Dr. David Gushee’s best-selling ‘Changing Our Mind’ becomes ‘Cambiano nuestra mente’ for Spanish readers

Our publishing house is proud to announce the upcoming (March 12, 2024) release of a Spanish edition of Christian ethicist Dr. David Gushee’s best-selling book, Changing Our Mind.

We also are proud that all translations of Dr. Gushee’s book are in response to requests from Christian individuals, families and church leaders around the world who want help in welcoming their LGBTQ family and friends. This is the second translation of this influential book that has been released. Earlier, a Christian group in Tibilisi, the capital of Georgia, released a Georgian-language version. Translation teams are working on additional versions in Chinese, Korean and Swahili.

Why is this book so important? 

As the new Spanish Amazon page says:

“Cambiando nuestra mente” ha ayudado a miles de familias y congregaciones a repensar con cuidado y compasión la forma en que algunas enseñanzas religiosas se han enseñado debido a la tradición sobre la plena inclusión de la comunidad LGBTQ.

Or in English:

“Changing Our Mind” has helped thousands of families and congregations carefully and compassionately rethink the way some religious teachings have been taught about full inclusion of the LGBTQ community.

As Dr. Gushee himself has said in talks to audiences around the world: “We measure the importance of this book not in the numbers sold but in the thousands of lives that have been changed and the thousands of families who are now able to love their children again.”

(And, for the record, well over 30,000 copies of the book have been sold, so far.)

Helping Families to Love Each Other Again

That’s exactly the appeal made by Alejandro J. Ugarte, the Spanish translator of this new edition, in a lengthy letter he wrote to Dr. Gushee in late 2022 proposing this edition. He explained how this was true for himself and his family and Ugarte concluded:

We desperately need more resources for Christian families in Spanish, because the translation of anti-LGBT books into Spanish has proliferated. As I have learned to love God more, as I have come to love the church more, and I have become more passionate about the Bible, so there is a burning desire within me that other Spanish-speaking families do not go through the hardship of an uninformed theology.

Even before Ugarte’s letter, Dr. Gushee had been talking with our publishing house about “the urgent need” for a Spanish translation. “I’m very interested in having an edition in Spanish because of the size and the importance” of the Spanish-speaking portion of Christianity, Dr. Gushee had told our publishing house repeatedly.

How Large is the Hispanic Audience?

Pew Research’s worldwide studies tell us that hundreds of millions of the world’s more than 2 billion Christians are Spanish speaking—comprising as much as a quarter of the Christian world. A majority of those Spanish-speaking Christians live in Latin America, but a huge number of Spanish-speaking Christians also live in the United States.

The U.S. Census reports the American Hispanic/Latino population is more than 62 million, according to the 2020 Census. The vast majority of that population identifies as having a Christian background, about 43 percent continuing to identify as Catholic—and a large portion now connecting with other churches or having no religious affiliation, according to Pew.

Most important in choosing to release Dr. Gushee’s book in Spanish is the Pew Research showing that a majority of Latinos speak Spanish, which is considered a strong tap-root to family heritage and values. Or, as the Pew report puts it:

Personal Hispanic identity is related to views about Spanish. U.S. Hispanics who consider their Hispanic identity to be extremely or very important to how they think about themselves are more likely than other Hispanics to say it’s important for future generations to speak Spanish. They are also more likely to say it is necessary for someone to speak Spanish in order to be considered Hispanic.

That is why Ugarte concluded his appeal to work on the translation by saying that this would be a labor of love for him “in hopes this can better the church, the life of individuals, and prevent families from fracturing.”

As a publishing house, we hope so, too!

Please consider ordering Cambiando nuestra mente from Amazon today.

Want a copy of the original? Here’s a link to the Amazon page for the English edition.