Theology and Public Life

Eric D. Barreto’s, MDiv '04, sense of calling and vocation was shaped by his childhood growing up in Puerto Rico. The experience of living on an island that has been repeatedly colonized — along with his consistent involvement in the church — shaped his views of justice and public life early on.

At 16, he felt a call to ministry but hadn’t yet discovered the many possibilities he could explore. Even as he started college, he believed he would be a preacher because that’s the example of ministry he’d previously witnessed. Later, Barreto realized that his calling would take the shape of educating people who are preparing for ministry and preparing to serve God and the world in different ways.

“It turns out that God was calling me to a life of scholarship and helping students prepare for ministry,” he says. “So often this is how God works: by surprising us along the way with opportunities we didn’t expect but that God had in mind all along.”

Now as the Frederick and Margaret L. Weyerhaeuser Associate Professor of New Testament at Princeton Seminary, he’s doing what he was called to do — helping shape people’s imaginations about texts of scripture and helping them determine how those texts often enable, empower, and shape ministry that leans toward the justice that God wants for society, he says.

For Barreto, the church can have a great impact on society. At its best, the church calls us to be faithful and to see the world not as it has been but as it might be. The church can help us see a world riven with injustice but not just see those cracks and those problems but to be able to name those problems and name the way God is already moving in our midst, he says. “The church can unite a diverse group of people and help the public learn how to be good neighbors to one another.”

“Churches, at their best, turn our eyes toward God, toward the God who creates, the God who sustains and the God who we confess one day will transform the world and create it anew,” says Barreto. “So, keeping our eyes focused on God is not a way for us to distract ourselves from the pains of the world but to see them that much more clearly.”

Creating educational and formative spaces is valuable, says Barreto. We need more spaces — not just Christian churches, but all kinds of faith traditions — where people gather around their deepest convictions, hopes, and griefs. There’s also this sense that we all need help with becoming the people who God created us to be. “The work of life and the work of faithfulness is not the work of individuals alone, it’s not solitary work but it's communal work that we do with each other.”

From a historical standpoint, theology and the church have been complicit in harmful, deeply problematic movements but simultaneously what is seen, especially among marginalized people and communities, are deeply faithful communities that are not just surviving but thriving on the underside of history, Barreto notes. For instance, African American communities have consistently called the nation toward a fuller embrace of the promises that were made about how we relate to one another, he says. “I always want to look to those places that maybe we have neglected, that we haven't noticed. That is where we often find the work of greatest faithfulness.”

“That’s where students are really helpful because often, they are in touch with those marginalized spaces, spaces that many of us haven't noticed, but they're deeply in touch with them”, he adds. “If they can help activate those communities or help the rest of society see the deep faithfulness that’s already happening in these marginalized spaces, that's a real gift.”

Faith Amid Coursework

Last summer, the Master of Arts in Theology (Justice and Public Life) program’s inaugural cohort embarked on a 24-month journey of exploring how past and present theology can influence their work and how they can intentionally engage in challenging societal issues within their current context. One course that’s included in the hybrid program is Nurturing Neighbors through Public Theology. The week-long, in-person intensive is taught by Barreto and Dr. Keri Day; the course examines faithful public leadership and the idea of public theology. Another course is Race, Ethnicity, and the New Testament, which explores the intersectionality of these three things.

MAT students are already deeply engaged public servants in fundraising, legal, and nonprofit professions, to name a few. For this reason, the idea is not about bringing people into those spaces but trying to meet people in the spaces where they're already serving — serving communities and serving God, he says.

“Our aim is to give them the space, time and colleagues and for them to think about how their faithfulness in the work they're already doing might be drawn closer together,” says Barreto. “Their faithfulness can inform their everyday work and propel them into a wider and brighter future. A more faithful future, a future where they sense a deeper integration between the things that they believe about the world, about God and the work that they're doing.”

The program itself hinges on the idea that there’s a wealth of scholarship that, once you learn about, will shape your imagination, Barreto says. There’s also a group of people who are similarly inclined to know more about their faithfulness and their work and spending time, learning, thinking, and interacting with them will help form the group as a whole.

The group’s commitment and their willingness to show up for others and themselves in the midst of other responsibilities is noteworthy and comments on their persistence, courage, and faithfulness, he says.

While the MAT program is still fairly new, Barreto has many hopes for current — and future — students who choose to take the journey. The desire is for students to find their intellects expanded and that they will read new ideas, encounter new theories, and new possibilities for thinking about Scripture and theology and everyday faithfulness, he says. Another hope is that they find a community of learners and leaders that will extend beyond the program.

“I hope they sense the ways that God moves in the midst of their coursework and the relationships with their professors and their classmates,” Barreto says. “That when they gather in person in the January meeting, they sense God’s spirit, drawing around them and meeting them. So, I hope that there's intellectual growth, relational growth, and spiritual growth.”

For Barreto, one of the highlights of engaging with the inaugural cohort is weekly virtual meetings. It’s where he bears witness to the vast geographical representation and gains insights into the lives of participants. “It’s the way that their everyday life is peeking around the edges. It’s the sense that they're juggling so much and yet are deeply committed to being together and to learning together. That's a beautiful thing.”

A benefit of the MAT program is that it invites people who are already deep in their contexts, deep in their work, and are unable to move to Princeton for a couple of years to do this work, and yet can benefit so much, Barreto says. “My hope is that we are extending the reach of Princeton Seminary, which has already had an incredible impact on the world. These are folks that we hadn't been able to educate before and hadn't been able to be in partnership with before and that's really exciting.”