Read letters from Alice Winters
December 2011
Advent 2010
November 2010
February 26, 2010
December 16, 2008
March 21, 2008
November 2007
For older letters, contact Mission Connections
Rev. Alice Winters
Alice retired from service as a PC(USA) mission co-worker in February 2012.
The Rev. Alice Winters teaches Bible and biblical languages in the School of Theology of the Reformed University of Colombia. She is also on the editorial council of RIBLA (acronym in Spanish for the Journal of Latin American Biblical Studies) and participates in ecumenical Bible study programs for the Latin American Society of Biblical Scholars. She has translated several Old and New Testament textbooks into Spanish and has numerous publications in Spanish and English in the areas of biblical studies and mission. She has been under appointment since she was commissioned in 1977.
The Reformed University was granted official recognition by Colombian government in 2002 and provides leadership training for many different denominations along the Caribbean coast of Colombia. The university stresses the study of Scripture in the original languages and seeks to integrate all theological studies in the context of the social and economic situation in Latin America. In addition to candidates for the gospel ministry (and a number of pastors who never had a chance to study theology) many students in the university are laypersons, often professionals in other fields who are active church leaders and seek theological training in order to relate their faith to their secular work and their daily lives.
In response to the increasing violence in Colombia, Alice, along with others in the Presbyterian Church of Colombia, has become involved in the struggle for human rights. She is active in the Ecumenical Network of Churches and Christian Organizations for Human Rights and in the work with displaced persons in the area of Barranquilla, where she lives.
Alice Winters is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and worked as a tax law specialist for the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in Washington, D.C. Her involvement in an inner-city Washington church led to her call to the gospel ministry, and she worked as pastoral assistant at Sixth Presbyterian Church in Washington before her studies at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts.
During a year as an exchange student at the Latin American Biblical Seminary in Costa Rica, she discovered an abiding interest in the “revolutionary dimensions of the gospel” as a theological imperative in the struggle against poverty, injustice, and oppression. She first went to Colombia in 1977 to direct a program of leadership training among rural pastors in the jungle wilderness of northwest Colombia, incorporating health, agriculture, and community development into theological education. In 1983 she joined the faculty of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary, predecessor to the School of Theology of the Reformed University, and served as its president from 1987-1992. She was the first woman to be named president of a seminary in Latin America.
Alice was ordained to the ministry of Word and Sacrament in 1977 in Sixth Church, Washington, D.C., and is a clergy member of National Capital Presbytery.
Birthday: October 30
