Edgardo Colón-Emeric is dean of Duke Divinity School, Irene and William McCutchen Professor of Reconciliation and Theology, and director of the Center for Reconciliation.
Colón-Emeric’s work explores the intersection of Methodist and Catholic theologies, and Wesleyan and Latin American experiences. His teaching covers a broad range of theological areas, including systematics, Wesleyan theology, ecumenism, and Latin American theology. His research brings theologians like Thomas Aquinas and Hans Urs von Balthasar into conversation with voices from the theological periphery like Bartolomé de las Casas and Saint Óscar Romero, guided by the conviction that Christian theology sounds best when symphonic.
Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Colón-Emeric was the first Latino to be ordained as an elder in the North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church and was founding pastor of Cristo Vive UMC in Durham, NC. He became founding director of the Hispanic House of Studies at Duke Divinity School in 2007 and joined the Divinity School faculty in 2008. From 2010-2021, he served as the director of the Central American Methodist Course of Study, which trains Methodist pastors who have not earned a formal master of divinity degree in such places as El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. He is also director of the Duke-Peru Theological Initiative, a partnership between the Methodist Church of Peru and Duke Divinity School.
He became director of the Center for Reconciliation (CFR) in 2018. Under his leadership, CFR has expanded its capacities and programs, including the launch of the Initiative of the Americas for Transformation and Reconciliation that brings together scholars and ministry practitioners from across the Americas to support reconciliation work. In 2020, he was appointed associate dean for academic formation.
Colón-Emeric serves on the United Methodist Committee on Faith and Order and on both national and international Methodist-Catholic dialogues. In October 2022, he met with Pope Francis for the second time as part of a delegation from the Methodist-Catholic Dialogue and presented Pope Francis with the report of the eleventh round of dialogue, God in Christ Reconciling: On the Way to Full Communion in Faith, Sacraments, and Mission.
Colón-Emeric is the author of The People Called Metodista: Renewing Doctrine, Worship, and Mission from the Margins (Abingdon Press, 2022); Hacia la nueva creación: Introducción a la Doctrina Metodista (Editorial Guadalupe, 2022); Wesley, Aquinas, and Christian Perfection: An Ecumenical Dialogue (Baylor University Press, 2009), which received the 2008 “Aquinas Dissertation Prize” from the Aquinas Center for Theological Renewal at Ave Maria University; and Óscar Romero’s Theological Vision: Liberation and the Transfiguration of the Poor (Notre Dame University Press, 2018), which received first place in the 2019 Catholic Press Association award for books about newly canonized saints.
Colón-Emeric has served as dean of Duke Divinity School since July 2021.
