All Team

Elaine Padilla is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion and Latinx and Latin American Studies at the University of La Verne. As through her book Divine Enjoyment (2015), she has engaged the apophatic tradition in Christianity to emphasize a metaphysics of relationality, passion, and enfleshment. She has also authored several articles and chapters of books and lectured on the trope of darkness. Her other publications include three volumes on theology and migration that she edited with Peter C. Phan. She is currently working on a manuscript tentatively titled The Darkness of Being where she delves into the concept of dark luminosity as a tool of refusal of imperializing totalities (such those established by coloniality) and of cultivating authenticity in processes of subjectification. The Caribbean (particularly Cuba and Puerto Rico) and U.S. Latinx experiences serve as historical points of departure from which she contextualizes the philosophical and theological explorations of the darkness of being.

Cristina Lledo Gomez is a systematic theologian and the Presentation Sisters Lecturer for BBI-The Australian Institute of Theological Education. She is also a Religion and Society Research Fellow for Charles Sturt University’s Public and Contextual Theology Centre. A graduate of University of Divinity (MTh) and Charles Stuart University (PhD), she is the author of Church as Woman and Mother: Historical and Theological Foundations (2018) as well as a number of articles and chapters in other edited volumes. She is currently working on her second book A Babaylan-Inspired Theology from Australia, as well as a number of articles and chapters in edited volumes. In 2020 she was the recipient of the Catholic Theological Society of America Catherine Mowry Lacugna Award for her essay “Mother Language, Mother Church, Mother Earth,” an exploration of the Catholic rhetoric on mothering as it affects the way women, the earth, and indigenous peoples are treated.

Bradford E. Hinze is the Karl Rahner, S.J., Professor of Theology at Fordham University in New York. He has written several books on ecclesiology including Practices of Dialogue in the Roman Catholic Church: Aims and Obstacles, Lessons and Laments (2006), Prophetic Obedience: Ecclesiology for a Dialogical Church (2016), and forthcoming in June 2022 Confronting the Church in Controversy (2022). He has written about decolonizing and synodality in: “Dreams of Synodality, Specters of Constraint,” Louvain Studies 38 (2020) 297-312 and “Decolonizing Everyday Practices: Sites of Struggle in Church and Society,” Presidential Address, Catholic Theological Society of America Proceedings 71 (2016): 46-61.

Raimundo C. Barreto Jr. is Associate Professor of World Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he earned his PhD in Religion and Society. He has degrees from the Seminário Teológico do Norte do Brasil and McAfee School of Theology/Mercer University. Prior to coming to Princeton, he taught in Brazil and served as director of freedom and justice at the Baptist World Alliance (BWA). At Princeton, he is one of the conveners of the World Christianity Conference, which will hold its fourth edition in 2023. He currently chairs the Committee on Christian Unity and Interfaith Relations of the American Baptist Churches USA and is the general editor of the World Christianity and Public Religion series, published by Fortress Press. He has authored and co-edited a number of publications, including Evangélicos e Pobreza no Brasil: Encontros e Respostas Éticas (2019), World Christianity, Urbanization, and Identity (2021), Migration and Public Discourse in World Christianity (2019), Decolonial Christianities: Latin American and Latinx Perspectives (2019), and the forthcoming Protesting Poverty: Protestants, Social Ethics and the Poor in Brazil (2023).

Luis N. Rivera-Pagán is the Henry Winters Luce Professor of Ecumenics and Mission Emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary. A graduate of Seminario Evangélico de Puerto Rico (MDiv) and Yale University (PhD), he is the author of numerous publications. Among his books are Mito exilio y demonios: literatura y teología en América Latina (1996), Evangelización y violencia: La conquista de América (1990) / A Violent Evangelism: The Political and Religious Conquest of the Americas (1992), and Ensayos teológicos desde el Caribe (2013); and he is the editor of God, in Your Grace …: Official Report of the Ninth Assembly of the World Council of Churches (2007). His chapter, “Towards a Decolonial Theology: Perspectives from the Caribbean,” is included in Raimundo Barreto and Roberto Sirvent, eds., Decolonial Christianities: Latinx and Latin American Perspectives (2019).

Palmira N Rios González, Dean of Academic Affairs (2015-2016) of Recinto de Río Piedras de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, and interim Dean of Seminario Evangélico de Puerto Rico. She earned her MA in Caribbean Studies from Fisk University, and her Ph.D. from Yale University. Over the years she has served on numerous boards and commissions for civil and human rights, including the Puerto Rico Civil Rights Commission, which she chaired for four years; Coordinator of the Academic Team of the Special Council to Address Social Inequality in Puerto Rico; and as a member of the International Coordinating Committee of the 3rd World Conference Against Racism (Durban 2001). She is one of the founders of Instituto Puertorriqueño de Estudios en Raza e Identidad (IPERI). She has also written and edited numerous publications, including Contrapunto de género y raza en Puerto Rico (2005).