Table of Contents

Introduction
Samuel Cruz
Chapter 1: The Use of Roman Catholic Material Culture, Ritual, and Devotional Practices in Haitian Vodou in the Greater Newark, New Jersey Area: The Urban Context.
Peter Savastano
Chapter 2: Between the Runway and Empty Tomb: Bodily Transformations and Christian Praxis in New York City’s House Ball Community.
Edgar Rivera
Chapter 3: Praying Aloud, in Spanish, in the South Bronx
Nicolas Dumit Estevez
Chapter 4: Troubling the Waters: Intimate Violence and the Church-Breaking the Hold of Shame and Secrecy
Michelle L. Nickens
Chapter 5: Revelation 12-13: A Guerilla Reading
Charlene Sinclair
Chapter 6: The Church, the City, and Its Mission in the 21st Century: A View from the Margins
Elieser Valentin
Chapter 7: Conclusion: A Praxis of Integral Liberation in a (Post) Colonial World A Critical and Compelling Conversation
David Traverzo

About the Author

Samuel Cruz is a sociologist of religion, race, sexuality and gender. Dr. Cruz is assistant professor of Church and Society at Union Theological Seminary City of New York. Dr. Cruz’s publications include a book, Masked Africanisms: Puerto Rican Pentecostalism (Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2005) as well as a number of book chapters and journal articles on Latina/o and global Pentecostalism, urban religion and on the sociology of religion—principal areas of his research and teaching. Dr. Cruz is also Senior Pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, NY.

Reviews

City life is complicated. Religious expressions within cities are even more difficult to ascertain. Cruz brings together scholars who explore marginalized religious spaces within cities to discover that what people claim to believe in theory, what they say about their faith, and how they live out that faith can be quite incongruent. Most religious scholars miss this because they fail to consider the complicated ethnic, cultural, and political realities of the everyday. As a corrective, this book provides us with a liberative critical reflection on the praxis of the disenfranchised.
*Miguel A. De La Torre, professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies, Iliff School of Theology*

Samuel Cruz is a major prophetic voice who understands that urban Christian visions and witnesses constitute much of the best of our future!
*Cornel West, Union Theological Seminary*