ogarcia-johnson

Bio: Oscar García-Johnson, Executive Director • Associate Dean • Associate Professor of Theology and Latinx Studies. He assumed leadership of Fuller’s Center for the Study of Hispanic Church and Community in October 2015. Prior to joining the Fuller faculty in 2008, he taught for ten years as an adjunct faculty member at Fuller. He also served as a regional minister with the American Baptist Churches of Los Angeles for 11 years and planted four new churches in Southern California. Born in Honduras and raised Roman Catholic, García-Johnson immigrated to the United States as a young adult to complete a degree in electrical engineering. While in college, he committed to the Protestant Church and experienced a vocational conversion into philosophical and theological studies, leading him to a life that has commuted between the academia and the church. García-Johnson teaches in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. His research methodology interlaces de/postcolonial studies, classical theologies, and Latino/a Global Studies into a critical hermeneutic of the South he calls Transoccidentality. His writings include Conversaciones Teológicas del Sur Global Americano, coedited (Puertas Abiertas/Wipf & Stock, 2016); Theology without Borders: Introduction to Global Conversations, coauthored with William Dyrness (Baker Academic, 2015); ¡Jesús, hazme como tú! 40 Maneras de Imitar a Cristo (Wipf & Stock, 2014); The Mestizo/a Community of the Spirit: A Latino/a Postmodern Ecclesiology (Pickwick, 2009). García-Johnson’s forthcoming books are: Spirit Outside the Gate: Decolonial Pneumatologies of the South (IVP Academic, 2019) offers a groundbreaking approach to theological and missiological studies applying independent critical decolonial thinking of the South resulting in the possibility of re-originating the Christian imagination in world Christianity. The Illegal God: A Public Theology Without Borders/El Dios Ilegal: Una Teología Pública Sin Fronteras (Urban Loft Publishers, 2020) offers a creative and prophetic treatment of the concept of "legality and illegality" as a counter-narrative to current nativist paleo-conservative instrumental attacks on the immigrants of the South in settings such as the United States and Northern Europe. The intent of the latter work is to provoque situated and critical conversations on the topic of immigration and illegality in the public space and the church environment. Garcia-Johnson provides conferences on critical ecclesiology, leadership development and ministry across Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the United States. He is committed to facilitating environments for nurturing intellectual-activists (De Sousa Santos), particularly among the bridge-generation (generación puente) of the second and third generations of Latinx and Latina women by building spaces for understanding border identities, intercultural dialogue, and faith-rooted social emancipation. He is a member of the Fraternidad Teológica Latinoamericana, The American Academy of Religion, La Asociación para la Educación Teológica Hispana, and is part of the steering committees of The Hispanic Theological Initiative and Mathew 25 Movement.

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