Jennifer Hughes Combines GTU/UCB Studies, Motherhood, and Ordination

Jennifer Hughes is using GTU and UCB resources to develop her own distinctive work in Latin American theology and history, while also pursuing ordination in the Episcopal Church and raising a son. Balancing these demanding priorities would challenge anyone, but for Hughes they do even more-they nourish one another.

Latin American liberation theology came to voice in the late 1960s in the context of Vatican II, entrenched poverty and political oppression in Latin America, and the will of Latin American bishops to help their people. This new theological perspective insists that God reveals God's self in the poor, and that the "non-persons of history" are empowered by God to rise up against the structures of their oppression. As an "enthusiast" of liberation theology, Hughes studies the colonial history of the church in Latin America, and the colonial and post-colonial theology.

The contemporary conversations in liberation theology draw Hughes as well. Feminism challenges practitioners to embrace a non-hierarchical vision, and theologians are currently discussing the questions that arise when the promised kingdom of God does not immediately arrive.

Archival Research and Fieldwork
One aspect of Hughes's work involves historicizing liberation theology by understanding how the vocabulary emerges from its colonial context. In unpacking a key concept like "poverty," she looks at how it has been understood theologically, from the origins of Christianity to the missionary monks of 16th century New Spain.

Her training in history, fluency in Spanish and Portuguese, and fieldwork in Brazil have enabled her to access archival documents. She has worked with unpublished Inquisition documents, with an eye towards uncovering indigenous perspectives. Through the Indians' testimonies, she has been able to explore what they actually believed and practiced, especially as they began to embrace Christianity. She comments that "the legacy of Christianity in Latin American countries is a painful one, because it's a history of conquest. But it is also hopeful and beautiful, because of the way ordinary people appropriated it and made it their own."

Together with her graduate work, Hughes is pursuing ordination in the Episcopal Church. Her sponsoring parish is a Spanish-speaking, inclusive congregation in inner-city Boston. Hughes hopes to do a ministry in the immigrant community there. Her long-term aspiration is to bring her pastoral and ministerial work together with her intellectual interests, by combining it with an academic career.

She says "if you have that praxis, it gives you the basis and commitments from which to do the theoretical work. As I study colonial history I am more able to understand the complexity and ambivalence of what it means to be a Spanish-speaking Christian in this country."

Inspiration
Hughes credits her mother, the anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes, with giving her "a sense of possibility." Her father is a social worker who currently teaches at a public middle school in Oakland. Growing up, Hughes lived in Ireland, Brazil, and South Africa, where her mother pursued her research.Hughes was raised Roman Catholic, but in South Africa she became increasingly drawn to the Anglican Church. The family had arrived in 1993, a year before Mandela's election, and Hughes saw the Anglican Church doing powerful ministry in a country that was going through painful and violent times. The church had also begun ordaining women.

Hughes studied at the University of Capetown, where she met her husband. There, she witnessed the lived commitment of professors who were "academic theologians, but also antiapartheid activists." Theirs was another example of bringing together thought and practice, academia and activism.

Using UCB Resources
GTU's relationship with UC Berkeley is one reason Hughes decided to study here. All GTU doctoral student enjoy cross-registration privileges with UCB, and are also encouraged to include a UCB professor on their committee. At UCB, Hughes has taken classes and served as a teaching assistant in the ethnic studies department. William Taylor, a colonial Latin American professor at UCB and one of the foremost experts in the field, is on her committee. Hughes remarks that although GTU faculty and students can have some apprehensions about being at UCB-the "archetypal secular institution"-she has found her experience there to be tremendously enriching. UCB students and faculty have been very supportive, encouraging her to incorporate her theological perspective and religious orientation into her studies.

The Interdisciplinary Challenge
As an interdisciplinary student, Hughes wants to be accountable to the different disciplines, while also learning to articulate her own ideas and vision. "Students in this area are learning the disciplines and pushing at the limits of those disciplines at the same time. You really need faculty and peer support for this. You need your own kind of passion and vision, and faith in that vision, as well as a willingness to be challenged in it."

She appreciates in the GTU "the freedom to pull things together in a different way, but also the structural support and accountability." Last year, she completed her general comprehensive exams in theology, as part of applying for "allied field" status with theology.

In the next year, Hughes will be completing her comprehensive exams in interdisciplinary studies and pursuing ordination. She looks forward to working with Rosemary Radford Ruether, a leading feminist theologian who joined the GTU in 2000. Hughes hopes to receive a Newhall grant to do a topical course in theological Spanish with Dr. Ruether, as well as a course on North American feminism. She also plans to apply for a Fulbright grant to do research in Latin America in the summer of 2003.

Locating practical support has been key to her success. She was one of the first to move into the eighteen-unit doctoral student housing on Virginia Street, in 1999, and she says she "couldn't have done the program without it." The connection with other students, and the accessibility to campus and to study groups and prep groups, has been very helpful.

Hughes found financial support as a GTU presidential scholar for her first two years. The Episcopal Church Foundation is currently supporting her studies. With motherhood, ordination, and graduate work all on her plate, staying in balance is not easy. Hughes credits her four-year-old son Santiago with help in this department. "He functions as the limit in terms of what I can accomplish in my schoolwork. My weekly shift at his cooperative child care center helps keep me grounded and connected."

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