I was born in Guatemala in the midst of civil war. Shortly after my family moved to the United States, the Berlin Wall collapsed. When I returned to Central America in the mid-1990s—this time to Nicaragua—the specters of the Cold War still haunted the region. This backdrop shaped my sensibilities and interests when I enrolled in college. As I deepened my university studies, two things became clear: 1) Religion shaped and intensified the Cold War struggle, and 2) Latin America was crucial to unpacking the Cold War’s religious dimensions. These insights have shaped my subsequent work at the intersections of religion, politics, and social criticism.
My most recent project centered on the life and thought of ethicist and political philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr. I was particularly drawn to the way that Niebuhr invoked the ancient Christian notion of original sin to expose the dysfunctions of twentieth-century politics and resist the simplistic binaries of good and evil that permeated Cold War rhetoric. These interests prepared me to serve as lead consultant for acclaimed filmmaker Martin Doblmeier’s award-winning documentary, entitled, An American Conscience: The Reinhold Niebuhr Story, which aired nationwide in April 2017. I also authored the eponymous companion book published by Eerdmans.
The film and book’s release opened up various speaking and writing opportunities. In the spring of 2017, I delivered the Thompson Lecture at Kalamazoo College, which featured a conversation with Grawemeyer Award winner Gary Dorrien. I also used the Niebuhr materials to run workshops for churches in the Midwest and Northeast and lead continuing education events for the United Methodist Church. Finally, I contributed chapters to two recently published collections: “The Virtues of the Social Critic” for a Routledge study entitled, Paradoxical Virtue, and “The 1930s: Economic Crisis and the End of an Era” for The Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr.
My current work addresses popular as well as academic audiences. In the Summer of 2020, I coordinated a forum on Jemar Tisby’s bestselling book The Color of Compromise and spearheaded a virtual symposium examining current events through an ethical lens entitled, Sins and Virtues in American Public Life. My think pieces have appeared in publications such as The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Religion Dispatches, and Current, and I have chapters forthcoming in Religion and Sport in North America (Routledge) and a Handbook of Contemporary Christianity in the United States (Rowman & Littlefield). I am also conducting research on two book-length projects interrogating the apocalyptic and Manichean legacies of the Cold War era: one focused on 1980s Guatemala and the other examining the ongoing effects of Cold War political theologies.