Recinos, Harold J. and Magallanes, Hugo, eds. Jesus in the Hispanic Community: Images of Christ from Theology to Popular Religion. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. Pages, xxii + 225. Paper, $21.50. ISBN: 9780664234287.

Reviewed by: Claudio M. Burgaleta, S.J., Fordham University

Harold J. Recinos and Hugo Magallanes, both professors of the Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, have edited a volume containing the Christologies of U.S. Latina/o theologians from a broad spectrum of national, denominational and methodological perspectives. One undercurrent throughout this volume that at times surfaces in the references of a few authors, is Michelle A. González’s critique of the Christologies of U.S. Latina/o theologians. In her essay on Jesus in the Handbook of Latina/o Theologies (Chalice Press, 2006), she contends that U.S. Latina/o Christologies have neglected many of the classical and contemporary themes that have preoccupied the mainstream academy.

Sánchez, David A. From Patmos to the Barrio: Subverting Imperial Myths. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008. Pages, xi + 209. Paperback, $21.00. ISBN: 9780800662592.

Reviewed by: Jacqueline M. Hidalgo
Williams College

In From Patmos to the Barrio: Subverting Imperial Myths, David A. Sánchez impressively models a new approach to biblical scholarship. Sánchez’s focus is not strictly an exegesis of Revelation 12; rather he explores the ongoing life of that text as a site of community engagement, especially the afterlife of Revelation that can be found within the community from which he hales, Chican@s in East Los Angeles. Examining Revelation 12 as it travels in the multiple migrations of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Sánchez furthers the possibilities of biblical study opened up by scholars such as Musa W. Dube, Jean-Pierre Ruiz, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Fernando F. Segovia, R. S. Sugirtharajah, and Vincent L. Wimbush.

Powers, Tom. The Call of God: Women Doing Theology in Peru. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Pp. 184. Paper. $18.95. ISBN: 0791457907.

Reviewed by: Cecilia González-Andrieu
Graduate Theological Union

Tom Powers is a brave scholar. The Call of God crosses many boundaries and steps into at least three potentially explosive areas. First, he relates the “talk of God” and the very personal “call” voiced and lived by women. Yet, Powers is unable to share in many of the formative and normative experiences in these women’s lives—being mother, being wife, being daughter, and being excluded and oppressed in both church and society. Second, the women who are the theologizing subjects in the book speak and live out of a culture which is not his. These Peruvian women share a series of cultural markers and cues, traditions and values which Powers can also only record externally. In this too, he is in danger of placing himself as interpreter and thus reducing the women’s reflection to what his interpretation will yield.

Gebara, Ivone. Out of the Depths: Women’s Experience of Evil and Salvation. Translated by Ann Patrick Ware. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2002. Pp. viii + 211. Paper. $20.00. ISBN: 0800634756

Reviewed by: María Teresa Dávila
Boston College

Ivone Gebara constructs a theology of suffering and salvation from the perspective of poor women. Using a feminist phenomenology Gebara describes the experiences of evil that women suffer, the evil that women do, and poor women’s experiences of salvation in their everyday lives. She uses the category of gender to explain how the cultural, religious, and social understandings of male and female are part of women’s understanding of suffering, evil, and salvation. Her central goal is to construct a theology of suffering and salvation that sustains a unified vision of human life where evil and salvation are present in interrelated ways. Sustaining this goal leads her to make statements about suffering and salvation that confront traditional notions of the suffering of Jesus Christ and the salvation present in the cross and resurrection.

Romero, Oscar A. The Violence of Love: Oscar Romero. Compiled and translated by James R. Brockman, S.J. With a foreword by Henri Nouwen. Maryknoll: Orbis, 2004. Pp. xvi + 214. Paper. $15.00. ISBN: 1570755353.

Reviewed by: Robert S. Pelton, C.S.C.
University of Notre Dame

This collection of Archbishop Oscar Romero’s homilies and other works is meant to facilitate knowing this man of faith and experiencing the power of his words. Published a few years before the twenty-fifth anniversary of his martyrdom, the book is a valuable and comprehensive contribution to a fuller appreciation of Archbishop Romero’s deep spirituality, revealing in Romero’s own words his commitment to Christ in the living body of his people.

Menes, Orlando Ricardo, ed. Renaming Ecstasy: Latino Writings on the Sacred. Edited Tempe: Bilingual Press, 2004. Pp. v + 157. Paper. $14.00. ISBN: 1931010153.

Reviewed by: Alberto López Pulido
University of San Diego

This anthology brings together the writings of Latina and Latino poets who explore spirituality and expressions of the sacred within the pan-Latino world. As suggested by the title, a major focus of the project is to highlight how works of poetry by Latinas and Latinos rename sacred and spiritual “ecstasies” for this community and, as a result, serve to redefine what constitutes our communion with the divine in a multicultural America.

Reviewed by: Jeffrey Gros, F.S.C.
Memphis Theological Seminary

This important volume on Christianity in Peru includes four quite ambitious sections in one volume. The author, a lay theologian and sociologist, demonstrates both scientific clarity and a pastoral concern in the descriptions and analyses laid out here.

The first section of the book is a primer on Catholic ecumenism, one of the better kept secrets in the Latin American Catholic Church. He surveys the basic Catholic documents, the historic Eastern and Reformation churches with the factors responsible for the divisions, the institutions of the ecumenical movement, ending with a short section on the interreligious mission of the Church. This will be a helpful introduction, though unfortunately it does not treat of the forty years of Catholic dialogues with these churches and ecclesial communities since the Council.