Assistant Professor of the Practice of Religion, Psychology, and Culture and Director of Field Education

Vanderbilt University Divinity School

Dr. Arelis Benítez is the Assistant Professor of the Practice of Religion, Psychology, and Culture, and Director of Field Education at Vanderbilt Divinity School.

Prior to joining Vanderbilt faculty, she served as an instructor at Loma Linda University School of Religion where she was Director of the Master of Science in Chaplaincy program and the former Lead Chaplain at Loma Linda University Medical Center – Murrieta where she developed a volunteer chaplaincy program. 

Her research interests center Chicana feminist perspectives on spirituality and Mesoamerican thought. Through this lens, she proposes alternative philosophies that redefine approaches to social, psychological, and spiritual-religious transformation in pastoral theology. As a pastoral theologian, she anchors her methodological approaches in the works of Gloria Anzaldúa towards the inclusion of Latinx communities and development of Latinx spiritual care responses. Grounded in her own social location, her dissertation, Im/migration and Sexual Identity Reconstruction: Parallels of Pain and Reexistence in Pastoral Theology, explores parallels of suffering and healing in sexual identity (re)construction and migration narratives within the Latinx LGBTQ+ community.

 Clinically trained as a healthcare chaplain, she integrates over a decade of experiences in pastoral ministry with vocational commitments to social justice that extend beyond the academy and into the public and private spheres. Currently, she also serves as a member of the CPE Professional Advisory Group at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Dr. Jorge Juan Rodriguez V, the son of two Puerto Rican migrants, grew up with his parents, grandmother, and uncle in a small affordable housing community in urban Connecticut. His story of diaspora, translanguaging, race, and religion propelled his academic journey, leading him to degrees in biblical studies, social theory, liberation theologies, and a Ph.D. in History from Union Theological Seminary. His scholarship examines Fat Studies as well as the intersections of race, religion, and social movements with a particular focus on Black and Brown religious activism in the 20th century, including groups like the New York Young Lords. 

His scholarly work has been featured in several outlets including TruthOut, Latino Rebels, and The Christian Century and he regularly speaks at universities and community organizations as well as podcasts and radio shows. His published work includes “Occupying Abuela’s Church: Latinx Religious Activism and the New York Young Lords” in Faith and Power: Latino/a Religious Politics since 1945 (NYU Press, 2022) and a forthcoming edited volume entitled Leading Latinamente: Learning with Daisy L. Machado (Fortress Press). He is also the series editor for “Theological Education ¡Latinamente!” a collection of forthcoming volumes out of Fortress Press that re-examine Latinidad in the 21st century along vectors of gender and sexuality, interreligious identity, indigeneity, Afro-Latinidad, and the like and their impact for theological and higher education. Additionally, his dissertation entitled “The Más Alla at First Spanish—the People’s Church: Race, Religion, and the New York Young Lords” was transformed into a multi-part public scholarship project with the present congregation of FSUMC: The People’s Church in East Harlem—the very church occupied by the Young Lords in 1969.

Dr. Rodríguez is currently pursuing an Executive Certificate in Non-Profit Management from Harvard University that builds on his years of experience in higher education administration and affordable housing development. Since 2021 he has also served part-time as Visiting Assistant Professor of Historical Studies at Union Theological Seminary. Yet, Dr. Rodríguez’s full-time work is with the HSP. 

Dr. Rodríguez joined the, then, “Hispanic Summer Program” in 2015 as a social media intern. Working closely with Dr. Daisy Machado, he began organizing development events, writing grant proposals, and contributing to Machado’s strategic vision for the organization. In 2020 Dr. Rodríguez was promoted to Associate Director for Strategic Programming. Since assuming this role, Dr. Rodríguez has helped the organization secure nearly $8 million in successful grants, establish strategic partnerships with dozens of peer organizations, triple its staff, grow from two annual programs to eleven, and establish the internal infrastructure to sustain this change.

Outside of the HSP, Dr. Rodríguez is an incoming Board member of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and a current advisory board member of the Office of Community Engagement at the City University of New York. He previously served on the advisory board of the Center for Religion and Cities at Morgan State University and the Leadership Council of First Spanish United Methodist Church–The People’s Church.