Brown Church Quotes

“The example of Chavez offers a clear warning to all Christians who aspire to a life of social justice and activism:  success in Christian social justice endeavors is not the product of human cleverness or carefully conceived strategies and tactics -- it is first and foremost the fruit of God experienced in the lives of all those who cling to Christ.”
― Robert Chao Romero, Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity

“We are exploited for cheap labor in vast economic contributions to the gross domestic product of the United States ($428 billion annually) as well as for our additional billion dollar contributions to federal, state, and local taxes. In the same breath, we are blamed for the economic and national security woes of the country by wily politicians eager for the power of elective office.”
― Robert Chao Romero, Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity

“Most US churches are hindered from effective ministry among the poor because our privilege and wealth keeps us from relationship and proximity to the poor, and our Western mindset uplifts personal comfort, expects quick results, and devalue suffering and perseverance.”
― Robert Chao Romero, Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity

“The failure to recognize the important role of ethnic culture and experience in shaping biblical interpretation can produce damaging results because it can lead a culturally dominant community to insist that its own interpretations of the Bible are "objective" and "official" to the exclusion of all others. The end result is the tribalization of Jesus in the circumscription of God within the narrow cultural understanding of a single ethnic racial community. Such biblical nationalism is idolatry, and it has historically lead to biblical interpretation that have oppressed Latinas/os, blacks, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and other people of color in the United States.”
― Robert Chao Romero, Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity

“Even though the Bible is God's inspired word, all biblical interpretation is informed for the cultural context of the interpreter.”
― Robert Chao Romero, Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity

“It was the poor, because of their suffering and struggle, who teach the world the meaning of Christian of love. Through entering into the world of the poor, all Christians come to a deep into faith in God and Jesus Christ.”
― Robert Chao Romero, Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity

“According to the theology of mision integral, biblical mission must include "both proclamation and demonstration of the good news of the Reign of God through Christian teaching, prescience, and social engagement for transformation.”
― Robert Chao Romero, Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity

“Jesus was a Messiah who challenged injustice and the oppressive status quo, but also one who gave his life on a Roman cross, rose again and calls his followers to personal and social transformation through repentance, discipleship, and the life in the kingdom of God.”
― Robert Chao Romero, Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity

“God had given the Spaniards the opportunity to share the message of Jesus with love, and instead they exploited this divine opportunity for greed and selfish gain.  The end result was genocide.”
― Robert Chao Romero, Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity

“As we walk with Jesus, he sends us to where he has already been at work -- among the poor, the suffering, the immigrant, and all who are cast aside.”
― Robert Chao Romero, Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity

“Browness is a liminal legal, political, and cultural space that US Latinas and Latinos have inhabited since the US-Mexico War and the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo of 1848. In exchange for the benefits of land (nearly half of a Mexico), the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo reluctantly granted US citizenship to former Mexicans, and with it, an implied "whiteness." At the same time however, through legal and social convention ever since, the United States has denied full and equal membership to Latinas/os within the American polity. We have been wanted for our land and labor, while at the same time rejected for our cultural and ethnic difference. When economic times get tough, we become the disposable "illegal alien," and are scapegoated and deported. We are wanted and unwanted. Necessary, yet despised. We are Brown.”
― Robert Chao Romero, Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity

“A church that doesn’t provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed—what gospel is that? Very nice, pious considerations that don’t bother anyone, that’s the way many would like preaching to be. Those preachers who avoid every thorny matter so as not to be harassed, so as not to have conflicts and difficulties, do not light up the world they live in.41”
― Robert Chao Romero, Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity