View the Table of Contents.
Read the Introduction.

aA thorough ethnography that sweeps the reader into the world of Marian visionary Estela Ruiz, her family and followers, and the evangelizing ministries they have created in South Phoenix. . . . Fascinating.a
--Timothy Matovina, Director, Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, University of Notre Dame

"This wonderfully written study, one of the most comprehensive and insightful books about modern Marian apparitions in North America, takes the story from the Virgin's first appearance to a feminist professional woman distressed by family burdens, through the widening sphere of the apparitions' impact on family and community, to the cult's ultimate role as a national and international vehicle for Catholic evangelizing, especially among Hispanics."
--"CHOICE," highly recommended

"This book stands as an intimate portrait of the visionary; 'a woman torn between the individualism she enjoyed in the 'Anglo world' and her familial commitments in her Mexican-American home.'"
--"Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion"

"This is a respectful, sensitive, clearly written book in which the author seeks to resolve the alien ethnographer's dilemma by 'writing like a relative.' The reader's reward is a rich sense of the circumstances and struggles of at least some Mexican Americans in South Phoenix to make a good life in the contemporary United States that balances faith and family with education, material strivings, professional growth, discrimination, and personal suffering in ways that begin to bridge the conceptual divide between offical and popular religion."
--"American Ethnologist"

aA compellingaccount of Marian devotion as alived religionaa
--"Sociology of Religion"

In 1998, a Mexican American woman named Estela Ruiz began seeing visions of the Virgin Mary in south Phoenix. The apparitions and messages spurred the creation of Maryas Ministries, a Catholic evangelizing group, and its sister organization, ESPIRITU, which focuses on community-based initiatives and social justice for Latinos/as.

Based on ten years of participant observation and in-depth interviews, The Virgin of El Barrio traces the spiritual transformation of Ruiz, the development of the community that has sprung up around her, and the international expansion of their message. Their organizations blend popular and official Catholicism as well as evangelical Protestant styles of praise and worship, shedding light on Catholic responses to the tensions between popular and official piety and the needs of Mexican Americans.

View the Table of Contents.
Read the Introduction.

aA thorough ethnography that sweeps the reader into the world of Marian visionary Estela Ruiz, her family and followers, and the evangelizing ministries they have created in South Phoenix. . . . Fascinating.a
--Timothy Matovina, Director, Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, University of Notre Dame

"This wonderfully written study, one of the most comprehensive and insightful books about modern Marian apparitions in North America, takes the story from the Virgin's first appearance to a feminist professional woman distressed by family burdens, through the widening sphere of the apparitions' impact on family and community, to the cult's ultimate role as a national and international vehicle for Catholic evangelizing, especially among Hispanics."
--"CHOICE," highly recommended

"This book stands as an intimate portrait of the visionary; 'a woman torn between the individualism she enjoyed in the 'Anglo world' and her familial commitments in her Mexican-American home.'"
--"Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion"

"This is a respectful, sensitive, clearly written book in which the author seeks to resolve the alien ethnographer's dilemma by 'writing like a relative.' The reader's reward is a rich sense of the circumstances and struggles of at least some Mexican Americans in South Phoenix to make a good life in the contemporary United States that balances faith and family with education, material strivings, professional growth, discrimination, and personal suffering in ways that begin to bridge the conceptual divide between offical and popular religion."
--"American Ethnologist"

aA compellingaccount of Marian devotion as alived religionaa
--"Sociology of Religion"

In 1998, a Mexican American woman named Estela Ruiz began seeing visions of the Virgin Mary in south Phoenix. The apparitions and messages spurred the creation of Maryas Ministries, a Catholic evangelizing group, and its sister organization, ESPIRITU, which focuses on community-based initiatives and social justice for Latinos/as.

Based on ten years of participant observation and in-depth interviews, The Virgin of El Barrio traces the spiritual transformation of Ruiz, the development of the community that has sprung up around her, and the international expansion of their message. Their organizations blend popular and official Catholicism as well as evangelical Protestant styles of praise and worship, shedding light on Catholic responses to the tensions between popular and official piety and the needs of Mexican Americans.

The United States is in the midst of a demographic revolution. It is estimated that by 2050 Latinx Americans will make up thirty percent of the nation's total population. Most Latinx Americans today are Christian. And while, historically, most of those Latinx Christians have been Catholics, that is changing as well, as more Latinx Americans embrace Protestantism or other traditions and practices. Even within the U.S. Catholic Church the demographic changes are being felt, as more than half of young American Catholics are Latinx. The Oxford Handbook of Latinx Christianities in the United States provides an introduction to U.S. Latinx Christianities, helping readers better understand the largest minority group in the United States. The chapters are written by specialists in U.S. Latinx Christianities from fields such as history, theology, and sociology and organized by theme. The essays, taken individually and collectively, pay attention to both historical and contemporary aspects of major Christian denominations and movements. This handbook provides in-depth coverage of specific national groups, denominations, geographies, and theologies, and also attends to themes of gender, sexuality, empire, migration, diaspora, borderlands, and transnationalism. This volume is a go-to source for anyone interested in the role that religion, specifically Christianity, plays in the lives of U.S. Latinxs.

Whether valorized as the heartland or derided as flyover country, the American Midwest became instantly notorious when COVID-19 infections skyrocketed among workers in meatpacking plants-and Americans feared for their meat supply. But the Midwest is not simply the place where animals are fed corn and then butchered. Native midwesterner Kristy Nabhan-Warren spent years interviewing Iowans who work in the meatpacking industry, both native-born residents and recent migrants from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. In Meatpacking America, she digs deep below the stereotype and reveals the grit and grace of a heartland that is a major global hub of migration and food production-and also, it turns out, of religion. Across the flatlands, Protestants, Catholics, and Muslims share space every day as worshippers, employees, and employers. On the bloody floors of meatpacking plants, in bustling places of worship, and in modest family homes, longtime and newly arrived Iowans spoke to Nabhan-Warren about their passion for religious faith and desire to work hard for their families. Their stories expose how faith-based aspirations for mutual understanding blend uneasily with rampant economic exploitation and racial biases. Still, these new and old midwesterners say that a mutual language of faith and morals brings them together more than any of them would have ever expected.

Whether valorized as the heartland or derided as flyover country, the American Midwest became instantly notorious when COVID-19 infections skyrocketed among workers in meatpacking plants-and Americans feared for their meat supply. But the Midwest is not simply the place where animals are fed corn and then butchered. Native midwesterner Kristy Nabhan-Warren spent years interviewing Iowans who work in the meatpacking industry, both native-born residents and recent migrants from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. In Meatpacking America, she digs deep below the stereotype and reveals the grit and grace of a heartland that is a major global hub of migration and food production-and also, it turns out, of religion. Across the flatlands, Protestants, Catholics, and Muslims share space every day as worshippers, employees, and employers. On the bloody floors of meatpacking plants, in bustling places of worship, and in modest family homes, longtime and newly arrived Iowans spoke to Nabhan-Warren about their passion for religious faith and desire to work hard for their families. Their stories expose how faith-based aspirations for mutual understanding blend uneasily with rampant economic exploitation and racial biases. Still, these new and old midwesterners say that a mutual language of faith and morals brings them together more than any of them would have ever expected.

The internationally growing Cursillo movement, or ""short course in Christianity,"" founded in 1944 by Spanish Catholic lay practitioners, has become popular among American Catholics and Protestants alike. This lay-led weekend experience helps participants recommit to and live their faith. Emphasising how American Christians have privileged the individual religious experience and downplayed denominational and theological differences in favour of a common identity as renewed people of faith, Kristy Nabhan-Warren focuses on cursillistas--those who have completed a Cursillo weekend--to show how their experiences are a touchstone for understanding these trends in post-1960s American Christianity. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork as well as historical research, Nabhan-Warren shows the importance of Latino Catholics in the spread of the Cursillo movement. Cursillistas' stories, she argues, guide us toward a new understanding of contemporary Christian identities, inside and outside U.S. borders, and of the importance of globalising American religious boundaries.