Who we are
The North American Academy of Ecumenists is a community of ecumenical scholars and activists from a wide variety of Christian traditions across North America. We promote scholarship, church life, and pastoral practice in the service of Christian Unity and bring together ecumenists, theologians, liturgists, graduate students, church officials, clergy, religious and laity actively pursuing Christian unity. Membership benefits include a subscription to the prestigious Journal of Ecumenical Studies.
Dr. Jakob Rinderknecht
President
Jakob Karl Rinderknecht is the Director of the Honors Program and an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of the Incarnate Word (San Antonio, TX). He studies how embodiment and culture shape the Catholic Church in its internal and external relationships.
Recent works include Mapping the Differentiated Consensus of the Joint Declaration, (Palgrave, 2016, winner of the Harding Meyer Prize in Ecumenism) and a critical translation of Karl Rahner’s An Ecumenical Priesthood: The Spirit of God and the Structure of the Church (Fortress, 2022). His current work argues that the field of ecumenism must attend to the intra-ecclesial wounds that Christians have inflicted on each other by participating in colonialism, enslavement, and the ecclesial structures of abuse and exclusion.
Dr. Raimundo C. Barreto
Vice President
Raimundo C. Barreto, associate professor of World Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary, holds a bachelor’s degree in theology from Seminário Teológico Batista do Norte do Brasil, an MDiv degree from McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University, and a PhD in religion and society from Princeton Theological Seminary.
Before teaching at Princeton, he taught in his native Brazil and was the director of the Division on Freedom and Justice at the Baptist World Alliance. Barreto is the author of Protesting Poverty: Protestants, Social Ethics, and the Poor in Brazil (Baylor University Press, 2023) and Base Ecumenism: A Latin American Contribution to Ecumenical Praxis and Theology (Augsburg Fortress, 2025). He is working on a new book titled Christians in the City of São Paulo: The Shaping of World Christianity in a Brazilian Megacity (Bloomsbury). He is also the co-editor of the Journal of World Christianity, the general editor of the World Christianity and Public Religion Series published by Fortress Press (2017–24), and a convener of the World Christianity Conference. He has published dozens of journal articles and book chapters, and has served on boards and committees of various organizations, including the Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations (CoNGO), Hispanic Theological Initiative (HTI), Overseas Ministries Study Center (OMSC), Baptist World Alliance (BWA), Aliança de Batistas do Brasil, American Baptist Churches (ABCUSA), the Alliance of Baptists, the National Council of Churches USA, and the World Council of Churches (WCC).
Dr. Aaron T. Hollander
Immediate Past President
Dr. Aaron T. Hollander is Associate Director of Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute, Editor of Ecumenical Trends, and Adjunct Faculty in Theology at Fordham University.
He serves on the steering committee of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network and on the faculty of the Summer Course in Ecumenism at the Centro Pro Unione in Rome; he was President of the NAAE from 2022-2024. He is a scholar of contextual theology and lived religion, with his PhD from the University of Chicago, MPhil from Trinity College Dublin, and BA from Swarthmore College. His research foci include the dynamics of ecumenical/interreligious conflict and coexistence, the aesthetic texture and political power of holiness (particularly in Orthodox Christianity), and the circulation of theological understanding beyond explicitly religious settings. His first book is entitled Saint George Liberator: Hagiography and Resistance in the Modern Mediterranean (Fordham, 2025). He is active in the Episcopal Church and cherishes his interreligious heritage (Christian and Jewish).
Dr. Joey Baker
Secretary
Joey Baker is the Administrative Assistant of the Southern California Christian Forum. He studies ecumenical methodology, with secondary interests in world Christianity and Pentecostal hymnody.
He received his PhD from Fuller Theological Seminary. He was an invited contributor to the Stewards Programme of the Karlsruhe Assembly of the World Council of Churches and currently serves as the Interim Chair of the Southern California Commission on Faith and Order. He is a lay member of the Assemblies of God.