Abstract
Religion has long served as a powerful institution in which gendered identities have been defined, prescribed, embodied, and maintained. Religious groups assert that these gender distinctions are commanded by God, the ultimate authority on everything. Claiming the divine being created these norms and religious laws provides powerful support—in a way that claiming gender is constructed by humans never could—for conservative religious doctrine that women and men have unique physical and personality characteristics that are the basis of their distinct, embodied gendered identities. For feminist intellectuals and activists, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton who took scissors to the Bible and cut out all the sexist sections and ending with a very short document, indeed, to current scholars who debate whether religion is inevitably and irredeemably sexist or can be reformed, religion provides a rich site for explorations of the sources and consequences of gender inequality in society.
God’s Gangs: Barrio Ministry, Masculinity and Gang Recovery is situated within the scholarly discourse on the “new masculinities,” demonstrating how various religious groups help men “go straight” from lives of drugs and crime, reflecting an aggressive masculinity to reconstruct new meanings of manhood. Urban religious ministries offer members a path away from their former lives of drugs, crime, aggression, and domestic violence by redefining their understanding of maleness to a conception of masculinity that is home and caring based. The pastors in these communities urge men to embrace a Godly discourse, which helps men who led destructive lives become better men, and develop a more socially acceptable construction of maleness. The new constructs of masculinity are focused in the domestic realm, rather than the streets. These ministries provide clear instructions for how men can enrich their inner lives, achieve integrity, find meaning in work, thrive in personal relationships, and become nurturing and supportive fathers.
Flores presents his field work and findings from two case studies conducted in Los Angeles, the city known as the epicenter of particularly destructive gang activities. He chose two organizations that had similar goals but distinctive approaches. Homeboy Ministries sought to offer former gang members whatever assistance they needed—classes, therapy, work opportunities—to help them reintegrate into their communities as caring men who would live home-centered lives. In contrast to this open community, Victory Outreach, an evangelical-Pentecostal group, urged members to spend evenings, weekends, and holidays at the Church, where they were encapsulated socially and ideologically, and directed to reaffirm their new identities in the company of similar men. Flores spent 18 months conducting fieldwork in these communities and interviewed 30 men who were or had been gang members.
I sense that Flores felt more comfortable within the Homeboy Ministries and therefore placed their activities and members at the center of his description of the transformation of gang members. Their experiences led Flores to develop an intersectional approach, showing how ethnicity (his interviewees were all Latino, save for the priest, and some were undocumented immigrants) intersected with their poor social class status—they could not find jobs to support themselves or their families—and enacted their frustrations through adopting the aggressive, hegemonic masculinity of the streets. These men embodied their machismo by engaging in dangerous practices: heavy drug and alcohol abuse, as well as high levels of interpersonal violence. Flores placed the concept of embodiment at the core of this study, asking how embodied religious practices facilitate gang recovery, by offering an alternative conception of masculinity that would be accomplished through new routines in their homes and at work.
In this well-written work, Flores starts with the background of racial and ethnic marginalization in Los Angeles, showing how Latinos, especially immigrants, lack structural opportunities to get ahead, and instead develop a construction of masculinity based on physical strength and aggression. Flores then introduces readers to eight cases of men who recovered from gang life and, through discourse and behaviors, performed a new, embodied conception of masculinity with a different set of daily practices.
This is a rich book, a fine case study of intersectionality, showing how race, class, and gender interact to lower the life chances of these Latino men. Nevertheless, I would have liked to read ethnographic details of how they described the journey through gang recovery ministries, how they interacted with the leader and the other men, the lessons they learned, and the steps they took to reconstruct themselves as new men.
Flores has entered a growing new focus in sociology of religion: the complex intersections among gender, embodiment, identity, and religion. Future research can build upon, deepen, and broaden our understanding of this field.