Ruth Padilla DeBorst (Ph.D., Boston University) has a heritage spanning Latin America—from Ecuador and Argentina to her current home in Costa Rica. Moreover, her North American graduate education, frequent speaking engagements, and now a position at an established theological seminary (Western, in Michigan) gives her literally a pan-American perspective.

In this interview, she tells us why she went back to an elite university to earn a doctorate, having already launched her career. She helps us understand how an evangelical in Latin America who engages in social concerns avoids the failed options of socialism or communism while also avoiding the extreme politics, including human-rights abuses, of evangelical-backed regimes in Guatemala, Brazil, and elsewhere. Along the way, we meet inspiring figures such as Canadian scholar and ethicist Ron Sider, American missions historian Dana Robert, sociologist Nancy Ammerman—and Ruth’s mom and dad, both formidable people. And Ruth lets us know what she thinks about the baleful effects of toxic masculinity, both native machismo and imported patriarchalism (and, yes, she takes aim at The Gospel Coalition).

Soft-spoken, gracious, articulate, and authentic, Ruth Padilla DeBorst offers us a Christian alternative to the loud, harsh, simplistic, and artificial versions of evangelicalism so popular in the northern third of the Americas. Come sit a while in Costa Rica with John and Ruth.