Any text that suggests that John Calvin is a liberation theologian deserves a closer look. In Racism and God-Talk, Rubén Rodríguez seeks to offer a mestizo theology, out of the Presbyterian perspective, that is consonant with critical race theories such as that of Cornel West, yet moves the United States Latino articulation of mestizo theology beyond an essentialist cultural identity to being “a transcultural paradigm for resisting racism” (70).

Mestizaje historically is the mixing of African, European, and indigenous peoples in the conquest of the Americas, but in contemporary Latino and Latin-American cultural deliberations it has come to mean a mutual mixing of cultures which does not culminate in assimilation. As much as he acknowledges the groundbreaking work of Virgil Elizondo, Rodríguez contends that Elizondo's genetic rendering of mestizaje cannot effect genuine transcultural relations. Instead, Rodríguez is drawn more to Ada Maria Isasi-Díaz's articulation of the “‘kin-dom’” (219) of God and Luis Pedraja's notion of dialogic encounter. Through Isasi-Díaz and Pedraja, Rodríguez seeks to advance a nonessentialist interchange that affirms the diversity among interlocutors, yet draws upon common ground to realize relationships that are more inclusive. In addition, he accents that mestizaje, historically forged in the crucible of colonialism and neocolonialism, is more is intrinsically committed to empowering the marginalized, in contrast to the notion of hybridity.

In the second part of his text, Rodríguez provides topical applications of his mestizo theology. First, in Calvin's case, Rodríguez provocatively contends that Calvin's emphasis on prophetic preaching, care for the poor and sick, suffering for the sake of righteousness, and the responsibility of magistrates to “secure a certain measure of social justice in human transactions” (125) is consonant with liberation theology's focus on empowering the poor and the powerless. Second, continuing his iconoclastic analysis, as much as Latino Protestant spiritualities are leery of popular religiosity, Rodríguez contends that the appearance of Guadalupe at Tepeyac in 1531 is a Christological event — the “theology of the Word” (170) in a new cultural context. Put otherwise, popular religion provides “voice to religious experiences not yet articulated in doctrine” (156).

Third, in terms of a mestizo Christ, in addition to H. Richard Niebuhr's five paradigms vis-à-vis Christ's relationship to cultures, Rodríguez via Pedraja accents “Christ through culture” (204), eliciting how Christ is realized in different cultures yet manifests a new way of living together as opposed to “exclusionary practices” (209). Fourth, Rodríguez articulates pneumatology through Isasi-Díaz's “praxis of solidarity” (225) in which the oppressed and oppressors converse on how to transform oppressive structures so that all parties are liberated. This new “community of faith” (224) initiated at Pentecost entails (1) that one can find the Spirit apart from traditional church structures and (2) the Spirit is not consigned to a privatized state as in North American spirituality. Finally, Rodríguez concludes that mestizo theology's emphasis upon inclusion, reconciliation, and justice suggests a 21st.-century ecclesiology that is ecumenical and non-hierarchical in character, as manifested in the extensive interchanges between Latino Catholic and Protestant theologians.

Clearly, this text is directed at scholars and practitioners of liberation theology, not political scientists interested in the practical political implications of United States Latino spirituality — there are no concrete case studies as in Catherine Wilson's The Politics of Latino Faith and Gastón Espinosa's Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States. Rodríguez's liberation rendering of Calvin though does provide an eye-opening contrast to the conventional rendering of the Calvinist legacy, especially in American political thought.

However, Rodríguez's recasting of mestizaje as a paradigm of inclusion, reconciliation, and justice is much more problematic. Within United States Latino theology, there has been a growing resistance to using racial discourse to realize liberation, preferring instead to focus on overcoming class disparities. Unfortunately, Rodríguez never responds to this argument.

In turn, Rodríguez wants to shift mestizaje from being a basis for Latino cultural identity to instead being a normative and experiential framework that can transform structures of domination and realize inclusive, egalitarian communities. Yet, even he at times accents “Latino(a)” or “Hispanic” as “an act of political solidarity” (221). Rodríguez's deliberations retain the tendency in Latino studies — as far back as Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands — to privilege the Latino (or in Anzaldúa's case, the Latina) standpoint and to reify the oppressor. The same goes for Rodríguez's rather Christian confessional rendering of both Guadalupe and ecumenism — the status of non-Christians in the mixing remains unclear.

Rodríguez does not show sufficiently how mestizaje can move beyond the language of resistance to domination to a discourse of mutual egalitarian relations between diverse peoples. In this regard, Jacques Audinet's lateral rendering of mestizaje in The Human Face of Globalization still offers more conceptual promise. Overall, Rodríguez would benefit from a conversation with social scientists (and vice-versa) on how to move beyond prophetic witness to transforming political structures and processes. That being said, Rodríguez's volume is a vital contribution, not only to liberation theology, but also to the growing discourse on how to realize a transcultural and transnational civil society.