PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS

KEYNOTE SPEAKER | Wednesday, June 18, 7:15pm | Glover Park Hotel
Latino/Hispanic/Latiné Ministry in TEC. The Rev. Canon Anthony Guillén was Missioner for Latino/Hispanic Ministries of The Episcopal Church. A sweep across 55 years of ministry amongst Latinos in The Episcopal Church. The leaders and the challenges they faced. Milestones and successes and a quick look towards the future.

CONFERENCE SPEAKER | Thursday, June 19, 12:30 | Nourse
Demography, Geography, and Destiny. Ray Suarez is an American broadcast journalist and author. The speaker is followed by time for a book signing. “We Are Home: Becoming American in the 21st Century" is available for $32.

SESSION 1 | Wednesday, June 18, 10:00-11:30
  • PECUSA’s Soap Opera was not a Mexican Novela. The Rev. Dr. Carla Roland Guzmán, Assistant Professor of Church History at The General Theological Seminary; Author of Unmasking Latinx Ministry for Episcopalians: An Anglican Approach (CPI, 2020) In “PECUSA’s Soap Opera was not a Mexican Novela” Dr. Roland revisits, revises and expands a 2022 presentation on the Episcopal Church’s involvement in 19th-century Mexico, particularly regarding the Iglesia de Jesús and the contentious role of Bishop Henry C. Riley. Drawing on a newly explored archive of Spanish-language Protestant and Catholic newspapers from Mexico City—including La Buena Lid, El Faro, and El Abogado Cristiano Ilustrado—Dr. Roland challenges an earlier more U.S.-centered narrative by foregrounding Mexican voices. The paper specifically explores three central tensions: Riley’s contested return and self-asserted authority from 1891 to 1895, the Mexican Church’s complex relationship with the U.S. Episcopal Church (PECUSA), and its efforts to define itself against Mexican Roman Catholic and Protestant counterparts. Through primary source analysis, the essay illustrates how Mexican Anglicans/Episcopalians insisted on their national identity, theological independence, and ecclesial legitimacy, ultimately exposing how ecclesiastical power struggles, accusations of foreign interference, and questions of authority and legitimacy shaped the Mexican Church’s development.
  • La Iglesia de Santiago: The First Spanish-Speaking Episcopal Church. Schuyler Rowe received her M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary (2024). A Postulant for Holy Orders in New York, she is Recording Secretary and the Fay Historical Fellow for the Board of Foreign Parishes. Iglesia de Santiago was the first Spanish-speaking Episcopal church in the United States, existing from 1866 to 1893. Contextualizing the church's founding within a community of Spanish-speaking political exiles and their New York-based allies explains why Iglesia de Santiago emerged in New York City. While fostering connections with other Spanish-speaking Anglicans and Episcopalians, Santiago became increasingly focused on the Cuban revolutionary struggle, primarily through the work of Santiago's third rector, Joaquín de Palma. Although its revolutionary focus ultimately led to the church's closure, this paper will argue that the church's work played a crucial role in the spread of Spanish-speaking Anglicanism, both in the United States and in other Spanish-speaking countries.
  • An Attempt for Equality. The Rev. Dr. John Rawlinson, Retired, St. James / Santiago Episcopal Church, Oakland, California. From late 2006 through 2013, a complex process was used to select Spanish-language items for a proposed Spanish-language liturgical songbook called a cancionero (essentially, a hymnal). The process resulted in selecting over 600 songs, arranged in seasonal and special-use groups. This presentation tells that story from the inside.
  • Liberation Theology and Latin American Anglicanism: A Fruitful Dialogue. The Rev. Dr. John L. Kater, Associate Professor of the Development of MInistry, MIng Hua Theological College, Church Divinity School of the Pacific. The early development of Liberation Theology, including its concept of a “preferential option for the poor” and the establishment of “comunidades eclesiales de base,” or grassroots Christian communities, is rightly attributed to the Roman Catholic Church. But drawing on the work of multiple Latin American Anglican theologians and church leaders, this paper traces its impact on Anglican theology and ministry from the 1980s, when it was discussed widely at a Symposium on Latin American Anglicanism and the First Latin American Anglican Conference, and the shifting and deepening emphases that emerged in the 1990s. In the twenty-first century, Liberation Theology has been broadened to stress the gospel demand for inclusivity and the importance of an enculturated liturgy with the potential to engage all people, themes that have played an especially significant role in the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil, and enabling some to affirm it as a “theology for all time.”

SESSION 2 | Wednesday, June 18, 1:30-3:00
  • The Latinx Studies Program, Seminary of the Southwest. The Rev. Nancy Aidé Frausto is director of the Latinx Studies Program and Lecturer for Multicultural Ministry at the Seminary of the Southwest. She is the Diocese of Los Angeles's first Latina leader to have grown up in a Spanish-speaking Episcopal Church who has gone on to pursue ordination. The Latinx Studies Program, originally known as the Hispanic Church Studies program at the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest, has existed since 1986. In the last 39 years, the program has prepared clergy to serve in Latino /Hispanic communities along the southern border and throughout the US. This presentation will focus on the changes and growth of the program, both in theological education and the practical formation that clergy called to Latino ministry must strive toward.
  • Aspectos a considerar para una pastoral en medio de pueblos indígenas. El Rvdmo. Dr. Carlos E. Lainfiesta. This proposal is made from the perspective of having served for almost ten years as Bishop Suffragan of the Western Region of Guatemala. The Region under my pastoral responsibility is comprised of the Departments of Quetzaltenango, Chimaltenango, El Quiché, and Totonicapán. The majority of churches are located in villages, far from commercial centers. Ninety percent of the  population is of indigenous descent, with very limited economic resources and very little formal education.

SESSION 3 | Thursday, June 19, 3:00-4:30
  • Thriving in nine Countries: Orden de Las Hijas del Rey, 1994-2024. The Ven. Lydia Bush, The Rev. MariaElena Daniel Cristerna. Bush is Archdeacon in the Diocese of Florida and continues to serve as Deacon at St. Luke’s, Live Oak. She serves on the Daughters of the King® International Committee with contact in the Diocese of Cuba for the past twelve years. Cristerna is based in Eagle Pass, Texas, but ministers in two churches in Piedras Negras, Mexico. She says serving as Chaplain to the Daughters of the King chapters in Mexico has been a great blessing in her life. In less than 20 years, from 1997 to 2015, The Order of the Daughters of the King® took root in nine Spanish-speaking countries: Cuba (1997), Honduras (1997), the Dominican Republic (2000), Spain (2013), Panama (2013), Colombia (2014), Ecuador (2014), Guatemala (2015), and Mexico (2015). Daughters in the US saw this rapid spread of the Order as a remarkable move of the Holy Spirit. Post-pandemic, the Order continues to grow in all 9 countries. The workshop will review the Order’s beginnings and presence in Spanish-speaking countries, and the presenters will share their experience with developing chapters in Cuba and in Mexico.  
  • Practices and Policies for the Amateur Archivist. The Rev. Dr. John Rawlinson, Past Archivist of the Diocese of California, Archivist of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. This workshop aims to help equip volunteer church archivists with a basic understanding of the principles and practices of archival work. This will cover what to do when one begins with cardboard boxes with random and disorganized materials, and continue to the time and situation of a well-organized archival center.

SESSION 4 |Friday, June 20, 8:30-10:00
  • Cantando amor y esperanza - Singing Love and Hope. Nuevo Cancionero Editorial Committee. The Office of Latino Ministries of the Episcopal Church is producing a songbook which includes popular Latino song, traditional hymnody, liturgical music, and new compositions. It includes Spanish-language and bilingual (Spanish and English) songs., gathered through many years of research and accompaniment to Latino communities of faith in Province IX, as well as in the Episcopal Church in the United States. Participants will hear the rationale and history for this project of many years and will be invited to sing along with a diverse selection from the cancionero. Committee members:
  1. Hugo Olaiz is a member of the Episcopal Church's Latino Ministries Songbook Committee and works at Forward Movement as an associate editor for Latino/Hispanic resources.
  2. The Rev. Yuriria (Yuri) Rodríguez-Laureani serves as a curate at the Episcopal Church of the Nativity in the Diocese of Indianapolis. She was recently ordained to the priesthood after completing the Master’s in Divinity program at the School of Theology, Sewanee: The University of the South. She is a native Costa Rican singer, artist, and educator specializing in Latin American music, culture, liturgy and theology.
  3. Laurie Zant has been singing and accompanying on the guitar since childhood. She started exploring Latin American worship music while living in Chile in the early 1990s and has been planning and leading Spanish and bilingual liturgical music ever since. A retired software solutions architect, Laurie lives much of the time in Denver, Colorado and sings in the choir at St. Thomas Episcopal Church. The rest of the year she and her husband live in southern Chile.
  4. The Rev. Gary Cox is vicar of Santa Teresa de Avila Episcopal Church and pastor of Calvary Lutheran Church in Chicago. He has played cello and guitar in various orchestras and chamber ensembles in Illinois, Wisconsin, Texas, Ecuador, and Guatemala. He has participated in the Episcopal Cancionero project since 2007.
  • Preserving Memory: How to do an Oral History. Dr. Joan Gundersen. Oral history offers an opportunity to record memories before they can be forgotten. Modern technology has made them even easier to do. However, there are still specific steps that the interviewer needs to take to make sure that the record is preserved and will be valuable and available to others in the future. Joan Gundersen, an experienced historian, will walk people through that process and provide helpful resource materials so that you can confidently approach an interview.

SESSION 5 | Friday, June 20, 10:15-11:30
  • Encuentro histórico religioso, hispano anglicano | Historical Religious Encounter, Hispano-Anglican. The Rev. Canon Isaías A. Rodríguez. Es oriundo de España, llegó a este país en l974, y ha trabajado desde l983 en la Diócesis de Atlanta. A native of Spain, came to this country in 1974, and has worked since 1983 in the Diocese of Atlanta. Positive and negative aspects of the Anglican Reformation and the interactive encounter with the Hispanic world, as well as the Hispanic world's contribution to Anglicanism.  
  • The Development of the Libro de Oración Común, 1853-2022. The Rev. Marta Rivera Monclova. La Reverenda (o Madre) Marta Rivera Monclova es una cura episcopal en Grace Church, Hartford, académica y fundadora de una comunidad religiosa emergente también en Hartford, Connecticut. Antes de su ordenación, fue profesora de literatura y trabajó en tecnología. The Rev. Dr. Stevens, on behalf of the Committee on the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, reported at the General Convention of 1853 that, “New Mexico, with its thousands of inhabitants, speaking the Spanish tongue, and trained in the lax morals of a semi-civilized country, is already incorporated into these United States, and no bar or hindrance now exists to the free dissemination among them of the pure word of God and the primitive institutions of the Church.” This was the very beginning of the Episcopal Church engaging with the Spanish language sincerely. While Spanish has a much longer heritage in the western hemisphere than English, Spanish, and by extension Spanish speakers, have rarely been construed as anything but foreign. In this paper, I will trace the development of the Spanish prayerbook from this first call in 1853 through to the newest 2022 translation, with particular emphasis on constructions of belonging and foreignness, and argue that as a church, we must do better at recognizing that the church is not a nation, and that there is no “foreign” to the body of Christ.
  • Una reseña sobre la historia de la Iglesia Episcopal en Cuba. Revda. Lis Margarita Hernández Martínez, Historian, Diocese of Cuba. We present some outstanding events in the history of the Episcopal Church in Cuba from its beginnings to the present. We refer to the Diocesan Organizations: Episcopal Women of Cuba, Episcopal Men, and Episcopal Youth. Orders and ministries in the Church and the Strategic Planning and Missionary Development, Climate Resilience programs.
  • A Compass and a Lightning Rod: The New Spanish Prayer Book. Hugo Olaiz, Associate Editor for Latino Ministries, Forward Movement. As the translator of the most recent (2022) edition of The Book of Common Prayer, I will present on some issues that relate to the past and to the current translations. I will try to answer the questions: What does this translation tell us about the Church as an institution? What about the relation between the Latino and the Anglo Church? What could this new version mean for a Church that is permanently changing, yet continues to assign to the prayer book both practical and symbolic value?