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Emmanuel College
About Emmanuel / Emmanuel Faculty / Néstor Medina

Professor Nestor Medina

Associate Professor of Religious Ethics and Culture

  • BRE Tyndale University College
  • MTS Tyndale University College / Wycliffe College
  • MA St Michael’s College, University of Toronto
  • PhD (Interdisciplinary Studies) St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto

Contact

Néstor Medina is a Guatemalan-Canadian scholar and associate professor of Religious Ethics and Culture. He engages the field of ethics from contextual, liberationist, intercultural, postcolonial and decolonial perspectives. He studies the intersections between people’s cultures, histories, ethnoracial relations and forms of knowledge in religious and theoethical traditions. He also studies Pentecostalism in the Americas.

He was the recipient of a First Book Grant for Minority Scholars (2014) and a Project Grant for Researchers (2018). He is currently researching ethnoracial relations during colonial Latin America and the influence of religion on those relations.

Néstor has extensive experience teaching in various cultural contexts and settings. He has taught at the Atlantic School of Theology, Brite Divinity School, Regent University School of Divinity and Conrad Grebel University College. For 12 years, Néstor has participated in the United Church of Canada’s People in Partnership program, travelling to Cuba to teach at the Seminario Evangélico de Teología (SET). He is also an ordained minister of the United Church of Canada.

Besides teaching and researching, he enjoys good food from different cultural backgrounds.

Selected Publications

Néstor is the author of Christianity, Empire and the Spirit (Brill, 2018), On the Doctrine of Discovery (CCC, 2017), a booklet, and Mestizaje: (Re)Mapping ‘Race,’ Culture, and Faith in Latina/o Catholicism (Orbis, 2009), which was the winner of the 2012 Hispanic Theological Initiative Book Award.

He is co-editor of Decolonizing Church: Emerging Voices Speak, Montreal & Kingston (with Becca Whitla) (McGill-Queen’s, 2025); Reading in Between (with Alison Hari-Singh and HyeRan Kim-Cragg) (Wipf & Stock, 2019); Pentecostals and Charismatics in Latin America and Latino Communities (with Sammy Alfaro) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); and Theology and the Crisis of Engagement (with Jeff Nowers) (Pickwick, 2013).

He is also the senior editor of the journal Perspectivas.

Selected Articles and Book Chapters

  • “La Lucha, lo Cotidiano, & Fiesta: On Decolonial Theoethical Insights in Latina/o/x Theologies.” In Resisting Theologies and The Everyday: Addressing Inequalities in Constructive, Practical, and Liberative Approaches, edited by Wren Radford, 41–62. England, UK: T&T Clark, 2025.
  • “Discerning the Spirit in Culture: Toward Pentecostal Interculturality.” In The Canadian Pentecostal Experience, edited by Michael Wilkinson and Linda M. Ambrose, 286–302. Leiden, NDL: Brill, 2024.
  • “Theological Musings Toward a Latina/o Pneumatology.” In Blackwell Companion to Latina/o Theology, second ed., edited by Orlando Espín, 182–204. New York, NY: Blackwell, 2023.
  • “Reconsidering Hospitality in Relation to Migration.” (Spanish) Concilium 398, edited by Stan Chu Ilo, Gustáv Kovács and Carlos Schickendantz (noviembre 2022): 117–130; German: Concilium 58, Heft 5 (2022): 579–589; Italian: Concilium 58, No. 5 (2022): 130–144.
  • “Latina/o/x & Chicana/o/x Pentecostals: On the Interconnection Between Religious and Ethnocultural Identity.” Aztlán Journal of Chicano Studies 47, no. 1 (Spring 2022): 179–89.
  • “De Liberación a Descolonización.” Cuadernos Red Ecclesia in América 2, no. 6 (2022): 28–34.
  • “The Christian Left: From the Past Toward a Possible Future.” Toronto Journal of Theology 38, no. 1 (Spring 2022): 2–16.
  • “Indigenous Acts of Decolonization: Canada and Guatemala’s Truth and Reconciliation Commissions.” In Decolonial Christianities: Latinx and Latin American Perspectives, edited by Raimundo Barreto and Roberto Sirvent. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
  • “Abya Yala, Aztlán, la Isla de la Tortuga, o Weesakajack.” In Decoloniality and Justice: Theological Perspectives, edited by Jean-François Roussel, 35–41. São Leopoldo, Brazil: Oikos; World Forum of Theology and Liberation, 2018.
  • “A Decolonial Primer.” Toronto Journal of Theology 33, no. 2 (2017): 279–287.

Memberships

  • American Academy of Religion 
  • La Comunidad of Hispanic Scholars of Religion 
  • Canadian Theological Society 
  • International Academy of Practical Theology 
  • Society for Pentecostal Studies 
  • ACTHUS: Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians in the USA