Decolonizing Theological Education: Elizabeth Conde-Frazier

In her recent book, Atando Cabos, Elizabeth Conde-Frazier takes stock of the cabos sueltos—loose ends—left over from the history of Latinx Christianity, including the ways the rise of Pentecostalism disrupted existing power structures and opened up new ways for Latinx people to assert agency. Then, atando cabos—tying these loose ends together—she reflects on how a new paradigm, centered on the work of the Holy Spirit, can serve to decolonize theological education going forward, bringing about an in-breaking of the kingdom of God. 

Conde-Frazier illustrates how this in-breaking would bring changes in epistemology, curriculum, pedagogy, and models for financial sustainability. Atando Cabos explores each of these topics and proposes a collaborative ecology that stresses the connections between theological education and wider communities of faith and practice. Far from taking a position of insularity, Atando Cabos works from the particularities of the Latinx Protestant context outward to other communities that are wrestling with similar issues so that, by the end, it is a call for transformation—a new reformation—for the entire Christian church.

Elizabeth Conde-Frazier is a nationally recognized authority on Hispanic Bible Institutes. She was until very recently the dean of Esperanza College of Eastern University. She now leads a major grant project for the Asociación para La Educación Teológica Hispana (AETH), a leading organization for Latinx theological education. She is the coauthor of A Many Colored Kingdom: Multicultural Dynamics for Spiritual Formation and Latina Evangélicas: A Theological Survey from the Margins and the author of Listen to the Children: Conversations with Immigrant Families and Hispanic Bible Institutes: A Community of Theological Construction.