Profile

Rady Roldán-Figueroa

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs; Professor of the History of Christianity; Truman Collins Chair of Missions

Dr. Roldán-Figueroa (he, him, his) is a Puerto Rican scholar whose research, publications, and teaching engage the history of Christianity from the 15th to the 20th century. He specializes in early modern global Christianity, Christianity in colonial Latin America, the intersectionality of Catholicism, race, and colonialism as well as the history of Christian spirituality. He is the author of The Ascetic Spirituality of Juan de Avila (1499-1569) (Brill, 2010), and The Martyrs of Japan: Publication History and Catholic Missions in the Spanish World (Spain, New Spain, and the Philippines, 1597–1700) (Brill, 2021). He is also co-editor of several collaborative projects, including: Collected Works of Hanserd Knollys: Pamphlets on Religion (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2017); Exploring Christian Heritage – A Reader in History and Theology (Baylor University Press, 3rd rev. ed. 2024); Bartolomé de las Casas, O.P.: History, Philosophy, and Theology in the Age of European Expansion (December 2018, Brill); The Transatlantic Las Casas: Historical Trajectories, Indigenous Cultures, Scholastic Thought, and Reception in History (Brill, 2023); and The Dominicans in the Americas and the Philippines (c. 1500-c. 1820): Devotional Life, Catholic Literary Culture, and Models of Holiness (Routledge, 2024). He has published forty-four articles and book chapters. His articles have appeared in Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte/Archive for Reformation History, Church History and Religious Culture, Critical Research on Religion, European History Quarterly, History of European Ideas, Journal of Early Modern Christianity, Quaker Studies, Sixteenth Century Journal, Social Sciences and Missions, and The Seventeenth Century. He has been the recipient of several awards including a Lilly Theological Scholar Grant, a Lilly Teaching Fellowship in Religion and Philosophy, numerous awards from the Hispanic Theological Initiative and a Greenleaf Visiting Scholar award from the Latin American and Iberian Institute of the University of New Mexico. He is the holder of the 2023-24, Rev. Robert Randall Distinguished Professorship in Christian Culture at Providence College and has the distinction of becoming the first Hispanic and Latinx full professor at Boston University School of Theology. His courses and seminars include, Christianity in Colonial Latin America, Mystical Theology and Modernity, Christianity Beyond Early Modern Europe, and Spirituality in Historical Perspective.

Selected Publications

Monographs

  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, The Martyrs of Japan: Publication History and Catholic Missions in the Spanish World (1597–1700) (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2021).
  • Rady Roldan-Figueroa, The Ascetic Spirituality of Juan de Ávila (1499-1569), Studies in the History of Christian Traditions 150 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010).

Edited Volumes and Academic Journal Special Issues

  • David Orique, O.P., Rady Roldán-Figueroa, and Cynthia Folquer, O.P., The Dominicans in the Americas and the Philippines (c. 1500–c. 1820): Devotional Life, Catholic Literary Culture, and Models of Holiness(Routledge, 2025).
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa and David Orique, The Transatlantic Las Casas: Lascasian Heritage, Indigenous Cultures, Scholastic Thought, and Historical Reception (Brill, 2023).
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa and Kathryn House, eds., Essays in Honor of Nancy Tatom Ammerman, Perspectives in Religious Studies vol. 49, num. 2 (Summer 2022).
  • David T. Orique and Rady Roldán-Figueroa, eds., Bartolomé de las Casas, O.P.: History, Philosophy, and Theology in the Age of European Expansion (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019).
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, ed., Early Modern Theologies of Race in the Age of European Expansion, special issue of the Journal of Early Modern Christianity 4/2 (2017).
  • C. Douglas Weaver and Rady Roldán-Figueroa, Exploring Christian Heritage: A Reader in History and Theology, 3rd rev. ed. (Baylor University Press, 2024).
  • C. Douglas Weaver and Rady Roldán-Figueroa, Exploring Christian Heritage: A Reader in History and Theology, 2nd rev. ed. (Baylor University Press, 2017).
  • C. Douglas Weaver, Rady Roldán-Figueroa, and Brandon Frick, Exploring Christian Heritage: A Reader in History and Theology (Baylor University Press, 2012).

Edited Series

Early English Baptist Texts, ed. Rady Roldan-Figueroa and C. Douglas Weaver (2 vols. in the series):

  • Joseph Everett Early, The Life and Writings of Thomas Helwys, Early English Baptist Texts (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2009).
  • William Pitts and Rady Roldan-Figueroa, eds., Collected Works of Hanserd Knollys: Pamphlets on Religion, Early English Baptist Texts (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2017).

Articles in Peer Reviewed Journals

  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Quaker Roots in Jim Corbett’s Nonviolent Sanctuary: The Unrecognized Influence of the Pacifist Research Bureau and the Legal Scholar, Harrop A. Freeman (1907–1993),” Quaker Studies vol. 30, no. 2 (2025), 1–24; DOI https://doi.org/10.16995/qs.19041
     
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “The Requerimiento and the Theological ‘Knot’ of European Expansionism: Jews, Muslims, and the Arawakan-speaking peoples of the Caribbean in Juan López de Palacios Rubios’s Juridical theory of Dominion (1512),” Critical Research on Religion vol. 13, no. 2 (2025):133–150, first published online, DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/20503032251344343
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Empire of Portland Cement, Concrete Blocks, and Specialty Shingles: Methodist Missions, Antonin Nechodoma, and the Implantation of a Colonialist Religious Aesthetic in Puerto Rico (1898–c. 1927),” Social Sciences and Missions 36, no. 3–4 (2023): 256–303.
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Religious Nationalism, Racism, and Raza Hispánica (“Hispanic Race”) in Constantino Bayle’s, S.J. (1882–1953) Missiology (A Publication History Approach).” Critical Research on Religion vol. 10, num. 1 (2022):41–60; DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/20503032221075378
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Spiritualité, Spirituality, and Espiritualidad: A Lexicographical Approach to the Conceptual History of Spirituality,” Church History and Religious Culture vol. 101, no. 4 (2021):1–30.
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “ ‘βαπτίζω Signifies to Dip or to Wash, but Never to Sprinkle’: London Baptists and Dipping as the Sign of Lay Supremacy, 1641–1645,” Church History and Religious Culture 99 (2019): 1–32.
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Religious Literature and its Institutional Contexts: Prelude to the Study of Spanish Accounts of Christian Martyrdom in Tokugawa Japan,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte/Archive for Reformation History (Special Issue: “The Global Impact of the Reformations: Long-Term Influences and Contemporary Ramifications” / “Die Weltwirkungen der Reformation: Zeitgenössische und langfristige Folgen der religiösen Reformbewegungen des 16. Jahrhunderts”), 108 (2017): 153–161.
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Literacy, Spirituality of Reading, and Catholic Literary Culture in Sixteenth-Century Spain,” Journal of Early Modern Christianity 2/2 (2015): 159–188.
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Martín de Roa, S.J. (1559–1637) and the Consolidation of Catholic Literary Culture in Spain,” European History Quarterly 45.1 (2015): 5–33 [Lead Article].

The Sixteenth Century Society and Conference recognized this article with the Harold J. Grimm Prize. The prizes is “named for Professor Harold J. Grimm of Indiana and Ohio State Universities, author and scholar, pioneer in American Reformation Studies, one of the founders of the Society for Reformation Research, editor of the Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte, as well as doctoral advisor and friend of many scholars, is awarded annually by the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference for the best article published during the previous year which reflects and sustains Grimm’s lifelong search for a broad understanding of the Reformation as a fundamentally religious phenomenon which permeated the whole civilization of Europe in the Reformation Era.”

  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Tomas Carrascón, Anti-Roman Catholic Propaganda, and the Circulation of Ideas in Jacobean England,” History of European Ideas, iFirst (2012), 1–38; vol. 39, no. 2 (2013): 169–206.
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Father Luis Piñeiro, S.J., the Tridentine Economy of Relics, and the Defense of the Jesuit Missionary Enterprise in Tokugawa Japan,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte/Archive for Reformation History 101 (2010): 207–230.
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Religious Propaganda and Textual Hybridity in Tomás Carrascón’s 1623 Spanish Translation of the Jacobean Book of Common Prayer,” The Seventeenth Century 25.1 (2010): 49–74.
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “ ‘Espirituación’: Juan de Ávila’s Doctrine of Union with the Holy Spirit,” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme 2–3 (2005): 65–96 [Date Issued: May 2007].
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “La relación de 1625 por Francisco Crespo sobre los mártires  de Japón: Introducción, edición y comentarios,” Encuentros en Catay  20 (2006): 64–85. [Fu Jen University, Taipei, Taiwan] [Date of Issue: 2007]
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “ ‘Justified Without the Works of the Law’: Casiodoro de Reina on Romans 3:28,” in The Formation of Clerical and Confessional Identities in Early Modern Europe, ed., Wim Janse and Barbara Pitkin, Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis/Dutch Review of Church History 85 (2005): 205–224. [Year Issued: 2006]
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Filius Perditionis: The Propagandistic use of a Biblical Motif in Spanish Evangelical Biblical Translations of the Sixteenth Century.” Sixteenth Century Journal 4 (2006): 1027-1055.

Book Chapters

  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Las Casas y su crítica de la guerra y la cultura bélica mediante su denuncia de la masculinidad beligerante,” Actas del IV Congreso Internacional de Historia de la Orden de Predicadores en América y del Ier Encuentro de Archivistas OP, ed., Juan Francisco Correa Higuera, Hugo Daniel López, Estela Calvente, Cynthia Folquer (Bogotá, Colombia and Tucumán, Argentina: Editorial UNSTA and Ediciones USTA, 2027), forthcoming
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “The Sanctuary Movement at the Crossroads: The 1987 Jerome Hall Dialogue at Harvard Divinity School and the Meaning of Sanctuary,” in Sacred Refuge: New Histories of the U.S. Sanctuary Movement, ed. Lloyd D. Barba and Sergio M. González (New York University Press, 2026), forthcoming.
  • David Orique, O.P., Rady Roldán-Figueroa, and Cynthia Folquer, O.P., “Historiography of the Dominicans in the Americas,” in David Orique, O.P., Rady Roldán-Figueroa, and Cynthia Folquer, O.P., The Dominicans in the Americas and the Philippines (c. 1500–c. 1820): Devotional Life, Catholic Literary Culture, and Models of Holiness (Routledge, 2025).
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Roman Catholic Exegesis from the Spirituali to the Jesuits,” Section III: The Development of Reformation Biblical Hermeneutics, in The Oxford Handbook of the Bible and the Reformation, ed. Jennifer Powell McNutt and Herman Selderhuis (Oxford University Press, 2024).
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Beyond the Black Legend: The Reception History of Las Casas in Late Sixteenth-century England,” in The Transatlantic Bartolomé de las Casas: Lascasian Heritage, Indigenous Cultures, Scholastic Thought, and Historical Reception, ed. Rady Roldán-Figueroa and David Orique (Brill, 2023).
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “The Institutional Inner Logic of Sixteenth Century Discalced Franciscan Missions,” in Sixteenth-Century Mission: Explorations in Protestant and Roman Catholic Theology and Practice (Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology), ed. Edward L. Smither and Robert L. Gallagher(Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2021).
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Learning from the Confessions of the European Reformations,” in Sources of Light: Resources for Baptist Churches Practicing Theology (Perspectives on Baptist Identities), ed. in Steven R. Harmon and Amy L. Chilton (Mercer University Press, 2020).
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Bartolomé de las Casas, his Theory of the Power of Bishops, and the Early Transatlantic Episcopacy,” in David Orique and Rady Roldán-Figueroa, Bartolomé de Las Casas: History, Philosophy, & Theology in the Age of European Expansion (Brill, 2018): 99–126.
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Martin Luther in Latin America: From the Counter-Reformation Myth of Latin American Catholicism to Luther as Religious Caudillo,” in Martin Luther. A Christian between Reforms and Modernity (1517-2017), ed. Alberto Melloni, Federica Meloni, and Stefania de Nardis (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017).
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Martin Luther in Lateinamerika: Vom Mythos der Gegenreformation des lateinamerikanischen Katholizismus bis zu Luther als religiösem Caudillo,” in Martin Luther. A Christian between Reforms and Modernity (1517-2017), ed. Alberto Melloni, Federica Meloni, and Stefania de Nardis (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017).
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Martin Lutero in America Latina: Dal mito controriformistico del cattolicesimo latinoamericano a Lutero come caudillo religioso,” in Lutero: Un cristiano tra riforme e modernità (1517-2017), ed. Alberto Melloni, Federica Meloni, and Stefania de Nardis (Torino: Unione tipografico-editrice torinese, 2017).
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “The Mystical Theology of Luis de la Puente (1554-1624),” in Brill’s Companion to Jesuit Mystical Spirituality, ed. Robert Maryks (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017), 54–76.
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Pedro de Ribadeneyra’s Vida del P. Ignacio de Loyola (1583) and Literary Culture in Early Modern Spain,” in Exploring Jesuit Distinctiveness: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Ways of Proceeding within the Society of Jesus, ed. Robert A. Maryks (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016), 156–174.
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Ignatius of Loyola and Juan de Ávila on the Ascetic Life of the Laity,” in Companion to Ignatius of Loyola: Life, Writings, Spirituality, ed. Robert A. Maryks (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), 159–178.
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Martin Luther, Commentarius in Apocalypsin ante 100 annos editus/Preface to A Commentary on the Apocalypse, Published One Hundred Years Ago (1528),” introduction and notes, inLuther’s Works: American Edition, ed. Christopher Boyd Brown (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2012), 59:203–207.
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Antonio del Corro and Paul as the Herald of the Gospel of Universal Redemption,” in Paul in the Reformation, ed., R. Ward Holder (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), 389–425.
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Translation, Guided Reading, and Anti-Roman Catholic Propaganda in the Reina-Valera Bible (1602): The Rendering of Deuteronomy 23,17[18],” in Infant Milk or Hardy Nourishment? The Bible for Lay People and Theologians in the Early Modern Period, ed. W. François and A. A. den Hollander, (Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 221) (Louvain: Peeters Publishers, 2009), 411–438.
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Reina’s Vision of a Truly Reformed Ministry: A Reconstruction,” in Lay Bibles in Europe 1450-1800, ed., M. Lamberigts and A. A. den Hollander, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 198 (Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2006), 159–181.

Introductions and Other Essays

  • David Orique, O.P., Rady Roldán-Figueroa, and Cynthia Folquer, O.P., “Introduction,” in David Orique, O.P., Rady Roldán-Figueroa, and Cynthia Folquer, O.P., The Dominicans in the Americas and the Philippines (c. 1500–c. 1820): Devotional Life, Catholic Literary Culture, and Models of Holiness(Routledge, 2025).
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa and David Orique, O.P., “Introduction: The Past and Present of Lascasian Studies,” in The Transatlantic Bartolomé de las Casas: Lascasian Heritage, Indigenous Cultures, Scholastic Thought, and Historical Reception, ed. Rady Roldán-Figueroa and David Orique (Brill, 2023).
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa and Kathryn House, “Ammerman for a New Day: Challenges for Twenty-first Century Baptists,” Essays in Honor of Nancy Tatom Ammerman, Perspectives in Religious Studies vol. 49, num. 2 (Summer 2022): 95–110.
  • David T. Orique and Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Introduction: Three Waves of Lascasian Scholarship,” in Bartolomé de las Casas, OP: History, Philosophy, and Theology in the Age of European Expansion (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019), 1–25.
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Solidarity is Not a Favor: A Reflection on the Roots of the Sanctuary Movement,” Focus (2019), 26–29. 
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Introduction: Race as a Category of Anthropological Difference in the Formative Stage of Peripheral Catholicism,” in Early Modern Theologies of Race in the Age of European Expansion, ed. Rady Roldán-Figueroa, special issue of the Journal of Early Modern Christianity 4/2 (2017).
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Luisa Capetillo’s Dream,” Focus (Spring 2014), 37–39.
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Contemporary Anabaptists Historiography and Theology, and the Broadening of Baptist Identity,” Truett Journal of Church and Mission 1 (2006): 5–11.
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “B.F. Stockwell, Protestant Mentality, and the Missionary Appropriation of Sixteenth Century Spanish Reformers,” Apuntes 23/3 (Fall 2003): 84–99.
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “The Christologies of Luther and Sobrino and Pastoral Care,” Apuntes (Spring 2001): 15–29.
  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, “Latin American Women through Missionary Eyes: The Work of the Women Commission of the Panama Congress,” Apuntes (Winter 1998): 112–124.

Translations in Peer-reviewed Collections

  • Rady Roldán-Figueroa, [Translation] “Excerpts from Luis de la Puente, Spiritual Guide That Deals with Prayer, Meditation, and Contemplation of the Divine Visits and Extraordinary Graces as well as of Mortification and the Heroic Deeds That Come with It (1609, 1614),” in Brill’s Companion to Jesuit Mystical Spirituality, ed. Robert Maryks (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017), 77–79.
                      Faculty Types
                      Faculty

                      View all Profiles