Response to William H. and Ruth Lewis Bentley
H. O. Espinoza
It is no easy task for a Hispanic to respond to brother Bentley's incisive and illuminating paper. For us Hispanics, our historical, cultural and religious pilgrimage to the wonderland of American evangelicalism has followed such a different route! Every ethnic group, including the English, the Germans, the Dutch, and the many other national, cultural and racial groups that have discovered America, including those who today are preaching the Gospel according to Billy Graham, Carl F.H. Henry, J.I. Packer, Kenneth Kantzer et. al., follow different stars, encounter different experiences and are surprised by different consequent realities. Truly, only the grace of God and his sovereign purposes in history hold us together in relative peace!
Historically, my ancestors, the great Aztec, Maya, Inca and other peoples had been on this continent for thousands of years before the southern Europeans arrived in the 15th century. We were here first. We owned and ruled everything, from the North Pole to the South Pole.
But then the Spaniards, the Portuguese and the Italians "discovered" us and grabbed the whole continent in the name of their kings and of their popes. Their kings reshaped our race and our culture, and their popes remodeled our religion. The result was the mestizo race and culture — a mixture of Latin and Indian
Page 336
bloods, genes, customs and societies, and a syncretistic, myth laden, idolatrous and oppressive Roman Catholicism — to this day the quasi-official religion of Latin America and the U.S. Hispanics.
The Evangelicals (to us the term means Protestants), did not discover Hispanic Americans until the 19th century. The American and the British Bible Societies, and the Presbyterian, the Methodist and the Baptist churches, were the first evangelical conquistadores. This was, in a very real sense, a second discovery of the New World. The evangelicals arrived with the Bible, a hymn book and the full Gospel. By the "full Gospel" I mean that everywhere they built churches for the salvation and spiritual nurture of the people, schools for their education, and hospitals for their physical needs. And the conquest of Hispanic America by the Bible and by the Evangelical church goes on to this day. May God grant its successful completion very soon!
Today, however, the evangelical church in the U.S. must acknowledge a historical, cultural, social, religious, economical, political and spiritual fact, pivotal to the understanding of the times present and future — the "discovery" of the United States by great masses of unevangelized peoples, including the church. Beginning in the 1970s, millions have come by plane and by ship, walking over bridges, wading rivers, jumping over fences, openly and covertly, legally and illegally.
Among us Hispanics, one of the results of this massive immigration has been not only the staggering increase in numbers but the wide-open opportunity to evangelize our people. Hispanics are coming out of a traditional pagan "Christianity" into a
Page 337
liberating, fulfilling, enriching, Bible-centered, Christ-focused Gospel, in three main socio-cultural evangelical groups:
First, the local congregations made up mainly of recent immigrants who, including the pastor and lay leaders, are monolingual (Spanish-speaking), keep very deep and strong ties to the culture, nationality and identity of the country of origin, and are totally isolated from all cultural, social and political aspects of life in the United States. This first generation U.S. Hispanic is finding an ideal spiritual and cultural home and refuge mainly in independent evangelical Charismatic churches. It is estimated that around 60% of all U.S. Hispanic churches belong in this category and are the fastest growing.
Next we have the second to fifth generation Hispanic who prefers a bilingual-bicultural Evangelical church where life and worship remains for the most part culturally Hispanic, but both English and Spanish are used in varying degrees to the extreme point of inventing new words with, for instance, the root in English and the ending in Spanish. The longer this bilingual-bicultural Hispanic has been in this country, the better educated, more acculturated and more ambitious for success, fame and power he turns out to be. But, for the very same reasons, the more secular, materialistic and indifferent to his spiritual needs and to the Gospel he becomes. Interestingly, though, this is the Hispanic sociological stratum where many Evangelical denominational churches are growing today. Among U.S. Hispanics, the bilingual-bicultural congregation is fast becoming the large, powerful, mainstream, Evangelical church.
And thirdly, and again as a different experience from our African-American brothers and sisters, we rejoice in acknowledging
Page 338
that the Anglo-American Evangelical churches are winning hundreds of thousands of bilingual and bicultural, and monolingual and monocultural (English only) Hispanics to Christ and to Evangelicalism. Nobody knows how many, but my guess is that the number is beginning to see the one million mark in the distance. This is indeed a key element in the extraordinary historical fact of the discovery of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in and through the Evangelical church, both Hispanic- and Anglo-American, by missions of U.S. Hispanics. The phenomenon includes both the growth of Hispanic-American individuals in Anglo-American churches, and the multiplication of Hispanic congregations within Anglo judicatories and structures.
The very plain fact is that today our Lord is bringing millions of non-Christians to our country, as if he were telling us: "What you have done for world missions and world evangelization is not enough. And since you won't go, I'll bring the lost world to you!" Well, the lost of the world are coming. And they will keep on coming.
We Hispanic evangelicals believe that what some of us call "Mother Church" is, indeed, of all churches — in the words of Dr. Bentley — "the most historically and contemporarily true to the Scriptures."
I dare say, however, that if the Anglo-American evangelical Church recognizes and acknowledges the reality of what God is doing today in the United States, and in the wisdom and power of the Spirit takes decisive and courageous steps at all levels to win millions of true disciples of Jesus among the so-called minority groups, then if this really happens, there is great hope for the future of our country. Otherwise, I dare not guess what will
Page 339
happen. History, however, teaches us some important lessons, for there have been other similar cases.
Let us now consider the title of this session with reference to the ethnic group I represent: The experience of Hispanic evangelical Bible believers.
To begin with, the fact is that for most of us our experience of evangelicalism was fully contained in our encounter with the missionaries sent from the U.S. by the Evangelicals (and again for Hispanics the term Evangelicals means nothing more than Protestants). In my own case, I was born in Monterrey, Mexico, in a hospital built, managed and supported by missionaries. The doctors and nurses were missionaries. Most of my Sunday school teachers throughout my childhood and adolescence were missionaries. My elementary and high schools were missionary schools, and so was the Evangelical seminary in Mexico City where I received my first Th.B.
Farther back, about 125 years ago, my father's father was led to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ by the first missionary the Presbyterian church ever sent to Latin America; my father also received all his education from evangelical missionaries. For anything wrong with me, please blame the missionaries!
So, for three generations in my family, our experience as Christians — our evangelicalism — has been fully contained in our encounter with the missionaries you sent to us and only with them. We witnessed in each of them the incarnation of Paul's testimony as a missionary: "Our Gospel did not come to you only in words, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and with full conviction, as you well know what kind of persons we were among you because of our love for you" (1 Thessalonians 1:5).
Page 340
And making allowance for wide degrees of variation in details and circumstances, this is the Hispanics' experience in meeting evangelicalism — through its ambassadors to the world.
But then we came to the United States and met the great Evangelical Church, the Mother Church the missionaries would tell us about with deep love and longing, and we had a soul-shaking, faith-trying experience. When we met the missionaries we were surprised by love: when we met the church we were surprised by racism, by indifference and by a 19th century Indian-fort mentality. We met a church with a strong commitment to "world missions," but with a crippling definition of "missions" — what we do in other lands, for other people beyond our borders, out there in "the world" — where everybody ought to stay.
And we met a church totally dominated by the Anglo-American secular (not Biblical) concept of power, of money, and of business.
One of the very visible end-results of this experience we have had with the U.S. Evangelical church is that there exists no interaction, fellowship, communion, consultation, or even conversation between Hispanic and Anglo churches even within the same denomination. A few years ago my organization, PROMESA — Hispanic Evangelical Projects and Ministries, and the Latin America Mission, together organized in Miami a few experimental Awareness Seminars. We brought together pastors of Anglo and Hispanic congregations from the same denominations for a couple of days to get acquainted with each other and their pastoral work. It was fascinating to watch their surprise on discovering each other's existence and how much alike, and how different, they are. The sad truth is that the average Anglo Evangelical local
Page 341
church is far more interested, and knows much more about a little church in Timbuktu, than about the Hispanic church across the street.
And so, our experience has left us with an ambivalent attitude: we hold profound and solid evangelical convictions and we love the ideal image we have in our minds of what constitutes a true evangelical; but since our "mother" has slammed the door in our faces so many times, we have concluded that we are not wanted, much less are we loved, and that we might as well build and establish our own Hispanic Evangelicalism.
Maybe one day, when we have enough money according to our mother's standards, and sufficient political power, and when we run our churches by the book according to the Harvard School of Business and the American Management Association, perhaps then mother will recognize her own children and will speak to us.
But, I don't wish to end on a negative, sour note, because we do love each other and we do need each other.
A few years back PROMESA sponsored, and the Latin American Theological Fellowship organized, a National Conference on Hispanic Evangelical Theology in the United States, a very productive meeting of about 100 U.S. Hispanic theologians. One of the most valuable conclusions, reached in unanimous agreement, was regarding the key areas of opportunity and challenge for U.S. Hispanic evangelicalism. They are:
1. Evangelicalism and discipleship. We are the largest non-Christian racial group in the country. By that we mean that at least 85% of our people have never received Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior and are not involved in any kind of church life.
Page 342
This is, we believe, a key area of concern for the future of evangelicalism in our land. By all means, and with all means, you and we must endeavor to win and disciple this major ethnic group.
2. Leadership development. Hispanics are emerging in all fields of human enterprise in the United States. It is urgent and imperative to develop strong, capable Hispanic Evangelical leadership. We are very happy to see the efforts being made by Evangelical denominations and theological institutions to encourage, facilitate, help and provide adjustable academic programs. Dr. Jesus Miranda, President of the Hispanic Association of Theological Education, and one of the foremost Hispanic Evangelical leaders, insists that the future of ethnic Evangelical churches depends entirely on this area of need.
We have taken micro views at our past pilgrimage, our present victories and struggles, and our future promise and challenge. We praise our Father's infinite grace in including us among the redeemed and remain committed, with all our brothers and sisters of all nations, tribes, peoples and languages, to be faithful until our Lord's final victory.
