Hispanic Theological Initiative Announces 2005 Book Award
Princeton, NJ, July 18, 2005–The Hispanic Theological Initiative (HTI) at Princeton Theological Seminary has announced that Dr. Arlene Sánchez-Walsh, incoming associate professor at the Haggard School of Theology at Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, California, will receive its annual book prize for 2005. The prize, awarded for her book Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self, and Society, will be presented at HTI’s annual summer workshop at Princeton Seminary on Saturday, July 23.
A public lecture will be given by Sánchez-Walsh on the topic of “Holy Ghost Set Up: Searching for a Latino Pentecostal Identity” that evening at 7:00 p.m. in the Cooper Conference Room at the Center of Continuing Education on the Seminary campus. Respondent to the lecture will be Daniel Ramirez from the Department of Religion at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Ramirez is an instructor in religions of the southwest borderlands, with a special interest in the history of religious contact, conflict and conversion in the Americas, and in the transnational and cultural dimensions of religious practice. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Duke University.
Sánchez-Walsh presents to the reader a detailed and engaging analysis of the California Latino Pentecostal experience by focusing on four separate historical case studies. She provides muchneeded insight into this topic, especially in view of the growing Latino Protestant population, threequarters of which is Pentecostal. She was born and raised in East Los Angeles, and received her Ph.D. in history from Claremont Graduate University in 2001. Her latest projects include a study of Latino Pentecostals, transnationalism, and the influence of the prosperity gospel in America. Her next book will be a history of Pentecostalism in America.
Latina/o scholars from across the country and Puerto Rico will gather for the workshop, sponsored annually by HTI, an organization partially funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and by Lilly Endowment, Inc. Housed at Princeton Seminary, it was founded in 1996 to help train religious leaders—teachers, pastors, and scholars—for the growing Latino religious community in the United States.
The lecture is open to the public free of charge, and it will be followed by a reception in the Center of Continuing Education. For more information, please contact the Hispanic Theological Initiative at 609-252-1721.
