In this project, I conduct a critical ethnography of a Queer Latine Migrant Christian ministry called Nuestra Cuir Chingoña to explore the ways a Queer theoethical analysis of active resistance may expand and articulate scholarly-activist notions of economic, social, and political hegemonies that target oppressed groups in churches, centering on the perspectives of fifteen participants and their work in challenging these hegemonic dynamics. Here, I take note from two projects – Miranda’s “Ethnographic Borders and Crossings: Critical Ethnography, Intersectionality, and Blurring the Boundaries of Insider Research” (2022) and Geerlings and Lundberg’s “‘That’s the World Standard’: A Critical Ethnography of ‘Universal’ Knowledge” (2020) – to develop and investigate a notion of Queer theoethical analysis within critical ethnography. According to Miranda, critical ethnography is a qualitative method that partners critical theory – in my case, Queer theoethics – with participant observation, semi-structured interviews, life histories, and archives to identify and challenge hegemonic forces with/in a marginalized community (Miranda 2022, 357). Viewed in this way, critical ethnography provides me with a framework to critique the façade of “value-free” knowledge production when studying oppressed groups, particularly as a white Queer U.S. citizen, enhancing transparency and research credibility. Moreover, as Geerlings and Lundberg observe, dominant epistemologies – which are often shaped by Eurocentric frameworks – are presented as forms of “value-free” knowledge production, erasing local and contextual ways of knowing (Geerlings and Lundberg 2020, 29). That is to say, the study of active resistance by oppressed groups as guided by “universal” narratives erases contextual, embodied, and resistant knowledges. I argue that by interrogating the ways in which dominant narratives erase localized modes of active resistance, this project critically examines the methodological implications of researching marginalized communities in churches, particularly from my positionality as a white Queer U.S. citizen.
To develop Queer theoethics as a critical theory that deconstructs economic, social, and political hegemonies, I will view it as a form of active resistance with scholarly-activist implications. Active resistance is a public display of opposition to economic, social, and political hegemonies that seeks to change them, and to understand how this works for marginalized communities in churches, I will take Akbar’s definition of protest in “The Radical Possibilities of Protest” (2020) as “a tool of constituting a political community alternative to the mainstream and communicating to other similarly situated people” (Akbar 2020, 67). For Akbar, protest is about “building power in communities in order to create lasting change over the long haul” (Ibid, 68). When treated as a Queer theoethic, active resistance can take the form of sanctuary, testimonials, and direct action against state violence through churches. In this way, active resistance opposes economic, social, and political hegemonies that suppress Queer lives through Eurocentric hegemonies in certain churches – including hierarchical logics of precarity and heteronormativity – that sustain oppression. Through active resistance, attempts at economic, social, and political change become an eschatological in-breaking of God’s reign of collective struggles of empowerment that can lead to communal empowerment for Queer lives. Thus, Queer theoethics is an attempt by Queer lives in churches to resurrect our community from the oppression of crucifixion and recognize the daily importance of this work.
For Nuestra Cuir Chingoña, active resistance takes the form of parentesco (“kinship”), which affirms relationality through alternative kinship networks that challenge eschatological essentialisms upheld by soteriological violence. First, with further immigration bans, arrests, detainment, and deportation under the Trump Administration to maintain the white paradise mytho-history of the state, parentesco helps Nuestra Cuir Chingoña build coalitions to fight for rights of Migrants to be part of the U.S. in forms of sanctuary. As Sostaita observes in Sanctuary Everywhere: The Fugitive Sacred in the Sonoran Desert (2024), deporting Migrants “not only violently captures and disappears people from their families and communities, but also works to separate migrants from networks of care and kinship that sustain life” (Sostaita (2024, 170). Because of the recent ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids that have detained Migrants in for-profit detention centers and deported them – in many cases, not to their home countries – Nuestra Cuir Chingoña has had to change strategy and reconsider the eschatological notions of their work for the rest of Creation. Parentesco forms these bonds to oppose eschatological essentialisms that make Queer lives feel disidentified from themselves and in need of saving. In this way, challenges to state violence seek to change economic, social, and political hegemonies that maintain eschatological essentialisms that are oppressive to Queer lives.
Second, Nuestra Cuir Chingoña also utilizes parentesco as a form of active resistance to oppose traditional economic, social, and political family structures that have oppressed Queer lives that prevented sanctuary. As Calvillo observes in “Christianities and the Construction of Latinx Ethnoracial Identities” (2022), faith communities – Latine churches in particular – “provide especially salient modes of sanctuary” for the forcefully displaced (Calvillo 2022, 337). Furthermore, according to Sostaita, sanctuary is an attempt to “transgress the limits of the profane world” that keep Queer lives and other minoritarian groups in line with the white paradise mytho-history of the state (Sostaita, 137-138). Because U.S. immigration policy focuses on enforcement, rather than solutions – or a care for human life and dignity – children become separated from their families, asylum seekers are criminally prosecuted, access to citizenship is blocked, and Migrant communities have begun self-policing. In this way, Nuestra Cuir Chingoña embodies parentesco to reclaim soteriological narratives for those lives – including its clergy and laity – who have been forcefully displaced and in need of sanctuary. By spending time together as familiares (“kin”) through fiestas (“parties”), comidas (“meals”), hitos (“milestones”), and día festivos (“holidays”), Nuestra Cuir Chingoña opposes soteriological violence to ensure the collective survival of Queer lives.
To my knowledge, by treating critical ethnography as a basis for Queer theoethical analysis, this project presents two unique contributions. First, unlike accounts that unlink Migrant and Queer concerns, this project treats them as inherently identifiable in active resistance in churches. Secondly, the project’s analysis of sanctuary focuses on eschatological reflections about Queer lives that treat active resistance in churches as soteriological.
In this project, I conduct a critical ethnography of Nuestra Cuir Chingoña, a Queer Latine Migrant Christian ministry, to explore how active resistance – as a Queer theoethic – critiques economic, social, and political hegemonies in churches. I engage Calvillo’s (2022) and Sostaita’s (2024) treatment of sanctuary as an alignment of Nuestra Cuir Chingoña’s approach to active resistance – parentesco (“kinship”) – which affirms relationality through alternative kinship networks that challenge eschatological essentialisms upheld by soteriological violence. Furthermore, by theorizing active resistance as a Queer theoethic, I engage Miranda’s (2022) and Geerling and Lundberg’s (2020) research on critical ethnography as a deconstruction of “value-free” knowledge production to counter eschatological essentialisms and soteriological violence that inhibit Queer livability, particularly for Queer Latine Migrant Christians and similarly oppressed groups. In this way, I attempt to contribute to scholarly-activist discourse of reimagining eschatological and soteriological interventions that assert Queer livability in churches.