Video: Understanding the Hispanic Christian Experience in America

This video, produced a few years ago for Hispanic Heritage Month by an evangelical Christian organization, aims to "help people outside of the Hispanic community better understand their Hispanic brothers and sisters in Christ." In it, Dr. Juan Sanchez shares some of his personal struggles in trying to fit in and calls for a recognition for what connects us all. 

A U. S. Navy veteran and a Baptist pastor, Sanchez associate professor of theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. In the video he states, "I was someone who was born in Puerto Rico, who didn’t know any English words, and we moved to the United States when I was almost eight years old. My dad moved us to Florida because of difficulties that we were having there as a family and him being involved in politics. And I have to confess, it was a tremendous challenge moving to a country, even though I was a US citizen, born a US citizen. But moving to a place where there was a different culture, a different language, having to learn English from scratch, trying to fit in every way that I could, trying to identify with professional sports teams like my American peers, or just trying to have the same fashions. It was very difficult.

"But what you also need to understand is, as brother and sisters in Christ, we have more in common with one another, with people who don’t even speak our language, than we do with our own blood-kin, our family members in our own households who are not believers. We have more in common with a believer who has come out of the Muslim faith in the Middle East than our American neighbor down the road who has an American flag waving in front of their house."

The full transcript is here.