Intergenerational ties in Latinx Protestant congregations: sustaining ethnicity through organizational and affective connections

Abstract

This paper examines the persistence of intergenerational ties within Latinx Protestant Congregations (LPCs) and the implications these ties have for the persistence of LPCs as distinctly ethnic institutions. Though studies of generational transitions within ethnic congregations tend to emphasize intergenerational discontinuity, this paper uncovers ways that Latinx Protestants maintain intergenerational ties through LPC involvement, both within and across institutional settings. Rather than focusing on the content of intergenerational transmission, such as cultural practices, ethnic material, or explicit identity labels, this paper is concerned with a more preliminary matter of ethnic identity maintenance—the persistence of channels of transmission across generations. In particular, this paper examines how LPC organizational structures sustain cross-generational links, and how later generation Latinxs express affective ties to earlier generation Latinxs. Taking a religious ecology approach, findings are based on in-depth qualitative research conducted within six LPCs, and an informal survey of eleven additional LPCs, all located in the city of Santa Ana, California, a Latinx majority city. Findings suggest that LPCs are successfully cultivating intergenerational ties among a select group of later generation Latinxs, and that later generation Latinxs who stay connected to LPCs value these ties.