PhD (St. Michael's)

netto.medina@utoronto.ca | 416-585-4537

Bio

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 an extensive experience in teaching in a variety of cultural contexts and settings. He has taught for: 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 teach 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.

Specializations

• Liberation theologies
• Culture and theology
• Post-colonial and decolonial theologies
• Latina/o theologies
• Religious Ethics
• Pentecostalism as a social movement

Recent Publications

• “(De)Cyphering Mestizaje; Encrypting Lived Faith: Simultaneous Promise and Problem.” In The Word Became Culture (Disruptive Cartographers: Doing Theology Latinamente), edited by Miguel H Díaz, with a foreword by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2020.
• “An Emerging Social Ethics: The Development of Pentecostalism in Latin America”. Pneuma 42 no. 3-4 (Dec 2020): 477-499.
• “Culture”: Disruption, Accommodation, and Pneumatological Resignification.” In Routledge Handbook of Pentecostal Theology. Edited by Wolfgang Vondey. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2020.
• With Becca Whitla, “(An)Other Canada is Possible: Rethinking Canada’s Colonial Legacy”. Horizontes Decoloniales/Decolonial Horizons 5 (September 2019):13-41.
• “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.
• “Thinking Pneumatology and Social Justice.” In The Holy Spirit & Social Justice: Interdisciplinary Global Perspectives, edited by Antipas L. Harris and Michael D. Palmer, with a foreword by Amos Yong, 24–47. Lanham, MD: Seymour Press, 2019.
• With Becca Whitla, “(An)Other Canada is Possible: Rethinking Canada’s Colonial Legacy”. Horizontes Decoloniales/Decolonial Horizons 5 (September 2019):13-41.
• Co-editor with HyeRan Kim-Cragg and Alison Hari-Singh. Reading In-Between: How Minoritized Communities Interpret the Bible in Canada (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2019).
• Christianity, Empire and the Spirit: (Re)Configuring Faith and the Cultural. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2018
• “A Decolonial Primer.” Toronto Journal of Theology 33, no.2 (2017): 279-287.
• On the Doctrine of Discovery (Booklet). Toronto: Canadian Council of Churches, 2017.
• Co-editor with Sammy Alfaro eds. Pentecostal and Charismatics in Latin America and Latino Communities, Charis Christianity and Renewal-Interdisciplinary Studies Series New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
• Co-editor with Jeff Nowers, Theology and the Crisis of Engagement. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2013).
• Mestizaje: (Re)Mapping “Race,” Culture, and Faith in Latina/o Catholicism. New York: Orbis Books, 2009.