Rate My Professor Lis Valle-Ruiz

Rev. Dr. Lis Valle-Ruiz is Associate Professor of Homiletics and Worship and Director of Community Worship Life at McCormick Theological Seminary. An ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) since 2013 and a member of the Presbytery of San Juan, Puerto Rico, she originally hails from Puerto Rico and combines her theological scholarship with prior experience as an actor and lawyer. Her academic background includes a PhD in Religion focusing on Homiletics and Liturgics from Vanderbilt University, where she also pursued studies in gender and sexuality; a ThM in Homiletics from Princeton Theological Seminary; an MDiv from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary; a JD from the University of Puerto Rico; and a BA in Education with an emphasis in Theater from the University of Puerto Rico. Valle-Ruiz has held positions such as Professor of Theology and Scripture at the Lux Summer Youth Institute, Monmouth College, Illinois, and provided worship and chaplaincy leadership in interdenominational gatherings. She has worked as a tutor, teacher, curriculum designer, artistic director, associate director for mission involvement, executive director of a not-for-profit organization, stewardship educator, event planner, artist in residence, worship fellow, and director of worship life.

Valle-Ruiz's research specializations center on performance theory, trauma theory, decolonial and queer studies, and their applications to worship and preaching practices. Her key publications include co-editing the book Unmasking White Preaching: Racial Hegemony, Resistance, and Possibilities in Preaching (Lexington Books, 2022). She has contributed essays to Liturgy Journal; Preaching in/and the Borderlands (Pickwick Publications, 2020); Preaching the Manifold Grace of God: Theologies of Preaching in the Early Twenty-First Century, Volume 2 (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2022); and The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Latinoax Theology, Second Edition (John Wiley & Sons, 2023). Her dissertation, “As One Among Many: Affirming a Multitude of Embodied Preaching Practices” (Vanderbilt University), and article “Toward Postcolonial Liturgical Preaching: Drawing on the Pre-Columbian Caribbean Religion of the Taínos” (Homiletic Online Journal, 2015), underscore her scholarly contributions. A fellow with the Forum for Theological Exploration and the Hispanic Theological Initiative/Consortium, she holds memberships in the Academy of Homiletics, the North American Academy of Liturgy, and the ARC Creative Collaborative for Theopoetics.