ABSTRACT
This chapter draws from a four-year ethnography of a Central American and Mexican immigrant Pentecostal church that examined how Pentecostal children and youth were socialized to language and literacy. I focus on the literacy practice of reading the Bible, which exposed the students to an archaic literary register in Spanish. Reading the Bible built students’ lexicon as well as their capacity for textual analysis, evaluation, and interpretation. I argue that schools can leverage these language and literacy skills to meet state literacy standards particularly as articulated in the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts (CCSS-ELA). In this way, church practices could inform school lessons to foster students’ literacy knowledge and skills.
