Director of Master of Theological Studies
Associate Professor of Religious Ethics and Culture
Contact
Tel: (416) 585-4537
Email: netto.medina@utoronto.ca
Néstor Medina is a Guatemalan-Canadian Scholar and Assistant professor of Religious Ethics and Culture. He engages the field of ethics from contextual, liberationist, intercultural, and Post and Decolonial perspectives. He studies the intersections between people’s cultures, histories, ethnoracial relations, and forms of knowledge in religious and theoethical traditions. He also studies Pentecostalism in the Americas. He was the recipient of a First Book Grant for Minority Scholars (2014) and a Project Grant for Researchers (2018). He is currently working on the ethnoracial relations during colonial Latin America and the influence of religion in those relations.
Néstor has extensive experience teaching in various cultural contexts and settings. He has taught for the Atlantic School of Theology, Brite Divinity School, Regent University and Conrad Grebel University College. For the last 12 years, Néstor has participated with the United Church as a part of the People in Partnership program by going to Cuba and teaching at the Seminario Evangélico de Teología (SET). Néstor is also an ordained minister of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada.
Besides teaching and researching, He enjoys good food from different cultural backgrounds.
Selected Publications
Néstor Is the author of Christianity, Empire and the Spirit (Brill 2018), On the Doctrine of Discovery (CCC, 2017), a booklet, and Mestizaje: (Re)Mapping ‘Race,’ Culture, and Faith in Latina/o Catholicism (Orbis, 2009), which was the winner of the 2012 Hispanic Theological Initiative book award. He is co-editor of Reading in Between (with Alison Hari-Singh and HyeRan Kim-Cragg); Pentecostals and Charismatics in Latin America and Latino Communities (with Sammy Alfaro); and Theology and the Crisis of Engagement (with Jeff Nowers).
Selected Articles and Book Chapters
“The Doctrine of Discovery, LatinaXo Theoethics and Human Rights.” Journal of Hispanic/Latina/o Theology 21 no. 2, Article 4 (November 2019): 151-173. https://repository.usfca.edu/jhlt/vol21/iss2/4/
“Indigenous Acts of Decolonization: Canada and Guatemala’s Truth and Reconciliation Commissions.” In Decolonial Christianities: Latinx and Latin American Perspectives, edited by Raimundo Barreto and Roberto Sirvent. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
“Abya Yala, Aztlán, la Isla de la Tortuga, o Weesakajack.” In Decoloniality and Justice: Theological Perspectives, edited by Jean-François Roussel, 35–41. São Leopoldo, Brazil: Oikos; World Forum of Theology and Liberation, 2018.
A Decolonial Primer.” Toronto Journal of Theology 33, no.2 (2017): 279-287.
“Cosmopolitanism: A Look from Its Exteriority.” Perspectivas 14 (20017): 126-139.
“Transgressing Theological Shibboleths: Culture as Locus of Divine (Pneumatological) Activity.” PNEUMA 36 no. 3 (December 2014): 1.15
“Tongue Twisters and Shibboleths: On Decolonial Gestures in Latin@ Theology.” Journal of Hispanic/Latina/o Theology 18, no. 2 (June 2013): 3–19.
Memberships
Society of Christian Ethics
American Academy of Religion
La Comunidad of Hispanic Scholars of Religion
Canadian Theological Society
International Academy of Practical Theology
Society for Pentecostal Studies
ACTHUS: Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians in the USA