Liberation theology is a Christian theological approach emphasizing the liberation of the oppressed. It engages in socio-economic analyses, with social concern for the poor and political liberation for oppressed peoples and addresses other forms of inequality, such as race or caste.
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) is a Baptist theological institute in Louisville, Kentucky. It is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. The seminary was founded in 1859 in Greenville, South Carolina, where it was at first housed on the campus of Furman University. The seminary has been an innovator in theological education, establishing one of the first Ph.D. programs in religion in the year 1892. After being closed during the Civil War, it moved in 1877 to a newly built campus in downtown Louisville and moved to its current location in 1926 in the Crescent Hill neighborhood. In 1953, Southern became one of the few seminaries to offer a full, accredited degree course in church music. For more than fifty years Southern has been one of the world's largest theological seminaries, with an FTE enrollment of over 3,300 students in 2015.
Paul Francis Knitter is an American theologian. He is currently an emeritus professor at Union Theological Seminary, where he has served as the Paul Tillich Professor of Theology, World Religions and Culture since 2007. He is also Emeritus Professor of Theology at Xavier University in Cincinnati, where he taught for 28 years before moving to Union. Knitter is known for his work on religious pluralism and multiple religious belonging, particularly regarding Buddhism and Christianity.
Justo Luis González is a Cuban-American historical theologian and Methodist elder. He is a prolific author and an influential contributor to the development of Latin American theology. His wife, Catherine Gunsalus González, is a professor emerita at Columbia Theological Seminary, and the two have co-authored several books.
George E. "Tink" Tinker is an American Indian scholar of the Osage Nation who taught for more than three decades at the Iliff School of Theology, a United Methodist Church theological school, where he focused his scholarship on the decolonization of American Indian Peoples. The Tinker family name is deeply embedded among the Osage.
Manuel A. Vasquez is a prominent Salvadoran scholar of religion and society. As Andrew W. Mellon post-doctoral fellow at Wesleyan University's Center for the Americas and former faculty at the University of Florida, he has focused on the interplay between religion and globalization in the Americas, particularly in Latin America and among U.S. Latinos.
Miguel A. De La Torre is a professor of Social Ethics and Latino Studies at Iliff School of Theology, author, and an ordained Southern Baptist minister.
Miguel Humberto Díaz is an American theologian, diplomat and commentator who served as United States Ambassador to the Holy See. He was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on August 5, 2009. He resigned on November 5, 2012, and was immediately named University Professor of Faith and Culture at the University of Dayton. He was the first Hispanic U.S. Ambassador accredited to the Holy See.
Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas is an American author and educator. She is associate professor of ethics and society at Vanderbilt Divinity School and the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Floyd-Thomas is a Womanist Christian social ethicist whose research interests include Womanist thought, Black Church Studies, liberation theology and ethics, critical race theory, critical pedagogy and postcolonial studies.
Lamin Sanneh was the D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity at Yale Divinity School and Professor of History at Yale University.
Luis G. Pedraja is a Cuban-born theologian, philosopher, author, scholar and educator. Pedraja is an influential contributor to the development of Latino/a theology. He is also noted for his work in process philosophy and postmodernism, as well as his work in higher education.
Andrew Finlay Walls was a British historian of missions, best known for his pioneering studies of the history of the African church and a pioneer in the academic field of World Christianity.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim is a Korean-American theologian and Professor of Theology at Earlham School of Religion, Richmond, Indiana. She is best known for books and articles on the social and religious experiences of Korean women immigrants to North America.
Philip Sheldrake is a religious historian and theologian with additional background in philosophy and political theory. His main work has been as a leading scholar in the overall multi-disciplinary field of spirituality. In particular, Philip Sheldrake has been closely involved internationally in the emergence of Christian Spirituality as an academic discipline. Sheldrake is a past president of the international Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality, linked to the American Academy of Religion (AAR). He has written or edited seventeen books, with another book pending, as well as numerous book essays and journal articles. His publications have mainly focused on the meaning of "spirituality", the interface of spirituality and religious history and spirituality in relation to contemporary society and culture. He has also written on the theme of human and religious reconciliation and, more recently, on a spiritual vision for cities in dialogue with history, philosophy, theology, social sciences and urban studies. Sheldrake recently published a book (2019) which offers a contextual study of the theology of Julian of Norwich, the Fourteenth Century English mystical writer and the first woman known to have written in English. He is currently working on a sequel to his city book concerning the cultivation of critical public virtues with a chapter on the nature of public leadership and what makes the "good leader".
Luis Nicolás Rivera-Pagán is the Henry Winters Luce Professor Emeritus of Ecumenics at Princeton Theological Seminary.
Jay B. McDaniel is an American philosopher and theologian. He specializes in Buddhism, Whiteheadian process philosophy and process theology, constructive theology, ecotheology, interfaith dialogue, and spirituality in an age of consumerism. His current interest is "to see how these myriad concerns might unfold in China".
Catherine Gunsalus González is an American historian, theologian, and ordained Presbyterian minister who is professor emerita of church history at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia.
The Centre for the Study of World Christianity (CSWC) is a research centre based in New College, the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. It was founded in the University of Aberdeen by Andrew F. Walls as the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World in 1982, but later moved by Walls to the University of Edinburgh in 1986. Its current name was adopted in 2009. The centre is currently directed by Alexander Chow and Emma Wild-Wood.
Carlos F. Cardoza-Orlandi is a Puerto Rican theologian, historian, teacher, academic and author. He holds the Frederick E. Roach Chair in World Christianity at Baylor University.
María Pilar Aquino is a Catholic feminist theologian. She is currently Professor Emerita, Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego (USD). Her primary areas of teaching and research were liberation theologies, social ethics, and feminist theologies.
