This is the first in a two-part series on the recent Latinas’ faith conference at the University of the Incarnate Word.

    SAN ANTONIO • “What I’m sneakily trying to do is for you to reflect on your faith and your religious beliefs and understanding,” said Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Ph.D., describing the focus of her presentation on Feb. 9 at the University of the Incarnate Word (UIW) as being the meaning and role of faith and religion for Latinas.
    Part of the Spirituality in Ministry’s Spirit and Life Series, sponsored by UIW and the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, the day-long conference examined key religious aspects of Latinas’ faith in terms of what has historically shaped it and what this means in the United States and the Catholic Church today.
    Isasi-Díaz, one of the leading Latina theologians in the United States, is known for her pioneering work in Latina theology and elaboration on mujerista theology. Born in Cuba, she entered the Ursuline Sisters shortly after arriving in the United States in 1960, and went on to work as a missionary in Peru, later teaching in Louisiana and New York.
    She is currently professor of ethics and theology at Drew University in Madison, N.J., and is author of numerous books, including En La Lucha — Elaborating a Mujerista Theology, Hispanic Women: Prophetic Voice in the Church and La Lucha Continues. She is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences.
While not claiming that Latinas’ faith is unique, it does possess a “certain particularity,” Isasi-Díaz noted.

    “To talk about religion, we have to talk about culture,” she said, adding that culture refers to “all we humans have invented and developed in order to deal with reality.” This includes not only customs and practices, but understanding or worldview.

    Culture, she related, is not static, but always changing in response to political, social and economic circumstances that are continually changing. In earlier times, cultures changed at a much slower pace because communities were self-contained and did not change much over time. Today, cultures change much more rapidly, keeping pace with the changes in circumstances.

    Nowadays, she noted, the span of a generation is considered to be just 10 years, as opposed to the 20 years it once was.
    “We live in an era of instantaneous communication and global connections,” she said, “which means that what happens in one corner of the world affects us at times more than what happened just around the corner.” As a result, we influence each other much more rapidly.

    Noting that traditions (the repeated practices of culture) are deeply entrenched, Isasi-Díaz pointed out their significance to the way we understand and approach our daily lives. While there is constant change occurring, traditions keep us grounded as we attempt to slow things down, since we can only deal with a limited amount of change at one time.
    “There is no group that I know of that has gone through more drastic change,” she said, referring to the Roman Catholic Church before and after Vatican II and recalling the turmoil surrounding these changes.
    “The fact is that we cannot just build on top of what we have, unless we let go a little bit of what we have,” she said, describing the rapid change of culture as demanding of us “some discontinuity with the past.”

    This does not mean rejecting the past or saying what was done before was wrong, but of processing the new information to gain new ways of understanding ourselves and each other.
    “Religion is part of culture and culture, as such, is influenced by religion,” she said, “but the rest of the elements of culture influence religion. And this is why I think we need to understand the faith and religion of Latinas.”

    Latinas and Latinos now make up 40 percent of the U.S. population, she noted, and in San Antonio, Los Angeles and parts of New York, make up more than 50 percent. Being the largest racial minority in the United States, it is foolish to think, she said, that U.S. culture is not being influenced by Latino culture.
    The dominant culture in our country, however, is actually a minority culture and only embraces Latino culture up to a point. The challenge comes in trying to figure out how all can participate in creating the dominant culture. “How do we together create what becomes then a new society and yet which is not static, which is always evolving?” she asked.

    Assimilation into the “melting pot” has been the response in the United States to dealing with differences, Isasi-Díaz said, noting there has been an attempt to refute any negative connotations by referring to this process as a “tossed salad” instead. “I don’t think so,” she said ruefully. “What continues to be the dominant paradigm is the melting pot.”

    And this melting pot, she related, has never been all-inclusive. “Blacks have never been allowed into the melting pot,” she said. “African-Americans in the United States have always been outside the melting pot. They have not been allowed to contribute their culture, their understanding, into the melting pot.”
    Calling this “melting” not only impossible but dangerous for those required to do so, Isasi-Díaz noted that it creates in the minority a sense of self-loathing and double consciousness. This was seen in many Hispanic parents in the past not allowing Spanish to be spoken at home in order that their children better assimilate into U.S. society and get ahead.

    Assimilation hurts the dominant group as well, she observed. Instead of trying to see what richness another culture can contribute to society at large, the trend is to marginalize them.
    To those who say that people immigrating here should accept the current culture instead of trying to change it, Isasi-Díaz, pointed out that many are not necessarily here by choice, but because of U.S. “meddling” abroad. Two-thirds of Mexico was swallowed overnight by the United States with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, she pointed out, and Cubans are here because of decades of U.S. supported dictatorships there, which finally came to an end when American support was withdrawn and Castro took over. Looming now in the headlines is Iraq and our involvement there.
    “So the United States, in a way, has a certain moral responsibility,” she said, “because of how the United States deals with the rest of the world.”

    She added that a culture need not feel threatened if it is willing to recognize differences as enrichment instead of as difficulties. By 2050, it has been predicted there will be no numerical ethnic majority group in the United States and the Catholic Church today is already more than 50 percent Latina/Latino. “So it’s absolutely a must,” said Isasi-Díaz, “for us to learn to deal with differences.”