Steering Committee

More than twenty years ago, a small group of dedicated educators, administrators, pastors, and theologians made a commitment to build a program that would support Latina/o PhD students in religion and theology. The Hispanic Theological Initiative is the result of their leadership. Today, HTI Steering Committee Members play a vital role in managing the unique collaborative enterprise called the HTI consortium which is comprised of 24 PhD-granting institutions committed to advancing the recruitment, retention, and graduation of Latina/o PhD students, as well as the sharing of ideas and best practices to address the needs of Latina/o faculty and students. HTI Steering Committee members dedicate their time and talent to support gifted Latina/o PhD students to complete their doctorate and be leaders in the academy and church. The Member Council and the HTI Staff are grateful and acknowledge their wisdom, and service.

Peter Casarella

Steering Committee Chair

Peter Casarella serves as Professor of Theology at The Divinity School at Duke University. His research focuses on systematic theology, world religions, and the world church. Prior to joining Duke Divinity, he was an associate professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, and he has served as director of the Latin American North American Church Concerns (LANACC) project in the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. At DePaul University, he was founding Director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology (CWCIT). He has published widely on medieval Christian Neoplatonism, contemporary theological aesthetics, intercultural thought, and the Hispanic/Latino presence in the US Catholic Church. His books include a monograph, Word as Bread: Language and Theology in Nicholas of Cusa, and a forthcoming collection of essays, Reverberations of the Word: Wounded Beauty in Global Catholicism.

Casarella has served as president of The American Cusanus Society, The Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States (ACHTUS), and the Academy of Catholic Theologians (ACT). He is currently serving a second five-year term on the International Roman Catholic-Baptist World Alliance Ecumenical Dialogue and served also on the Roman Catholic-World Communion of Reformed Churches Dialogue.

Eric D. Barreto

Member

Eric D. Barreto is Weyerhaeuser Associate Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary and an ordained Baptist minister. The author of Ethnic Negotiations: The Function of Race and Ethnicity in Acts 16 (Mohr Siebeck, 2010), the co-author of Exploring the Bible (Fortress Press, 2016), and editor of Reading Theologically (Fortress Press, 2014), he is also a regular contributor to ONScripture, the Huffington Post, Working Preacher, and Enter the Bible. For more, go to ericbarreto.com and follow him on Twitter.

Jacqueline Hidalgo

Member

Jacqueline M. Hidalgo is Professor of Latina/o/x Studies and Religion at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Her work examines the power of scriptural imaginaries, narratives, and material cultures in shaping relations of race and gender in the American West. She also studies religion, scriptures, and culture among Latina/o/xs in the United States more generally. Hidalgo is the author of Revelation in Aztlán: Scriptures, Utopias, and the Chicano Movement., and co-editor of Latinxs, the Bible, and Migration.

Ahida Pilarski

Member

Ahida Calderón Pilarski is Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and Chair of the Theology Department at Saint Anselm College. She serves on the Board of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States (ACHTUS), and in the Society of Biblical Literature’s “Latino/a and Latin American Biblical Hermeneutics” section and in the “Committee for Underrepresented Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession” (CUREMP). Pilarski has edited or co-edited Judges (Wisdom Commentary Series [WCS], 2018), 2 Kings (WCS, 2019), By Bread Alone: Reading the Bible Through the Eyes of the Hungry (Fortress, 2014), Pentateuco: Introducción al Antiguo Testamento/La Biblia Hebrea en Perspectiva Latinoamericana (Verbo Divino, 2014), and has published many papers on the prophets, Latinx and Latin American hermeneutics, and feminist interpretation.

Daniel Ramírez

Member

Daniel Ramírez is Associate Professor of American Religions at Claremont Graduate University. Ramírez previously taught at the University of Michigan and Arizona State University. His research interests lie in U.S. and Latin American religious history and culture and the Reformation en español. Ramírez has taught a vast range of courses within these broad fields, including American Evangelicalisms and Fundamentalisms; Religion, Migration, and Transnationalism; History of the Hispanic Heterodox: Latina/o Religious History; Religious Pathways of the Borderlands; and Film and Religious History, among others. His book, Migrating Faith: Pentecostalism in the United States and Mexico in the Twentieth Century (University of North Carolina Press), received the 2017 Pneuma Book of the Year Award from the Society of Pentecostal Studies. Ramírez currently serves as president of the American Society of Church History.

Luis Rivera-Rodríguez

Member

Luis R. Rivera-Rodríguez is Associate Professor of Theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary (UMC). He served as the Academic Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Garrett-Evangelical from 2014-2019. Rivera maintains a thorough and diverse experience of academic teaching, administration, and institutional leadership. Rivera received his Th.D. (1993) and Th.M. (1981) from Harvard Divinity School, his M.Div. (1978) from Evangelical Seminary of Puerto Rico, and his B.A. (1973) from the University of Puerto Rico. He is co-editor of The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theologians (English, Spanish, and Portuguese editions). His research, teaching, and publications focus is systematic theology, specifically Latino/a and Diaspora theologies. Rivera was a faculty member at the Evangelical Seminary in Puerto Rico (1986-1995) and at McCormick Theological Seminary (1995-2013) where he also served as Academic Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs (2008-2013).