Hijacking history. How the Christian Right teaches history and why it matters. By Kathleen Wellman. Pp. xvi + 368. Oxford–New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. £22.99. 978 0 19 757923 7

Abstract

his discussion of Olivares’s term as treasurer of his Claretian order, when he administered a multi-million-dollar stock portfolio and lived a lifestyle far removed from that which characterised his years as pastor of La Placita Church in Los Angeles. It was from La Placita that in Olivares formally declared its inauguration as a sanctuary parish, presenting a religiously inspired challenge to the federal government that would have resonated with William Lloyd Garrison a century earlier. The weightiness of this study (it runs to  pages) is not without its limitations. Relying heavily as he does on oral histories of family and associates to understand themanbehind the clerical collar (little personal correspondence having survived), García frequently draws inferences about Olivares’s theology and ministry which, though plausible, fall somewhat short of being definitive. For one desirous of celebrating Olivares’s progressive credentials and his commitment to liberation theology’s ‘preferential option for the poor’, moreover, he makes surprisingly little of aspects of Olivares’s theology that suggest an enduring commitment to traditional Catholicism, notably Olivares’s initial reluctance to receive an award from the American Civil Liberties Union for his work with refugees because of theACLU’s support for abortion (p.). Defence of the poor and themarginalised – the central plank of Olivares’s ministry at La Placita –may consequently not havebeenpredicatedon the same values that informed theworkofhis liberal Protestant counterparts in the Sanctuary Movement.