N.J. pastor to discuss belonging, diversity
As a child in Puerto Rico, the Rev. Eric Barreto attended school on an American military base alongside the children of soldiers who had been stationed outside of San Juan.
“I had to think a lot about what it meant to be the only Puerto Rican kid in the classroom,” said Barreto, who moved when he was 9 to the United States and lived in several states. “I had to think a lot about what my faith had to do with the feelings of wanting to belong, but also feeling like I couldn’t quite belong.”
Barreto — who is now the Weyerhaeuser Associate Professor of New Testament at New Jersey’s Princeton Theological Seminary — plans to address belonging through a theological lens as the featured speaker for the 50th annual Cotham Lectures. The lectures are scheduled for Sunday and Monday at Westover Hills Presbyterian Church, 6400 Richard B. Hardie Drive in Little Rock.
In his lecture, “Believing and Belonging in Luke-Acts,” Barreto said he will present readings of the Bible to help people enhance and broaden what they imagine when they think about racial, ethnic, gender or other differences — and help others see something about God that they can’t see on their own.
“I think too often in the church we’ve seen the changing demographics of our neighborhood as a problem to solve rather than the very place where God is most living in the world,” Barreto said. “So that’s helped to energize people and say, ‘Look, go to your communities, go to your churches. Look for those distinct stories that will help us see faith in a new way, and will help energize us for the work of justice.’”
A course Barreto is currently teaching, “Race, Ethnicity and the New Testament,” deals in part with how different racial and ethnic communities read the New Testament. Whether working through interpretations of The Gospel of Luke or Acts of the Apostles, Barreto said it’s key that commentaries and texts come from different “social locations” so different sets of perspectives can be put into conversation with one another.
“In the end, that kind of rich conversation helps us get deeper into the text of Scripture,” Barreto said.
Barreto is also a leader with the Hispanic Theological Initiative Consortium, which was created with a goal of increasing the number of Hispanics in seminary education — a field, he said, where Hispanics are underrepresented. The initiative has a 97 percent retention rate, which
Barreto said was unheard of in any doctoral program. More than 100 students have graduated since its creation 20 years ago. Graduates go on to occupations that include teaching at a university level and working in the nonprofit sector, or the political sector with regard to immigration.
“I think for a lot of people, we see the strength in the diversity [of] our communities,” Barreto said. “I think where we sometimes fall short is that in church we often have not talked biblically and theologically about how God is invested in diversity and in our differences.
“That’s my calling. It’s a place of hope for what I can contribute to good conversation,” Barreto added. “And it is kind of complicated in these days, but I think also there’s a lot of people with goodwill who want to think about this more, and act in ways that are more faithful. So in that way it’s not hard work.”
The Cotham Lectures were established through an endowment in 1968 by Ralph and Mary Frances Cotham, in memory of their son, Edward Ralph Cotham V, who died in a boating accident when he was 2 years old.
Frank LeBlanc, pastor of Westover Hills, said that at its beginning, the Cotham Lectures featured mostly men who were biblical scholars
and theologians.
“It’s evolved away from back in the day, when everybody went to church,” LeBlanc said. “You could have a roomful of people who went to church and you would deepen their understanding of Scripture and theology. Nowadays not so many people go but are still searching for something deeper.”
Recent speakers have included faith-based authors Diana Butler Bass and Rachel Held Evans. Westover Hills strives to feature guests who LeBlanc said are good scholars and good speakers.
“The more you can hear from people who are living in different settings, the deeper your understanding of the world,” LeBlanc said.