In 1999 Mayra Rivera Rivera had just transferred to a master’s program in theological studies at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, from the Evangelical Seminary of Puerto Rico. With that move, she says, “I was no longer a Puerto Rican, I was a Latina,” one of 45.5 million Hispanics in the United States as of 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Rivera says the Hispanic Theological Initiative (HTI) gave her a way of understanding her role as a theologian in the U.S., and her own identity as a Latina. “At HTI there is a sense of accountability,” says Rivera. “We are welcomed to this community of scholars, but we also respond to this community, and that experience shapes us.”

When a professor at Drew suggested she become an HTI fellow, Rivera says she didn’t realize what kind of community she was stepping into, one where “people doing their doctoral degrees were so willing to talk to me, to help me…[learn] how to survive in the academy. I remember writing an email when I got home expressing how fantastic the experience [of the summer workshop] was: I wasn’t a lonely person trying to do this strange thing, but rather I was part of a broader community. It was transformative,” she says.

HTI was created out of the need for such a community. It grew from a study of the situation of Latina/o scholarship by Justo L. González, then professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. In response to that study, The Pew Charitable Trusts provided a grant in 1996 to begin HTI at Emory. Daisy Machado, currently professor of church history at Union Theological Seminary in New York, directed the program. With continued funding from Pew, in 1999 the program moved to Princeton Theological Seminary, directed by Zaida Maldonado-Pérez, now associate professor of church history and theology at Asbury Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida. The program’s current director, Joanne Rodríguez (M.Div., 1999), came aboard in 2002.

In 2003 Lilly Endowment Inc. funded additional HTI scholarships, and the Board of Trustees of Princeton Seminary voted to take over operating costs of the program when Lilly and Pew funding ends. As of 2008 HTI had supported fifty-five fellows through their doctoral degrees, and thirty-nine more fellows are currently degree candidates. Of the fifty-five fellows who have their doctoral degrees, fifty-three are working and teaching in the academy. Rivera is one of these, now assistant professor of theology at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. She published her first book with Westminster John Knox Press in 2007, titled The Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God.

In November 2008, sixteen theological schools joined Princeton Theological Seminary to create the Hispanic Theological Initiative Consortium (HTIC). Consortium schools help fund the mentoring, networking, and scholarship costs for their HTI scholars; the schools in the consortium were chosen because they had three or more students supported by HTI, but more schools are invited to join. “With the consortium, HTI now includes a collaborative entity, HTIC, where Ph.D.-granting institutions across the nation are coming together and partnering to find ways to better recruit, retain, and graduate Latina/o students in theological and religious studies, and also to better use the resources that are being produced by scholars graduated from HTI,” says Rodríguez.

The purpose of the HTI and HTIC remains to support Latina/o scholars in the fields of religion and theology, and to increase the number of Latina/o faculty in seminaries and universities. In creating HTI, González says that he wanted to “go beyond a scholarship program, and develop HTI into a system of support for students. The main thrust was creating community for them.” He says that support system has become the trademark of HTI.

For Hjamil Martínez-Vázquez, as for many Latina/o students, “the biggest obstacle [to advanced study] was money.” Martínez-Vázquez was in the first class of HTI fellows, and is currently teaching undergraduates as assistant professor of religion at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, where he will apply for tenure next year. He says he is the first Latino in his department.

Martínez-Vázquez adds, “Even beyond the money, the network aspect is most important, not only because you have contact with your peers, but because you have major contact with established scholars in the field.” That contact is essential, because in academia as in most professions, who you know can be as important as what you know. HTI provides students with networking funds, used to attend meetings of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature, to visit professors in their field, and to do research both in the U.S. and abroad.

Another key part of the HTI program is mentoring. Mentors are senior scholars who visit their student twice each year. Mentors even come to dissertation defenses. Such support isn’t only emotional; it’s also very practical. “Even if you’re in a school where you’re marginalized, the mentor will be an established scholar in the field who can vouch for the project that you want to do,” Martínez-Vázquez says.

One of the goals of HTI is not only to produce Hispanic scholars, but also to create a body of Hispanic theological scholarship that will speak to the realities of Hispanic Christians. “One of the great insights of liberation theology is that theology…is informed by culture and society even when it is not aware that it is,” says Rivera. “The process [of theologizing] is contested and multiple, and we are also responsive as theologians to the [situations] our theology speaks to.” Martínez-Vázquez puts a finer point on his critique of much of academia: “There’s nothing wrong with writing things that make no sense to anyone,” he says, “but from the Latina/o perspective, most of the work [of HTI fellows] has been created with a purpose and a locality.” That emphasis on connecting theological scholarship to the lived experiences of local communities begins with the HTI application process, where prospective fellows must give evidence of their connection with and service to their faith group.

Though all HTI fellows belong in the racial-ethnic category of “Hispanic/Latino,” the HTI community itself is diverse, representing thirteen denominations, including Roman Catholic, mainline Protestant, and evangelical, and nineteen countries. Because of this diversity, says Rodríguez, “All of HTI’s work is done en conjunto, collaboratively.” And the Latina/o community extends beyond the borders of Christianity. Martínez-Vázquez’s current project is a book on Latina/o Muslims. “One of the things you learn by being in a community is that some members are not being included,” he says.

Meanwhile the HTI community continues to grow. At the annual summer workshop on Princeton Seminary’s campus in July 2008, twenty-one fellows gathered for four days of writing and research training, mentoring sessions, worship, and a lecture by 2008’s HTI Book Prize winner, the Reverend Dr. Raúl Gómez-Ruiz. Gómez-Ruiz was a 1998–1999 Dissertation Year Fellow, and is vice president for academic affairs, director of intellectual formation, and professor of systematic studies at Sacred Heart School of Theology in Hales Corners, Wisconsin. Gómez-Ruiz’s book is titled Mozarabs, Hispanics, and the Cross. The summer workshop is the heart of many fellows’ experience of HTI, an opportunity to share resources, experiment with new ideas, and learn about the field of Latina/o theological scholarship.

Graduates of HTI are so formed by the process that most seem compelled to pass their experience forward. HTI graduates often serve as mentors, lead workshops, or serve on the selection committee. “I get the HTI newsletter and know about the new students,” says Rivera, “and when possible I seek them out, just to have coffee and ask them how things are going. At the Graduate Theological Union we have two HTI fellows, and we meet once a semester.”

Although Association of Theological Schools (ATS) statistics suggest that Latinas/os make up 14 percent of the population of the United States, they represent just 3 percent of the faculty and students at ATS institutions. Executive Director of the Association of Theological Schools Daniel Aleshire is cochair with González of HTIC’s steering committee. “Dan is aware of the under-representation of Latina/o scholars in theological education, and thinks it’s a main agenda item to be addressed,” says González. He adds that while there is much to be done, much has been accomplished. “When I began teaching in the United States forty years ago, I was the only tenured professor in any Protestant Seminary who was Latino,” González says. “When HTI began, I could still count the number of Latina/o scholars. I can no longer count them.”

For more information about HTI, visit www.htiprogram.org.

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