Of borders and margins

"The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and its Hispanic constituency live in an uneasy and tension-filled relationship. In this engagingly written work, Daisy L. Machado locates the historical underpinnings of this relationship through an analysis of the Disciples' interaction with Hispanics in Texas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.". "Machado shows that, although there was a large Hispanic population in Texas during this period, the Christian Church failed to develop a significant presence in Hispanic communities. Much of this failure can be traced, she argues, to the notion of the frontier, which influenced and shaped both church policy and theology for Disciples ministering to the Hispanic community. The frontier ethos - with its focus on divine providence and election, ideas about a chosen race and virgin land, and understanding of the church as a socializing and Americanizing agent - provided an AngloAmerican prism through which Disciples saw themselves and others. The acceptance and implementation of these ideologies meant that while the Christian Church was taking its place as a member of the American Protestant establishment it was simultaneously failing in its work among Hispanics."--BOOK JACKET.