Chaplain Kelly Figueroa-Ray

Chaplain Kelly Figueroa-Ray guides Hamline University's spiritual and religious life and leads our engagement with Saint Paul and the wider community. She is experienced in community organizing, project management, and teaching, and is strongly committed to the "do all the good" mission of the Wesley Center for Spirituality, Service, and Social Justice. She is the managing editor of the Journal of Scriptural Reasoning and The Mahle Lectures Journal. She teaches lived theology, focusing on Beloved Community; uses of scripture in U.S. politics and the public sphere; immigration policy and the US-Mexico border; and interreligious dialogue through Hamline's Department of Social Justice and Social Change, and is a Provisional Elder in the Minnesota Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Before Hamline, Chaplain Kelly taught as a visiting assistant professor in the Religion department at Saint Olaf College. She also served as the communications and operations director at the Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia, where she also earned her Ph.D. in the Scripture, Interpretation and Practice program in the Department of Religious Studies. Her academic focus is the relationship between scripture and theology as it is lived out in contemporary communities, with a particular interest in multicultural Christian ministries. Chaplain Kelly earned her B.A. at the University of California at Berkeley in international and area studies, and completed her M.Div. at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. magna cum laude. Her essay "'Lady, Give Me A Drink': Reading Scripture, Shaping Community Development," is part of the book Mobilizing for the Common Good: The Lived Theology of John Perkins by University Press of Mississippi, 2013. Her work, "Learning How to Read: How Rabbinics Aids in the Study of Contemporary Christian Practices," is found in Religious Studies and Rabbinics (Eds. Dr. Elizabeth Shanks Alexander and Dr. Beth Berkowitz, Routledge, 2018). Her most recent publication "'I Love You and There is Nothing You Can Do About It': Pastor Miguel's Love Disruption of White Hegemonic Culture" was published in Practical Matters, issue 13 on "Love" (November, 2020).