Latina/o Religion, Culture, and Society Unit
Latina/o Religion, Culture and Society Program Unit
Call for Papers 2025
- Browning the Army of God: Religion and the Rise of the Latino Far-Right
- 2-hour Session with Business Meeting
Over the last twenty years, Latinos in the United States have embraced far-right politics at an unprecedented rate. The percentage of Latinos who voted for Donald Trump swelled from 29% in 2016, to 32% in 2020, and then to 42% in 2024 (www.as-coa.org). This electoral trend continues to bewilder political pundits, frustrate progressive activists, and confound religious leaders. Underlying this confusion is an apparent contradiction: Trumpism perceived not as oppressive, but rather, as a symbol of freedom. It raises a pressing question: Why has Trumpism, an authoritarian political movement rooted in white supremacy, found a home in many Latino communities? The LRCS unit therefore invites scholars to critically examine the forces driving the increasing alignment of Latinos with far-right movements.
In Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America, investigative reporter Paola Ramos details how evangelical pastors have become instrumental power brokers in the MAGA movement, even launching far-right candidates into public office in predominantly Latino districts that historically vote Democratic. Convinced that Trump is “Making America Godly Again,” Latino evangelical leaders have successfully recruited congregation members into ‘God’s Army’ by decrying LGBTQ+ rights as a moral crisis and migration from the Global South as an existential threat to American culture. Looking to the future, Ramos suggests that as the U.S. transitions to being a minority-majority nation, Latinos – and other people of color – must embrace ideologies of whiteness if existing hegemonic structures, regardless of which political party is in power, are to survive.
To develop a nuanced understanding of this phenomenon and explore its alternatives, the LRCS unit welcomes proposals that analyze the role of religion in the rise of the Latino far-right. We invite proposals that focus on one or more of the following themes:
- theological critiques of White Christian Nationalism
- Replacement Theory / Nativism / immigration
- politics of assimilation / anti-Blackness / colorism
- global capitalism and the “American Dream” / mythologies of individualism
- impact of Latin America’s colonial history
- anti-LGBTQ+ rights / reproductive rights as moral crisis
- progressive social movements / class solidarity / labor organizing
- role of social media/WhatsApp in disinformation or mobilization campaigns
- Ecofeminist Approaches to Liberation: Displacement, Disaster, and Geographic Inequalities
- 2-hour Session with Business Meeting
Latiné and immigrant communities in the United States are disproportionately impacted by environmental degradation fueled by global patriarchal and capitalist systems. These structural forces not only exacerbate geographic inequalities but also render marginalized communities increasingly vulnerable to climate-related disasters. These disasters—rooted in systemic neglect and exclusion—expose how government responses fail to address the basic human needs of marginalized communities.
In the current neoliberal era, marginalized communities are frequently scapegoated, further deepening their precarity, displacement, and erasure. Anti-immigrant discourses framing these communities as burdens to social services only intensify their vulnerability during such crises, exposing the intersection of environmental degradation and systemic injustice. The aftermath of Hurricane Helene (September 2024) exemplifies this dynamic. Furthermore, misinformation about federal and state emergency aid discouraged Latiné communities from seeking assistance, due to concerns about incarceration, deportation, and discrimination.
Our unit welcomes papers that use ecofeminist approaches to explore themes of environmental injustice, displacement, and systemic oppression. We invite papers that address, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- How anti-immigrant narratives impact access to disaster aid and community resilience.
- Ecofeminist critiques of capitalism and patriarchy in the context of environmental precarity.
- The role of misinformation and state responses in deepening systemic inequalities.
- The intersections of gender, race, and geographic vulnerability in climate crises.
- Activism and community-led strategies for liberation and environmental justice in Latiné and immigrant communities.
By engaging ecofeminism as a lens, this panel aims to highlight pathways to freedom for displaced and marginalized communities within ongoing environmental and social crises.
The Presidential theme of Freedom provides an opportunity for the Ecclesial Practices Unit and the Latino/a Religion, Culture and Society to explore the emancipatory potential of autoethnography. Critical theorist Gloria Anzaldúa offers an autohistoria-teoría that illustrates how self-historical writing provides critical, analytical and spiritual insights to theorize experiences against repressive socio-cultural discourse.
Our session invites scholars to explore the theme of Freedom by engaging with the one of following topics:
- Embodied Knowledge and Freedom: What role trauma and intergenerational trauma play in narratives of freedom? How does migration, the journey from one location to another in search "to be free", shed light on the individual and communal wounds?
- Crossing Boundaries and Freedom: How do borders (metaphorical and real) frame and/or constrain the possibilities for liberation?
- Memory and Legacy of Resistance: How do our ancestral memories and histories shape our understanding of freedom and resistance? What role does collective memory play in the legacies of colonialism, racism and patriarchy and how does it shape our ongoing struggle for freedom?
- 90-Minute Co-Sponsored Session with Contemporary Islam unit and Religions and Social Conflict unit
At the turn of the 21st century, Samuel Huntington identified the United States as a nation of settlers facing multiple threats to its constitution, including Muslims and Latinx populations. Over the past two decades, both groups have become central targets in the discursive strategies of international fascism, now in power in the US and in multiple spaces throughout the world. In collaboration with the Contemporary Islam, Latino/a Religion, Culture, and Society and Religions, Social Conflict, and Peace Studies units, we invite proposals that show entanglements in one or more of these topics:
- Narratives of white genocide and replacement, particularly regarding Muslim and/or Latinx immigration.
- The new right-wing co-optation of Muslim and/or Latinx populations.
- New religio-racial perspectives on whiteness in the United States regarding the future inclusion of a “Middle Eastern or North African” designation in the US census.
- They Are Eternal Foreigners: The denaturalization of longstanding Muslim and/or Latinx histories, memories, or individuals.
- Conspiracy theories that link Muslim and/or Latino Immigration with a Jewish plot to destroy Western civilization.
- Religious resistance against state oppression: Cross-cultural, Muslim and/or Latinx experiences.
- The intersection of Islamophobia and anti-Latinx sentiment with anti-Black racism, Sinophobia, anti-Native racism, and/or antisemitism.
- Liberationist and decolonial frameworks in resistance to racist and authoritarian structures.
- Fascism as "colonialism turned inward:” What the US and Europe can learn from Global South struggles?
- Doctrines of National/International Security, New Red/Green/Brown-scares.
- Conflictive Narratives of ‘Freedom’ and American consciousness.
- How white Christian nationalist ideologies use religious texts and myths of racial supremacy to justify the marginalization of non-Christian, immigrant, and racialized groups.
- Roundtable Book Panel on Reckoning with History: Settler Colonialism, Slavery and the Making of American Christianity by William Yoo (Westminster/John Knox Press, 2025)
- 90-Minute Co-Sponsored Session with History of Christianity unit
The Latina/o Religion, Culture and Society unit and the History of Christianity units invite scholars to explore the theme of Freedom by engaging William Yoo’s Reckoning with History through the lenses of history, theology, and social justice. Panelists should discuss how the legacies of settler colonialism and slavery have shaped—and continue to shape—religious thought, practices, and institutions, particularly within the context of American Christianity. This session calls for critical engagement with the paradoxes of freedom in religious and national narratives.
We encourage panelists to address the following questions: How did Christian theology support systems of oppression such as land dispossession and enslavement while proclaiming a gospel that is inherently liberative? How did Indigenous, Black, or Latine Christians resist and reimagine freedom within these oppressive systems? What can contemporary communities, especially those struggling for dignity, learn from this history as they grapple with ongoing inequities in church and society?
We welcome submissions that focus on, but are not limited to, one of the following themes:
- Theological justifications and critiques of slavery and settler colonialism.
- Historical and contemporary intersections of race, religion, and nationalism in shaping American Christianity.
- Contributions of Black, Indigenous, Latine and other marginalized voices to constructing prophetic theologies of liberation.
- Modern-day implications of settler colonialism and slavery in Christian theology, ethics, and activism.
- The role of memoirs, sermons, and forms of public discourse practices in shaping narratives of freedom or exclusion.
This Unit examines, through systematic study and reflection, the social locations, religious beliefs, and practices of the rich and diverse multicultural backgrounds of Latinas/os in the United States and Canada. The Unit recognizes that this is an interdisciplinary enterprise in view of the cultural and religious roots and sources of Latinos/as, including heritages from Europe, indigenous nations of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. The traditions emerging out of the mixture of these cultures throughout the Americas continue to undergo further development and innovation in the North American context, producing the distinct phenomena of Latino/a theologies and religions. It is this rich and deep religious/theological-cultural-social-political complex that is the focus of this Unit.