If Jesus Could Not Save Himself, How Would He Save Me?

Abstract

As the country recognizes the 101st birthday of former President Ronald Reagan, this memoir offers insight into a local Anglo-Protestant community in Westchester, California, that was but one grain of sand in a sea of change that led to the Reagan Revolution. In the early 1980s, this cohort of Anglo-Protestants reached out to neighborhood youngsters in a dedicated attempt to “save” them from hell. Julian Segura Camacho, a Mexican American teenager living in California at the time, soon found himself attending an all-white church, primarily upper class but still sprinkled with less fortunate ones. This Assembly of God church became a family and much like any relationship, Camacho found pleasure and anguish as different personalities played themselves out.

As a member of this communal religious and racialized space, Camacho was able to see firsthand how the Reagan Revolution attracted those who felt the US was becoming too secular. Yet this book is not political; it is simply a story of a Mexican American boy engaged in a seven-year routine of bible study, youth and boy scout activities, and camping trips, along with sermons about the coming of Christ, and the evils of Darwinism.