HTI Open Plaza

In honor of Mother’s Day, OP Talks presents a mother-daughter conversation between sociologist and ethnographer Dr. María del Socorro Castañeda and Lupita Tonantzin Castañeda-Liles about keeping the lines of communication open so that we can heal intergenerational trauma. After Lupita faced some challenging times in middle school, they decided to start Becoming Mujeres, a training firm that provides workshops and seminars on mental health to Latina teens, young adults, and older women. Some of the silences that often come with intergenerational trauma are consistent, says Dr. Castañeda, who is Chief Education Officer. “That's why we need to be proactive in healing those silences…To talk about Catholicism is also to address the silences that come with growing up in that particular faith or devotion.”

Together, Dr. Castañeda and Lupita—now in her first year of high school—model how to communicate across generational lines. They talk about how to break communication barriers between caregivers and teenagers so that they can understand the social context that influences the way each approaches a situation. Dr. Castañeda encourages “parents to be open, to acknowledge, to embrace, and to see as a gift the importance of being fully open with our children.”

In this episode of OP Talks, President of the American Academy of Religion Dr. Mayra Rivera and American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow Dr. Mark D. Jordan discuss his recent book Transforming Fire: Imagining Christian Teaching (Eerdmans, 2021). Among the questions Dr. Jordan engages are: What was Jesus’s teaching pedagogy? Considering that he taught in a variety of ways—parable, discussion, miracle performance, ritual observance—how should modern-day Christian teaching happen, especially in a time of significant change to theological education as an institution?

Whether teaching Matthew or the Platonic dialogues or Santa Teresa, Dr. Jordan sees his own pedagogy as an attempt to “reactivate that transmission right so [that] it becomes a living thing rather than just inert information passed down, so that the student can actually begin to feel this continuity of instruction of shaping that's passing down."

Along with the book, this conversation is part of the Theological Education between the Times (TEBT) series, an initiative out of HTI member school Emory University Candler School of Theology that "gathers diverse groups of people for critical, theological conversations about the meanings and purposes of theological education. The project begins with a recognition that theological education is between the times, on the way. And it works in the confidence that we do not walk this road alone."

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 that responds to the needs of that pilgriming community of discernment and activism than an institutional place with courses representing academic or church traditions to be transmitted. Let us follow the Spirit, who, like the wind, is universal, unpredictable, and outside our control.”

Along with the book, this conversation is part of the Theological Education between the Times (TEBT) series, an initiative out of HTI member school Emory University Candler School of Theology that "gathers diverse groups of people for critical, theological conversations about the meanings and purposes of theological education. The project begins with a recognition that theological education is between the times, on the way. And it works in the confidence that we do not walk this road alone."

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 past, and how it might change going forward. In this episode of OP Talks, Dr. Aleshire notes that, although the first response of theological schools to communities of color was inclusion, this has changed over the last few decades. "Schools are beginning to realize that these students are not just incorporated in an ongoing enterprise,” he says, “they are contributing to the change of that enterprise.”

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 the activity of God within a consumer culture…By reframing the question in terms of God’s activity in and in spite of it, the book offers a lived theological account of consumer culture that recognizes not only its deceptions but also traces of truth in its broken promises and fallen hopes.”