Puerto Rican Christianities in the United States

Abstract

This chapter makes the argument that the history of Puerto Rican Christianities must be understood in relation to Puerto Rico, as the archipelago is part of the United States proper. Circulatory movement between Puerto Rico and the US mainland and internal migration within the United States have and will continue to characterize Puerto Rican Christianities. This makes them a collective, evolving object of study. This chapter examines Puerto Ricans who have contributed to building Hispanic/Latino churches in the United States since at least the middle decades of the twentieth century and are still doing so in the early twenty-first century. This chapter emphasizes that while Puerto Ricans are mainly Catholic, their interpretations of dogma and ritual practices transcend mainstream and vernacular forms of Catholicism. In recent years, the number of evangelical churches, especially Pentecostal, has ballooned on both sides of the air bridge that links Puerto Rico and the US mainland. The field of Puerto Rican religion patiently awaits the scholars who will take it seriously, move it forward within Puerto Rican studies, and venture into comparative terrain.