Historian Dr. Felipe Hinojosa talks to PhD candidate The Rev. Francisco García, one of the few Latino Episcopal priests in the U.S.

*Youth from the Florencia* barrio of South Central Los Angeles arrive at Belvedere Park for La Marcha Por La Justicia, California, 31 January 1971. Photo: Luis C. Garza | Source: *UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center*

Historian Dr. Felipe Hinojosa talks to pastor and PhD candidate The Rev. Francisco García, one of the few Latino Episcopal priests in the United States, about growing up in Los Angeles, his academic work, and pastoring different churches and congregations, as well as about his labor organizing work. The scholars also discuss the mentorship of Canon Lydia López—who, for more than 50 years, served the Diocese of Los Angeles and wider Episcopal Church—and who The Rev. García says was instrumental in his life, encouraging him to take his place at the table and affirming to him that the church needed people like him: "activist organizing priests." “She was a powerhouse with her fierce loving spirit,” he says of the late Canon López.

The Rev. García also describes his return to “the church that raised me up,” All Saints Church in Pasadena, California, where he started an immigration justice ministry and later served as Rector of Holy Faith Episcopal Church, a multiracial, multilingual congregation in Inglewood.

“That’s sort of what prompted me to explore the PhD,” he recalls. “I had questions about the way the church itself was structured, about the institutions, about economic disparities between [churches]...Now it makes sense for me to do theology and ethics and to explore these questions about what is the church, where does the church reside, how does the church function, and how do we have a different understanding of the church, in light of people’s lived realities—economic and social and ethnic and all of these realities.” He adds that, “because of my formation and labor, that lens is really central to the way I think and the way I want to make sense of the church.”

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The Rev. Francisco J. García is a PhD candidate in Theological Studies, Ethics and Action at Vanderbilt University in the Graduate Department of Religion, and a Graduate Research Fellow at the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt Divinity School.

A Chicano from Los Angeles, born to Mexican immigrant parents, he also serves as an Assistant Chaplain at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Chapel in Nashville, Tennessee. Informed by his work in community, faith, and labor organizing, The Rev. García’s doctoral project entails developing theologies/ecclesiologies of organizing—rooted in Latinx, Christian, and interfaith liberation traditions—reimagining the church as a social movement that challenges the pressing structural injustices of our time and constructs alternatives.

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Born and raised in Brownsville, Texas, Dr. Felipe Hinojosa is the John and Nancy Jackson Endowed Chair in Latin America & Professor of History at Baylor University. Dr. Hinojosa was formerly on faculty at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, where he also served as Director for the university's Carlos H. Cantu Hispanic Education & Opportunity Endowment. His research areas include Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies, American Religion, Race and Ethnicity, and Social Movements. He co-edited Faith & Power: Latino Religious Politics Since 1945 (New York University Press, 2022) with Sergio M. González and Maggie Elmore. His recent book, Apostles of Change: Latino Radical Politics, Church Occupations, and the Fight to Save the Barrio (University of Texas Press, 2021) is set in four major cities (Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Houston), where, in 1969 and 1970, Latino radical activists clashed with religious leaders as they occupied churches to protest urban renewal, poverty, police brutality, and racism. Latino Mennonites: Civil Rights, Faith, and Evangelical Culture (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014) received the 2015 Américo Paredes Book Award for the best book in Mexican American and Latina/o Studies by the Center for Mexican American Studies at South Texas College. His work has appeared in Zócalo Public Square, Western Historical Quarterly, American Catholic Studies, Mennonite Quarterly Review, and Latina/o Studies collections. Dr. Hinojosa holds a PhD in History from the University of Houston, an MA in History from the University of Texas Pan American, and BA in English from Fresno Pacific University. He serves on the Advisory Board for the interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, and online moderated forum Latinx Talk.

The Look of Common Prayer

Historian Dr. Felipe Hinojosa talks to PhD candidate The Rev. Francisco García, one of the few Latino Episcopal priests in the U.S.

HTI Open Plaza

The Look of Common Prayer

Historian Dr. Felipe Hinojosa talks to PhD candidate The Rev. Francisco García, one of the few Latino Episcopal priests in the U.S.

A Faithful and Constructive Conversation

The Place across the River

HTI Open Plaza