Eben Levey

Eben Levey completed his PhD in 2021 at the University of Maryland, College Park. Prior to Alfred University, he taught at Boise State University. Western Washington University, American University and University of Maryland, College Park.

Levey’s dissertation, “From Liberation Theology to Teologia India: The Progressive Catholic Church in Southern Mexico, 1954-1994,” expanded the scope of histories of Liberation Theology (a progressive Catholic movement that emerged in the late 1960s) by centering a focus on Indigenous Mexico. He asked two parallel questions: How did Liberation Theology change the fabric of Indigenous Mexico? And, how did Indigenous Mexico change Liberation Theology? Levey shows how Indigenous Catholics pushed progressive liberationists to move beyond mere class-based analysis and incorporate Indigenous demands for multiculturalism, self-determination, and local autonomy in ways that would both open the Roman Catholic Church to indigenous ways of being Catholic and later become the framework for official multiculturalism in Mexican government policy of the 1990s and into the twenty-first century.

Levey is currently working on transforming his dissertation into a book manuscript and he recently published two articles that grew out of his dissertation research:

“Making Liberation Theology Indigenous: The Seminario Regional del Sureste (SERESURE) and Indigenous Mexico, 1969-1990,” in Christian Bueschges, ed., Liberation Theology and the Other(s): Contextualizing Latin American Catholic Activism in the Second Half of the 20th Century. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021.

“‘A New Type of Priest:’ The Regional Seminary of the Southeast (SERESURE) and Indigenous Ministry in Mexico, 1969-1990,” Catholic Southwest: A Journal of History and Culture, Vol. 32, 2021.