The Rhetorical Influence of Contemporary Evangélicas

Abstract

This essay uses a cultural rhetoric framework to analyze Hermanas: Deepening our Identity and Growing Our Influence (2019), a multi-authored book by evangelical Latinas in the U.S. The distinct storytelling in the text—which layers the authors’ personal narratives with discussions of biblical texts—emerges from both white evangelical and Latina cultural contexts. This communal, activist approach to personal narrative enacts rhetorical leadership by confronting systemic injustices in U.S. evangelicalism and offering readers in that community new ways to engage with dominant evangelical rhetoric and with the stories of others.

Notes

1 My deep thanks to RR reviewers Aja Martinez and Lisa Shaver for their feedback on this article.

2 InterVarsity Press (IVP), a branch of the college ministry InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, published Hermanas. The press produces podcasts, Bible studies, fiction, academic monographs, and nonfiction in categories like “Christian Living” and “Politics & Government.” IVP claims to publish over 100 books each year and actively promotes authors from diverse backgrounds and books on race, ethnicity, and religion.

Hermanas received positive reviews in Sojourners magazine, Booklist, and Foreward Reviews (which named it a finalist in its 2019 Book of the Year Award). Positive Goodreads and Amazon reviews also reflect the book’s success with its intended readers.

3 This essay does not comprehensively define “evangelical,” but rather highlights those features that allow Kohn, Vega Quiñones, and Robinson to establish an evangelical ethos. The identifier evangélica looks like a cognate for “evangelical” but it does not denote theological and political identity like “evangelical” (Martell-Otero 8). Instead evangélica is a broader term for those who see themselves as preaching el evangelio, the gospel (8).

4 The three authors of Hermanas use “Latina,” rather than “Latinx,” in reference to themselves and to their families, colleagues, and readers. They include an “intentional reminder that it [the term Latina] is limited and must include African, Asian, and indigenous descendants” and give readers freedom “to identify with the term or not” (10). I follow their lead in using “Latina” when I describe, quote, or analyze their prose.

5 Kohn, Vega Quiñones, and Robinson join other Latina evangelicals who counter individualism and decontextualized readings of the Bible, like pastor Sandra Maria Van Opstal or theologians Loida I. Martell-Otero, Zaida Maldonado Pérez, and Elizabeth Conde-Frazier. A continued discussion of Latina rhetorical leadership in evangelicalism might look to these writers.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bethany Mannon

Bethany Mannon is an Assistant Professor of English at Appalachian State University, where she is the Director of Composition and specializes in Rhetoric and Writing Studies. She is the author of “I Grew Up in the Church”: Personal Narrative in the Rhetoric of American Evangelical Women (forthcoming from Baylor UP) and several articles on feminist and religious rhetoric.