HTI Open Plaza

In this episode of OP Talks, Professor of Educational Leadership Dr. Mary Hess talks to Hispanic Bible theologian Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Conde-Frazier about her book Atando Cabos: Latinx Contributions to Theological Education (Eerdmans, 2021). “We find ourselves in a time when the forms of ‘church’ are transitioning,” writes Rev. Dr. Conde-Frazier. “Theological education may become more of a journey t...

Hispanic Theological Initiative (HTI) former director Dr. Justo L. González and Rev. Dr. Daniel O. Aleshire, longtime Association of Theological Schools (ATS) executive director, discuss what theological education should become. Dr. Aleshire’s book Beyond Profession: The Next Future of Theological Education (Eerdmans, 2021) offers a brief account of how theological education has changed in the pas...

Dr. Antonio “Tony” Alonso talks to Dr. Erica Ramirez about what informed his recently published book Commodified Communion: Eucharist, Consumer Culture, and the Practice of Everyday Life (Fordham University Press, 2021). “Reducing the work of theology to resistance and centering Christian hope in a Eucharist that might better support it,” Dr. Alonso argues, “undermines the ability to talk about th...

Sociologist Carlos Martínez García is an opinion columnist for the Mexican national daily La Jornada . He writes on various topics, beginning with his advocacy for religious and other minorities in southern Mexico. In this bilingual episode of OP Talks, Martínez García and religious historian Dr. Daniel Ramírez discuss the role of the public intellectual in religious and political life and how Eva...

In most parts of the world and especially where Christianity is flourishing, Pentecostal and charismatic movements predominate. What would it look like for the Western world—beset by the narrative of decline—to participate in this global Spirit-driven movement? (Eerdmans) Dr. Néstor Medina and Rev. Dr. Amos Yong discuss his most recent book, Renewing the Church by the Spirit: Theological Education...

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Rev. Dr. Loida Martell talks to psychologist Rev. Dr. Yvonne Martínez Thorne about complicated grief in extraordinary times. “We have been going from grief to grief in grief,” says Rev. Dr. Martínez Thorne, Founder and CEO of Cultivating Wholeness Counseling Associates, PC, where caring for the whole person matters. “This pandemic of COVID-19, plus the pandemic of racism, has ushered us into this...

Rev. Miluska (Milly) Aquije’s mother brought her to the United States from Peru at the age of three, but it wasn’t until Milly applied to college that she learned she was undocumented. Her immigration status was a secret that would come to weigh heavily on her.  For DACA recipients like her, election cycles can be stressful, as immigration is a key divisive issue often deployed by politicians to s...

Dr. João Chaves talks to sociologist Dr. Jonathan Calvillo about his research and about life in Santa Ana, a hub of Latinx activity in one of the most conservative counties of California—a city once dubbed by the media as the hardest place to live in the U.S. Dr. Calvillo’s most recent book, The Saints of Santa Ana: Faith and Ethnicity in a Mexican Majority City (Oxford University Press, 2020), ex...

Rev. Dr. Tito Madrazo sees ethnography as a way of "bearing witness, of bearing testimony." In this episode of OP Talks, Dr. João Chaves talks to Rev. Dr. Madrazo about his new book Predicadores: Hispanic Preaching and Immigrant Identity (Baylor University Press, 2021) and about his work, which was deeply influenced by his own personal story. Born in Venezuela and now an ordained Baptist pastor, R...

Stewardship of God's creation (“creation care”) is key to the ministries of both Rev. Dr. Loida Martell, a veterinarian by training, and of board-certified chaplain Alexandra Zareth. In this episode of OP Talks, the scholars discuss the year of the pandemic, and how it has exposed a new social reality that continues to reverberate not only socioeconomically and politically but also in our religiou...

Dr. Felipe Hinojosa grew up in Brownsville, on the Texas-Mexico border. Steeped in the work of Iglesia Menonita del Cordero, where his father was pastor, he saw early on “the need to dream collectively, as a community." In this episode, Jorge Juan Rodríguez V talks to Dr. Hinojosa about his newest book, 'Apostles of Change: Latino Radical Politics, Church Occupations, and the Fight to Save the Bar...

Dr. João Chaves and Rev. Dr. Tony Lin discuss his book Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream (The University of North Carolina Press, 2020). In this ethnography, Rev. Dr. Lin explores the reasons why Latin American immigrants across the United States are increasingly drawn to Prosperity Gospel Pentecostalism, a strand of Protestantism gaining popularity around the world. He contends t...

Dr. Jacqueline Hidalgo speaks with Dr. Néstor Medina about the questions that shaped her first book, Revelation in Aztlán: Scriptures, Utopias, and the Chicano Movement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), and how she came to bridge the study of scriptures, the Book of Revelation, and the Chicano Movement. Dr. Hidalgo describes how the history of Chicana/o/x textual traditions tells us a lot about how scri...

Dr. Erica Ramírez and Dr. Jonathan Calvillo revisit the Latinx voter outcomes they projected in a recent HTI podcast episode about the 2020 presidential election. With the national media attention focused on this diverse voting bloc—the so-called “sleeping giant"—the two sociologists examine some of the narratives spun by the news cycle. Looking at the complexity of what it means to be a U.S. Lati...

On June 3, 2020—after the murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd—the Black presidents and deans of schools and departments of theology and religion released a statement, ”Black Presidents and Deans Say: No More Stolen Black Lives!”, with a list of concrete demands. That month, school leaders of the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) responded with statements of solidarity...

Sociologists Dr. Erica Ramírez and Dr. Jonathan Calvillo discuss the Latinx vote—the so-called "sleeping giant"—that seems to resurface every election cycle. Latinos are often touted as a coveted swing vote that can collectively pivot elections. What these pronouncements often fail to recognize is that Latinos are not an easy voting group to pin down, considering the diversity of the Latinx "commu...