This dissertation examines the relationship between the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the largest and most influential denomination of evangelical Protestants in the United States, and Latino immigration in the late twentieth-century United States. Throughout this period, immigration from Mexico became a political flashpoint; it also transformed the demographics of California and other parts of the Sunbelt United States. Recognizing the evangelizing potential Latino immigrants held, the SBC heralded them as the “greatest evangelizing opportunity of the century.” In an attempt to embrace Latino immigrants, the SBC advanced the American Mosaic program in 1971—a church planting strategy that promoted separate churches where Latino congregants could practice their faith in their own language while preserving their culture. By eschewing assimilationist evangelizing methods, the SBC attempted to diversify its congregational base. An unexpected collaboration between the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the SBC bolstered this approach, with both advocating for evangelizing and providing social services to illegal immigrants. But with the passing of the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986, the SBC and INS abruptly severed their relationship. By 1994, the SBC fully rejected the compassionate approach to Latino immigration and instead embraced restrictionist anti-immigrant policies, best exemplified by Proposition 187 in California. While the SBC as an institution remained publicly silent, congregants rallied in support of Proposition 187, ensuring its passage.
The SBC’s proselytization efforts coincided with the political mobilization of evangelical conservatives, representing one of the most significant movements in American religious and political history. This dissertation examines how immigration from Mexico helped to fuel and, eventually, reshape this mobilization and, also, how it influenced proselytization efforts. Divisions within the Christian Right, however, and the intensifying anxieties of SBC members over their place in society in the 1980s and 1990s, complicated white evangelicals’ attitudes toward Latino immigration. Tensions became particularly acute in California, where SBC debates over Mexican immigration flooded into the political mainstream during the struggle over California’s restrictionist Proposition 187 in 1994. Establishing a durable pattern of anti-immigrant politics among white evangelicals, compassion for Latino converts largely shifted to fear and disdain. / 2025-10-04T00:00:00Z
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/47062 |
| Date | 04 October 2023 |
| Creators | Haitayan, Dalia |
| Contributors | Schulman, Bruce J. |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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