The Center for Theology, Religious Studies, and Ethics is one of the research units under the Office of Research and Innovation whose area of research is in the fields of Theology, Religious Studies, Philosophy of Religion, and Philosophical Ethics.  It was established in 2013, through the mandate given the Rev. Fr. Herminio Dagohoy, OP, Rector of the University, in response to the need of the University to have a Center that will encourage faculty members to be actively involved in ethical and theological discourses through research and other forms of scientific activity to help clarify pressing issues that have religious and moral implications, and also to promote research in the said fields with the end view of contributing in the advancement of knowledge.

The Center has been preceded by the Center for Contextualized Theology and Ethics established in July 2002 by the then Rector, Rev. Fr. Tamerlane Lana, OP, with Fr. Vicente Cajilig, OP as its first Director. In 2006 the Center was restructured giving birth to two separate units, namely, the John Paul II Research Center for the Ecclesiastical Sciences under the directorship of Fr. Gerard Francisco Timoner, OP, and the UST Center for Ethics headed at first by Fr. Pablo Tiong, OP, and then by Fr. Fausto Gomez, OP. Both research units were dissolved in 2009. The establishment of the present Center for Religious Studies and Ethics addresses the lacuna in the research configuration of the University in the areas of Theology, Religious Studies and Ethics which were left to the personal initiative of the faculty researchers interested in the said fields of study without an organized system of support coming from the University since the dissolution of the said two institutes.