions, and also to their stupidity in not confining their
operations to the people with whom we were fighting. As it was, they
had now given offence to two powerful tribes who had hitherto been
friendly to us. In addition, four of our rifles were in the hands of the
enemy, which might well be a source of bitter trouble to us in the
future; as, indeed, it turned out.
At the conclusion of the narrative we sent the wounded man away,
with orders that his wants should be attended to, and talked the
matter over. It was then dusk, and much too late to think of starting
for M’thara.
A few moments later Resarse arrived in camp from the village
where the ivory was, and delivered his report. He informed us that it
was a fair-sized tusk, and would weigh perhaps 50 lbs. An hour later
the fossil and his friends turned up, and after a mild discussion we
agreed to pay the price demanded, viz. a cow and three ewes with
lambs—on the condition that they were to let us have the tusk very
early on the following morning, as we explained that we were greatly
desirous of starting early for M’thara; I, for one, being a little anxious
about George.
Therefore at sunrise next morning we despatched Resarse to the
fossil’s village with a cow, together with a message to the effect that
he (Resarse) was to bring back the tusk with him, accompanied by
one or two of their men, to whom we would hand over the balance of
the purchase price due to them, i.e. the three ewes and their lambs.
Partaking of an early breakfast, we next packed up the tent and
the numerous loads belonging to El Hakim which had been in Bei-
Munithu’s charge, though we had to leave some of them behind.
There were about fifteen loads of various beads, a 300-yard Alpine
rope, ten or a dozen loads of mardūf (English drill), about six loads of
iron, copper, and brass wire, some “bendera” (red cloth) and “kiniki”
(blue cloth), and also some loads of camp equipment, medicines,
and ammunition; which, together with some signal-rockets and
gamekeepers’ flares, totalled up to some forty odd loads. The
donkeys gave some trouble at first, as they were very fresh, and
strongly objected to being loaded again after twelve days’ idleness.
Finally, somewhere about ten o’clock we were ready for our long-
delayed return to M’thara.
All this time there were no signs of Resarse or the ivory. Half an
hour after we had finished packing he was descried approaching the
camp, but was still driving the cow; there were no signs of the tusk.
Our disgust and annoyance can be imagined when we heard that the
fossil had hidden the tusk and run away! Bei-Munithu was
peremptorily summoned, and we angrily demanded the reason of
this treatment, expressing our displeasure in sufficiently severe
terms. Bei-Munithu, much disturbed, departed to find out.
We simmered for another two hours till his return. From his
account it appeared that there were two tusks, and the owner, seeing
Resarse approaching with only one cow, thought we intended to
cheat him, and incontinently fled. Bei-Munithu, however, had now
persuaded him that we were honest, and he was now on his way to
camp with the two tusks. Again we sat down and waited, with as
much patience as we could command under the circumstances.
We unloaded the donkeys, and tried to rake out something
eatable, but failed, as there was nothing cooked. At two o’clock in
the afternoon we were still waiting. At that hour one of Bei-Munithu’s
men came into camp with the information that the fossil and his
friends had run away again, taking the two tusks with them. El Hakim
exploded at this aggravating news. He sent for Bei-Munithu once
more, and fairly made the old reprobate shake with fear, though, as
far as we knew, it was no fault of his.
“Go at once,” cried El Hakim, “and tell these people that I have
waited two days on their account. I will wait no longer. If they do not
bring that ivory within two hours, I will come and burn their villages
and destroy their plantations to the last muhindi stalk.”
Bei-Munithu became greatly agitated, and implored El Hakim to
have a little patience while he himself went to see the fossil and his
friends, in order that he might try to convince them of the error of
their ways.
He returned late in the afternoon, accompanied by the fossil and
the other two ancients, with whom we had bargained, bringing with
them the two tusks. We gave them a piece of our minds and the
price agreed upon, and allowed them as a special favour to pick their
three ewes, a proceeding which occupied the greater part of another
hour.
The tusks were only medium specimens, weighing 90 lbs. the pair.
We thanked Bei-Munithu for his efforts on our behalf, although we
had more than a shrewd suspicion that he had caused the whole
delay from first to last, though for what purpose we could not be very
certain.
It was very late in the day when we eventually started for Mathara,
and there seemed very little hope of reaching it that night, though we
determined to try, notwithstanding our many loads and our
miscellaneous collection of cattle, sheep, goats, and loaded
donkeys, all of which seemed to have contracted a malignant type of
perverseness, inasmuch as they would not keep to the path, needing
constant care and watchfulness and frequent halts in order to
recover stragglers. Fortunately, Dirito and one of his tribesmen
volunteered to accompany us and “chunga” (drive) the animals, an
offer which we gladly accepted.
We made fair progress until we reached the strip of forest
described in the account of our first march to Karanjui, on the
borders of which we arrived just before dusk. We were joined there
by Viseli, one of the head-men of Chanjai, and one of his people,
who proceeded to assist Dirito in driving the animals. In this manner
we reached Karanjui, and El Hakim proposed that we should camp
there. I was averse to such a plan, however, remembering George’s
note, so we pushed on.
Traversing the further belt of forest, we crawled out into the open
plain which stretches away to Mathara. The sun had already set, and
the wind became bitterly cold. The porters were tired and beginning
to straggle, but as there was no water nearer than a stream an
hour’s march on the hither side of our own camp, we had no choice
but to proceed in spite of the darkness. On we went, Dirito and Viseli
with the tired animals keeping close to us, while the porters were
strung out in an irregular line in the rear. It grew pitch dark, and a
cold wind, increasing in violence, nearly froze us.
Hour after hour we pursued our hopeless way in the blackness of
the night, until somewhere about 8 p.m., when we reached the small
stream. It was useless going any further, so we camped. We called
for the tent to be pitched and firewood brought, but to our surprise
met with no response. We could not understand it. We called again,
but beyond Dirito and Viseli and their two henchmen with the
animals, there were not more than three or four men with us, and
they were carrying loads of cloth. The others were scattered
somewhere in the darkness along the path by which we had come.
We were in a nice predicament, our small party being perched on a
bare, bleak hillside, exposed to the full fury of the icy blast without a
tent, a blanket, or a thing to eat, though nothing had passed our lips
since our hasty meal at daylight that morning. However, there was
nothing to do but to make the best of it, so we ordered a large fire to
be made, to try to mitigate in some degree the freezing horror of the
icy gale. Another disappointment awaited us; there was absolutely
no firewood to be had. Our few men searched diligently for an hour,
and brought back two or three handfuls of brushwood, which by dint
of a wasteful expenditure of matches, coupled with no small amount
of profanity, were transformed into a puny apology for a fire.
Presently, to our great joy, we heard shouts from the other side of
the stream, and soon we had the satisfaction of beholding a small
body of our porters approaching. We eagerly examined their loads,
but alas! they consisted, of course, of brass and iron wire, and, by
the irony of fate, one load of cooking and table utensils.
El Hakim and I resigned ourselves to a night of discomfort, and
crouched down over the miserable spark we dignified by the name of
a fire. An hour later a solitary porter struggled into our midst, and, lo
and behold, he carried the fly-sheet of the tent. We hastily uncorded
it, and found the tent-pegs rolled up inside; these were at once
sacrificed for firewood, and we soon had a moderate blaze going.
Then Ramathani discovered some pieces of raw meat among the
cooking utensils, the remains of a sheep we had killed two days
before. We very soon had them out, and cutting them into chunks,
toasted them in the frying-pan, which formed a nourishing though
somewhat indiarubber-like meal. El Hakim then spread the canvas
fly-sheet out on the ground, and we both crept under it and tried to
forget our discomfort in sleep.
The gale blew with great violence all night, blowing our protecting
fly-sheet up at the corners, and sending an icy draught up our
trouser-legs in a most disagreeable manner; so that, altogether, we
were unfeignedly thankful when the first grey streaks that heralded
the dawn appeared in the eastern heavens.
We arose and stretched our stiff and frozen limbs, and calling up
the few men who, huddled to the leeward of the animals, resembled
so many corpses under their scanty linen cloths, we started for our
camp at Mathara, which, having struck the right path, we reached in
an hour.
George had not yet risen, but, hearing our arrival, wrapped himself
in a blanket and came out of his tent. I was very disagreeably
surprised at his appearance. He was quite yellow and very thin and
haggard, the effect of a severe attack of fever, which, coupled with
anxiety on our account and differences with the Wa’Mathara in
camp, had given him a very bad time indeed. He looked more like a
ghost than a living being, but “all’s well that ends well,” and our
arrival safe and sound contributed in no small degree to his speedy
recovery. The Wa’Mathara, it appeared, had again been up to their
old trick of surrounding the camp with armed men, and on one
occasion they had actually attacked some of our camp followers
while on their way to the stream for water. In fact, George was
compelled to get up from his bed, where he lay racked with fever,
and, seizing his rifle, sally forth accompanied by four or five men in
order to drive off the enemy, who, however, fled at his approach
without further hostilities.
We now commenced preparations for our move northward to the
Waso Nyiro River, selecting what trade goods and cattle we should
require, intending to leave the balance with N’Dominuki. Food had
also to be bought and packed into loads, as, after leaving Mathara,
there were no other cultivated districts in the direction we intended to
travel, and we should have to depend for sustenance entirely upon
the food we were able to carry with us, and on any game we might
be able to shoot. An inventory of the contents of our food-boxes
showed that there was no reserve salt, and beyond an ounce or two
in use, there was absolutely none in the safari. I mentioned the
disconcerting fact to El Hakim, but he consoled me with the
assurance that we should certainly be able to obtain salt at a crater,
marked N’gomba on the map, a little to the south of the Waso Nyiro
and due north of the Jombeni Mountains. Our supply of English flour
was also finished, and we were then living on the native M’wele and
Metama.
In the afternoon I took a rifle, and, leaving camp, struck in a
northerly direction in search of game. Crossing the thorn forest, I
came out on to a gravelly highland, covered with thorn scrub, and
here and there isolated Morio trees. Underfoot a few small aloes with
red flowers grew in the patches of earth between the blocks of white
quartz plentifully bestrewn everywhere.
The Morio (Acocanthera Schimperi) is a curious-looking tree with
its bare stem, averaging about six feet in height, formed of several
thin stems twisted round each other after the manner of a vine.
Surmounting the bare stem is a spherical crown of leaves, giving it
the appearance of those little toy trees supplied to children in Noah’s
arks. It has a small leaf and small pink-and-white flowers, which
have a delightful scent. The A’kikuyu and Wa’Ndorobo use the
distilled sap of the roots for poisoning their arrows. It is also used by
the Somalis for that purpose combined with the sap of another
variety of the same species (Acocanthera Ouabaio) which grows in
the Arl mountains of northern Somaliland. The resultant poison is the
celebrated “Wabaio” of the Somalis. No other plant or tree will grow
near the Morio, consequently they are met with only in little groups or
as isolated specimens.
About two miles from camp I reached a small stony hill. On the
summit I discovered a small rudely constructed fort, built of flat
stones, containing small huts of stone roofed with brushwood. It
faced to the north, and I afterwards found that it was used by the
A’kikuyu as a watch-tower when expecting a Rendili raid. From the
top of this fort I obtained a good view of the surrounding country. To
the north the ground sloped away in a long incline to the Waso Nyiro,
the bed of which lies more than a thousand feet lower than M’thara
at the point in its course due north at that place. Beyond the Guaso
Nyiro showed dimly the shadowy outlines of Mounts Lololokwe and
Wargasse, 7750 feet and 10,830 feet in height respectively. Further
away to the north and east lay the desolate sandy wastes of
Samburu or Galla-land.
To the north-east beyond the Doenyo lol Deika (a hog-backed
ridge 6200 feet above sea-level) the great plateau of Lykipia
stretched as far as the highlands of Kamasia and Elgeyo. At the foot
of the Kamasia highlands lies Lake Baringo, distant a hundred and
twenty miles, the southern end of which is inhabited by the Wakwafi
of Nyemps. Fifteen miles south of Baringo is Lake Hannington,
discovered by, and named after, the late Bishop Hannington, who
was murdered by the natives of Usoga in 1885. The water of this
lake is lukewarm, and, being impregnated with mineral salts, is very
bitter. The Lykipia Plateau is terminated on the north by the Loroghi
Mountains, and on its eastern side by the Elgeyo escarpment, which,
together with its southern continuation, the Mau escarpment, forms
part of the eastern wall of the great “fault” in the earth’s crust which
extends from the sea of Galilee, over 33° north of the Equator, down
the valley of the Jordan, thence down the Red Sea, and southward
through North-Eastern Africa to Lake Tanganyika, 10° south of the
line, and which is known to geographers as the Great Rift Valley.
South-west of my point of vantage rose the lofty peak of Kenia,
veiled as usual by its curtain of cloud. To the south-east, and on the
eastern side of Kenia, lay the route we had just traversed, extending
through M’thara, Munithu, Zura, Moravi, Igani, Wuimbe, Zuka, and
M’bu back to Maranga on the Tana River. The first stage of our
journey was safely accomplished. Who could tell what Fate had in
store for us in the unknown regions to the northward?
On the way out I met with no game, but on my return I saw two or
three impala antelopes, at which I could not get a shot, chiefly owing
to the noise I unavoidably made in approaching them over loose
pebbles and quartz blocks. I returned to camp unsuccessful in
consequence.
We learnt from George that during our absence at Munithu one of
the donkeys had fallen sick and died. When El Hakim asked where
the carcase was, George told us that our Wakamba porters had
eaten it. They did not ask for permission to do so, possibly because
they feared the ridicule of the “M’sungu,” but the same night, when
all was still in camp, they sneaked out one by one, and, cutting up
the carcase, brought it into camp and cooked and devoured it during
the night. It became a standing joke against them with the rest of the
safari, who at once nicknamed them “Fisis” (hyenas) for the
remainder of the trip. When any of the Swahili porters felt particularly
jocular, they would sing out, “Nani amakula punda?” (Who ate the
donkey?) which earnest inquiry would be immediately answered by a
ringing shout from the rest of the Swahilis, “Wakamba fisi” (the
Wakamba hyenas), followed by a shout of laughter, accompanied by
cat-calls. The Wakamba themselves would smile a contented,
cheerful smile, and think lovingly of the magnificent gorge they had
enjoyed, and, I believe, rather pitied the Swahilis for their fastidious
prejudices.
The morning after our arrival from Munithu, the Somalis returned
from their sojourn in Chanjai, where they had been purchasing food.
They intended to start from the Waso Nyiro on the following day,
and, as we had expected, absolutely refused to entertain the idea of
another expedition into Embe. I concluded a little “deal” with Ismail
during the morning, exchanging twenty cartridges for a little coarse
salt.
Just before noon I went out alone with the 20-bore shot-gun, with
the intention of shooting guinea-fowl for the pot. I wore rubber shoes,
and in jumping a stream, strained my instep badly. The pain was
severe, but I tried to walk it off. I got into the thick forest between our
camp and M’thara, but saw no birds. Noiselessly threading my way
along a narrow game-track, while on the look-out for partridges, I
suddenly saw a large brown mass looming through the openings of
the foliage. Only small patches of it were now and again visible, and,
as I had not the least idea what it was, I cautiously crept closer in
order to get a better view. It was quite stationary, and at first I
thought it was a large hut, though what it was doing there I could not
imagine. I cautiously approached to within ten yards, and then halted
and watched. Suddenly the mass moved, a low rumbling noise was
heard, and then an enormous head swung into my field of vision,
flanked by vast outspread ears and a pair of magnificent tusks.
There I stood gazing straight into the face of the largest bull elephant
I had ever seen, with only a 20-bore shot-gun and No. 6 shot with
me! After a few seconds’ suspense I regained the use of my
scattered faculties, and it immediately occurred to me that this
particular part of the forest was not a good place for guinea-fowl, and
at once decided to look somewhere else. I am modest by nature,
and deprecate ostentation; therefore I made as little noise as
possible on my backward journey—at least till I was quite a quarter
of a mile from the elephant. I did not wish to alarm him. I took the
bearings of the place, and limped back to camp for a rifle. El Hakim
immediately went back with me, but we could not find the elephant.
He had evidently winded me on my first visit, and retreated into the
deeper recesses of the thorn forest.
On my return to Cairo, I happened to mention this encounter with
the elephant to an American friend of mine. He listened with a
twinkle in his eye, and remarked, “Why, if that isn’t strange! Do you
know, ’most the same thing happened to me last Fall; when I was
huntin’ in the Rockies with my brother. We had gone out pretty early
one morning to try and shoot a few by-ids. After a smart tramp along
the river-bank, through a lot of bushes, we were pulled up with a jerk,
as, on coming round a tree, we spotted an old grizzly b’ar reared up
on his hind legs, feedin’ on something in the bushes. As we were
only loaded for by-ids, we drew back and watched him. Pretty soon
‘old grizzly’ turned around and looked us straight in the face. My
brother thought it must be nearly breakfast-time, so we started for
our camp on the run! As we dodged among the bush we could hear
the pit-pat of the grizzly’s feet in our rear, and I tell you we ran good
and hard. Presently the sound of pursuing footsteps grew fainter and
fainter, and, taking a quick look round, durned if ‘old grizzly’ wasn’t
runnin’ hard’s he could the other way! What?”
FOOTNOTES:
[6] The sap of this wood possesses certain stimulating qualities,
and is extensively chewed by the natives of North Kenia. I tried it
afterwards, and found it of a somewhat peppery flavour. Its effect
upon me was rather nauseating, and it afterwards gave me a
slight headache.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE START FOR THE WASO NYIRO.
Some of El Hakim’s experiences with elephants—I am made a blood-

brother of Koromo’s—Departure from M’thara—A toilsome march
—A buffalo-hunt—The buffalo camp—Account of Dr. Kolb’s death
—An unsuccessful lion hunt—Apprehension and punishment of a
deserter.
Early the next day the Somalis left for the Waso Nyiro. Soon after
their departure we were aroused by a sound of altercation in our
camp. On sending to inquire the cause, we found that four of the
Somalis had returned, and were busily searching the tents of our
men for deserters from their safari. Summoning them, we asked by
what right they entered our camp and searched it without even
asking permission. They were so impertinent that I lost my temper,
and abused them soundly, and ended up by kicking them out of the
camp. The looks they bestowed on me, an Infidel, who had dared to
raise his foot against a follower of Mahomet, boded ill for my
personal safety, if it should ever chance that opportunity favoured
them.
We were not quite ready to march, as our loads gave us more
trouble than we had bargained for. N’Dominuki came to see us in the
morning, accompanied by a large number of his people bringing
food. We purchased about a fortnight’s rations, as we did not intend
to be away more than a month in any case, and we could easily eke
out the rations with game. We only took a month’s supply of tinned
stuff, soap, candles, etc., for ourselves, leaving two cases behind
with N’Dominuki as a reserve store to take us back to Nairobi. We
also left behind twenty loads of beads, large-bore ammunition, and
odds and ends of equipment, and all the cattle, except eight or nine
head which we intended to take with us. N’Dominuki had five young
camels belonging to El Hakim, which we also took along, as we
thought they might be useful for buying ivory from the Rendili.

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Latinxs, the Bible, and Migration 1st ed.

Edition Efraín Agosto

Latinxs, the Bible,

THE BIBLE AND

More information about this series at

Latinxs, the Bible,

The Bible and Cultural Studies

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018954651

Cover credit: gaiamoments / Getty Images

1 Introduction: Reading the Bible and Latinx Migrations/

2 The Bible as Homing Device Among Cubans at

3 Gendering (Im)migration in the Pentateuch’s Legal Codes:

4 Channeling the Biblical Exile as an Art Task for Central

5 “Out of Egypt I Called My Son”: Migration as a Male

6 The Flight to Egypt: Toward a Protestant Mariology in

7 Whence Migration? Babel, Pentecost, and Biblical

8 Islands, Borders, and Migration: Reading Paul in Light

9 Border Crossing into the Promised Land: The

10 Reading (Our)Selves in Migration: A Response 191

Efraín Agosto is Professor of New Testament Studies at New York

Nancy Elizabeth Bedford, Dr. theol., was born in Comodoro Rivadavia,

Ahida Calderón Pilarski is Associate Professor in the Theology

Introduction: Reading the Bible and Latinx

Efraín Agosto and Jacqueline M. Hidalgo

© The Author(s) 2018 1

not strictly grapple with our contemporary migration crises; rather we

Who Is Latinx? Why Migration?

anti-­immigration rhetoric of the current US president and his supporters

who are not included in the understanding of “Latinx” in this volume.

Yet others caution against a “one-size fits all” theology of migration.18

Latinx Biblical Scholars and Their Roots

Religion as a Migrant Tradition

to religious communities in the hopes of belonging and religious practices

The Bible and/as the Border

Scriptures are the products of diasporic struggles; they do not necessarily

way the broader Christian community, denominations, local churches,

2. “Trump Compares Illegal Immigrants to ‘Animals,’” The Washington Post,

The Bible as Homing Device Among Cubans

In the fall of 2003, during my first semester of graduate school, I enrolled

© The Author(s) 2018 21

to think about the complex interactions between religion and migration,

Cuban migrants at Claremont’s Calvary Chapel deployed the discourse

The (Trans)National Home

experience. Immediately after he moved to the U.S.A., he and his wife

The Bible as Otherworldly Home

of this world. Despite some similarities in approach, González and Isasi-­

The Bible as “Language World” for Migrant Experience

Smith’s pattern of preaching worked straight through the Bible with

vides ways of drawing their own borders—borders that exclude some

The Bible and the Otherworldly Home

In sermons, Bible studies, conversations, and interviews, the Bible was

contains within it some of the memorialized earlier home is part of its

She connected this otherworldly home to finding home in this world

The Domestic Home

the end-of-the-world were significantly tied to the structure of the family

An ivory “shauri”—Death of Sadi ben Heri and his companions—

Some of El Hakim’s experiences with elephants—I am made a blood-

You might also like

1 Introduction: Reading the Bible and Latinx Migrations/

2 The Bible as Homing Device Among Cubans at

3 Gendering (Im)migration in the Pentateuch’s Legal Codes:

4 Channeling the Biblical Exile as an Art Task for Central

5 “Out of Egypt I Called My Son”: Migration as a Male

6 The Flight to Egypt: Toward a Protestant Mariology in

7 Whence Migration? Babel, Pentecost, and Biblical

8 Islands, Borders, and Migration: Reading Paul in Light

10 Reading (Our)Selves in Migration: A Response 191

anti-immigration rhetoric of the current US president and his supporters

of this world. Despite some similarities in approach, González and Isasi-