Doing Theology Latinamente
The Protestant Latinx Academic Movement, 1965-1979
- History & Biography
- Publisher: Fortress Press (Augsburg Fortress)
- Published: 2026
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Publisher's Description
Luis R. Rivera traces the origins, context, and transformative history of a Latinx Protestant movement from the margins that changed the landscape of American theological education in the 1970s. Rivera's careful research and comprehensive analysis identifies and defines the emergence of the Protestant Latinx Academic Movement, or PLAM, a groundswell of activism that catalyzed new ideas, programs, and ways of educating for ministry across the geographic and denominational landscape from the late 1960s through the end of the 1970s. Inspired by and connected to the diverse Hispanic social justice and civil rights movements of the period, PLAM grew increasingly bold in seeking change and more organized in challenging and negotiating with the Protestant theological establishment. Rivera traces the movement's development from its initial coalescence, centered on programs such as the Hispanic American Institute at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, through the first waves of transformation in theological education with the establishment of programs at schools including Perkins School of Theology, New York Theological Seminary, McCormick Theological Seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary, and Wartburg Theological Seminary. Throughout, he paints a rich picture of the personalities and approaches involved in PLAM, also connecting the movement's advocacy to that undertaken by other minoritized populations. By the end of the 1970s, Rivera argues, PLAM had seen the emergence of a variety of academic programs for Latinx students, the development of a cadre of Latinx scholars and educators, and the validation of the field of Latinx theology by stakeholders in the academy and philanthropic foundations. PLAM had moved from the outskirts to the margins of the academy, from which it has continued to fight externally and struggle internally to keep its vocation as a Latinx academic prophetic and reformist movement.
Endorsements (7)
“As a living example of teología de conjunto, that is, theology done as a community, a community concerned about action in the face of injustice, this well-researched work by someone who has sat in the dean's chair provides a much-needed history of the role that key individuals and institutions played in creating a movement, demonstrating that good theology is not done in a vacuum. Rivera-Rodríguez keenly draws from social movement studies to show the relationships between the particular and the universal, between the insider and the outsider, and between churches and social justice.”
“In Doing Theology Latinamente, Luis R. Rivera-Rodríguez powerfully narrates a long-neglected story, illuminating the social movements that gave rise to Latinx theology and its transformative impact on graduate theological education and communities of faith. This essential volume offers a compelling account of the Protestant Latinx Academic Movement and demonstrates the enduring social impact of doing and practicing theology from the margins.”
“Thanks to a tour de force of painstaking archival research, this book retrieves a key part of recent theological history that too easily could have been lost: the formative and transformative years of what the author calls the Protestant Latinx Academic Movement. By unveiling this inspirational story for us, Luis Rivera-Rodríguez provides us latinamente with timely inspiration for how to seek justice, imagine new options for theological education, and resist marginalization in our own time.”
“Rivera-Rodríguez expands the archive in this important story of people, ideas, agendas, and institutions. Through a rich and informative synthesis of a remarkable array of interviews, school records, and secondary sources, Rivera-Rodríguez, the historian, describes formative contexts and explains the emergence of coherent but diverse academic forms of Latinx theology. Tracking programs through successive stages, including failed efforts and false starts, Rivera-Rodríguez describes the ways in which Latinx ministries achieved visibility and voice in seminaries and by way of accrediting agency mandates. In this well-crafted work on Protestant theological education, Rivera-Rodríguez has produced the new standard.”
“This is a book that creatively and meticulously provides an unmatched systematic study of the emergence, development, and significance of what the author describes as the Protestant Latinx Academic Movement. While not a professional historian, the author aims to provide this "story" as "an informed and reflective witness of this movement." While scholarly literature has already established that during the 1960s in the US, Latinx religious constituencies in Protestant congregations began a protest to change "the way Latinx churches and ministers were conducted, treated, and funded in their predominantly white/Anglo-European denominations," these studies "have not developed a clear argument regarding how a segment of this movement became interested in gaining greater access to and transforming the theological education offered to Latinx leaders in Protestant and Evangelical seminaries affiliated to the ATS." Surely, one of the most conspicuous contributions of this story is the author's contention that the movement emerged as a group committed to social justice, to presently become "a source of transformation and innovation in the US establishment of graduate theological education." As an active participant in this project, I concur with the author and continue to contribute to its myriad forms of offerings.”
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