Connecting Communities Through Faith

In 2021, Sarah Solis was a school teacher in a southern Texas town, where the majority of students in her classroom had recently arrived from Mexico. Working with those students, and witnessing the struggles of immigrants at the border, forced her to think deeply about her Mexican-American heritage and her faith.

“I had a lot of tensions about what was happening on the border — 10 minutes away from my home,” she says. “I began to have a lot of questions about, OK, what is the church’s role… in addressing this?”

Now a second-year Master of Divinity student at Duke University Divinity School, Solis believes that the Hispanic House of Studies, known as La Casa, is helping her grow spiritually while finding answers to that question. La Casa is a resource center for students, pastors and congregations, providing support for their ministry to the Hispanic/Latino community.

“Hispanic House has been able to not only give me space in the community and a network of people who are serving immigrant congregations here in North Carolina,” she says, “but has also given me experiences that deepen my understanding of the impacts of immigration policies and decisions in the Hispanic/Latino communities I want to serve.”

In the 1990s, those communities grew rapidly, from approximately 67,000 to more than 1.1 million by 2020. Recognizing a need for trained faith leaders to serve these new residents, the North Carolina and Western North Carolina conferences of the United Methodist Church joined forces with Duke Divinity and The Duke Endowment’s Rural Church program area in 2007 to create the Hispanic House of Studies.

Now known as La Casa, the Hispanic House recently celebrated its quinceanera, a milestone age of 15 years in Hispanic/Latino culture that marks emergence into adulthood. It is now a fundamental part of Duke Divinity’s ability to prepare leaders like Sarah for ministry in Hispanic/Latino communities. Its strength as a resource to respond to change and prepare for the future extends beyond the campus of Duke University, too.

“It illustrates the creativity of The Duke Endowment in supporting something that does not immediately seem to grow out of supporting the rural church. And yet… it connects to the broad church because it connects to the ecology of North Carolina,” said Edgardo Colón-Emeric, dean of the Duke Divinity School and founder of La Casa.

Sarah Solis feels fortunate to be a part of that spiritual ecology.

“I am very blessed to serve in a Hispanic, Spanish-speaking congregation here in the Triangle area. We are living life together — this is church — this is familia.”

Learn more about Hispanic House, Duke University Divinity School.