I wrote this book because I want more people to understand a fuller conception of biblical lament so that they can experience the healing and hope that it brings. Too often when people talk about lament, they describe it as sadness or even wallowing in pain. The Bible offers a much deeper perspective, which I seek to unpack in my book.

Traditionally, Exodus is considered a book of redemption, law, and God’s presence. However, through a diasporic lens, it is also a book of migration, the ambivalence between home and new lands, liminality, a journey of becoming God’s people and experiencing God’s presence through local churches in the diaspora.

Numbers has much to teach us about ecclesiology, the doctrine of God’s people, and the relationship between God and his people. In other words, the Camp of Israel is not simply God’s organizing his people for departure, for traveling through the desert—no, it’s God’s creation of his covenant community!

It is clear to those who attend our Latino/a churches that many believers have never thought of how their immigrant experience and heritage might impact their reading of the Bible. Our hope is that this book might stimulate more Bible readings from that perspective, for the sake of Latino/a churches as well as for those from other communities who could learn much from Latinos/as.

Each chapter explores a different portion of Scripture, exploring what it might suggest about just discipleship and drawing that discussion into dialogue with a contemporary justice issue. So, for example, I explore Deuteronomy’s feasts as practices that shape the community for justice, and bring that into dialogue with the contemporary issue of economic segregation.

We wanted to provide, in one volume, a beautiful example of socially located exegesis, attentive to the power and authority of the Biblical text in its historical context along with insights that are born out of one’s culture and experience.

The biggest “aha” moment for me was learning about the non-Western influences that shaped Western culture and civilization. This clearly problematizes the claim of cultural independence (also, superiority or inferiority), which has a  significant implication for global theological reflection. It means that theological constructions in non-Western contexts should be free to draw helpful insights from  outside our cultures without thinking that we are using something foreign.

In many colleges and universities there has been an interest in attracting more Hispanic students but not enough focus on attracting Hispanic faculty. We wanted to hear Hispanic professors describe their journeys in the academy and the challenges they faced because we believe that representation is important.

I wanted to bring Black voices together to address the value of Black lives, theologically, biblically, and sermonically—especially in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and many other events like that in our nations’ history.

I think, with other scholars, that the Spirit is neglected in discussions about Paul’s soteriology in Galatians. I wanted to demonstrate that one of Paul’s chief concerns in the letter is to argue that the Galatians have everything they need in Christ to live a life pleasing to God because they have the Spirit.

We believe followership is something in its own right, not just the lack of leadership. . . . One can follow well and one can follow poorly. Furthermore, the first call of every Christian is to be a follower (of Christ, but also of those who have walked the road of discipleship before you). We should take that call seriously.

First, that because God is a covenantal God who has entered time and space to be in relationship and partnership with us, who we are matters to God. That is the basis of faith and theology, which must take into consideration our context and identity.