Angel Santiago-Vendrell | Baylor University (original) (raw)

Papers by Angel Santiago-Vendrell

Religions, Apr 8, 2024

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY

Religions, 2024

Methodist history, Apr 1, 2019

In Perishing Heathens Julius H. Rubin "recounts the stories of missionary men and women in the pe... more In Perishing Heathens Julius H. Rubin "recounts the stories of missionary men and women in the period between 1800 and 1830 who responded to the call to save perishing heathens [sic] in missions to the Osages in the Arkansas Territory, to the Cherokees in Tennessee and Georgia, and to Ojibwes in the Michigan Territory" (1-2). The missionaries presented by Rubin exemplify the religious ideals of the Second Great Awakening by embracing the New Divinity theology; Samuel Hopkins's ethical principle of "disinterested benevolence," which rejected personal interests for the sake of Christ; and Jonathan Edwards's book The Life of David Brainerd, which became the exemplar of evangelical missionary piety. In this type of evangelical personhood the missionary practiced methodical self-examination through prayers, meditation, and fasting, which then revealed the deplorable condition of the heart full of pride and sin. Such practices led missionaries and new converts not only to intense moments of melancholy and depression but also to great highs with the Lord. This is why the missionaries believed that they would build the kingdom of God in America by civilizing and converting perishing heathens. Rubin divides the book in six chapters. Chapter one narrates the travails of David and Alice Bacon as missionaries to the Ojibwes in Michigan's Lower Peninsula from 1802 to 1804. After their efforts to establish a mission post failed, David worked as a domestic missionary in the Ohio Reserve. This missionary appointment did not go well either, forcing Bacon to experiment in the creation of an idealized Puritan village in Hudson, Ohio. Full of monetary debt and another missionary failure, Bacon ended up becoming a traveling Bible salesman. Chapter two reconstructs the life and ministry of a single female missionary from the Union Mission to the Osages. The missionary vocation of "Miss D" exemplified a life broken by disease and disappointments. A convert and member of the Congregational Church of Litchfield, Connecticut, pastored by Lyman Beecher, Miss D volunteered to be a missionary at the age of twenty-one. After a prolonged voyage from New York to Arkansas, Miss D succumbed to malaria, bilious remittent fever, tuberculosis, and was afflicted with delirium. For almost four years, members of the Union Mission provided around-the-clock care for Miss D. She never recovered and was admitted at the Hartford Retreat, an asylum for the insane, when she was twenty-seven. Rubin argues, "Her missionary vocation, forged in the smithy of Brainerd's evangelical piety, ended in failure, despair, madness, and early death from infectious disease" (73). Chapter three investigates the endless chain of religious intelligence through the mass publication of memoirs, correspondence, and accounts of missions in the formation of an American evangelical identity, which provided the ideological model to be emulated in light of the new personhood of evangelical piety forged at the

Pneuma, 2007

... and John Meany. I also thank members of my Dominican Ashram community during these past years... more ... and John Meany. I also thank members of my Dominican Ashram community during these past years who assisted me with their prayer, encouragement, and edit-ing: Jim Barnett, Maureen Cannon, Deb Clark, Richard de Ranitz, Stan Drongowski, Rosemary Henley (now ...

Theology Today, Jun 18, 2014

Mission Studies, Feb 21, 2019

Mission Studies, Jun 1, 2023

This book on the missiology of M. Richard Shaull makes a definite contribution to both the histor... more This book on the missiology of M. Richard Shaull makes a definite contribution to both the history of Christianity and missiology in Latin America and the Caribbean. The story of Millard Richard Shaull, a missionary from the United States who was transformed by historical praxis and pastoral ministry in Latin America, is worth telling. M. Richard Shaull was a pioneering voice in the movement called liberation theology in Latin America and the Caribbean. His solid theological background in the Reformed tradition, his attentive and open mind, and his prophetic vocation and vision discerned in the midst of suffering and hope provide for the development of a relevant theology of mission. John A. Mackay, a towering figure in the ecumenical movement, and Shaull's mentor at Princeton Theological Seminary, became his main source of inspiration and theological advice. It was in the 1950s that M. Richard Shaull started to reflect and write on the church and its mission in the sociopolitical turmoil taking place in countries like Colombia and Brazil. His active involvement over the years in the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) and his influence in the founding of Church and Society in Latin America, an avant-garde ecumenical organization in the early 1960s, place him both in the larger map of the ecumenical movement, particularly the World Council of Churches, and in the ecumenical movement in Latin America and the Caribbean. Shaull influenced the lives of theologians like Rubem Alves, his student in Brazil and at Princeton Theological Seminary, whose own work as a liberation theologian made a profound impact in the initial development of liberation theology in Latin America with his book, A Theology of Human Hope (Corpus Books, 1969). Dr. Á ngel Santiago-Vendrell, Assistant Professor of Evangelism at Asbury Theological Seminary (Florida Dunnam Campus), has gathered an impressive amount of information, which he diligently organized. He has selected important primary sources, analyzed the correspondence, and placed documents in their historical dimension (some of them unpublished and known to the general public for the first time). He has also traced books and essays forgotten or lost in missionary archives and personal collections of missionary executives.

Pneuma, 2013

J. Andrew Kirk was well received by Pentecostals at the Pentecostal Theological Seminary through ... more J. Andrew Kirk was well received by Pentecostals at the Pentecostal Theological Seminary through the courses offfered in mission studies by Rick Waldrop. In my last year in the master of divinity degree at the institution, I read Kirk's What is Mission? right out of the press in 1999. Kirk was alluring to a group of students who wanted to explore his biblically oriented contextual methodology of the intersection of the Gospel and culture, justice for the poor, encounter with other religions, care for the environment, and building peace through pneumatological lenses. It was like discovering a new concrete language to engage my own Latino/a Pentecostal tradition; a language, to my surprise then, constructed in conversation with Latin American Roman Catholic theologians. Mission in Context is a collection of articles inspired by Kirk's missiology. The book is crafted in four major sections. There are three biographical musings in the fĳirst section by Cathy Ross, Daniel Kirk, and J. Samuel Escobar showing the development of Kirk's missiology in diffferent contexts throughout his life. In the second section, What is Mission?, C.

The Ecumenical Review, 2011

In this interdisciplinary work on the psychology of fundamentalism, the editors have incorporated... more In this interdisciplinary work on the psychology of fundamentalism, the editors have incorporated a wide variety of authors and disciplinary perspectives, each of which focuses on an issue such as blame, victimization, paranoia, and apocalyptic mentality. While it is striking that such a wide variety of authors would share so much agreement over the existence and attributes of a fundamentalist mindset, a close reading of each is necessary to understand the striking nuances in interpretation from author to author. This work will have wide appeal to those engaged in work on religion and violence or in any area of the humanities or social sciences. The weakness of the book is the emphasis placed on the potential dangers of the fundamentalist mindset, with but a fleeting mention of its benefits. While the book succeeds in incorporating disparate perspectives and disciplinary paradigms, all of the authors rightly share a kind of trepidation over the potential dangers of the fundamentalist symptoms in spite of the fact that these very symptoms are also sparingly acknowledged by several authors and editors to be central to the healthy development and sustenance of a democratic world.

Religions, Feb 15, 2023

Constructing Race in Puerto Rico, 2018

Puerto Rico has a long and contested history of race and racialization. As in missiology, where c... more Puerto Rico has a long and contested history of race and racialization. As in missiology, where context shapes interpretations of reality based on understandings of God, Scripture, and human beings, issues of race are also contextually propagated and implemented. 1 This essay presents the concept of race as a process of exclusion based on biological, physical, cultural, and socioeconomic realities in Puerto Rico. First, it describes the history of the purity-of-blood statutes in Spain, which serves as the first step to understanding the concept of race in Puerto Rico. Second, I offer a description of how the concept of purity of blood was transformed in Puerto Rico to preserve social dominance based on the place of birth and traces of African or Amerindian blood. Third, I point out that when the United States took possession of Puerto Rico in 1898, the first Protestant missionaries encountered a different environment with regard to racial issues than the one they had back home. They were amazed at the mixing between the races, and, without understanding the deeper notions of race and class in the island, they praised Puerto Rico as a place where racism did not exist. Fourth, this essay offers a critique of the perpetuation of racism based on notions of sameness

https://place.asburyseminary.edu/firstfruitspapers/1096/thumbnail.jp

Journal of Pentecostal Theology, 2012

This article addresses interreligious dialogue from a pneumatological Hispanic Pentecostal perspe... more This article addresses interreligious dialogue from a pneumatological Hispanic Pentecostal perspective in dialogue with Jesuit theologian Jacques Dupuis. The article is an expression of contextual theology taking into consideration the multilayered character of the Hispanic Pentecostal communities based on ethnicity, race, gender, socio-political, and religious location. Both Samuel Solivan and Jaques Dupuis conceived pneumatology as intrinsically necessary for constructing communities of solidarity and empowerment with adherents of other faith traditions. The article concludes with a visionary calling to the Hispanic Pentecostal community to contribute to the larger conversation of religious pluralism and interreligious dialogue based on the diversity and inclusivity of their shared history.

Religion, 2021

The scholarship on the history of Protestant missions to Puerto Rico after the Spanish American W... more The scholarship on the history of Protestant missions to Puerto Rico after the Spanish American War of 1898 emphasizes the Americanizing tendencies of the missionaries in the construction of the new Puerto Rican. There is no doubt that the main missionary motif during the 1890s was indeed civilization. Even though the Americanizing motif was part of the evangelistic efforts of some missionaries, new evidence shows that a minority of missionaries, among them Presbyterians James A. McAllister and Judson Underwood, had a clear vision of indigenization/contextualization for the emerging church based on language (Spanish) and culture (Puerto Rican). The spread of Christianity was successful not only because of the missionaries but also because native agents took up the task of evangelizing their own people; they were not passive spectators but active agents translating and processing the message of the gospel to fulfill their own people’s needs based on their own individual cultural assu...

International Review of Mission, 2008