The Scandal of the Latino Evangelical Mind

In 1994, Christian historian Mark Noll wrote a book titled The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. In this book, Noll made the now-classic argument that “the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”[1] He contended that despite evangelicalism’s cultural influence in mainstream media and politics, as well as its financial success, what evangelicalism lacked was a serious intellectual life capable of thoughtfully engaging modern culture.

Since its publication, the state of the world has dramatically changed. From the rise of the digital age, with the internet, social media, and now artificial intelligence, to changes in the moral norms of our society around issues of race, gender, the family, and more. The pluralization of our civil society has veered into a polarization of the most uncivil kind. The foundations of our constitutional rights are being challenged as the limits of our democratic boundaries are tested day by day.

Likewise, the state of evangelicalism has also shifted. The term “evangelical” has become highly contested, as segments of U.S. evangelicalism have either aligned themselves with or become complicit in a far-right populist agenda. Many who grew up in the evangelical church now find themselves feeling like foreigners in a movement they once called home. Others use prefixes such as Ex-, Post-, and New- to describe their faith in the aftermath of scandal, church abuse, and partisan politics.

The scandal of the evangelical mind is not merely that there isn’t one, but rather that, in failing to nurture the life of the mind, it has also neglected its moral conscience. And it is precisely that moral conscience that is needed today.

The Formation of the Latino Evangelical Mind

How, then, does the Latino Church fare within the life of the evangelical mind? While Latino evangelicals and Pentecostals are not unfamiliar with critiques of emotionalism and anti-intellectual spirituality, over the past thirty years we have seen great strides within the Latino community in the realm of higher education.

In 2024, a Lifeway Research study revealed that “almost half [of Hispanic pastors] have completed Bible institute training (47%) or seminary courses (46%),” and “more than a third have a master’s degree from a seminary (38%) or have taken courses from a Bible college (34%). A quarter (25%) have completed church-based school courses, while 12 percent have a seminary doctoral degree.”[2]

When it comes to Gen Z, NaLEC’s newest At-Promise Initiative reported that “22% of Hispanic adults 25+ now have a bachelor’s degree or higher – up from 13% in 2010.”[3] Furthermore, a 2025 Gallup report shows that “Hispanic students are among the groups with the largest improvement in school ratings,”[4] and that “60% of Gen Z students” feel prepared for their future.[5] There is no mistaking the significant growth of Latinos pursuing advanced degrees and higher education in the United States today.

And yet, disparities among U.S. Latinos and Latinas remain prevalent within both the church and the academy. Within ATS-accredited seminaries in the United States, only 5.7% of all ATS faculty are Latino: 4.2% are men and 1.5% are women. This means that when we send members of our communities to seminary, they have only about a 6 percent chance of taking a course with a professor who shares their cultural background, much less their theological tradition.

Within our denominational Sunday school curricula, the materials produced make no mention of how Scripture speaks to our cultural distinctives. There is no recognition of the traumas our children are facing. There are no paradigms for making sense of the racial and xenophobic inequities of our time.

This should cause us to pause and reflect on what this means for the Latino evangelical mind.

The Scandal of the Latino Evangelical Mind

Thus, the scandal of the Latino evangelical mind is not that it does not exist, but rather that it has been deceived. It has been deceived into believing that it has no mind, no intellect, and no serious theological tradition.

When I first attended seminary, there were some who tried to convince me that our theologians were heretics. They searched for reasons to discredit us, from writing too few books to writing too many. They trained me to speak their foreign tongues while simultaneously refusing to learn my own. And in time, I came to realize that the same sun rose and fell upon those who came before me.

From the influence of the early European expansionist enterprise, which framed our African and Indigenous ancestors as “savages” and their European counterparts as “civilized,” to the mid-twentieth-century Bracero Program, in which, as Marie Arana described it, workers became “limbs to be borrowed at America’s whim; easily disposed of when inconvenient.”[6] From the labeling of our people as “essential” workers who picked our food during the COVID pandemic to chants for “mass deportation now” shortly thereafter. The aftermath of centuries of the dehumanization and commodification of Black and brown bodies remains alive and well, reverberating throughout our academic and ecclesial institutions today.

We see it in the “imposter syndrome” experienced by some of our brightest scholars as they navigate theological institutions that were not made for them. We see it in the red carpets we roll out for white denominational leaders who speak at our congresses and assemblies in hopes of their affirmation. In many ways, the psychological impact of generational trauma remains seared into our conscience. The white gaze hovers over Latino evangelical social existence, looming like an ever-present shadow and monitoring the boundaries of what is deemed socially acceptable.

The Latino evangelical mind has been deceived into believing that it does not have a mind of its own—that it must acquiesce to the will of its colonizers and remain subject to the systems and structures that oppress it. We were sold a vision in which, to gain true knowledge, we must drink from other wells, and there is nothing to be found in our own.

The time has come for this narrative to end.

The Awakening of the Latino Evangelical Conscience

I believe that Latino evangelicalism is experiencing a revival in this present moment. It is a revival arising not from the comfort of our pews, but from persecution on our streets. It is a revival that is not only spiritual, but profoundly moral. We are witnessing a great awakening of the moral conscience of the Latino evangelical church, as pastors, bishops, and Christian leaders bear witness to the brutality of ICE enforcement being inflicted upon our churches and communities.

The scales are falling from the eyes of those who have refused to see the suffering of the most vulnerable in our community, and repentance is taking place among pastors and Christian leaders who were led astray. Paulo Freire referred to this as “conscientization,” the process of “learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions [of a society], and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality.”[7]

The power of education is found in our ability to identify, interpret, and articulate the systems and structures that have impeded the flourishing of our people. The time has come for the Latino evangelical church to say, “¡Basta ya!” ¡Basta ya! to the indiscriminate persecution of our people. ¡Basta ya! to the meme-ification of the human suffering of immigrants. ¡Basta ya! to the complicity of Christians who watch in silence and refuse to raise their voices for those who cannot speak for themselves.

The time has come for the Latino Church to speak plainly. It is time for the Latino Church to heed the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”[8]

It is time for the Latino evangelical church to take its place and lead as a moral conscience for our nation.

The Renewal of the Latino Evangelical Mind

To be a moral conscience for our nation requires that we not “conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of [our] mind.”[9] It requires a mind that is not bound by the powers and principalities that have sought to suppress it, but one that is set apart and wholly other. To be a moral conscience for a nation requires that we possess a holy imagination.

May we drink confidently from our own wells, knowing that we too “have the mind of Christ.”[10]

May we draw upon the intelligence of our ancestors and what Robert Chao Romero describes as “the spiritual communal treasure that [is] the Brown Church.”[11]

And may we never settle for kissing the rings of rulers who turn their faces from the suffering of our people.

Let us speak plainly and clearly, with the minds of our scholars, the hearts of our pastors, the feet of our activists, and the faith of our abuelas. For if there is one thing that the U.S. evangelical church must learn, it is this: the life of the Latino evangelical mind is not merely thought—it is lived.

Let us therefore live into the call the Spirit has placed upon the Latino evangelical church of renewing the mind of U.S. evangelicalism and our nation for such a time as this.

Author’s Note: This address was originally delivered at the National Latino Evangelical Coalition’s (NaLEC) 15th Anniversary SENT Summit Gathering on October 3, 2026, in Orlando, Florida.

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