Hanging on a ghetto cross: Piri Thomas and Latino Protestant popular religion

Currents in Theology and Mission, August, 2004 by Jose David Rodriguez

My interest in popular religion has led me to search for those resources that witness to the spiritual and religious expressions of the Latino people in the United States and its territories. This area of interest has captured the attention of an increasing number of Latino scholars, providing a rich and provocative documentation. (1) This knowledge has challenged important tenets of traditional epistemological and theological reflection as well as dominant trends in the past and present mission and ministry with Latinos by mainline expressions of the Christian church in North America.

In this study I explore some valuable contributions of the Latino Protestant religious perspective by analyzing a selection of examples from the literary work of the Afro-Puerto Rican author Piri Thomas. My preference for the contributions of this author stems from the fact that his work is an important and provocative example of what is labeled Latino literature. Thomas is also one of the few Latino authors who have written about personal experience and convictions with the intention to stimulate a critical examination of the religious and spiritual expression of traditionally under-represented constituencies in North American society.

Literature as a locus of religious expression

In several of his recent publications, Luis N. Rivera-Pagan regrets the negligible attention given to literature as a focus of our creative and spiritual imagination. (2) While the homiletical exposition of religious leaders has paid attention to images of humanity and the sacred in literature, modern theological reflection has been mostly nurtured by the intellectual dialogue with representatives in the fields of philosophy and the social sciences. With few exceptions, theologians have neglected to reflect on the contributions of literature in exploring the dilemmas, enigmas, and yearnings of humanity. (3)

For Latin American theologians, this disregard of literature becomes unacceptable, given the significance of literature as the focal expression of the Latin American drama in all of its manifold complexities. For Rivera-Pagan, the need for a serious theological exploration of Latin American literature derives not just from the relevance that the creative symbolic expressions of this literature provides in response to the queries of religious and ecclesiastical concerns but also from the fact that the exploration of the myths, utopias, and faith immersed in this literature might be one of the ways to overcome the difficult predicament in which Latin American liberation theology finds itself. We live in a historical period aptly described by Elsa Tamez as one of messianic drought in which the horizons seem to close. (4)

Hispanic/Latina religious leaders in the U.S. view this dialogue between literature and theology as an important source of Hispanic/Latino theology. Yet, given the recent emergence of this theological perspective, the number of studies available in this area are few and mostly from a sociological or literary perspective. (5) In addition, while Latino authors usually follow an interdisciplinary approach, most of the studies of Protestant popular religion explore this topic from a theological perspective, or a viewpoint that takes one's own denominational tradition as a lens from which to interpret the significance of this religious expression. (6)

My choice of the literary work of Piri Thomas aims at enriching these efforts, not just by selecting a Latino author for whom literature becomes a preferential vehicle of expression, but because his particular contributions challenge not only a dominant literary genre in Latino literature but other theological efforts at this task.

Piri Thomas and his literary contributions

Born of Puerto Rican and Cuban parents in New York City's Spanish Harlem in 1928, Piri Thomas's struggle for survival, identity, and recognition began at a very early age. The vicious and cruel street environment of poverty, racism, and street crime experienced in New York City's ghetto streets led to his own involvement with crime. In 1955 he ended up in prison for armed robbery. After serving seven years of incarceration and hard labor, he rose above his violent background of drugs and gang warfare, using his street and prison experience to reach out to young people and turn them away from a life of crime. In 1967 he published Down These Mean Streets, now considered a classic of its kind. This provocative and psychologically penetrating autobiographical novel launched his career and fame as an author, winning him instant and lasting acclaim. (7)

Thomas's literary contributions are part of what Puerto Rican cultural critic Juan Flores describes as the literature of "lowercase people." In U.S. Latino literature, "lowercase literature" is a literature deriving from sources other than those identified with formal education and cultural literacy. While authors of this literary genre are clearly familiar with the works of classical and contemporary literature, their perspective never leaves the Latino world that borders on destitution and is intricately associated with blackness and the African American experience. For Flores, there is a significant distinction between this type of literature and other variants of Latino literary expression. The distinctive feature of Latino "lowercase literature" lies not on its thematic concerns or stylistic features but on the differential sociological placement and grounding of the writing and social identity of its subjects. For "lowercase" Latino writers, their work stands face to face with social experience, however harsh and saturated with mass culture, with its characters, voices, and story lines, all recognizable inhabitants of the mean but real streets. (8)