Heirs, Agents, and Leaders of a Movement
The ecumenical group of Hispanic-Latine presidential leaders in ATS schools (presidents and a few executive deans) included in this publication constitutes collectively one of the main outcomes of a process and a movement that started almost 60 years ago. These individuals stand on the shoulder and struggles of previous generations that challenged the exclusionary and marginalizing practices towards Hispanic-Latine and other minority groups in the predominantly White and Anglo-European theological establishment in ATS schools. The emergence period of the contemporary Hispanic-Latine theological movement in ATS schools can be traced between the mid-1960s until the end of the 1970s.[1]
During the mid-1960s, the emerging Chicano and Puerto Rican social justice and civil rights movements challenged the moderate politics of the post II World War generations of Hispanic community leaders who worked for economic justice, labor rights, school integration, equal citizenship, greater political representation, social integration, and culturally affirmative agendas.[2] In contrast, the new generation of leaders worked with a “liberationist” perspective, a self-determination agenda, progressive politics, and a multicultural approach to cultural identities.[3] These two competing approaches in the struggle for social justice among Hispanic-Latine communities and politics impacted and inspired leaders in Hispanic-Latine communities, politics, and religious groups.[4]
There were other national and international sources that nurtured the activist perspectives and praxes among Hispanic-Latine religious leaders and groups during the 1960s and 1970s. We can highlight the politics and reflections of religious movements connected to other forms of liberative social movements of the times. For example: decolonizing and revolutionary movements in Latin American, Africa, and Asia (Indigenizing theologies, liberation theologies, Third World theologies); Black civil rights movement in the USA (Black Theology); socialist movements (Christian-Marxist dialogue in Europe, Christians for Socialism in Latin America); anti-war and moratorium movements (peace, anti-nuclear, and pacifist theologies); and the diverse feminist movement (white feminist, womanist, mujerista theologies).[5] Inspired by these movements and theological perspectives, Hispanic-Latine religious persons and groups developed new reformist organizations within their denominations to incorporate and carry a wider social justice agenda in society and within the church.
The late 1960s and the early 1970s witnessed the emergence of Hispanic-Latine caucuses in mainline Protestant denominations, and similar groups also emerged among Hispanic-Latine Catholic lay and clergy populations.[6] These leaders established regional groups and national ecumenical networks to sustain solidarity and collaboration. Eventually, sectors among these activist religious groups targeted predominantly white seminaries as places in which they wanted to have greater access, a contextualized theological education, and resources for financial support and academic success. The collective action of these groups, with the support of non-Hispanic-Latine allies, made them successful in pressing and negotiating with seminaries to open a variety of academic programs to serve Hispanic-Latine clergy and lay leaders. At least, thirteen Protestant and Evangelical seminaries opened “Hispanic ministries programs” during the 1970s.[7]
The small but steady growth of the Hispanic-Latine student population in ATS seminaries since the 1960s and the emergence of Hispanic ministries programs in ATS schools during the 1970s paved the way for the formation and growth of new generations of Hispanic-Latine theological educators and scholars in seminaries and universities. One key organization that supported the formation of these academic cohorts was the Fund for Theological Education (FTE, now the Forum for Theological Exploration). The FTE offered scholarship programs for ministerial and doctoral Hispanic-Latine students from 1976-1995. During the late 1980s and mid-1990s, other organizations fostered new generations of Hispanic-Latine leaders and garnered resources to serve those pursuing vocations of teaching and research in theological and religious studies: the Hispanic Summer Program (HSP 1988), the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians in the United States (ACHTUS 1988), La Comunidad of Hispanic Scholars of Religion (1989), the Association for Hispanic Theological Education (AETH 1992), and the Hispanic Theological Initiative (HTI 1996).
Starting in the 1980s, there was a relatively small but growing, diverse, and intergenerational group of Hispanic-Latine leaders teaching in ATS seminaries and divinity schools. As these leaders developed their teaching careers, they advanced in faculty ranks, leadership positions, and in administrative roles in schools and in professional associations. Some of these leaders became executive ministers in their denominations, members of boards of directors and editorial committees, directors of Hispanic ministry programs, directors of academic departments, associate deans, and deans of faculty in seminaries. This “leadership capital” helped some of these qualified candidates to aspire or respond to the invitation to serve as presidents when invited by predominantly white administration, faculties, and Board of Directors. During the second decade of the XXI century, a small number of presidents and executive deans would emerge out of a pool of credentialed, knowledgeable, and trusted Hispanic-Latine leaders in ATS theological schools, universities, or denominational settings.
The collection of presidential speeches in this volume is a testament to several interlaced macro, messo, and micro histories during the last six decades. First, the transformative force that minoritized groups have exercised since the 1960s on the predominantly Anglo-European and white graduate theological establishment. Second, the different strategies of the graduate theological establishment to respond, accommodate, support, and coopt the presence and agenda of minoritized groups in the academy. Third, the legacy, impact, and institutionalization of the Hispanic-Latine theological movement in ATS schools and system. Finally, the resilient struggle, creative work, spiritual vitality, networking, and courageous leadership of Hispanic-Latine theological educators and scholars who have discerned a vocation for presidential leadership in the contested field of graduate theological education in ATS schools.