Date of Award

Spring 1-1-2015

Document Type


Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)



First Advisor

Lisa Flores

Second Advisor

Leah Sprain

Third Advisor

Reiland Rabaka


Victory Outreach is a mostly Chican@ Protestant Church, with substantial African American membership in some congregations, which has grown rapidly in past few decades. Targeting mostly gang members and those battling drug or alcohol addiction for potential membership, “VO” espouses mostly mainstream American values, specifically oriented towards the urban poor and especially men, and drawing on cultural elements including hip hop culture, low rider car culture, gang and prison culture, and cholo culture. Using mostly interviews and participant observation focusing particularly on men at a Victory Outreach congregation in Denver, CO, this project describes the ways that men at Victory Outreach revise their conceptions of masculinity and create cultural bridges between African Americans and Chicanos through the development of a hybrid masculinity and a reliance on shared black-brown cultural exchange. However, the rhetoric at “VO” often leaves the roots of class relations, structural racism and gender hierarchy mostly unchallenged, limiting the churches resistant potential in the areas of race, class, and gender