Over June 22-25, 2022, some 40 theologians, ecclesiologists, historians, ethicists, and ecumenists gathered in San Juan, Puerto Rico (with another 50 in attendance online), for a conference held under the auspices of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network. Conference papers and plenary lectures explored the urgent challenges of “decolonizing churches” insofar as the political effects and psychological traumas of church involvement in colonial exploitation, from early modernity to the present day, continue to be consequential.
Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute (GEII) served as a sponsor and co-organizer of the conference, at which a group of six brilliant emerging scholars – currently doctoral students at major institutions of theological learning – were awarded Graymoor Scholarships (the pilot of a longer-term program through GEII) to support their participation and subsequent publication in Ecumenical Trends.
The 2022 cohort of Graymoor Scholars included: Britta Meiers Carlson (Boston University School of Theology), Stephen Di Trolio Coakley (Princeton Theological Seminary), Yenny Delgado (Lausanne University), Ryan Ramsay (Baylor University), Kenia Vanessa Rodriguez (Drew University), and Hesron Sihombing (Iliff School of Theology). For more information on our Graymoor Scholars and the Decolonizing Churches conference, see https://geii.org/learn_more/events/recent_events.html.