Chairs Workshop: Best Practices: Diversifying Your Faculty – Honest Conversations

Friday - 9:00 am-4:30 pm
CC-24A

Sponsored by the Academic Relations Committee and the Status of Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession Committee

Miguel A. De La Torre, Iliff School of Theology, Presiding

Panelists:

Edwin David Aponte, Lancaster Theological Seminary

Grace Ji-Sun Kim, Moravian Theological Seminary

Akintunde Ebunolu Akinade, High Point University

Sharon Watson Fluker, Fund for Theological Education

Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Brite Divinity School

Fumitaka Matsuoka, Pacific School of Religion

Separate registration is required.

Abstract

Chairs Workshop: Best Practices: Diversifying Your Faculty – Honest Conversations

Sponsored by the Academic Relations Committee and the Status of Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession Committee

The workshop will deal with issues on how to diversify the academic institution, specifically the student body and the administration. Based on the Career Guide for Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession, the program will be an honest and open discussion on good practices to follow along with pitfalls to avoid. Plenary, panels, and interactive break-out sessions will be featured. Featured speakers include Sharon Watson Fluker, Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Edwin Aponte, and Fumitaka Matsuoka. Breakout sessions will be led by Edwin Aponte, Grace Ji-Sun Kim, Akintude Akinade, and Miguel A. De La Torre.

Leadership Workshop: The Religion Major and Liberal Education

Friday - 9:00 am-4:30 pm
CC-24C

Timothy M. Renick, Georgia State University, Presiding

Panelists:

Richard M. Carp, Appalachian State University

Nadine S. Pence, Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion

Stephen Prothero, Boston University

Separate registration is required.

Abstract

Leadership Workshop: The Religion Major and Liberal Education

Amid changing global and academic contexts, what is the nature and role of the religion major? What are its goals, and how do they relate to the goals of a liberal education? How do we know if we are succeeding in meeting these goals? The workshop will bring together a distinguished group of experts to lead a day-long and interactive discussion of the religion major. Through plenaries, panels, and breakout sections, participants will explore and share challenges, best practices, success stories, and failures. The workshop is part of an eighteen-month-long joint AAR/Teagle Foundation project to study the religion major.

Preliminary Agenda:

Introduction: Why Religious Studies?

Establishing the Religious Studies Major: Stories from the Trenches (interactive session)

Religious Studies Across the Curriculum: The Interdisciplinary Nature of the Major (panel discussion)

Lunch

The Major in Different Institutional Contexts/Different Models for the Major (interactive session)

What has worked? What has not? (panel discussion followed by a break-out session)

Summary: What Have We Learned (as a Discipline and Today)?

The workshop will be of benefit to a range of participants: faculty, administrators, and graduate students. The goal is to bring a diverse group of AAR members together in an lively and open discussion about what it means to major in religion, what our field contributes (and should contribute) to the education of our students, and how we can be better at what we do.

AAR Board of Directors Meeting

Friday - 9:00 am-5:00 pm
MM-Manchester

Jeffrey L. Stout, Princeton University, Presiding

Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies

Friday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
GH-Edward C

North American Paul Tillich Society

Theme: Paul Tillich and Jewish Thought
 

Friday - 9:00 am-11:15 am
GH-Manchester A

Marcia MacLennan, Kansas Wesleyan University, Presiding

Theme: Paul Tillich and Jewish Thought

Bryan Wagoner, Harvard University

Judaism in the Life and Thought of Paul Tillich

Anne Marie Reijnen, Faculté Universitaire de Théologie Protestante, Brussels, Institut Catholique de Paris

Liberal Theology, Zionism, and Christian Nationalism: A Topical Inquiry into the Dialogue between Paul Tillich and Martin Buber

Stephen Butler Murray, Skidmore College

The Relevance of Paul Tillich to the Future of the Jewish-Christian Dialogue

Religion and Media Workshop: Religion and New Media -- Old Tools or New Trajectories?

Friday - 10:00 am-6:00 pm
CC-25A

S. Brent Plate, Texas Christian University, Kaley Middlebrooks Carpenter, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Jenna Tiitsman, Auburn Theological Seminary, City University of New York, Presiding

Jeffrey Sharlet, New York University

Eddo Stern, Los Angeles, CA

Tracy Fullerton, University of Southern California

Heidi Ann Campbell, Texas A&M University

Separate registration is required.

Abstract

Religion and Media Workshop: Religion and New Media -- Old Tools or New Trajectories?

From stone tablets to scrolls, printing presses to the Internet, artists, journalists, and believers of all stripes have used the advanced technology of their age. However, the question arises as to whether these new media are merely tools, or actually arbiters of religious change itself. This day-long workshop begins with questions such as: How is the representation of religion effected in new media incarnations, from the Internet to gaming? How is new media changing traditional journalism, and what are the effects on religion reporting? Could new media even be changing religion itself, in terms of what it means to those who practice it--or even how it is practiced? These are some of the issues covered in presentations by Jeff Sharlet (writer/editor of The Revealer, Harpers, Rolling Stone; Eddo Stern (Game Designer;, Tracy Fullerton (Game Designer, USC); Ryan Bolger (co-author, Emerging Churches); and Heidi Campbell (author, When Religion Meets New Media).

North American Paul Tillich Society

Theme: Paul Tillich as Biblical Theologian
 

Friday - 11:30 am-1:15 pm
GH-Manchester A

Loye Ashton, Tougaloo College, Presiding

Theme: Paul Tillich as Biblical Theologian

Ron MacLennan, Bethany College

Paul Tillich: Biblical Theologian of Connectedness

Francis Ching-Wah Yip, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Tillich as a New Testament Theologian?

Matthew Lon Weaver, Duluth, MN

The Existential Reception of Revelation: Paul Tillich as Biblical Theologian

Women's Caucus Workshop

Friday - 12:00 pm-3:00 pm
MM-Columbia 2

Sponsored by the Women's Caucus

Julie J. Kilmer, Olivet College, Harriet Luckman, College of Mount St. Joseph, and Paula Trimble-Familetti, Chapman University, Presiding

Melissa Stewart, Adrian College
Intersections between Women’s Studies and Religious Studies

Barbara J. Searcy, Lee University
Organizing Women’s Groups on College Campuses

Mary Keller, University of Wyoming
Online Teaching: What Five Years Have Taught Me

Ruth Fitzgerald, Grand Ledge, MI
Distance Learning—More Than Theology: A Student Perspective

Nancy L. Eiesland, Emory University
Accessing Feminist Theology: The Missing Subjectivity of Women with Disabilities

Kathryn A. Lyndes, Chicago Theological Seminary, Elmhurst College
Contemporary Strategies for Adjunct Classroom Teaching

Abstract

Women's Caucus Workshop

Sponsored by the Women's Caucus

Includes three mini-sessions on Strategies for Women in the Profession, Women and Online Teaching, and Women in the Classroom.

International Bonhoeffer Society: Editorial Board, Annual Meeting, Board of Directors

Friday - 1:00 pm-6:30 pm
MM-Marina G

North American Association for the Study of Religion

Theme: Ritual Transformation of Agency
 

Friday - 1:00 pm-3:30 pm
CC-23A

Theme: Ritual Transformation of Agency

Jens Kreinath, Wichita State University and University of Heidelberg

Mimesis, Fractal Dynamics, and Agency in Yoruba Spirit Possessions

Gustavo Benavides, Villanova University

Priestly, Institutional, and Material Agency in Roman Catholic Sacramental Practice

Steven Engler, Mount Royal College and Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo

Patronage and Distributed Agency in Brazilian Spirit-possession

Responding:

Ivan Strenski, University of California, Riverside

Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies

Friday - 1:00 pm-3:30 pm
GH-Edward C

Thomas F. Torrance Theological Fellowship

Friday - 1:00 pm-3:30 pm
GH-Betsy B

1:00 pm Business Meeting

2:00 pm Eric G. Flett, Eastern University

Persons, Powers, and Pluralities: Thomas F. Torrance's Trinitarian Ontology of Culture

See www.tftorrance.org for more information.

Person, Culture, and Religion Group

Friday - 2:00 pm-6:30 pm
CC-29B

North American Paul Tillich Society

Theme: Paul Tillich and Religious Pluralism
 

Friday - 2:15 pm-4:00 pm
GH-Manchester A

John Thatamanil, Vanderbilt University, Presiding

Theme: Paul Tillich and Religious Pluralism

Christian Danz, University of Vienna

Christianity and the Encounter of World Religions: The Contribution of Paul Tillich to Current Discussions in the Theology of Religion

John Starkey, Oklahoma City University

The Human Predicament and Salvation in Tillich and Thatamanil

Andrew Yan, Hope College

Paul Tillich's Encounters with Buddhism: An Implication for His Systematic Theology

Luis Pedraja, Middle States Commission on Higher Education

The Tao of Tillich

North American Association for the Study of Religion

Theme: Novelty, Presence, and History: Brief Pre-Modern Discourses on Method and Theory
 

Friday - 4:00 pm-6:30 pm
CC-23A

Theme: Novelty, Presence, and History: Brief Pre-Modern Discourses on Method and Theory

Alison Frazier, University of Texas, Austin

Saintly Presence: The Wager of Latin Hagiography in Renaissance Italy

Nancy Levene, Indiana University, Bloomington

Traces of History in St. Anselm

Constance Furey, Indiana University, Bloomington

Utopian History

Responding:

Nathan Rein, Ursinus College

Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality

Theme: Teaching for Justice: Research and Teaching Strategies in Higher Theological Education
 

Friday - 4:00 pm-6:00 pm
MM-Marina D

Theme: Teaching for Justice: Research and Teaching Strategies in Higher Theological Education

Given that we are to live and work toward justice within most faith traditions’ perspectives, how does our scholarship and practice encourage “teaching for justice” within institutions of higher education? A panel of scholar-teachers will respond to this question with observations (via programming, syllabi, and/or course assignments) from their research and teaching of spirituality. For more information, please contact Anita Houck at ahouck@saintmarys.edu.

Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies

Theme: In or Out: Homosexuality, the Church, and the Sangha
 

Friday - 4:00 pm-6:30 pm
GH-Manchester G

Harry Wells, Humboldt State University, Presiding

Theme: In or Out: Homosexuality, the Church, and the Sangha

Robert Fastiggi, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit

The Catholic Church and Homosexuality

Ilene Stanford, Harvard University

In or Out? Marriage as a Social Practice

José Ignacio Cabezón, University of California, Santa Barbara

Is Homosexual Sex "Sexual Misconduct"? Critical Reflections on Some Classical Indo-Tibetan Sources

Michael Sweet, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Shameless Discretion: Insider and Outsider Perspectives of Homoeroticism in the Sangha

Responding:

Richard Reilly, St. Bonaventure University

6:00 pm Business Meeting

Polanyi Society

Friday - 4:00 pm-6:00 pm
GH-Edward B

Jere Moorman, Polanyi Society, Presiding

4:00 pm William Coulson, Center for Studies of the Person

On Having Misread Polanyi’s Theory of Personal Knowledge

Responding:

Dale Cannon, Western Oregon University

Philip Rolnick, St Thomas University

5:15 pm William Kelleher, La Canada, CA

Personal Knowledge as Pure Self-Reflection

Responding:

Phil Mullins, Western Missouri State University

Diane Yeager, Georgetown University

Karl Barth Society of North America

Friday - 4:00 pm-6:30 pm
CC-29C

Mark McInroy, Harvard University

Karl Barth and Personalist Philosophy: A Critical Appropriation

John McDowell, Edinburgh University

Christology and Prayer in Karl Barth's Theology

North American Paul Tillich Society

Theme: Paul Tillich, Ethics, and Theology
 

Friday - 4:15 pm-6:30 pm
GH-Manchester A

David Nikkel, University of North Carolina, Pembroke, Presiding

Theme: Paul Tillich, Ethics, and Theology

Daniel Puchalla, University of Chicago

The Limits of Love, Power, and Justice: Tillich's Ontology and Theology against “Full-Spectrum” Military

Annekatrien Depoorter, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Doing Theology in a Context of Religious and Cultural Pluralism: A Comparison and Evaluation of Paul Tillich’s Method of Correlation and the Theological Method of Edward Schillebeeckx

Jennifer L. Baldwin, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

Erotic Play: A Trip into the Secret Lives of Girls, Feminist Theologies of the Erotic, and the Theological Thought of Paul Tillich

Sigridur Gotmarsdottir, Drew University

The Apophatic “God above God”: Tillich and the Poststructuralist Critique of Negative Theology

Søren Kierkegaard Society Banquet

Friday - 6:00 pm-10:00 pm
Offsite

Athens Market Taverna

109 West "F" Street

6:00 pm Social Hour

7:00 pm Banquet (Contact Lee Barrett at lbarrett@lancasterseminary.edu)

8:00 pm K. Brian Soderquist, Søren Kierkegaard Center, University of Copenhagen

Using the New Translation of the Journals and Notebooks

EIS Center Orientation

Friday - 7:00 pm-9:00 pm
GH-Elizabeth

Sponsored by the EIS Advisory Committee

Shelly C. Roberts, American Academy of Religion, Presiding

Abstract

EIS Center Orientation

Sponsored by the EIS Advisory Committee

The EIS Center orientation will feature a short presentation which will include an overview of the center, an explanation of how to best utilize the center, and a question and answer session. After the presentation, the center will be open for use, with the exception of the Interview Hall. Employers will be able to review candidate credentials, leave messages for registered candidates, and make reservations for booth space. Candidates will be able to pick up their copy of the Annual Meetings Special Edition of Openings, and leave messages for employers. The center will also accepting onsite registrations at this time. Employers and candidates are encouraged to participate in orientation but are not required to attend.

Society for the Arts in Religious and Theological Studies Reception

Friday - 7:00 pm-8:30 pm
MM-Coronado

Society for Hindu-Christian Studies

Theme: How We Do Hindu-Christian Studies
 

Friday - 7:00 pm-11:00 pm
GH-Molly B

Theme: How We Do Hindu-Christian Studies

This panel seeks broad audience participation in a discussion of methods, theories, and approaches in the field of Hindu-Christian studies. Panelists will make brief remarks based on papers that will be made available in advance on the HCS listserv, and audience members will then be invited to join in the discussion. To sign up for the listserv or to get copies (after Nov. 2), please email: cbauman@butler.edu.

T. S. Rukmani, Concordia University, Presiding

Harold Coward, University of Victoria

Hindu-Christian Studies: A Retrospective

Susan Abraham, Harvard Divinity School

Theological Approaches to Hindu-Christian Studies

Brian K. Pennington, Maryville College

Historical-Critical Approaches to Hindu-Christian Studies

Arvind Sharma, McGill University

Hindu-Christian Studies through the Lens of Ethics

Catherine Cornille, Boston College

Missiology and Hindu-Christian Studies

Kristin Bloomer, University of Chicago

Ethnography and Hindu-Christian Studies

Responding:

T. S. Rukmani, Concordia University

The Future of Hindu-Christian Studies

Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality

Theme: Dying to Live: A Film and Conversation about Spirituality on the Borderlands
 

Friday - 7:00 pm-9:30 pm
CC-24B

Theme: Dying to Live: A Film and Conversation about Spirituality on the Borderlands

How does “crossing the border” affect one's spirituality? In this session, the short film Dying to Live will be shown, followed by a panel discussion with Mexican migrants and others whose lives are profoundly shaped by the tense reality of the U.S.-Mexican border. All are welcome to attend and to stay after the discussion to view displays and share conversation. For more information, please contact Anita Houck at ahouck@saintmarys.edu.

Arts Series/Films: Jesus Camp

Friday - 7:30 pm-9:00 pm
GH-Betsy B

Sponsored by the Religion, Film, and Visual Culture Group

Rachel Wagner, Ithaca College, Presiding

Abstract

Arts Series/Films: Jesus Camp

Sponsored by the Religion, Film, and Visual Culture Group

This documentary film provides a window into life at the Pentecostal youth camp "Kids on Fire" and by extension also portrays some of the most controversial religious and political aspirations of evangelical Christians in America today. Discussing the making of the film, the directors have expressed their affection for the people they filmed; however, the barrage of heated commentary surrounding the film has raised questions about the objectivity of the filmmakers in their selection and presentation of material. The film therefore provides a window not only into a segment of conservative Christianity but also into the challenges of religious documentary filmmaking. Directed by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, 2006

Arts Series/Films: King of Masks

Friday - 7:30 pm-9:00 pm
GH-Betsy A

Sponsored by the Women and Religion Section, Confucian Traditions Group, and Daoist Studies Consultation

Jonathan Herman, Georgia State University, Presiding

Abstract

Arts Series/Films: King of Masks

Sponsored by the Women and Religion Section, Confucian Traditions Group, and Daoist Studies Consultation

This touching and provocative film, set in a remote part of China during the 1930s, tells the story of an elderly street performer who makes a marginal living by plying a unique craft which has passed from father to son for generations. Mindful that he has failed his familial duties by having no male heir, the old man reluctantly visits a harrowing black market, where he adopts/purchases a young boy to carry on the family name, as well as the ancient family art of silk masks. However, the boy is hiding a secret, one which challenges the old man's most deeply ingrained beliefs. King of Masks offers an intriguing glimpse into Chinese family values, gender relations, and the sometimes dysfunctional legacy of Confucian ethics. In Mandarin Chinese, with English subtitles. Directed by Tian-Ming Wu, 1996.

AAR Regional Officers Breakfast

Saturday - 7:00 am-8:45 am
CC-29A

Jacqueline Z. Pastis, La Salle University, Presiding

Abstract

AAR Regional Officers Breakfast

The Regional AAR Officers Breakfast Meeting is scheduled for Saturday morning, 7:00-8:45 am, at the AAR annual meeting in San Diego. AAR Executive Director Jack Fitzmier will offer brief comments followed by a report from the Regions Committee. We will then open the floor for discussion and networking.

International Schleiermacher Society

Saturday - 7:00 am-11:30 am
GH-Emma B

8:00 am Coffee and breakfast (bring your own)

9:00 am Wendy Farley

“Mind Reduced to the Necessity of Seeking": Opportunities for Buddhist -- Christian Dialogue in Schleiermacher's Theological Anthropology

10:00 am Ethics Series I: (papers pre-distributed beginning in July; contact Ted Vial, tvial@iliff.edu)

Peter Foley, University of Arizona

Schleiermacher's Critique of Previous Ethical Theories in the 1803 Grundlinien

Jeffery Kinlaw, McMurray University

Schleiermacher's Critique of Fichte's Political Philosophy

11:15 am Planning

11:45 am-12:45 pm Adjourn to nearby restaurant for lunch

Society for the Arts in Religious and Theological Studies

Saturday - 7:00 am-11:30 am
CC-30D

9:00 am Welcome

Wilson Yates, SARTS President

9:10 am Presentations by 2006 SARTS Fellowship Award Winners:

Maureen O¹Connell

Stephen Lösel

Rebecca Davis

David Friend

Winners of the 2006 SARTS Fellowship Awards will present their projects, ranging from murals in inner-city Philadelphia to the music of Mozart, and from the cuadros of Peruvian women to Reformation architecture in Europe.

10:50 am Break

11:00 am Business Meeting

For additional information regarding this session, visit us online at www.SARTS.org, or contact Kimberly Vrudny at 1-651-962-5337, kjvrudny@stthomas.edu.

Theological Education Steering Committee Meeting

Saturday - 7:30 am-9:00 am
GH-Mohsen A

John Thatamanil, Vanderbilt University, Presiding

Academic Relations Committee Meeting

Saturday - 7:30 am-9:00 am
MM-Encinitas

Fred Glennon, Le Moyne College, Presiding

Student Liaison Group Annual Business Meeting

Saturday - 7:30 am-9:00 am
GH-Ford BC

Davina C. Lopez, Eckerd College, Presiding

Abstract

Student Liaison Group Annual Business Meeting

Student Liaison Group members will gather to discuss business.

International Members' Breakfast

Saturday - 7:45 am-8:45 am
GH-Manchester A

Richard M. Jaffe, Duke University, Presiding

Abstract

International Members' Breakfast

All AAR international attendees are invited to an information session and continental breakfast hosted by the AAR’s International Connections Committee.

Publications Committee Meeting

Saturday - 8:00 am-11:30 am
GH-Madeleine A

Francis X. Clooney, Harvard University, Presiding

Special Topics Forum

Theme: What’s My Job? Academic Citizenship and the Well-being of Schools, Departments, and Programs
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
MM-Point Loma

Sponsored by the Academic Relations Committee

Fred Glennon, Le Moyne College, Presiding

Theme: What’s My Job? Academic Citizenship and the Well-being of Schools, Departments, and Programs

Panelists:

Mark Schwehn, Valparaiso University

Elizabeth Conde-Frazier, Claremont School of Theology

Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Georgetown University

Louis A. Ruprecht, Georgia State University

Abstract

Special Topics Forum

Theme: What’s My Job? Academic Citizenship and the Well-being of Schools, Departments, and Programs

Sponsored by the Academic Relations Committee

Professors’ jobs are often described as "three-legged stools," supported by scholarship, teaching, and "service." This session reframes "service"' as "citizenship" and what it means to be a good citizen of the academy. Topics will include understanding and effectively engaging in shared governance, collaboration and collegiality, and representing the Academy in/to the public. As a special focus, we will ask about the impacts of the growing percentage of part-time and temporary faculty members in our institutions (e.g., how does this affect the citizenship requirements of the shrinking tenure-line faculty, what citizenship responsibilities accompany part-time and temporary faculty work, what responsibilities do tenure line faculty have toward part-time and temporary faculty as fellow citizens of our institutions?).

Special Topics Forum

Theme: Studies of World Religions in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
MM-New York

Sponsored by the International Connections Committee

Jin Hee Han, New York Theological Seminary, Presiding

Theme: Studies of World Religions in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan

Panelists:

Archie Lee, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Weichi Zhou, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Yen-zen Tsai, National Chengchi University

Mu-Chou Poo, Academia Sinica

Responding:

Kwok Pui Lan, Episcopal Divinity School

Abstract

Special Topics Forum

Theme: Studies of World Religions in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan

Sponsored by the International Connections Committee

Visiting scholars participating in the China Focus will speak about the state of the field in China in the study of various religious traditions, including Chinese religious traditions, Christianity, and Islam. The participants will include Archie Lee, Weichi Zhou, Yen-zen Tsai, and Mu-chou Poo. Kwok Pui Lan and Jin Hee Han will moderate the session.

Academic Teaching and the Study of Religion Section

Theme: What Happens When a Body Teaches a Body?
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
CC-23A

Rodger Nishioka, Columbia Theological Seminary, Presiding

Theme: What Happens When a Body Teaches a Body?

Joel Dubois, California State University, Sacramento
Teaching Religion in “Real-time”: Applying the Calendrical Approach to Asian Religious Traditions

Stanford J. Searl, Union Institute and University
Embodied Knowledge: Teaching and Listening as Informed Spiritual Practices

Lynne Westfield, Drew University
Teaching in the Flesh: Experimenting with Incarnational Practices in Seminary Classrooms

G. William Barnard, Southern Methodist University
Stepping across Boundaries: Ritual Praxis Inside (and Outside) the Religious Studies Classroom

Jack A. Hill, Texas Christian University
The Borderlands as Liminal Context of Revelatory Experience: Embodied Pedagogies from Faculty of Color

Abstract

Academic Teaching and the Study of Religion Section

Theme: What Happens When a Body Teaches a Body?

This session addresses one of the hottest but most contested subjects in the teaching of religious studies: embodied learning. The presenters will cover a range of teaching situations, hands-on ideas for classroom application, and pedagogical issues dealing with the body-learning of students and body-identities of teachers.

Teaching Religion in “Real-time”: Applying the Calendrical Approach to Asian Religious Traditions
Joel Dubois, California State University, Sacramento

Scholars are increasingly recognizing that the study of religious ideas and history needs to be balanced with the study of lived religion. But many religion courses taught in academic settings continue to feature historical periods and key ideas, with only secondary reference to practice, place, and time, making it particularly important to disseminate information about alternative models for teaching about lived religion. This presentation features the calendrical approach modeled by Professor Jon Levenson's "Judaism: the Liturgical Year" course at Harvard Divinity School. Using samples of primary source readings, the presentation demonstrates that the calendrical approach can be applied with equal success to Asian religions and is well suited to a variety of student audiences and institutional contexts. Instructors of Asian religion interested in experimenting with the method will also be directed to online lists of relevant resources.

Embodied Knowledge: Teaching and Listening as Informed Spiritual Practices
Stanford J. Searl, Union Institute and University

This will be an experiential presentation that invites participants to worship together, creating a pedagogical version about what it can mean to engage in a process of sacred inquiry through worship sharing and listening. Drawing upon the theoretical frameworks from psychology and spirituality, including the work of Carl Rogers, Eugene Gendlin, and George Kalamaras, this will be an active, embodied, and participatory session that investigates, in some collaborative manner, the potential for a worship-sharing process of inquiry and learning. This session will have particular relevance to teachers interested in how to apply the concepts of embodied knowledge, with particular attention to active and spiritually informed listening as a way of teaching.

Teaching in the Flesh: Experimenting with Incarnational Practices in Seminary Classrooms
Lynne Westfield, Drew University

This essay analyzes a three-year pilot project concerning teaching practices and syllabus design for incarnational pedagogy. While many educators are aware of Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy (1956) concerning educational behavior, few are aware of his three-pronged theory which moves beyond knowledge and includes affect and body as necessary behaviors of learning for adults. The irony, in theological education, is that while much attention is given to explaining and critiquing incarnational theologies, little attention is given to incarnational pedagogical practices for body, mind, and spirit. With the premise that sound education for competent church leadership must include body, mind, and spirit, the essay discusses the development of this intensive course titled "Ministry and Imagination" and the learnings we have gained about teaching with, through, and to the body. The essay extrapolates principles and practices of incarnational pedagogy from the pilot project research and suggests implications for seminary curriculum.

Stepping across Boundaries: Ritual Praxis Inside (and Outside) the Religious Studies Classroom
G. William Barnard, Southern Methodist University

During the past two decades, I have utilized a variety of experiential and participatory pedagogical modalities in my Religious Studies classes. For example, at various times students have, among other activities, made masks, drummed, watched their breath, or practiced Chi Kung. All of these non-orthodox activities are offered as a way to underscore and enliven the copious (and crucial) intellectual content that students must grapple with when taking one of my classes. In this paper, I will discuss in some detail two of the more complex and strikingly non-orthodox activities that I have integrated into two separate classes over the years. I will examine some of the difficulties and rewards of utilizing these techniques within a university setting, and I will also explore some of the ways in which a willingness to incorporate these types of exercises into the classroom challenges several current academic pedagogical assumptions.

The Borderlands as Liminal Context of Revelatory Experience: Embodied Pedagogies from Faculty of Color
Jack A. Hill, Texas Christian University

This paper argues that the borderlands--flashpoints of encounters with persons of different races, cultures, and classes--constitute potentially rich, liminal spaces for teaching and learning. It is based on recent qualitative interviews with religion and theology professors of color at colleges, universities, and seminaries throughout the U.S. who are committed to integrating experiences of marginalization into their teaching. The paper explores how faculty can more fully embody their teaching by transparently modeling multifaceted identities, deepening our awareness of dynamics of oppression, and providing insights for overcoming resistance to encounters with "the other" in the global neighborhood. The paper suggests how the use of creative teaching activities, texts from the margins, and personal metaphors of embodiment can liberate us from captivities to hegemonic paradigms. It concludes by proposing a list of "borderlands competencies" for educators who seek to take students to thresholds of new visions of self and community.

Christian Systematic Theology Section

Theme: Sin
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
CC-23B

Stephen G. Ray, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Presiding

Theme: Sin

Amy Carr, Western Illinois University
Enduring Radical Distrust: Sin and Redemption among the Sinned Against

Chris Boesel, Drew University
Contextualizing That by Which We Are Contextualized: The Aporiatic Predicament of a Systematic Treatment of Sin

Brian Robinette, Saint Louis University
Transfiguring the Victim: Jon Sobrino, René Girard, and the Resurrection

Krista Hughes, Drew University
Moving Violation: A Feminist Reclamation of the Incurvatio

Abstract

Christian Systematic Theology Section

Theme: Sin

Enduring Radical Distrust: Sin and Redemption among the Sinned Against
Amy Carr, Western Illinois University

Emerging Christian discourse about the “sinned-against” seeks to correct the tendency of Christian language about sin to address us primarily as sinners whose own actions are the source of a broken relationship to God. But Christian depictions of sin as distrust complicate efforts to distinguish our subjectivity as sinners and sinned-against, for one of the spiritual effects of being traumatized by another’s sin is precisely difficulty trusting God. Yet, how can theologians characterize such distrust as sin without implying that the sinned-against could have acted to prevent this sin from afflicting them? Building on biblical precedents for such naming, Flora Keshgegian’s arguments against speaking of the sinned-against as innocent, and Luther’s insights about God providentially stirring despair (and asking Christians to discern and endure the seemingly demonic masks of God), I will suggest several ways to enrich an account of sin and redemption from the perspective of the sinned-against.

Contextualizing That by Which We Are Contextualized: The Aporiatic Predicament of a Systematic Treatment of Sin
Chris Boesel, Drew University

Kierkegaard and Barth are enlisted to tease out a certain aporiatic predicament facing a systematic treatment of sin. Sin is a necessary theological category that resists efforts to define it and employ it as a theme for systematic ends as if the reality of sin were determinable by and contextualize-able within the work of Christian doctrine. It can, nevertheless, become “unhelpful” if and when (as too often happens) its necessity is allowed, systematically, to take on a disproportionate centrality in determining the doctrinal witness to the “Christian message” of Trinitarian activity. What is needed is a systematic approach to sin that both acknowledges the extent to which its reality as undomesticate-able, uncontextualize-able mystery exceeds the systematic intentions, efforts, and capacities of the theologian (and the reader of theology), while simultaneously witnessing to the limits of sin as contextualized by the Trinitarian activity to which Christian systematic theology attempts to point.

Transfiguring the Victim: Jon Sobrino, René Girard, and the Resurrection
Brian Robinette, Saint Louis University

This paper examines two distinctive, though complimentary proposals regarding the status of the victim in Christian theology. Engaging the work of Jon Sobrino and René Girard, it shows the importance of holding together in closest unity the themes of justice and forgiveness in Christian soteriology. The paper argues that the dialectical schema of victim/victimizer favored by Sobrino remains necessary to speak of God’s eschatological justice, but insufficient in accounting for God’s forgiveness and eschatological hospitality offered to both victims and victimizers. This is crucial to affirm since victimization is fiercely cyclical, as Girard’s work has shown. Only by receiving God’s offer of forgiveness in the risen victim can we perceive the depths of our guilt and complicity in the production of victims, even when bearing the mantle of justice. The “apocalyptic imagination” that energizes Sobrino’s project must be contextualized within the “paschal imagination” we find in the work of Girard.

Moving Violation: A Feminist Reclamation of the Incurvatio
Krista Hughes, Drew University

How might contemporary theology rethink sin as it is employed to describe the fundamental post-lapsarian character of humans as inescapably sinful? Starting from the confession that we understand sin only in light of divine grace, I seek to reconfigure this anthropological image according to a conception of grace that is thoroughly relational and dynamic and takes seriously the term’s aesthetic connotations. I focus my reflections through the figure of the homo incurvatus in se ipsum. While honoring feminist critiques of the Incurvatio’s appropriateness for describing woman’s sin, I suggest the Incurvatio does have applicability for women’s self-understanding as persons thirsting for grace, for it limns a self-consciousness and anaesthesia that bind women and men. If grace is that which nurtures our “knowing and feeling with” God and world, then sin names the flow of violating events –- toward the divine, the world, and ourselves –- that render us relationally insensible.

Comparative Studies in Religion Section and Religion in South Asia Section

Theme: Encounters in Ethnography Today
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
MM-Torrance

George Pati, Valparaiso University, Presiding

Theme: Encounters in Ethnography Today

Panelists:

Amy Allocco, Emory University

Neil Dalal, University of Texas, Austin

Karen Pechilis, Drew University

Bruce M. Sullivan, Northern Arizona University

Corinne Dempsey, University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point

Janet Gunn, University of Ottawa

Tracy Pintchman, Loyola University, Chicago

Selva J. Raj, Albion College

Abstract

Comparative Studies in Religion Section and Religion in South Asia Section

Theme: Encounters in Ethnography Today

Ethnography is not new to historians of religions, but such scholars have enthusiastically embraced this method in recent years. Factors that seem to encourage and validate today’s expanding interest include globalization, issues of authenticity, the conjoining of fieldwork with home, and the pervasiveness of mediated classrooms. This panel, whose members all study South Asian religious traditions, especially Hinduism, explores current issues in ethnographic discourse, including: practice’s reframing of text; home as field; and biography and ethnography. Short individual presentations will provide detailed observations of an ethnographic encounter and the significance it has for addressing wider issues in the understanding and practice of religion and ethnography. There will be ample time after the presentations for audience members to share their experiences as we work together as a group to find further connections among all the encounters that will help us determine what the experience of ethnography is teaching us today.

History of Christianity Section and North American Religions Section

Theme: War and Religion in North America
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
CC-24C

W. Clark Gilpin, University of Chicago and Harry Stout, Yale University, Presiding

Theme: War and Religion in North America

Panelists:

Edward J. Blum, San Diego State University

Ira Chernus, University of Colorado

Brandi Denison, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Jonathan Ebel, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Andrew Murphy, Valparaiso University

Abstract

History of Christianity Section and North American Religions Section

Theme: War and Religion in North America

This interactive discussion, featuring Professors W. Clark Gilpin and Harry Stout as moderators, explores the intersection of religion and war in the history and life of the United States. American historians have long seen wars as turning points in the American journey. From the “radicalism” of the American Revolution to the current “war on terror,” wars have fueled dramatic changes in the social, economic, and political lives of Americans. Yet many narratives of religion in the United States do not see war as a primary component in the making of American religion. Just how have wars shaped religious life and practice in the United States? And how, in turn, has religion shaped war, including its military, social, and cultural dimensions? This lively session asks its participants to muster their expertise in service to a critical issue in the life of the AAR and its members.

Philosophy of Religion Section

Theme: G.W.F. Hegel: 200 Years after The Phenomenology of Spirit
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
MM-Torrey 2

Joseph Prabhu, California State University, Los Angeles, University of Chicago, Presiding

Theme: G.W.F. Hegel: 200 Years after The Phenomenology of Spirit

Thomas A. Lewis, Brown University
Projection in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

Christopher Roberts, Reed College
From the Slaughterbench of History to the Golgotha of Absolute Spirit: Hegel’s Sacrificial Rhetoric and Philosophy’s Sublation of Religion

Andrew Hass, University of Stirling
Hegel and the Art of Negation

Alison Bjerke, University of California, Santa Barbara
Love and the Dialectic

Abstract

Philosophy of Religion Section

Theme: G.W.F. Hegel: 200 Years after The Phenomenology of Spirit

Projection in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
Thomas A. Lewis, Brown University

Hegel’s treatment of religion in the Phenomenology of Spirit offers a striking early account of religion as projection. Where philosophy presents spirit in the concepts of thought, religion portrays spirit through representations, consisting largely of images, allegory, and metaphor. Through its images, religion represents spirit as an other, so that even the religious community in which spirit is present remains “burdened with the antithesis of a beyond.” The Phenomenology — much more than the later Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion — stresses the need to move beyond religious representations to philosophical concepts. The subtlety of Hegel’s view of religion, however, appears in its much greater appreciation of religion’s importance than that found in most projectionist theories. While religion is to some degree alienating, Hegel portrays it as having a necessary and potentially positive social impact, rather than the deleterious consequences Feuerbach highlights.

From the Slaughterbench of History to the Golgotha of Absolute Spirit: Hegel’s Sacrificial Rhetoric and Philosophy’s Sublation of Religion
Christopher Roberts, Reed College

This presentation argues that, as Hegel attempted to demonstrate this movement from religion to philosophy (or, from religion’s viewpoint, to effect philosophy’s usurpation of religion’s rightful place in society), he deployed in various ways a sacrificial rhetoric that reformulated key notions such as piety, devotion and authority. To achieve this change, Hegel had to reconceive the very history of Christianity, and, along with this, notions of sacrifice in relation to a rather unorthodox conception of Geist. To examine Hegel’s claims to be a Lutheran, I will turn to the culminating pages of The Phenomenology of Spirit. This dense instance of sacrificial rhetoric provides a rich hermeneutical resource for understanding Hegel’s attempt to validate a great deal of religion’s influence in modern society, but at the same time carve out a distinct space for philosophy as its translator in the university and in society as a whole.

Hegel and the Art of Negation
Andrew Hass, University of Stirling

This paper will argue that Hegel’s Phenomenology presents a view of art that allows us to think of it beyond its subservience to either religion or philosophy, and beyond its aestheticization as “fine art” which we find in the later works. Out of its enmeshment with religion – “religion in the form of art” – we might think of a more originary “art” that returns us to the creative activity at the heart of consciousness and its coming to being in and for itself, as earlier sections describe. But this generative activity turns out to be, paradoxically, a negating force. The paper questions then whether, conceived as an originary movement, this creative negation, “art” in its most generative sense, also disrupts our received notions of religion and philosophy, and forces us into new interdisciplinary ways of thinking, in which art, religion, and philosophy might be radically reconceived even beyond Hegel.

Love and the Dialectic
Alison Bjerke, University of California, Santa Barbara

Hegel’s dialectic has inspired whole fields of poststructuralist analysis that pivot around the question of desire, but matters are otherwise regarding the question of love. The paucity of scholarship on the role of love in Hegel’s thought is striking in light of the fact that love provides the model for Hegel’s earliest dialectic, and the dialect arguably ends in a love relationship in Hegel’s latest published lectures on religion. Furthermore, it is significant that the Phenomenology of Spirit culminates in a moment of forgiveness. Reading the Phenomenology in conversation with Hegel’s early ruminations on love shows that forgiveness is the operation of love. By exploring the connection between love and forgiveness, I will argue that the Spirit ultimately returns to itself thanks to the mystical impulse of love. This reading of love has implications for debates within political theology because it suggests that forgiveness, not recognition of right, achieves freedom.

Religion and the Social Sciences Section

Theme: Religion and Food
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
CC-24A

Carol B. Duncan, Wilfrid Laurier University, Presiding

Theme: Religion and Food

Lynne Gerber, Graduate Theological Union
The Christian Dieter’s Dilemma: Navigating Abundance and Restriction in Christian Weight Loss Programs

William Schanbacher, Claremont Graduate University
Food Security and Food Sovereignty: Poverty and the Material Foundations of the Global Politics of Food

Laura Hartman, University of Virginia
Let Them Eat Cake: Food Prices, Fair Trade, and Christian Ethics

Mary Ann Clark, Prescott, AZ
There Is No Orisha As Lucky As The Stomach: Feasting and Feeding within Santería Ritual Practice

Abstract

Religion and the Social Sciences Section

Theme: Religion and Food

The Christian Dieter’s Dilemma: Navigating Abundance and Restriction in Christian Weight Loss Programs
Lynne Gerber, Graduate Theological Union

Christian weight loss programs call on people to develop seemingly ascetic practices in the name of pleasing God by getting thin. But they also want to affirm a God who provides all good things to His people and who would never deprive them, especially of food. In order to be effective both as weight loss and as religious groups, these programs have to find a way navigate this fundamental tension. This paper will examine two distinctive approaches to resolving it: abundance within strict food guidelines and extreme restraint with the most pleasurable of foods. It will argue that this tension is reflective of the affinity between evangelical Christianity and consumer culture and the resulting reluctance of Christian weight loss groups to critique one of the primary sources both of abundant food opportunities and cultural dictates that define bodily control in the face of abundance as a virtue.

Food Security and Food Sovereignty: Poverty and the Material Foundations of the Global Politics of Food
William Schanbacher, Claremont Graduate University

As emergent topics in the social sciences and discussions on global poverty, this paper evaluates and contrasts the “food security” and “food sovereignty” movements. This evaluation addresses two methodological concerns: (1) How the social sciences and religious studies approach the study of food in general and (2) How a reflective concern for food sovereignty in specific can supplement discussions in the social sciences pertaining to food in a wide variety of cultural and religious contexts. Through a brief survey of key WTO policies and UN Human Development Reports, this paper contends that current trends in neo-liberal and developmental global food policy are endangering the basic material (i.e. food) foundations of religious and cultural traditions for a majority of the worlds poor.

Let Them Eat Cake: Food Prices, Fair Trade, and Christian Ethics
Laura Hartman, University of Virginia

Controversy over food pricing is not new to Christian ethics. Long before “fair trade” advocates argued that coffee sold at the lowest prices often is produced at the expense of badly-paid workers, Quaker abolitionist John Woolman was contemplating the price of sugar and molasses because of its complicity in the slave trade. Martin Luther, two centuries prior, at the dawn of capitalism, saw such economic abuses in his time that he called for state-determined prices, not trusting sinful individuals to trade fairly on their own. Contemporary feminists write of pricing in a context of mutuality, calling not only for fair wages and prices, but also for economic decisions based on the Christian norm of neighbor-love. This paper uses a method of historical Christian ethics, informed by an understanding of economics, politics, and ecology, to evaluate and assess the contributions of Christian thought to the question of appropriate food prices.

There Is No Orisha As Lucky As The Stomach: Feasting and Feeding within Santería Ritual Practice
Mary Ann Clark, Prescott, AZ

Three ritual practices can be used to understand why food—its preparation, presentation and consumption—form important ritual activities within Orisha worship communities. Within these traditions, rituals of blood sacrifice are commonly described with a metaphor of feeding and feasting enacted by the devotees for the Orisha. The fact that many rituals are either preceded or followed by a meal shared by the participants extend this metaphor beyond the principal ritual space. During other ritual occasions, fresh fruit and cooling desserts are presented to deities and devotees. What do these food choices tell us about these traditions and their theological understandings?

Study of Islam Section

Theme: Tradition, Reform, and Modernity in South Asian Islam: Perspectives on the Deoband Madrasa
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
MM-Santa Rosa

James W. Laine, Macalester College, Presiding

Theme: Tradition, Reform, and Modernity in South Asian Islam: Perspectives on the Deoband Madrasa

SherAli Tareen, Duke University
Internal Debates on Democracy, Pluralism, and Secularism in the Islamic Tradition: The Case of the Deoband Madrasa in India

Brannon Ingram, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
An Indian Scholar between Tradition and Modernity: The Fatawa of Rashid Ahmad Gangohi (d. 1905) on the Sufis

Kelly L. Pemberton, George Washington University
An Islamic Discursive Tradition on Reform as Seen in the Writing of Deoband’s Maulana Taqi Uthmani

Fareeha Khan, University of Michigan
Madhhab Structure as Tool for Reform: Maintaining Interpretive Authority While Redefining Women’s Right to Divorce

Fuad Naeem, International Islamic University
Sufism and Revivalism in South Asia: An Evaluation of Their Relationship in the Light of the Writings of Were Mawlānā Ashraf 'Alī Thānvī of Deoband and Mawlānā; Ahmad Raza Khān of Bareilly

Responding:

Ebrahim Moosa, Duke University

Abstract

Study of Islam Section

Theme: Tradition, Reform, and Modernity in South Asian Islam: Perspectives on the Deoband Madrasa

Recent years have witnessed a spate of journalistic writing on the North Indian madrasa known as Deoband after it was reported that the Taliban considered themselves spiritual and intellectual descendants of the Deoband school. Established in 1867, the Deoband madrasa was created with the goal of instituting religious education and reform as a means of reinvigorating the diminished social and political prestige of the Indian Muslims in the aftermath of the abortive revolt against British authority in 1857. Despite the media attention lavished on Deoband today, we still lack critical scholarship on the institution’s founding figures. The field of madrasa studies in general, and the study of Deoband in particular, remains largely unexplored and little understood. This panel hopes to redress this problem by examining four key figures in the history of Deoband and their responses to questions of law, gender, democracy, and Islamic mystical religiosity in the modern era.

Internal Debates on Democracy, Pluralism, and Secularism in the Islamic Tradition: The Case of the Deoband Madrasa in India
SherAli Tareen, Duke University

Lately, questions relating to Islam’s compatibility with democracy, or the question of why Islam seems incompatible with Western notions of secularism and democracy, have generated a considerable amount of interest in both scholarly and journalistic communities. This paper is not concerned with answering the question of whether Islam is or is not compatible with democracy. Rather, it is primarily interested in presenting a set of illustrations from modern Muslim discourses that demonstrate the variety of responses to this issue with regard to one important school of Muslim reformist thought, Deoband. More specifically, this paper is based on a comparison between the thought of two major Deoband thinkers, Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanavi (d. 1943) and Maulana Ubaid Ullah Sindhi (d. 1943).

An Indian Scholar between Tradition and Modernity: The Fatawa of Rashid Ahmad Gangohi (d. 1905) on the Sufis
Brannon Ingram, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

A major target of South Asian reformist thought has been Sufism, historically the pre-eminent source of the very interior self-formation that the reformists have claimed to advocate. Reformists, like the Sufis, upheld the Prophet Muhammad as the foremost pious exemplar. Many of the most vehement attacks on Sufism, in fact, were made by reformists who were themselves Sufis. How did this curious turn of events in the history of South Asian Islam come about? My paper provides one perspective on this question by examining the writings of a seminal figure of the Deoband school, Rashid Ahmad Gangohi (1829-1905), focusing on his collection of his legal responsa (fatawa, sing. fatwa) in Urdu, the Fatawa-yi Rashidiyya, as well as supplementary literature in Urdu by other Deobandis and secondary studies in English.

An Islamic Discursive Tradition on Reform as Seen in the Writing of Deoband’s Maulana Taqi Uthmani
Kelly L. Pemberton, George Washington University

This paper critically analyzes a cross-section of the jurisprudential works and “perfecting the faith” texts produced by one of the most renowned scholars to emerge in recent history from Deoband: Maulana Muhammad Taqi `Uthmani. While assessing `Uthmani’s contribution to what might be termed a “contemporary discursive tradition” of Islamic reform, I focus upon two key tensions that emerge in his writing: between the idea of a “universal” Islam guided by the principles of Shari`a and the particularities of Hanafi jurisprudence in contemporary Pakistan; and between Uthmani’s own apparently contradictory uses of taqlid (imitation of precedent) and ijtihad (independent reasoning). The paper argues that ‘Uthmani’s teachings carry broader implications for a recasting of reformist movements in Islam today, one that envisions them as part of an ongoing dynamic construction of religious authority.

Madhhab Structure as Tool for Reform: Maintaining Interpretive Authority While Redefining Women’s Right to Divorce
Fareeha Khan, University of Michigan

This paper investigates the interconnections between reform, gender, and religious authority in the intellectual history of the Deoband madrasa. More specifically, it deals with the discourses on Muslim divorce law of Maulana Ashraf ‘Ali Thanavi, the renowned Indian Hanafi scholar and Sufi of the Deoband school. One of the most startling aspects of Thanavi’s collection of fatwas is that he advocates the transference of the right of divorce to women. The unilateral right to divorce is often portrayed as a jealously guarded privilege afforded to the man alone, with Muslim women usually being allowed only recourse to court action if severe breaches of marital rights could be proven. By advocating the transferal of this right to the wife, Thanawi shows that even the most taboo Muslim ideas could be challenged, as long as this challenge was posed in a way that could fit within existing frameworks of Muslim legal discourses.

Sufism and Revivalism in South Asia: An Evaluation of Their Relationship in the Light of the Writings of Were Mawlānā Ashraf 'Alī Thānvī of Deoband and Mawlānā; Ahmad Raza Khān of Bareilly
Fuad Naeem, International Islamic University

Scholarly and popular discourse has often considered modernists and puritanical reform movements as the primary catalysts of change in the Islamic world over the last two centuries. This discourse as well as supposed dichotomies between Sufism and revivalism or between traditionalism and change are challenged upon closer analysis of how Sufism has often been at the center of Islamic revivalism in the modern era and how tradition has been reinterpreted, reformulated, and reinvented to assert new modes of Islamic identity in the modern world. In the context of South Asia, the two major orientations of Sunni Islam over the last century, the Deobandī and the Barelvī are represented by 'ālim-Sufis Mawlānā Ashraf 'Alī Thānvī (1860-1943), and Mawlānā Aḥmad Raza Khān (1856-1921), respectively. Despite differences, they utilized Sufi ideals to reformulate Islamic practice and self-identity in the modernizing mileau of Muslim India under British rule.

Theology and Religious Reflection Section

Theme: Sighting Whiteness: The Presence in Absence of Whiteness in White Theology and the Academy
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
MM-Coronado

Hjamil A. Martinez Vazquez, Texas Christian University, Presiding

Theme: Sighting Whiteness: The Presence in Absence of Whiteness in White Theology and the Academy

Panelists:

James W. Perkinson, Ecumenical Theological Seminary

Elaine Robinson, Brite Divinity School

Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Duke University

Responding:

Dwight N. Hopkins, University of Chicago
Namsoon Kang, Brite Divinity School

Abstract

Theology and Religious Reflection Section

Theme: Sighting Whiteness: The Presence in Absence of Whiteness in White Theology and the Academy

This panel will explore the ways in which Anglo/White theologians ignore, obscure, or deny the questions of race and racism, especially in terms of their own whiteness (in both the ontological and geopolitical senses). How does this lack of vision take shape in theology and the academy? How can Anglo theologians work toward sighting/citing/site-ing whiteness in transformational ways?

Women and Religion Section

Theme: Women in the American Religious Imagination
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
GH-Windsor

Jung Ha Kim, Georgia State University, Presiding

Theme: Women in the American Religious Imagination

Jeannine Hill Fletcher, Fordham University
“This Woman Is a Pagan, but a Very Good Friend”: Chinese Women in the American Religious Imagination

Judith Plaskow, Manhattan College
Embodiment, Elimination, and the Role of Toilets in Struggles for Social Justice

Nami Kim, Spelman College
From “Helpless Heathens” to “Deserving Victims”: “Asian Women” in the American Religious Imagination

Wilis Rengganiasih Endah Ekowati, Florida International University
Official DeNUNciation: Theravāda Buddhist Nuns in Indonesia Struggling to Define Identity

Responding:

E. Ann Matter, University of Pennsylvania

Business Meeting:

Jung Ha Kim, Georgia State University, Presiding

Abstract

Women and Religion Section

Theme: Women in the American Religious Imagination

“This Woman Is a Pagan, but a Very Good Friend”: Chinese Women in the American Religious Imagination
Jeannine Hill Fletcher, Fordham University

Among the archives of the Maryknoll Sisters (Ossining, New York) are papers from their work in Chinese missions. Their letters, diaries, and published works reflected and shaped the religious imagination of 1930s and 1940s America. A caption on an otherwise unmarked photograph will serve as the touchstone for this investigation into the conflictual representation of Chinese women. It reads: “This woman is a pagan, but a very good friend.” The conflicted nature of the representation of Chinese women will emerge from culling portraits like this one from the many writings of Maryknoll. However, the unique experience of Maryknoll sisters allowed them to come to know Chinese women as friends. Their writings help to fill out the portrait of Chinese women held in the American religious imagination.

Embodiment, Elimination, and the Role of Toilets in Struggles for Social Justice
Judith Plaskow, Manhattan College

Despite four decades of feminist discussion and reclamation of the body, the subject of elimination as a fundamental aspect of body experience has received little attention. This paper will use the issue of women and toilet space in the U.S. as a starting point for mapping a larger project that takes seriously both theoretical issues around elimination and embodiment and the relationship between adequate toilet facilities and access to full public participation and citizenship. After looking at public toilets as a site of women’s marginalization and incomplete resistance, I will consider the questions of why the demand for sufficient bathroom space has not been part of a broader feminist analysis and agenda and why it is important to end the silence around this issue.

From “Helpless Heathens” to “Deserving Victims”: “Asian Women” in the American Religious Imagination
Nami Kim, Spelman College

This paper examines the images of “Asian women” in the American religious imagination by comparing the nineteenth century US Christian missionary discourse with the contemporary “faith-based” human rights discourse. There are interesting parallels found between the two in relation to the components of what is called the “fairy tale” that characterizes the story of victim in human rights crisis. The components are victim who deserves “rescue,” the villain, and the savior who rescues the victim. In the missionary discourse during the so-called golden age (1880-1920) of American Protestantism, it was the image of helpless “heathen” women that kindled light on “Western” people’s imagination about “Asian women,” thus motivating Christians to support the mission movement both ideologically and materially. Similarly, oppressed and deprived “Asian women” who need “rescue” from the “ungodly” regimes is one of the images that mobilizes Christians to support the new faith-based movement both ideologically and materially.

Official DeNUNciation: Theravāda Buddhist Nuns in Indonesia Struggling to Define Identity
Wilis Rengganiasih Endah Ekowati, Florida International University

The Theravāda Buddhism basic reasoning for prohibiting women from the Sangha is the historical accident: the fading away of the Bhikkhuni Sangha, the order of nuns, in the eleventh century CE due to war and famine in India and Sri Lanka. This paper will examine the controversy over the bhikkhuni ordination taken by Indonesian Theravādin women and rejected as invalid by the Theravādin monastic governing body in Indonesia. Based upon the author’s field research and interviews, as well as the author’s experience as a Theravādin woman in Indonesia, the paper’s main focus is the Indonesian-context discourse. Drawing upon the Eightfold Path, the bhikkhunis and their supporters plea: with “right speech,” “right understanding,” “right thought,” and the “right action,” the first step might be taken now to liberate all, including women, in this very lifetime.

Afro-American Religious History Group

Theme: Go West: African Americans and Religion in the West
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
MM-Del Mar

Kamasi Hill, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Presiding

Theme: Go West: African Americans and Religion in the West

Larry G. Murphy, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
Thematic Prisms for Exploring African American Religious History in the US West

Julius Bailey, University of Redlands
Imagining the American West: Benjamin T. Tanner and the Politics of Racial Destiny in the AME Church

Lerone Martin, Emory University
"It Is Wonderful!" out West: Father Divine, the Peace Mission Movement, and California

Responding:

Randi Jones Walker, Pacific School of Religion

Business Meeting:

Moses N. Moore, Arizona State University, Presiding

Abstract

Afro-American Religious History Group

Theme: Go West: African Americans and Religion in the West

Thematic Prisms for Exploring African American Religious History in the US West
Larry G. Murphy, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

Though black people had resided in the trans-Mississippi West since Spanish colonial days, the mid-nineteenth century saw a significant movement of US-based blacks into this region. Along with this influx came the institution created decades before amidst white oppression on the farms and white discrimination in the cities - the black church. The church and its clergy leadership held a pivotal position in black community life. This paper identifies hermeneutical lenses for discerning an understanding of the nature and mission of black church bodies established by clergy as well as laity in the procreant environs of the US West. It thus addresses the challenge of new frontiers; the West as “land of promise;” as El Dorado; as alternative to the violent racial stigmatization of the South, while yet a space of continuing racial animus; as “a man’s world” where women excelled; as home missions opportunity; as site of black ecumenism.

Imagining the American West: Benjamin T. Tanner and the Politics of Racial Destiny in the AME Church
Julius Bailey, University of Redlands

During his tenure as editor of the Christian Recorder from 1868 to 1884, through editorials, articles, and letters, Bishop Benjamin T. Tanner of the AME Church made political, economic, biblical, and scientific arguments for the “Americanness” of blacks and the appropriateness of their migration to the site of the quintessential American spirit, the West. Tanner’s unbridled passion for the American West and its potential role in the future of the race and complicated re-framing of the central homeland for African Americans provides a useful counterpoint to the prominent “Back-to-Africa” advocates such as Edward Blyden and Henry McNeal Turner, undermines the strict dichotomy between nationalist and assimilationist perspectives in African American religious history, and illumines the distinctiveness of the imagined space of the West in the politics of racial destiny.

"It Is Wonderful!" out West: Father Divine, the Peace Mission Movement, and California
Lerone Martin, Emory University

The scholarly treatment of the Peace Mission Movement has primarily focused on two aspects of the movement: Father Divine’s claims of divinity and his controversial financial affluence. With the exception of a few texts, the racial reform efforts of the movement have been forgotten. Furthermore, This interpretive lens is primarily applied to the movement’s activity on the east coast, namely New York and Philadelphia. However, approximately a third of the movement’s branches existed west of the Mississippi, with California being the home to the majority. Whites comprised roughly 70 percent of the Peace Mission Movement’s membership in California. Further investigation into the career of the Peace Mission Movement in California will reveal often overlooked aspects of the Movement, in particularly the movement's myriad of efforts and activities aimed at racial equality.

Bonhoeffer: Theology and Social Analysis Group

Theme: Appraising Bonhoeffer: Pastoral Resistance
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
CC-24B

Martin Rumscheidt, Atlantic School of Theology, Presiding

Theme: Appraising Bonhoeffer: Pastoral Resistance

Peter Frick, St. Paul's College, University of Waterloo
Who Is Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Philosopher, Exegete, or Pastor?

Rachel Payne, Baylor University
Chronos, Kairos, and Jubilee in Dietrich Bonhoeffer and André Trocmé: Nonviolent Revolution Realized through Eschatologically Reading Scripture

Nancy Lukens, University of New Hampshire
The Language of Non-Religious Interpretation in Bonhoeffer’s Prison Writings

Abstract

Bonhoeffer: Theology and Social Analysis Group

Theme: Appraising Bonhoeffer: Pastoral Resistance

Throughout his life, Dietrich Bonhoeffer assumed many roles; he was, among other things, a theologian, a philosopher, a poet, an exegete, and a pastor. The papers in this session will examine and assess these roles in different ways: by looking at the broad sweep of Bonhoeffer's life and the various roles he played over time; by placing him in conversation with Nazi-era French pastor and pacifist André Trocmé; and by exploring Bonhoeffer's creation and use of non-religious language in his prison writings. At stake in this appraisal of Bonhoeffer is not only our understanding of Bonhoeffer in his own context, but an understanding of Bonhoeffer that informs current use (and current misuse) of his work and legacy. This session will also interest those who wish to explore the role of pastor in resistance and in constructive Christian responsibility.

Who Is Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Philosopher, Exegete, or Pastor?
Peter Frick, St. Paul's College, University of Waterloo

The main objective of this study is to clarify the various professional roles Bonhoeffer assumed over his lifetime and to examine how these roles functioned in their uniqueness and how they were correlated among each other. Who was Bonhoeffer? A theologian, a philosopher, an exegete, a pastor? Was he primarily one of these, or did his life bear witness to the fact that he was simultaneously some or even all of these? I will argue that Bonhoeffer understood himself as embodying all of these roles. For him, these four roles are mutually correlated in a manner that is progressive from theologian to pastor. Ultimately, being a pastor was the most valued for Bonhoeffer. It is possible to hold the three first roles without being a pastor; but it is impossible to be a pastor without also being a theologian, philosopher, and exegete.

Chronos, Kairos, and Jubilee in Dietrich Bonhoeffer and André Trocmé: Nonviolent Revolution Realized through Eschatologically Reading Scripture
Rachel Payne, Baylor University

Faced with the horror of the Nazi regime’s violent agenda, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and André Trocmé both relied on an eschatological reading of the Sermon on the Mount to inform and justify their revolutionary actions. In their published works, both emphasize the role of the church community as a means of perpetuating a nonviolent social ethic, but only the Frenchman largely succeeded in equipping his congregation to perform practical work toward realizing social justice on earth by redeeming victims of oppression. My aim in this paper is to highlight the references that each man makes to the constancy of God’s timeline as opposed to the capriciousness of human history. I will show that the small but significant differences between their readings of chronos and kairos--particularly with regard to how they interpret Jesus’ radical re-readings of Jewish models of eschatology--suggest the reason for their divergence in praxis.

The Language of Non-Religious Interpretation in Bonhoeffer’s Prison Writings
Nancy Lukens, University of New Hampshire

This paper considers implications for today's reception of Bonhoeffer's May 1944 statement: "Our church... is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to humankind and the world. Our earlier words are therefore bound to lose their force..." Bonhoeffer affirms a "new language, perhaps quite non-religious, but liberating and redeeming." The paper examines the prison poems, particularly "Jona" and "Von guten Mächten," as expressions of Bonhoeffer’s non-religious interpretation, linking these writings with the "view from below" and "costly grace," which contrast sharply with rhetorical misappropriations of Bonhoeffer on the religious Right. It argues with Jürgen Henkys that precisely because of Bonhoeffer’s experience of the loss of credibility of religious language in the church and in the culture around him, his poetry in particular becomes his ultimate expression of non-religious interpretation of Christian faith and cannot be responsibly read as rooted in individualistic piety or self-righteous civil religion.

Buddhist Philosophy Group

Theme: Dignāga in China
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
MM-Columbia 3

A. Charles Muller, Toyo Gakuen University, Presiding

Theme: Dignāga in China

Zhihua Yao, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Empty Terms in Buddhist Logic: Dignāga and His Chinese Commentators

Dan Lusthaus, Brookline, MA
Dignāga's Sasaṃvitti Re-examined through the Chinese Sources

Chen-Kuo Lin, National Chenchi University
The Object of Cognition in Dignāga’s Ālambanaparikṣavṛttihi: On the Controversial Passages in Paramārtha’s and Xuanzang’s Translations

Junjie Chu, University of Vienna
Dignāga on the Object of Cognition

Business Meeting:

A. Charles Muller, Toyo Gakuen University, Presiding
John D. Dunne, Emory University, Presiding

Abstract

Buddhist Philosophy Group

Theme: Dignāga in China

Despite the monumental importance of Dignāga for Buddhist philosophy and Indian philosophy in general, most of his important works survive in complete form only in Chinese and/or Tibetan translations. The Chinese translations of his Ālambana-parīkṣā (one of which includes the only extant version of Dharmapāla's commentary) display interesting and suggestive differences of interpretation that shed light on how key elements of Dignāga's epistemology were understood. Nyāyamukha is extant only in its two Chinese translations. Roughly a dozen texts in the Chinese canon discuss passages from the Pramāṛasamuccaya. Several other Dignaga texts are also preserved in Chinese. The papers will focus on important issues in the interpretation and analysis of Dignāga's thought: epistemological and logical issues, questions of language and the status of cognitive objects, Dignāga's impact on Indian and Chinese Buddhism, how he was interpreted, and contributions of his thought to contemporary philosophy.

Empty Terms in Buddhist Logic: Dignāga and His Chinese Commentators
Zhihua Yao, Chinese University of Hong Kong

The present paper will explore how Dignāga, the founder of Buddhist logic, deals with the issue of empty subject terms. On the one hand, he proposed a method of paraphrase, which resembles Russell’s theory of descriptions. On the other hand, his use of his apoha theory tended toward a pan-fictionism. Subsequently, Dharmakīrti's efforts made the latter approach become more acceptable among later Indian and Tibetan Buddhists. In contrast, the Chinese Buddhists, who were free from the influence of Dharmakīrti, dealt with the issue in three different ways: 1) adhering to Dignāga’s method of paraphrase; 2) allowing exceptions for non-implicative negation; and 3) indicating the propositional attitude of the given proposition. The variety of the Buddhist approaches to the problem of empty terms will enrich our understanding of the philosophical issues related to empty terms.

Dignāga's Sasaṃvitti Re-examined through the Chinese Sources
Dan Lusthaus, Brookline, MA

Dignāga, in both the Pramāṛasamuccaya and Nyāyamukha, includes svasaṃvitti (Ch,: zizheng) as an intrinsic and necessary component of pratyakṣa (cognitive sensation). What does svasaṃvitti mean, and how does it help provide Dignāga's formulation of pratyakṣa with the requisite qualities of a pramāṛa? The discussion will explore two hypotheses: (1) Redefining pramāṛa in Dignāga's usage from "justification" or "truth" to "what undeniably conveys novel knowledge;" this distinction may not be trivial. (2) Evidence in the Chinese sources that svasaṃvitti originally meant something other than "cognition cognizing itself" and that this later meaning (already partially entertained in the Cheng weishilun), when imported back into Dignāga, introduces more confusion than light. For Dignāga, svasaṃvitti may have meant something akin to the Pāli terms: sacchikiriyā (realization, experience), sacchikaroti (to see with one's own eyes, to experience for oneself); sacchikaraṇīya (able to be experienced [in four ways: by kāya, sati, cakkhu, and paññā]).

The Object of Cognition in Dignāga’s Ālambanaparikṣavṛttihi: On the Controversial Passages in Paramārtha’s and Xuanzang’s Translations
Chen-Kuo Lin, National Chenchi University

In this paper, I will examine how Dignāga’s Ālambanaparikṣavṛttih was differently received in Paramārtha’s and Xuanzang’s translations. Following Dharmapāla’s Commentary, Xuanzang claims that the object of cognition in Ālambanaparikṣavṛtti refers to five kinds of sensory objects. By contrast, in Paramārtha’s translation the object of cognition refers to six kinds of objects. Why was the object of mano-vijñāna left unexamined in Xuanzang’s translation? In order to solve the interpretive controversy between Paramārtha and Xuanzang, I will also address the following questions: Is it legitimate to read Dignāga’s Ālambanaparikṣavṛtti in light of “consciousness-only”? Or is it better to read it in light of Dignāga’s later logico-epistemological works, such as Nyāyamukha and Pramāṛasamuccayavṛtti? How is the object of mano-vijñāna related to the other five sensory objects? Does it have to do with mānasa-pratyakṣa or “mano-vijñāna arising simultaneously with five sensory objects” (wu-chu-yi-shi)? Those questions will be examined in my paper.

Dignāga on the Object of Cognition
Junjie Chu, University of Vienna

In the Pramāṛa-samuccaya with its Vṛtti Dignāga states that perception is free from conceptual construction and that its object is the svalakṣaṛa – usually translated as "particular'" while cognitive objects other than those in perception are either conventionally existent or imagined. However Dignāga does not offer a clear explanation of this svalakṣaṛa. Dharmakīrti interprets it as a real thing that can fulfill a purpose. In this paper, after an analysis of Dignāga's thought about the object of cognition in his earlier works, I will examine his statement in PS(V) about svalakṣaṛa and demonstrate that Dignāga, unlike Dharmakīrti, is consistently an Internalist (antarjñeya¬vādin), so that his svalakṣaṛa should be understood as being internal in nature.

Comparative Religious Ethics Group

Theme: Current Work in Comparative Ethics: Religious Liberalism, Moral Virtuosity, and the Experience of Limits
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
MM-Carlsbad

Anne E. Monius, Harvard University, Presiding

Theme: Current Work in Comparative Ethics: Religious Liberalism, Moral Virtuosity, and the Experience of Limits

Elizabeth Barre, Florida State University
The Possibility of Religious Liberalism: The Common Good and Civil Society in Catholic and Islamic Political Thought

Nathaniel Barrett, Boston University
Musicality and Ren: An Examination of the Early Confucian Ideal of Moral Virtuosity and Its Applicability to Multicultural Societies of Late Modernity

Peter T. C. Chang, Harvard University
Comparative Study of Conscience: Joseph Butler and Wang Yang-ming

David Clairmont, University of Notre Dame
Persons as Religious Classics: Green, Tracy, and the Theology of Bridge Concepts

Responding:

Sumner B. Twiss, Florida State University

Abstract

Comparative Religious Ethics Group

Theme: Current Work in Comparative Ethics: Religious Liberalism, Moral Virtuosity, and the Experience of Limits

The Possibility of Religious Liberalism: The Common Good and Civil Society in Catholic and Islamic Political Thought
Elizabeth Barre, Florida State University

Given the current religious conflicts taking place in the Middle East, many are beginning to wonder whether the values associated with democratic liberalism might be fundamentally incompatible with Islam. Indeed, Muslims themselves often argue that Islam—unlike Christianity—cannot recognize a separation between religion and politics. Is this accurate? By comparing certain aspects of Catholic and Islamic political thought, I will show that this assertion betrays a misunderstanding of both Islam and Christianity. In fact, there turn out to be many ways in which Islamic struggles with liberalism mirror the struggles of the Catholic Church. More specifically, I will argue that notions of the “common good” and “civil society” play similar roles in the political arguments of both traditions. Yet, I will also show that subtle differences have important implications for understanding the different ways in which liberalism might (or might not) take root in the Islamic world.

Musicality and Ren: An Examination of the Early Confucian Ideal of Moral Virtuosity and Its Applicability to Multicultural Societies of Late Modernity
Nathaniel Barrett, Boston University

This paper explores some of the unique resources and possible limitations of early Confucian moral philosophy through an examination of a conspicuous trope of early (pre-Qin) Confucian texts: refined musical performance as a metaphor for moral virtuosity, or ren. With special attention to Xunzi’s essay, “Discourse on Music,” the paper unpacks the many ways in which musical metaphors serve to clarify some of the most compelling traits of Confucian moral philosophy – especially its emphasis on the aesthetic and spontaneous aspects of moral conduct – as well as some of its liabilities. In particular, musical metaphors alert us to the issue of the importance of cultural commonality for the development of moral virtuosity, an especially important issue for those who wish to adapt Confucian ideals to our late-modern, multicultural setting.

Comparative Study of Conscience: Joseph Butler and Wang Yang-ming
Peter T. C. Chang, Harvard University

Joseph Butler and Wang Yang-ming exalted conscience (or liang-chih, in Wang’s terminology) as the individual person’s moral guide. While elevating the authority of conscience, Butler and Wang were mindful that this faculty does err; hence, one’s invocation of conscience in moral decision-making may yet serve as an excuse or cover for erroneous convictions. In my paper, I analyze how Butler and Wang dealt with the dilemma of moral fallibility and the complex reality of erroneous conscience. I will show that in light of human finitude, these two thinkers pleaded for a degree of toleration of people’s diverse and even faulty opinions. Yet they also expected strict conformity to a set of core values considered foundational to the moral order. My ultimate aim is to show that Butler and Wang upheld a moral framework that allowed them to accommodate diverse, even erroneous, conscientious views without surrendering to extreme subjectivism.

Persons as Religious Classics: Green, Tracy, and the Theology of Bridge Concepts
David Clairmont, University of Notre Dame

This paper examines the early comparative work of Ronald Green to uncover missed comparative opportunities in his Kantian program. Specifically, it focuses on the notion of limits as uniting the distinctly moral and religious domains of human life. To develop the importance of reflection on moral and religious limits for comparative ethics, this paper turns to the work of David Tracy on the religious classic to examine how the moral person as one who confronts her or his own moral and religious limits has the capacity to bear a "surplus of meaning" in the unfinished nature of their moral lives. Outlining the person as religious classic offers a new place for historical and theological voices to come together in constructive comparative conversations.

Feminist Theory and Religious Reflection Group

Theme: Discussion of Saba Mahmood's The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
GH-America's Cup

M. Gail Hamner, Syracuse University, Presiding

Theme: Discussion of Saba Mahmood's The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

Panelists:

Janet R. Jakobsen, Columbia University

Amina Wadud, Virginia Commonwealth University

Kathleen Roberts Skerrett, Grinnell College

Responding:

Saba Mahmood, University of California, Berkeley

Business Meeting:

Rosemary P. Carbine, College of the Holy Cross, Presiding

Abstract

Feminist Theory and Religious Reflection Group

Theme: Discussion of Saba Mahmood's The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

Saba Mahmood's recent book, The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject has generated prolific excitement and debate across numerous discourses. This panel discussion includes papers from three scholars from three different subfields of religious studies. The paper presentations will be followed by a response from Professor Mahmood.

Hinduism Group

Theme: Producing Vaishnavism: Texts, Practices, and Devotees in the Colonial Context
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
GH-America's Cup

Brian A. Hatcher, Illinois Wesleyan University, Presiding

Theme: Producing Vaishnavism: Texts, Practices, and Devotees in the Colonial Context

James P. Hare, Columbia University
Garlanding Hinduism: Nabhadas's Bhaktamal in the Colonial Context

Rebecca Manring, Indiana University, Bloomington
Advaita's Nineteenth-Century Reconstruction

Varuni Bhatia, Columbia University
Instructions for Worship: Vaishnava Ritual Manuals and Everyday Practice in Colonial Bengal

Jason Fuller, DePauw University
Bhaktivinoda Thakura and the Recovery of Gaudiya Vaisnavism in Late Nineteenth-Century Bengal

Business Meeting:

Timothy Lubin, Washington and Lee University, Presiding
Vijaya Nagarajan, University of San Francisco, Presiding

Abstract

Hinduism Group

Theme: Producing Vaishnavism: Texts, Practices, and Devotees in the Colonial Context

The late nineteenth century marked a critical moment in the emergence of Vaishnavism, and Hinduism more generally, as a marker of religious and political identity. While a trend toward consolidation dates from prior to the colonial era, the colonial encounter served as a catalyst for the establishment of Hinduism as a religious tradition comparable to Christianity and Islam. Out of specific sectarian contexts a pan-Indian concept of Vaishnavism took hold and came to define a Hinduism centered on monotheistic bhakti devotionalism. The four papers in the session will address themes such as religious reform, print, the emerging middle-classes, the rise of new intellectuals, and the spread of capitalism to shed light on Vaishnavism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a session, we hope to show that the new institutions and contexts of the colonial environment directly or indirectly shaped the transformations within Vaishnava traditions during this period.

Garlanding Hinduism: Nabhadas's Bhaktamal in the Colonial Context
James P. Hare, Columbia University

Composed in the late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century, Nabhadas's Bhaktamal occupies a central position in the consolidation of Hinduism. Although composed in a Ramanandi context, this text presents a catholic view of Vaishnavism that cuts across boundaries of sect, region, caste, and gender. An extensive commentarial literature has formed around this text. The earliest and most influential commentary is Priyadas's 1712 CE Bhaktirasabodhini, which has itself become the subject of commentary and exegesis. This paper examines the reception and publication of the Bhaktamal and Bhaktirasabodhini during the late nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries. These decades saw numerous translations, commentaries, and retellings of the Bhaktamal, culminating in Sitaramsharan Bhagwan Prasad "Rupkala's" exegesis and edition, published in the first decade of the twentieth century. In the supra-sectarian framework of the Bhaktamal, Rupkala and others found an ideal location for the construction of a non-sectarian Vaishnavism.

Advaita's Nineteenth-Century Reconstruction
Rebecca Manring, Indiana University, Bloomington

Advaita Acharya, the elder statesman and forerunner of the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition, lent the young movement his gravitas and respectability in its formative years. Four hundred years later, he (or at least, newly discovered hagiographies) appeared to uphold conservative, Brahmanical values in a world now governed by European rationalists. Clearly his summoners were consciously using him as a weapon in an ideological battle, but was it a battle against colonialism or something else entirely?

Instructions for Worship: Vaishnava Ritual Manuals and Everyday Practice in Colonial Bengal
Varuni Bhatia, Columbia University

This paper will analyze two manuals of Gaudiya Vaishnava ritual and worship: Gauranga Puja Paddhati (A Method for the Worship of Chaitanya), which appeared in print in 1906, and Vaishnaviya Sadhan Paddhati (A Manual of Vaishnava Practice), which was published in 1935. It will look at how these manuals operate in the religious world of the emerging Bhadralok (middle-classes) of Bengal. What kind of practices do they propagate? What kind of an adjustment among time, work, and worship can be seen in these manuals? Who is their target audience, and how do the authors understand themselves influencing their readership? This paper will show how the coming of print, the concept of the workday, and the critiques of missionaries and other educated Indians created the conditions wherein Vaishnava practices had to be disciplined in accordance with theological challenges as well as secular concerns.

Bhaktivinoda Thakura and the Recovery of Gaudiya Vaisnavism in Late Nineteenth-Century Bengal
Jason Fuller, DePauw University

In late nineteenth-century Bengal, religious modernizers and social reformers attacked Gaudiya Vaisnavism for its sectarianism, irrationality, and intellectual inadequacy. Responding to the challenges of a universalizing Christianity and Brahmo reform movements, a well-respected Deputy Magistrate named Bhaktivinoda Thakura took up the defense of Gaudiya Vaisnavism at the end of the century. Over the course of thirty years Bhaktivinoda distinguished himself as the leading defender of Vaisnavism in Bengal. His greatest contributions to Vaisnava faith and practice were ideas which emerged out of his unflinching confrontation with the proponents of secularism and religious modernization during the colonial period. In this paper I will address Bhaktivinoda’s “modernization” of Vaisnavism through an investigation of the ways in which he employed emerging technologies and middle-class discursive practices in his rearticulation of Gaudiya Vaisnavism for a new urbane bourgeois audience in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Law, Religion, and Culture Group

Theme: Authority and Representation in Legal and Religious Contexts
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
MM-Leucadia Oceanside Pacific Point Loma Leucadia

Russell T. McCutcheon, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Presiding

Theme: Authority and Representation in Legal and Religious Contexts

Loriliai Biernacki, University of Colorado, Boulder
Miming Manu: Women and Authority in Relation to Manu's Law Book

Greg Johnson, University of Colorado, Boulder
Social Lives of the Dead: Contestation and Continuities in Hawaiian Repatriation

Ruth Mas, University of Colorado, Boulder
Sedimenting Secularity in Contemporary France: Law and Muslim Bodies that Matter

Paul R. Powers, Lewis and Clark College
“When the Scrolls Shall Be Unrolled”: Turning Deeds into Words in Classical Islamic Legal and Eschatological Thought

Responding:

Bruce Lincoln, University of Chicago

Abstract

Law, Religion, and Culture Group

Theme: Authority and Representation in Legal and Religious Contexts

This paper session is composed of three papers that cohere around themes pertaining to authority and representation in religiously consequential legal (con)texts. The papers share an analytical focus on issues surrounding ways discourse, language, and rhetoric function in such contexts, with particular attention to subaltern voices. While exploring common themes, these papers take on diverse contexts, including Manu’s Law Book and its subversion, repatriation conflicts surrounding the royal dead in contemporary Hawai`i, the formation of secular Muslim subjectivities in relationship to the structuring force of the French state, and the interaction of legal categories and eschatological literature in classical Islam.

Miming Manu: Women and Authority in Relation to Manu's Law Book
Loriliai Biernacki, University of Colorado, Boulder

For the past several decades much of the debate about women's roles across the spectrum of religious traditions has focused upon locating women as agents, within the religious practices of particular traditions. Recently, however, some feminist scholars of Hinduism and Indian culture have suggested that the idea of agency may not be such a useful category. This is particularly the case in view of sources available for understanding pre-colonial Indian women. In this paper I offer an alternative strategy for mapping a presence of women as subjects in this context. I suggest that we find responses to legal texts, specifically to well-known maxims (nyāyas) within the legal text, cropping up elsewhere. These responses take the form of an imitation of the legal maxim, which then subvert its meaning. Thus we find convenient versified quips performing a kind of mimicry which radically undermines dominant tropes defining women and their roles.

Social Lives of the Dead: Contestation and Continuities in Hawaiian Repatriation
Greg Johnson, University of Colorado, Boulder

This paper explores an under-analyzed relationship between Western law and native cultures—one where law has, in potent respects, stimulated “traditional” cultural activities, even when these activities take the form of contestation and outright intra-cultural conflict. The specific context addressed is repatriation politics in contemporary Hawai`i, with particular attention to examples of the Polynesian postmortem in the present: the 1994 “theft” of royal caskets from the Bishop Museum and the ongoing Kawaihae dispute that involves fourteen Native Hawaiian organizations in a struggle over numerous ancient objects. This paper analyzes how contemporary articulations of Hawaiian identity, however embattled and divisive, illustrate the ways in which micro-political discourses in the present stand in a relationship of marked continuity with the “stabilized” Hawaiian past. To dismiss present claims to tradition as “inauthentic” due to their manifestly political content, it is argued, is to commit a basic category mistake in the study of tradition.

Sedimenting Secularity in Contemporary France: Law and Muslim Bodies that Matter
Ruth Mas, University of Colorado, Boulder

I examine modalities of secular Muslim subjectivity in relation to the structuring force of the French state. Specifically, I focus on how epistemologies about Muslims are reconfigured throughout the ongoing “war on terror” and then inscribed by law onto Muslim bodies in France. The contemporary securing of law as an element of the architecture of global empire has also been crucial to regenerating France’s colonial terms of “exception” into the present through France’s complicity with the “war on terror.” One of the most public strategies in consolidating French sovereignty has been to rationalize and thus legitimate, amidst the recent debates over the wearing of the hidjab, the deployment of laïcité in France’s colonies. I examine this debate, and the polemics that ensued in order to examine how they constitute the splitting and fragmenting of the grounds on which Muslim feminine subjects are constituted in relation to the French state.

“When the Scrolls Shall Be Unrolled”: Turning Deeds into Words in Classical Islamic Legal and Eschatological Thought
Paul R. Powers, Lewis and Clark College

Pre-modern Islamic eschatological accounts prominently depict a heavenly book or tablet in which every deed of every living person is recorded in writing, to be reviewed on Judgment Day, determining each individual’s eternal fate. Such tropes portray the prospect of representing an entire human lifetime, imagined as consisting of a set of discreet actions, in a comprehensive written text. I argue that Islamic law functions in part to provide a named category of action-type for each human act, helping to complete a worldview in which actions are conceptualized as discrete units capable of corresponding to items on a written list. Islamic legal and eschatological literatures thus interact symbiotically, together defining both how to act and what is at stake in acting. Exploring this intertextual nexus shows that “putting Islamic law into practice” can happen in a variety of ways, including in practices of reading accounts of the afterlife.

Platonism and Neoplatonism Group

Theme: Foundations of Neoplatonism
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
GH-Betsy C

Gregory Shaw, Stonehill College, Presiding

Theme: Foundations of Neoplatonism

John Bussanich, University of New Mexico
The Triumph of the Archaic: Peter Kingsley on Orphic-Pythagorean Mysticism

John Peter Kenney, Saint Michael's College
Pagan Monotheism and the Foundations of Christian Platonism

Dylan Burns, Yale University
Hellenic-Christian Polemics between Pseudo-Dionysius’ Celestial Hierarchy and Julian’s Contra Galileos

Sarah Pessin, University of Denver
Tracking the Ps. Empedoclean "First Element": Revising the Plotinian Cosmos in Judeo-Islamic Neoplatonism?

Business Meeting:

Willemien Otten, University of Chicago, Presiding

Abstract

Platonism and Neoplatonism Group

Theme: Foundations of Neoplatonism

This session contains papers that reflect on the principles of historic Neoplatonism

The Triumph of the Archaic: Peter Kingsley on Orphic-Pythagorean Mysticism
John Bussanich, University of New Mexico

This communication examines Peter Kingsley's provocative reconfiguration of the mystical dimension of ancient philosophy and religion. On his view the intuitive symbolic poetry of Parmenides and Empedocles, which encodes Orphic-Pythagorean magical and meditative practices, was eclipsed by the rationalistic turn of Classical and Hellenistic philosophers. I shall argue that despite notable differences in the use of language and pedagogical methods, all these thinkers make a similar distinction between supra-rational awareness and discursive philosophical thinking, which is reflected in their insistence that degrees of spiritual experience correspond to the hierarchical structure of reality. I shall discuss the "spiritual history" developed by the later Neoplatonists to support the view that one finds more continuity than discontinuity from archaic to classical and post-classical figures.

Pagan Monotheism and the Foundations of Christian Platonism
John Peter Kenney, Saint Michael's College

This paper has two purposes: to re-examine the origins of Neoplatonism in reference to recent scholarship on pagan monotheism and then to consider anew the foundations Christian Platonism, especially the thought of Augustine.

Hellenic-Christian Polemics between Pseudo-Dionysius’ Celestial Hierarchy and Julian’s Contra Galileos
Dylan Burns, Yale University

This paper draws attention to an intriguing, overlooked passage of the Celestial Hierarchy as an example of Denys’ engagement with Neoplatonic polemics. The passage (CH 260C-261A), a commentary on Dt 32: 8-9, is a complex meditation on providence and free will: specifically, the question of why God selected first the Jews as his chosen people and then sent his universal savior to them in a relatively remote part of the world. The paper will argue that this passage attempts to rebut a well-developed critique of Christian theodicy stemming from Platonists as early as Celsus, but reaching the form Denys responds to only in Julian’s Contra Galileos. The observation that the pseudo-Areopagite was familiar with Julian’s polemic (or an epitome of it) has important ramifications for recent discussions of Denys’ identity and the orientation of the corpus as a whole.

Tracking the Ps. Empedoclean "First Element": Revising the Plotinian Cosmos in Judeo-Islamic Neoplatonism?
Sarah Pessin, University of Denver

Through an investigation of the notion of an “Empedoclean” cosmic “First Element” in various tenth-fourteenth century traditions, I aim to better elucidate the foundations of Jewish and Islamic Neoplatonism in way of uncovering nuances in their understanding of the Neoplatonic cosmos, the role of Universal Intellect, and the process of emanation. In particular, I focus on three issues: (1) I examine the relation of the “Empedoclean First Element” to Plotinus’ own doctrine of intelligible matter, (2) I consider the relationship of these ideas to Empedocles’ own notions of Love and Strife (with special recourse to the eleventh century Neoplatonism of Solomon Ibn Gabirol), and (3) I explore the implications of this First Element doctrine on the emergence in Jewish Neoplatonism of the idea of emanation as a play of light and shadow (with a focus on the tenth century works of Isaac Israeli).

Practical Theology Group

Theme: Worship Practices and Social Activism
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
CC-25A

Dale P. Andrews, Boston University, Presiding

Theme: Worship Practices and Social Activism

Claire Wolfteich, Boston University
Division in the Body: Prayer and the Public Struggle over Abortion

Peter R. Gathje, Memphis Theological Seminary
Rituals of Resistance: Creating Conversion and Community for Abolition of the Death Penalty

Peter Gordon Slade, Ashland University
Grits and Grace: Mission Mississippi's Interracial Ecumenical Prayer Breakfasts as a Practice of Racial Reconciliation and Social Transformation

Jeremy Posadas, Emory University
"I Have a Dream," "People Power," "¡Sí, se puede!": Worship, Politics, and Repertoires of Performed Public Life in US and Philippine Contexts

Responding:

William T. Cavanaugh, University of Saint Thomas

Abstract

Practical Theology Group

Theme: Worship Practices and Social Activism

Division in the Body: Prayer and the Public Struggle over Abortion
Claire Wolfteich, Boston University

The struggle over abortion rights is a persistent part of the American culture wars, amply studied from political and sociological perspectives. What is less researched is the way in which various forms of prayer and worship are integrated into both sides of this debate. Prayer is quite visible in the pro-life movement but also has played a role in shaping the pro-choice movement. This paper will explore the practice of prayer in both the pro-life and pro-choice movements, looking particularly at how prayer shapes a community, sends it forth to political action, and is understood as means of social transformation. The paper will explore the integral role of prayer in the public struggle over abortion, identify practical theological dilemmas, and point to the need for careful, communal reflection upon the practice of prayer and the issue of abortion.

Rituals of Resistance: Creating Conversion and Community for Abolition of the Death Penalty
Peter R. Gathje, Memphis Theological Seminary

Ritual can be defined as religious theater designed to help us connect with the Divine, or a power/purpose beyond ourselves, a larger story/meaning to which we belong. Rituals are stylized and usually repetitive acts that take place at a set time and location. They almost always involve the use of symbolic objects, words, and actions. This paper describes and analyzes rituals of resistance to the death penalty that address the emotional, religious, and moral attachments to the death penalty. The rituals of resistance include vigils and fasting on cathedral steps before scheduled executions, and a weekly public demonstration at busy city intersection. Attention will be paid to how these rituals envision and practice an alternative worldview through ritually reconfiguring space, time, and symbols and words within the Christian faith to both create a community of abolition and invite people to move from support of the death penalty to opposition.

Grits and Grace: Mission Mississippi's Interracial Ecumenical Prayer Breakfasts as a Practice of Racial Reconciliation and Social Transformation
Peter Gordon Slade, Ashland University

Mission Mississippi, perhaps the largest model of intentional ecumenical church-based racial reconciliation work in the United States today, proclaims its twice weekly prayer breakfasts are the essential core of its work to “change Mississippi.” Exploring this claim using the incites of theologians (Dietrich Bonheoffer, Jürgen Moltmann, and Miroslav Volf) and sociologists (Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith), this paper argues that the unspectacular early-morning gatherings of African American and white Christians around coffee, biscuits and prayer, is in fact a practice and discipline of Christian reconciliation with the power to re-shape participants racialized political and religious attitudes.

"I Have a Dream," "People Power," "¡Sí, se puede!": Worship, Politics, and Repertoires of Performed Public Life in US and Philippine Contexts
Jeremy Posadas, Emory University

This paper offers one contribution to continue filling the persisting lacuna between liturgical practice and political practice as scholars theorize them. Three actual instances of the practice of nonviolent mass demonstration - the 1963 US March on Washington, the 1986 Philippine People Power Revolution, and present-day public actions of faith-based community organizing groups - are analyzed as explicit conjunctions of politics and worship, from which one can articulate some of the mutual relationships between liturgical and political action. Upholding practical theology’s impulses to critical correlation (broadly understood), this work does not make either liturgical action or political action derivative from the other; instead, it considers political action and liturgical action as two repertoires of performed and enacted public life that necessarily overlap, at least for those who regularly practice worship. This provides richer possibilities for a liturgical (-practical) theology of politics, or a political liturgical (-practical) theology.

Pragmatism and Empiricism in American Religious Thought Group

Theme: Richard Bernstein's Pragmatism
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
MM-Columbia 1

David Lamberth, Harvard University, Presiding

Theme: Richard Bernstein's Pragmatism

Curtis Hutt, Brown University
Bernstein, Rorty, and Dewey on the Ethics of Historical Belief

Deborah Whitehead, University of Colorado, Boulder
Continuing the Argument: Tradition, Plurality, and Bernstein's "Engaged Pragmatism”

Kevin Schilbrack, Wesleyan College
Moral Realism, Metaphysics, and Pragmatism

Responding:

Eddie S. Glaude, Princeton University

Abstract

Pragmatism and Empiricism in American Religious Thought Group

Theme: Richard Bernstein's Pragmatism

Bernstein, Rorty, and Dewey on the Ethics of Historical Belief
Curtis Hutt, Brown University

Richard Bernstein, as noted by Nancy Frankenberry, isolates "proto-positivism" and "fideism" in the work of Richard Rorty who also proposed a "neat apartheid" between public and private spheres. This unfortunately, when co-opted by "new confessionalists" has served to insulate religious beliefs from challenges. Agents whose beliefs are determined intra-traditionally need not rebut the questions of outsiders who do not share their own basic beliefs. I will not only argue that Bernstein fairly amends Rorty but that John Dewey would have taken Bernstein's criticisms one step further.

Continuing the Argument: Tradition, Plurality, and Bernstein's "Engaged Pragmatism”
Deborah Whitehead, University of Colorado, Boulder

In this paper I first sketch out Richard Bernstein’s notion of an “engaged pragmatism” and outline some of its implications for how we conceptualize pragmatist tradition and history, indeed even the very definition of the term "pragmatism" itself. I then move to discuss some of the ways in which this notion can be applied to feminist critiques of pragmatism and feminist “argumentative retellings” of pragmatism’s origins. I argue that the Bernsteinian focus on plurality, diversity, and conflict in the interest of maintaining the vitality of the pragmatist tradition is helpful in destabilizing dominant forms of the tradition, but should be supplemented by critical feminist analysis in order to fully open up the tradition to address the complicated dynamics of gender, race, class, and other power dynamics in the construction of pragmatism.

Moral Realism, Metaphysics, and Pragmatism
Kevin Schilbrack, Wesleyan College

Jeffrey Stout and Franklin Gamwell are two contemporary religious ethicists whose accounts of moral realism are apparently diametrically opposed. Stout argues that moral realism does not require metaphysical claims about reality as it is in itself. In fact, “ethics without metaphysics” is one of Stout’s slogans. In contrast, Gamwell argues that moral convictions have no validity unless they are grounded in the ultimate nature of things. “No ethics without metaphysics” might be his slogan. This paper seeks to explore the extent to which these two views might be reconciled. This paper argues, first, that Gamwell's metaphysical approach actually is pragmatist, in the sense that for Gamwell metaphysics involves the reflection on the norms implicit in practices and, second, that Stout's critique of metaphysical realism does not apply to Gamwell's position. If the paper is successful, the end result is an understanding of moral realism that is both pragmatist and metaphysical.

Religion and Popular Culture Group and Religion, Media, and Culture Group

Theme: Born Digital and Born Again Digital: Religion in Virtual Gaming Worlds
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
MM-Marriott Hall Salon 2

Gregory Grieve, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, Presiding

Theme: Born Digital and Born Again Digital: Religion in Virtual Gaming Worlds

Brian Moynihan, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Born Digital

Vincent Gonzalez, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Born Digital

Rabia Gregory, University of Missouri, Columbia
Born Digital

Pamela Mullins Reaves, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Born Again Digital

Shanny Luft, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Born Again Digital

Anne Blankenship, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Born Again Digital

Abstract

Religion and Popular Culture Group and Religion, Media, and Culture Group

Theme: Born Digital and Born Again Digital: Religion in Virtual Gaming Worlds

To walk on water in a videogame is not a miracle, the imagination of game designers being the only natural law in these new worlds. A growing class of games, however, labors to harmonize their internal realities with religion, creating in-game situations that reward and impart religious training. The result is an interplay of discipline and belief affecting (and effecting) the player even after they turn off the game. This session includes two papers, and closes with an interactive arcade/poster session featuring several key games. The first paper, a diachronic study of evangelical Christian videogames, will investigate the ongoing negotiation of technologies and theologies which bring out-game realities in. The second, a synchronic study of three religious moments that emerged along with their media, will emphasize how individual religiosities are shaped by religious gaming, bringing in-game realities out.

Born Digital
Brian Moynihan, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

When religion is born under the constraints of new media, it manifests novel modalities of practice, text, and community. This paper presents a synchronic examination of three games which demonstrate new technological frames for imagining religion. The first case study investigates how technological and disciplinary practice functions in The Journey to Wild Divine, a meditation-based game that sacralizes biofeedback. The second explores kabbalah.com’s introductory courses as a previously unthinkable scripturality that crafts player dependence through embedded, interactive parables. The final study concerns the rhetoric of virtual holy war in multi-player gaming worlds. Often complete with “bibles” and liturgy, these discourses raise questions on what qualifies as “real” religion and religious community. The composite image of these new religious forms demonstrates how technology affects religion, and how technologized religion affects the religious, exploring both the player’s digital incarnation in new religious worlds and the technologies that make it possible.

Born Again Digital
Pamela Mullins Reaves, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

This three-part paper examines the scriptural basis of a series of evangelical Christian video games, including Wisdom Tree games, N’Lightning’s Catechumen, and Left Behind: Eternal Forces. Collectively, we characterize these games as “born-again digital.” After briefly considering the general development of these games over time, we explore the way these evangelical games employ scriptural material and thus reflect biblical literacy. By examining the function of scripture in each game, we evaluate how the features of the Christian gaming genre—including technological advancements and competition with secular counterparts—impact the potential significance of scripture in the games. We propose that as games become increasingly action and graphic oriented, the role of scriptural passages diminishes. While biblical material continues to inform the settings of the games, biblical literacy is not necessarily required. This transition leads us to reflect how, if at all, these games might be considered a form of religious practice.

Religion in Latin America and the Caribbean Group and Pentecostal-Charismatic Movements Consultation

Theme: Research Sites, Opportunities, and Problems in Borderlands Pentecostalism
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
MM-Atlanta

New Program Unit

Nelson Maldonado-Torres, University of California, Berkeley, Presiding

Theme: Research Sites, Opportunities, and Problems in Borderlands Pentecostalism

Arlene Sanchez Walsh, Azusa Pacific University
Strangers at Our Gates: Latino Pentecostal Migrants and the Assemblies of God in the Borderlands

Daniel Ramirez, Arizona State University
Yanking Out the “Royal Telephone”: Borderlands Pentecostal Musics

Ethan Sharp, University of Texas, Pan American
Conjunto Conversions: Musical Adaptations in Mexicano Pentecostal Communities

Responding:

Jesse Miranda, Vanguard University

Abstract

Religion in Latin America and the Caribbean Group and Pentecostal-Charismatic Movements Consultation

Theme: Research Sites, Opportunities, and Problems in Borderlands Pentecostalism

Surveys of religious history in North America have given short shrift to Latina/o Pentecostalism and have forced most Latino religious history into westward and northward flows. Scholarship on Pentecostalism has not been exempt from this bias in its attention to movement centers and in its privileging of standard historical sources. In terms of both space and methodology, borderlands Pentecostalism has been relegated to the geographic and epistemic periphery. Similarly, the bulk of social scientific studies of pentecostalismo have been undertaken in Latin America, resulting in the foisting of extraneous templates upon U.S. Latina/o Pentecostals. This interdisciplinary panel seeks to situate the state of the question squarely within the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and to signal new directions for research. The vantage point at the interstices of two countries will allow for new mappings and soundings of a religious cartography that reflects people’s experience and movement through spaces both real and imagined.

Strangers at Our Gates: Latino Pentecostal Migrants and the Assemblies of God in the Borderlands
Arlene Sanchez Walsh, Azusa Pacific University

For the Assemblies of God, revisioning their relationship with Mexicano converts in the early years of the movement (1915-1935), the past must be usable, particularly when their early history is so rife with paternalism, racism, and anti-Catholicism. One way to accomplish this is to juxtapose Henry C. Ball, the missionary boss, with Alice Luce, the genteel matron. This is usable, but is it accurate? This paper contends that the growth of the Mexican Assemblies of God was more a product of the contemporary cultural milieu: anti-Catholic, premillenial dispensations that viewed the training of Mexican “laborers” necessary to contest Roman Catholicism and Communism—in Mexico, not the U.S.; that the Mexican Assemblies grew and thrived in the U.S., not as a product of evangelism, but rather church growth occurred by sheer demographic will, despite repatriation, despite marginalization, growth occurred in spite of attitudes, meager resources, and often from one Mexicano convert to another.

Yanking Out the “Royal Telephone”: Borderlands Pentecostal Musics
Daniel Ramirez, Arizona State University

This interdisciplinary study examines Pentecostal music as a tool for cultural maintenance, ideological resistance, and social solidarity in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. The contemporary evangélico growth among Latino and Latin American populations requires a precise historicization that takes into account the experience of migration and the impact of migrating cultural and symbolic goods, including, especially, musical ones. The fecund production of early borderlands Pentecostal composers stands—and sounds—in stark aesthetic contrast to that of Mainline precursors. Their aesthetic choices allowed Pentecostals to capture the popular sonic sphere with a repertoire that reflected most of the popular musical genres of Mexican/Chicano society as well as the migrating and melancholic experience of a mobile proletariat and peasantry. The very peripheral nature of the borderlands afforded a measure of freedom and agency away from guardians of doctrinal and liturgical orthodoxy.

Conjunto Conversions: Musical Adaptations in Mexicano Pentecostal Communities
Ethan Sharp, University of Texas, Pan American

This paper considers some of the musical styles that Mexicano Pentecostals use and adapt for church services, from a perspective rooted in the disciplines of folklore, cultural anthropology and ethnomusicology. I evaluate the symbolic capacities of these styles, and engage scholarly discussions that attempt to determine ways in which Pentecostals are engaged in social changes associated with late capitalism, transnationalism and globalization. I argue that the diverse repertoire, including the consistent use of styles derived from the conjunto tradition, within Mexicano Pentecostal churches reveals not a contradictory or double consciousness, as some scholars have suggested, but an awareness of multiple subjectivities. (Through attention to multiple subjectivities, I relate my analysis to theories and commentary about lives on the border). Through conjunto, as well as "modern" styles of praise and worship, Pentecostals imagine and pursue diverse possibilities for relating to God, fellow believers, and the complex world outside the church building.

Science, Technology, and Religion Group and Cultural History of the Study of Religion Consultation

Theme: Soap, Coal, and Rayon: Miraculous Elements of Modern Industry
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
GH-Molly A

Elizabeth A. Clark, Duke University, Presiding

Theme: Soap, Coal, and Rayon: Miraculous Elements of Modern Industry

Kathryn Lofton, Indiana University, Bloomington
Saving Suds: Soap Promotions and the Moral Culture of American Cleanliness

Richard J. Callahan, University of Missouri, Columbia
The Power of Coal: Development and Enchantment in Central Appalachia

Chad Seales, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Chemical Fluid to Rayon: The Miracle of Industrial Conversion in the Modern American South

Responding:

John Corrigan, Florida State University

Abstract

Science, Technology, and Religion Group and Cultural History of the Study of Religion Consultation

Theme: Soap, Coal, and Rayon: Miraculous Elements of Modern Industry

This panel addresses the religious enchantment of modern industry in the United States. Each paper focuses on the production and consumption of a specific industrial element: soap, coal, or rayon. Presenters describe the language of industrial production, tracing a common grammar of miraculous conversion. The presenters then reflect on the theoretical and methodological implications of these material practices for the study of religion in America.

Saving Suds: Soap Promotions and the Moral Culture of American Cleanliness
Kathryn Lofton, Indiana University, Bloomington

Few objects encapsulate the ambivalent moral tenor of modernity better than soap. With the development of vegetable oils in the mid-nineteenth century, and the concomitant founding of Procter and Gamble in 1837, soap gained its promotional footing alongside the processes that define modern objectification. This paper is an analysis of the Protestant language embedded within the sale of soap, the ways Christian moral imperatives goaded soap into the stratosphere of modern business. Although “cleanliness is next to godliness” was an axiom popularized by Wesleyan itinerants in the antebellum period, it was not until the emergence of a diverse, immigrant-clogged industrial America that clergy became committed to a specifically accessorized moral cleanliness. Product placement in late-nineteenth century sermons, collaborations between Protestant social reformers and specific soap companies, as well as the formation of the Cleanliness Institute form the documentary basis for this exposition on the sudsy mission to an unwashed populace.

The Power of Coal: Development and Enchantment in Central Appalachia
Richard J. Callahan, University of Missouri, Columbia

This paper explores coal as a material substance that not only fired the furnaces of industry, but also fired the religious imagination. The discovery of coal under the Central Appalachian Mountains in the late nineteenth century and the development of industrial mining produced mythic as well as economic dreams. The source of electricity and economic potential, coal was imagined by industrialists, travel writers, missionaries, and others as an enchanted power that would unleash the progress of history and civilization that had been held back in the mountains, bringing education, religion, and material and cultural development to a “backwards” region. Examining coal as metaphor, promise, and transformational power by missionaries, industrialists, and journalists, this paper considers how ideas of religion, morality, civilization, and progress were bound together in the industrialization of Central Appalachia's coal fields. It further considers counter-meanings for mountain residents who experienced coal as a different symbol and reality.

Chemical Fluid to Rayon: The Miracle of Industrial Conversion in the Modern American South
Chad Seales, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Despite the abundance of religious and technological mixtures in the modern American South, such as the Old Time Gospel Hour, scholars have, with few exceptions, considered industrialization at odds with antebellum religious practices. Southern evangelicals, though, used industrial technology for more than just a vehicle to distribute the sacred. For some, industry itself was religiously enchanted. To illustrate this point, I focus on “Miracles of Supervision,” a keynote address delivered by Southern Baptist minister George D. Heaton to the Southern Industrial Relations Conference in 1949. In this speech, Heaton declared industrial conversion of elements to products, such as chemical fluid to rayon, “as miraculous a thing as modern life witnesses.” Such religious language suggests that industrial conversion was a southern Protestant equivalent of a Roman Catholic science of transubstantiation. If this is true, then the “real presence” of postbellum Protestantism is found in the factory, not in the congregation.

Western Esotericism Group

Theme: Esotericism and Transgression
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
GH-Ford A

Allison P. Coudert, University of California, Davis, Presiding

Theme: Esotericism and Transgression

Wendy Rachele Terry, University of California, Davis
"Outside the Court of Your Secrets": Marguerite Porete's Transgression

Geoffrey McVey, Miami University, Ohio
Acceptable Transgressions: Mysticism and Esotericism at the Margins

Taylor Hines, University of California, Santa Barbara
Conservative Transgression: Swedenborgian Sectarianism in Unitarian Boston

Matthew Rogers, Northwestern University
Black Magic in British Columbia

Grant H. Potts, University of Pennsylvania
Creativity, Exchange, and Institutionalization in a Ritual Magic Lodge

The Western Esotericism Group's Business Meeting will be held Sunday, 6:30 pm-8:00 pm in the Program Unit Chair's Lounge (MM-Business Suite 1)

Abstract

Western Esotericism Group

Theme: Esotericism and Transgression

Western esoteric currents are not infrequently depicted as "transgressive" with respect to the religious, social, and political standards of mainstream culture. This panel will focus on the forms that transgression can take in esoteric movements and the reasons for it. Papers will reflect on the theoretical possibilities for an alliance of esotericism and transgression. Others will examine specific historical cases where transgression is made manifest in the context of esoteric thinking.

"Outside the Court of Your Secrets": Marguerite Porete's Transgression
Wendy Rachele Terry, University of California, Davis

Marguerite Porete (d.1310) wrote a book “which sounds clearly of heresy”—“quod manifeste sonat in heresim,” and continued to circulate it after censure. Documentation of her and her self-appointed advocate Guiard de Cressonessart trials show that Guiard and Marguerite underwent similar prosecution. Guirad, who confessed, was imprisoned for life for teaching that there were two churches and denying papal primacy. Marguerite refused to confess and was executed. She was subsequently labeled a “pseudo-mulier,” literally fake woman. Her book, Mirror of Simple Souls, was quickly disassociated with her. Excerpts from the Mirror formed the foundation of condemnation against antinomianism at the Council of Vienne (1311-12) while the Mirror continued to circulate anonymously as an accepted spiritual treatise. Careful analysis of the Mirror taken in conjunction with Marguerite's proximity to Guiard demonstrates that her esoteric teachings, not just those which were ultimately labeled antinomian, were significant in her "transgression."

Acceptable Transgressions: Mysticism and Esotericism at the Margins
Geoffrey McVey, Miami University, Ohio

The boundaries between mysticism and esotericism are not a matter of content but of their acceptability within the discourse of religious studies. Both present methods of transgressing the limits or definitions of the self, but where mysticism has found a place within scholarship, esotericism has not. This paper is intended to demonstrate that the separation of the two categories is, despite very similar content, grounded the valuation of origins, and ultimately in the representation of the esoteric as a field defined by otherness.

Conservative Transgression: Swedenborgian Sectarianism in Unitarian Boston
Taylor Hines, University of California, Santa Barbara

This paper explores the changing status of a small group of elite Swedenborgian sectarians in Unitarian Boston from around 1815 through the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Originally labeled mentally unbalanced and subjected to petty persecution, the Swedenborgians went on to become extremely successful and well-respected. While in their first years this group implicitly challenged central epistemological planks in the early Unitarian synthesis, they also embraced many conservative doctrines, practices and concerns. By the 1840s and 50s they no longer seemed particularly radical, especially when placed next to the Transcendentalists whose revolt they had anticipated and fed.

Black Magic in British Columbia
Matthew Rogers, Northwestern University

The emic definition of “black magician” varies significantly from occultist to occultist, and often even within the works of a single writer. The acclaimed novelist Malcolm Lowry was a friend and pupil of the occultist Charles Stansfeld Jones, who was himself a disciple of Aleister Crowley. Lowry combined himself and Jones to develop the anti-hero of his magnum opus Under the Volcano, Geoffery Firmin, whose brother jokes about him, “Maybe he’s a black magician!” Not only the principal figures of this magical lineage, but related works of secondary scholarship engage the “black magic” distinction. Notions of “black magic” can profoundly illuminate the ethical and metaphysical dimensions of occult practice when used by magicians themselves and by those who study them. This paper explores that concept within the particular case history of magical filiation that eventuated in the tragic demise of Malcolm Lowry.

Creativity, Exchange, and Institutionalization in a Ritual Magic Lodge
Grant H. Potts, University of Pennsylvania

Based on a year of fieldwork on Portland, Oregon based Sekhet Maat Lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), this paper examines the question of integration and exchange in an esoteric fraternity on two levels, the liturgical and the institutional or bureaucratic. It looks at two rituals: the autumn equinox ritual performed at the lodge in September of 2006 and the ongoing weekly performance of Aleister Crowley’s Gnostic Mass. These rituals show two avenues through which integration takes place: the doctrine of signatures inherited from the esoteric tradition and an ideology against collective interpretation of practice that is coupled with a meticulous obsession with correct practice. The paper concludes by examining the relationship between the integration of religious information on a liturgical level and the integration of institutional practices from other religions and from secular institutions.

Religions in Chinese and Indian Cultures: A Comparative Perspective Seminar

Theme: Rituals in Indian and Chinese Cultures
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
MM-Anaheim

Tao Jiang, Rutgers University, Presiding

Theme: Rituals in Indian and Chinese Cultures

Panelists:

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Lancaster University

Frederick M. Smith, University of Iowa

Kathryn McClymond, Georgia State University

Thomas A. Wilson, Hamilton College

Paul R. Goldin, University of Pennsylvania

Tanya Storch, University of the Pacific

Business Meeting:

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Lancaster University, Presiding
Tao Jiang, Rutgers University, Presiding

Abstract

Religions in Chinese and Indian Cultures: A Comparative Perspective Seminar

Theme: Rituals in Indian and Chinese Cultures

This year the seminar theme is rituals in Indian and Chinese cultures. Our panelists will address aspects of rituals as follows: What in classical Indian and/or Chinese contexts do we identify as ritual and how does that affect any theory of ritual? What are the sources of ritual authority and how are they interpreted? What issues does the performance of rituals address? How are rituals articulated and presented?, etc. We are concentrating on ritual theory in the normative contexts of Vedic and Confucian ritual, as well as the meditative qualities apparent in the history of Buddhist ritual (but we quite understand the possibility of opening up the comparative understanding of ritual through more "popular" modes, while not being able to accommodate them here). A key feature of the seminar is to facilitate discussions among the panelists and with the audience at the conference.

Animals and Religion Consultation

Theme: Visioning Animal-Human Relationships through the Religious Studies Looking Glass
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
GH-Madeleine C

Forrest Clingerman, Ohio Northern University, Presiding

Theme: Visioning Animal-Human Relationships through the Religious Studies Looking Glass

Sarah Pike, California State University, Chico
“Liberation’s Crusade Has Begun”: Hare Krishna Hardcore Youth and Animal Rights Activism

Michelene Pesantubbee, University of Iowa
"Bearly" Understandable: Transformation from Human to Bear and Man to Woman

Joanne Pierce, College of the Holy Cross
The “Rainbow Bridge”: Animals as Sharers in Human Immortality (or Eternal Life in Cyberspace)

Aaron Gross, University of California, Santa Barbara
The Animal, Critical Theory, and the Study of Religion

Responding:

Ines M. Talamantez, University of California, Santa Barbara

Business Meeting:

Laura Hobgood-Oster, Southwestern University, Presiding

Abstract

Animals and Religion Consultation

Theme: Visioning Animal-Human Relationships through the Religious Studies Looking Glass

This session examines the multi-faceted implications of the human-animal relationship in religious experiences. From radical animal rights activism to seeking connections in the afterlife through the internet to understanding the bear in Cherokee traditions, the session deliberately attempts to cover the increasingly broad range of human-animal studies in religion.

“Liberation’s Crusade Has Begun”: Hare Krishna Hardcore Youth and Animal Rights Activism
Sarah Pike, California State University, Chico

In 2006, Hare Krishna hardcore band “108” contributed to a benefit for imprisoned animal rights activist Peter Young. This is just one of many examples of the connection between Krishna Consciousness, hardcore music, straight-edge youth culture and radical animal rights activism, a connection completely left out of scholarly literature on religion and animals, youth culture, and the animal rights movement, as well as news media accounts of animal rights terrorism. This paper explores the ways in which Krishna Consciousness has shaped hardcore youth culture and animal rights activism. Drawing on interviews with activists and Krishna hardcore musicians, music lyrics, fanzines, and MySpace band sites, I argue that the point of convergence of hardcore music, Krishna Consciousness and radical activism represents an important subculture within which young adults negotiate and construct religious and activist identities.

"Bearly" Understandable: Transformation from Human to Bear and Man to Woman
Michelene Pesantubbee, University of Iowa

This paper draws on images of bears through myth and song to provide insight into Cherokee historical responses to men who behaved like women. The issue of Cherokee traditional thought arises from an amendment made to the Cherokee Nation Marriage and Family Act in June 2004 that bans same-sex marriage. One council member who urged passage of the amendment stated that “The Tribunal has made it quite clear that it is the Council’s position to clarify what the Cherokee peoples [sic] traditions and beliefs are.” In response to the petition to ban same-sex marriages a Cherokee scholar argued that “there is overwhelming evidence for the historic and cultural presence of multiple gender roles and same-sex relations” including marriage between same-sex couples among the Cherokee. Bear stories and songs provide a lens by which to examine Cherokee understanding of humans who exist outside normative boundaries for human behavior.

The “Rainbow Bridge”: Animals as Sharers in Human Immortality (or Eternal Life in Cyberspace)
Joanne Pierce, College of the Holy Cross

The consideration of animals and their roles in human lives has often, in the past, raised the question of their sentience and participation in a human afterlife. Recently, I began a study of the internet phenomenon of religious narrative and funeral memorials of animals (usually pets) on a series of internet sites linked in a Webring: the Rainbow Bridge. This presentation will offer some analysis of the following points: the roots of the Rainbow Bridge narrative; the question of animal sentience and “salvation,” especially in connection with Christian tradition; the need (at least for some Americans) to ritualize the passing of a pet, and the form of this ritualization; thus, the content of memorial epitaphs and eulogies on the Rainbow Bridge; finally, the function of cyber space as a kind of “eternal life” or immortality.

The Animal, Critical Theory, and the Study of Religion
Aaron Gross, University of California, Santa Barbara

Though it is not generally acknowledged, certain ways of imagining animals and the human-animal border have been crucial to the theoretical basis of the field of religious studies since its inception. I critically analyze this under-examined theoretical heritage and consider how a perspective from the “animals and religion” discourse might challenge such foundational assumptions of the field. I highlight the broader theoretical significance of this question through a brief consideration and problematization of the thought of Emile Durkheim and later sociologists and historians of religion influenced by his conception of religion as an essentially human (and not animal) phenomena. I propose to explicate the limitations of this theorization of religion through a consideration of the question of the animal as it has emerged in critical theoretical discussions of subjectivity in the thought of Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben.

Childhood Studies and Religion Consultation

Theme: Children and Sacred Texts
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
MM-Manchester 1

Judith Gundry-Volf, Yale University, Presiding

Theme: Children and Sacred Texts

Jennifer E. Beste, Xavier University
Catholic Children's Encounter with the Bible through "Catechesis of the Good Shepherd"

Russell Dalton, Brite Divinity School
Children's Bible Texts of Terror: Abraham and Isaac, Jephthah's Daughter, and Elisha and the She-bears in U.S. Children's Bible Storybooks, 1860-2006

Laurel Koepf, Union Theological Seminary
Calling for Children: A Childist Interpretational Hermeneutic

Annemie Dillen, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Good News for Children? Towards a Biblical Hermeneutic of Texts of Terror

Responding:

John Carroll, Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education

Business Meeting:

Barbara Pitkin, Stanford University, Presiding

Abstract

Childhood Studies and Religion Consultation

Theme: Children and Sacred Texts

Catholic Children's Encounter with the Bible through "Catechesis of the Good Shepherd"
Jennifer E. Beste, Xavier University

The purpose of this paper is to explore how Catholic children encounter and relate to the Christian Scriptures within the context of a faith formation program called "Catechesis of the Good Shepherd." The aim of this method is to provide sacred space to "fall in love" with God by allowing children to encounter Scripture on their own terms. Besides drawing on the literature by founder Sofia Cavalletti and other catechists, analysis will be based on my ethnographic field research observing three to five year olds in a Catholic parish every Sunday and six to eight year olds at a Catholic Montessori school. The second main section of this paper will contrast this method of encountering Scripture with the more widespread traditional religion class that relies on a textbook with Scripture stories. I will draw on my field research observing four traditional second grade religion classes as a point of contrast.

Children's Bible Texts of Terror: Abraham and Isaac, Jephthah's Daughter, and Elisha and the She-bears in U.S. Children's Bible Storybooks, 1860-2006
Russell Dalton, Brite Divinity School

Children’s bible storybooks have been among the most popular and influential types of religious publications in the United States over the past 125 years, providing many with their first impressions of Bible stories. These storybooks lend insight into the American church’s changing assumptions about the lessons children need to learn and the nature of the Bible. This paper focuses on the ways that three troubling stories about children, Abraham and Isaac, Jephthah’s daughter, and Elisha and the she-bears, have been retold for children. The stories of Isaac and Jephthah’s daughter, for example, are often revised in ways that celebrate their obedience and total submission to their fathers, even to the point of passively allowing their fathers to kill them without complaint. The story of forty-two children being mauled by bears is retold to teach children a variety of lessons. Illustrations from these storybooks will be shown and discussed as well.

Calling for Children: A Childist Interpretational Hermeneutic
Laurel Koepf, Union Theological Seminary

Increasingly, methodologies for the interpretation of sacred texts recognize and value the presence of the interpreter’s voice in her or his interpretation, as well as the ways in which his or her voice is influenced by social location. Largely though, the diversity of interpretational voices has been limited to those of adults. The voices of children as interpreters of sacred texts must be recognized as a part of the plurality of interpretational voices and brought into conversation with other methodologies for textual interpretation. To do so without disempowering children, it is necessary not only to search for the presence and voices of children in sacred texts, but also to seriously engage children as interpreters in their own right. These two elements of childist interpretation are used to engage 1 Samuel 3:1-4:1. The methodologies employed by three children of different ages are considered in a child-centered interpretation of the text.

Good News for Children? Towards a Biblical Hermeneutic of Texts of Terror
Annemie Dillen, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

After all the recent research about images of children in the Bible, the question now is how can we deal with texts about children that raise moral questions in our contemporary context. I distinguish three ways of dealing with problematic texts about children, namely diabolization, banalization and ethicization. Diabolization means considering scriptural texts as absolutely bad. Banalization means relativizing the meaning and the relevance of these scriptural passages. Ethicization refers to an attitude whereby the content of the scriptural texts is interpreted in a new way so that these texts take on a more positive meaning. At the end I will provide building blocks of a liberating biblical hermeneutic, referring to the method of "resistant reading." The models of reasoning developed can also be applied to other difficult biblical texts, and therefore also offer us insights into possible positive ways to make and deal with children’s Bibles.

Death, Dying, and Beyond Consultation

Theme: Continuing Bonds with the Dead
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
GH-Edward D

Kathleen Garces-Foley, Marymount University, Presiding

Theme: Continuing Bonds with the Dead

Stephen Potthoff, Wilmington College
Refreshment and Reunion in Paradise: Near-Death Experiences as Vehicles of Individual and Communal Healing in Early North African Christianity

Robert Ross, University of Massachusetts, Boston
The Dead among the Living: The Presence of Ancestors in the Music of a Culture

Melissa Kelley, Weston Jesuit School of Theology
Continuing Bonds and Attachment to God

Rhon Manigault, Wake Forest University
Talking to the Dead: Performative Memory as Living Practice among Gullah/Geechee Women

Business Meeting:

Christopher Moreman, St. Francis Xavier University, Presiding

Abstract

Death, Dying, and Beyond Consultation

Theme: Continuing Bonds with the Dead

Refreshment and Reunion in Paradise: Near-Death Experiences as Vehicles of Individual and Communal Healing in Early North African Christianity
Stephen Potthoff, Wilmington College

Throughout human history, religious systems have served to provide hope and meaning in the face of death. From the third through the seventh centuries CE, early Christians in the North African city of Carthage embraced hope and meaning at life’s boundary through the construction of a paradisal realm for the departed in the cemetery. Early Christian martyrs, whose tombs attracted the graves of ordinary Christians seeking the postmortem company and protection of the martyrs in paradise, had embarked in the darkness of prison on visionary otherworld journeys, during which they visited resplendent gardens and partook of paradisal banquets. Such visions of paradise, in many ways the internal counterpart to the imaginative act of creating a paradisal realm in the cemetery, provided blueprints and images from the spirit realm, which stonemasons sculpted into a culturally shared sacred landscape where all Christians could experience healing and hope across the boundary of death.

The Dead among the Living: The Presence of Ancestors in the Music of a Culture
Robert Ross, University of Massachusetts, Boston

This presentation examines how the power of ancestors makes its presence known through distinctive themes in the music of Creole-Zydeco and Cajun cultures of Southwest Louisiana. Both the music itself, and various social rituals expressed in the music, become vehicles through which there is established a continuing bond between the living and the dead. The presentation is dynamic and interactive, including both a theological analysis of the role of the dead in the religious and ‘folk religious’ practices of these cultures, and live performances of the representative music discussed.

Continuing Bonds and Attachment to God
Melissa Kelley, Weston Jesuit School of Theology

This paper will present the concept of attachment to God as an important consideration for the ongoing study of continuing bonds with the deceased. While attachment theory is a familiar frame for considering the experience of grief, including continuing bonds with the deceased, the area of attachment to God is still largely neglected. After an overview of current conceptual and empirical work in attachment to God, this paper will explore ways that one’s style of attachment to God may influence both the nature and the function of one’s continuing bonds with the deceased. Important questions for future theorizing, empirical research, and strategies of care will be proposed.

Talking to the Dead: Performative Memory as Living Practice among Gullah/Geechee Women
Rhon Manigault, Wake Forest University

Women in the South Carolina low-country profess to “talk to the dead all the time,” a practice of ongoing communication between the living and the deceased. This paper explores the layered meanings of this practice and engages the ways talking to the dead challenges literal appropriations of the terms “talking” and “dead.” In one of its specific formations, talking to the dead is the transmission of communal memory through ritual performance. This performative memory is readily featured in multiple practices in low-country culture – the creation of sweetgrass baskets, the use of folklore by local storytellers, and the performance of sacred music. For women of the low-country, the deceased, though physically transitioned, are very much alive.

Rethinking the Field Consultation

Theme: Religion, Theology, and the Arts
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
CC-28E

Davina C. Lopez, Eckerd College, Presiding

Theme: Religion, Theology, and the Arts

Part 2: Theology and Film: Challenging the Sacred/Secular Divide

Panelists:

Cecilia Gonzalez-Andrieu, Loyola Marymount University

Naoko Frances Hioki, Graduate Theological Union

Bobbi Dykema Katsanis, Graduate Theological Union

John Handley, Graduate Theological Union

Jenny Patten Gargiulo, Graduate Theological Union

Frank Burch Brown, Christian Theological Seminary

Alejandro Garcia-Rivera, Jesuit School of Theology, Berkeley

Sara Anson Vaux, Northwestern University

Christopher Deacy, University of Kent

Gaye Williams Ortiz, Augusta State University

Maia Kotrosits, Union Theological Seminary

Responding:

S. Brent Plate, Texas Christian University

Business Meeting:

Bradley L. Herling, Marymount Manhattan College, Presiding

Abstract

Rethinking the Field Consultation

Theme: Religion, Theology, and the Arts

Part 2: Theology and Film: Challenging the Sacred/Secular Divide

This year's Rethinking the Field session examines Religion, Theology, and the Arts by bringing together two inter-related panels. The first is devoted to developing a method that brings theology and critical theory together around common criteria. The panel will urge scholars in the arts and in religion to work across a number of disciplines, allowing the theological insights embedded in artistic expression to shine through. The second focus of the session will be religion, theology, and film: the panel will attempt to advance the conversation within this subdiscipline by stimulating awareness of a range of methodological and theoretical issues that go along with examining filmic texts. In particular, these speakers will suggest that film provides a necessary and vital element in the dialogue between theology and popular culture, particularly when it is pursued in a positive, enthusiastic, yet critical manner.

Søren Kierkegaard Society

Theme: Kierkegaard in Dialogue with Non-Christian Religions
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
CC-26B

Tamara Monet Marks, Florida State University, Presiding

Theme: Kierkegaard in Dialogue with Non-Christian Religions

K. Brian Soderquist, Søren Kierkegaard Center, University of Copenhagen

Kierkegaard's Understanding of Non-Christian Religions

Andrew J. Nicholson, State University of New York, Stony Brook

Hinduism-Buddhism: Skillful Means and Bold Assertions

Karen C. Carr, Lawrence University

Daoism: Sin, Spontaneity, Nature, and God

Jennifer Pouya, Texas Christian University

Kierkegaard and the Jewish Shadow

Adam Buben, University of South Florida

Background for a Congruence: Kierkegaard and the Samurai

Abrahim Khan, University of Toronto

Kierkegaard and Muhammad Iqbal on Becoming a Self

Responding:

Erik Ziolkowski, Lafayette University

La Communidad/The Community

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
GH-Maggie

North American Association for the Study of Religion

Theme: Taxonomies in the Study of Religion
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
CC-28A

Theme: Taxonomies in the Study of Religion

Craig Martin, Syracuse University

Strategic Uses of "Religion": Taxonomy and Metonymy in Political Discourse

Leah Payne, Vanderbilt University

Time on Their Side: Using Philosophy of Time to Understand Distinctions between Early American Pentecostals and Fundamentalists

Thomas B. Ellis, Appalachian State University

Spirituality Redescribed, Self-esteem Misrecognized

Responding:

Aaaron Hughes, University of Calgary

Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
CC-30C

9:00 am 2007 Presidential Address

Stephanie Paulsell, Harvard University

Lost in the Mystery of God: Childhood and the History of Christian Spirituality

10:30 am Business Meeting

Mary Frohlich, Catholic Theological Union, President-elect, Presiding

All are welcome. For more information, please contact Anita Houck at ahouck@saintmarys.edu.

Person, Culture, and Religion Group

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
CC-29B

North American Paul Tillich Society and Polanyi Society

Theme: How Tillich’s Recently Retrieved Paper, “Participation and Knowledge: Problems of an Ontology of Cognition,” Engages Polanyi’s Thought
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
GH-Oxford

Walter Gulick, Montana State University, Billings, Presiding

Theme: How Tillich’s Recently Retrieved Paper, “Participation and Knowledge: Problems of an Ontology of Cognition,” Engages Polanyi’s Thought

Co-Presenters:

Durwood Foster, Pacific School of Religion

Richard Gelwick, Bangor Theological Seminary

Responding:

Donald Musser, Stetson University

Robert Russell, Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences

11:15 am Business Meeting:

Walter Mead, Illinois State University, Presiding

Karl Barth Society of North America

Theme: Discusson of Alyssa Lyra Pitstick, Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ's Descent into Hell (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2007)
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
CC-26B

George Hunsinger, Princeton Theological Seminary, Presiding

Theme: Discusson of Alyssa Lyra Pitstick, Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ's Descent into Hell (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2007)

Panelists:

Paul J. Griffiths, University of Illinois, Chicago

David Lauber, Wheaton College

John Webster, Aberdeen University

Responding:

Alyssa Lyra Pitstick

Society for Hindu-Christian Studies

Theme: (Re-)Constructing Advaita: Rambachan's The Advaita Worldview and Thatamanil's The Immanent Divine in Conversation
 

Saturday - 9:00 am-11:30 am
GH-Mohsen B

Michael McLaughlin, Presiding

Theme: (Re-)Constructing Advaita: Rambachan's The Advaita Worldview and Thatamanil's The Immanent Divine in Conversation

9:00 am Panel and Discussion

Panelists:

Michelle Voss Roberts, Rhodes College

Michael McLaughlin, St. Leo University

Joseph Prabhu, California State University

Responding:

Anantanand Rambachan, St. Olaf College

John J. Thatamanil, Vanderbilt University

11:30 am Business Meeting

Corinne Dempsey, Presiding

San Diego Zoo Tour

Saturday - 9:30 am-1:00 pm
Offsite

Sponsored by the Science, Technology, and Religion Group

Separate registration required.

Abstract

San Diego Zoo Tour

Sponsored by the Science, Technology, and Religion Group

The San Diego Zoo is a world-famous destination with more than 4,000 animals and 800 species in residence. The tour offers a great mini-introduction to the zoo’s mammal, bird, and plant collections. It includes a 90-minute private bus tour and one off-exhibit area. The tour is led by a zoo guide and is appropriate for ages 3 and up. Tour fee includes zoo ticket, transportation, and special behind-the scenes access to the zoo.

San Diego Chinese Historical Museum Walking Tour

Saturday - 10:30 am-1:00 pm
Offsite

Sponsored by the Chinese Religions Group

Separate registration required.

Abstract

San Diego Chinese Historical Museum Walking Tour

Sponsored by the Chinese Religions Group

The San Diego Chinese Historical Museum is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to collect, preserve, and share the Chinese-American experience and Chinese history, culture, and art to educate the community and visitors. The museum was founded in 1996 by the San Diego Chinese Historical Society. Since opening, the museum has presented more than thirty-nine exhibits highlighting the rich tradition of Chinese culture and history in San Diego and the world. The museum also features a library on Chinese culture and a tranquil garden with a koi pond.

Plenary Address

Theme: The Covenant with Black America
 

Saturday - 11:45 am-12:45 pm
CC-20D

Eddie S. Glaude, Princeton University, Presiding

Theme: The Covenant with Black America

Panelists:

Tavis Smiley, Los Angeles, CA

Responding:

Emilie M. Townes, Yale University
Cornel West, Princeton University

Abstract

Plenary Address

Theme: The Covenant with Black America

From his celebrated conversations with world figures, to his work to inspire the next generation of leaders, as a broadcaster, author, advocate, and philanthropist, Tavis Smiley continues to be an outstanding voice for change. Smiley hosts the late night television talk show, Tavis Smiley on PBS, and radio show, The Tavis Smiley Show on Public Radio International, making him the first American ever to simultaneously host signature talk shows on both public television and public radio. He also created the Tavis Smiley Foundation, whose mission is to enlighten, encourage and empower black youth, as well as Tavis Smiley Presents, a subsidiary of The Smiley Group, Inc., that brings ideas and people together through symposiums, seminars, forums, and town hall meetings. In addition, he has authored ten books, and he made publishing history when the book he edited, The Covenant with Black America, reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.

Special Topics Forum

Theme: ATLA Career Alternatives Luncheon: Focus on Religion and Journalism
 

Saturday - 11:45 am-1:00 pm
GH-Manchester E

Sponsored by the Graduate Student Committee and American Theological Library Association

Kimberly Bresler, St. Joseph's University, Presiding

Theme: ATLA Career Alternatives Luncheon: Focus on Religion and Journalism

Panelists:

Debra Mason, Religion Newswriters Association

Jason Byassee, The Christian Century

Sandi Dolbee, San Diego Union-Tribune

Separate registration is required at www.aarweb.org/Meetings/Annual_Meeting/Current_Meeting/RSVP/ATLA/.

Abstract

Special Topics Forum

Theme: ATLA Career Alternatives Luncheon: Focus on Religion and Journalism

Sponsored by the Graduate Student Committee and American Theological Library Association

Students in religion and theology often find creative and rewarding career alternatives to the life of a professor. This year, our ongoing Career Alternatives series focuses on the intersection of religion and the media: what career opportunities exist for people interested in both religion and communicating ideas about religion using the expanding varieties of news media? Come listen to talented and experienced writers about their lives in religion and journalism.

AAR student members interested in attending must RSVP online ASAP (first-come, first-served basis) at www.aarweb.org/ Meetings/ Annual_Meeting/ Current_Meeting/ RSVP/ATLA/.Online registration deadline is noon on Wednesday, November 15.

Special Topics Forum

Theme: Introduction to the AAR
 

Saturday - 1:00 pm-3:30 pm
GH-Betsy A

Sponsored by the Graduate Student Committee

Kimberly Bresler, St. Joseph's University, Presiding

Theme: Introduction to the AAR

Panelists:

Richard Amesbury, Claremont School of Theology

Davina C. Lopez, Eckerd College

Bradley L. Herling, Marymount Manhattan College

Maurice Lee, Harvard University

Myesha D. Jenkins, American Academy of Religion

Abstract

Special Topics Forum

Theme: Introduction to the AAR

Sponsored by the Graduate Student Committee

The American Academy of Religion sponsors a broad umbrella of programs, affiliations, and sub-groups: the Theological Programs Initiative, mentoring programs for women and ethnic minorities, the Graduate Student Committee and Student Liaison Group, a multitude of associated regional meetings, the Employment Information Service, and various publishing enterprises, to name just a few. If you're confused by the AAR's alphabet soup (TPI, REM, SWP, GSC, SLG, EIS, and more) or if you've ever wondered what else the AAR does besides the annual meeting, come hear about the wide range of programs and opportunities for service offered to all AAR members.

Special Topics Forum

Theme: Sustainable Theological Education
 

Saturday - 1:00 pm-3:30 pm
MM-Marina G

Sponsored by the AAR Academic Relations Committee, AAR Theological Education Steering Committee, and SBL

David Rhoads, Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago and Laurel D. Kearns, Drew University, Presiding

Theme: Sustainable Theological Education

Panelists:

John B. Cobb, Claremont School of Theology

Rosemary R. Ruether, Claremont Graduate University

Calvin DeWitt, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Sallie McFague, Vancouver School of Theology

Norman Habel, Flinders University

Larry Rasmussen, Union Theological Seminary, New York

Abstract

Special Topics Forum

Theme: Sustainable Theological Education

Sponsored by the AAR Academic Relations Committee, AAR Theological Education Steering Committee, and SBL

As the declining health of the earth reaches a critical point, religious people from a wide variety of traditions are beginning to respond. It has been forty years since Lynn White issued what many saw as a wake up call. Institutions of theological education should be providing vigorous, visionary leadership on this issue, but are they? Six of the prophetic voices that have encouraged both churches and seminaries to address the worsening ecological crisis have been asked to reflect on the significant role of theological education in leading the faith community to respond. What leadership can seminaries provide through scholarship, academic programs, community life, building and grounds, and institutional practices? What unique opportunities and challenges does theological education face in meeting the environmental challenge? Ample time will be allowed for discussion. See www.webofcreation.org for more on this session and what some schools are already doing.

Religious Implications of Extreme Longevity Wildcard

Theme: Radical Life Extension: Implications for Eschatological Visions of the Religions
 

Saturday - 1:00 pm-3:30 pm
CC-25A

New Program Unit

Calvin Mercer, East Carolina University, Presiding

Theme: Radical Life Extension: Implications for Eschatological Visions of the Religions

Panelists:

Aubrey de Grey, Methuselah Foundation

Shawn Arthur, Appalachian State University

Ronald S. Cole-Turner, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

Derek Maher, East Carolina University

Terence L. Nichols, University of St. Thomas

Arvind Sharma, McGill University

Brent Waters, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

Abstract

Religious Implications of Extreme Longevity Wildcard

Theme: Radical Life Extension: Implications for Eschatological Visions of the Religions

Advances in medical sciences raise the possibility that biomedical technology could indefinitely extend healthy human life. The most optimistic predictions envision significant breakthroughs within two or three decades. If the science of “arrested aging” or “practical immortality,” sometimes referred to with the more technical and operational term “engineered negligible senescence,” were realized, it could have implications more radical than any other development in human history. Calls for dialogue and debate about the implications for society of extreme longevity -- the indefinite extension of healthy human life -- are being heard from several quarters (e.g., President’s Council on Bioethics, Hastings Center, leading scientists). The panel will open with a summary presentation by a scientist who is conversant with current scientific research. A panel of experts, from various religious traditions, will examine how the eschatological visions of religions might be impacted by the development and widespread use of radical life-extension technology.

Arts, Literature, and Religion Section

Theme: Images and Narratives of Violence
 

Saturday - 1:00 pm-3:30 pm
MM-Torrey 3

Jonathan Ebel, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Presiding

Theme: Images and Narratives of Violence

S. T. Campagna-Pinto, California State University, Bakersfield
Veiled Perception: Religion and Violence in Photographic Images from the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan

Kathryn Reklis, Yale University
"Torture Education" and the Imagination of Redemption: Suffering Heroism in 24

J. Cayenne Claassen-Luttner, Emory University
Pure and Violated Female Bodies: Martyrdom Images, Pornography, and Imitation

Alexei Khamin, Drew University
Ignatius of Antioch: A Postcolonial Reading

Abstract

Arts, Literature, and Religion Section

Theme: Images and Narratives of Violence

The Arts, Literature, and Religion Section’s session on "Images and Narratives of Violence" analyzes the relationship between representations of violence and religious beliefs and practices. Discussing images ranging from photographs from the Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan to the television show 24, and representations of martyrdom, crucifixion, and torture in genres ranging from accounts of the saints to pornography, presenters think about the complex ways in which humans represent and respond to images of suffering bodies and violence, and how religion shapes our viewing and responses to such images.

Veiled Perception: Religion and Violence in Photographic Images from the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan
S. T. Campagna-Pinto, California State University, Bakersfield

The RAWA photo exhibit “Under the Veil” presents documentation of the violence and oppression experienced by the women and men of Afghanistan under siege from Islamic Fundamentalists and American military saviors. The subjects of these photographs are real persons suffering torture and death; the enormity of their dignity and value go far beyond the documentation of their suffering. These real human persons cannot be aware of the interpretive gyrations of an audience reposing in the comfort of reflection. Thus the relationship of revelation to images of violence displays the veiled perception that works to obscure rather than reveal engagement with the oppressed. Photography as representation of human suffering thus gives knowledge but fails to create acknowledgement of "the neighbor with an unconscious." The religious dimensions of these photographs thus rests in their creation and not in their viewing, in their critique of those who gaze.

"Torture Education" and the Imagination of Redemption: Suffering Heroism in 24
Kathryn Reklis, Yale University

Once a week over 10 million Americans watch Jack Bauer, the hero of the Fox television show 24, lead a disturbing trend in post-9/11 television: the use of torture as a terrorist-fighting device. Amnesty International's Alistair Hodgett claims that 24 provides "torture education" to an otherwise naive audience. I want to suggest that the education provided can be understood, in theological terms, as opening a fantastic space where the horror of torture is not only tolerated, but even desired as a site of redemption through the creation of Jack as a suffering hero. Jack's redemptive suffering, however, stems from his ability to inflict pain on others, and only secondarily from his ability to suffer it himself. A theological tradition that has at its heart a crucified savior is poised both to reveal the account of redemption found in the suffering body of a torturer, and also to challenge it.

Pure and Violated Female Bodies: Martyrdom Images, Pornography, and Imitation
J. Cayenne Claassen-Luttner, Emory University

Since the earliest accounts of the Acta Martyrum, images and narratives of Roman Catholic martyrs have often had an erotic component. This pattern has continued through the twentieth century, becoming radically apparent in the martyrdom narratives of Saint Maria Goretti, who was canonized in 1950. In this paper I contrast several Catholic representations of sexual violence as martyrdom: authoritative narratives of Saint Maria Goretti, pietistic images of Goretti, the role of pornography in narratives about Goretti’s sexual assault, and Sue Coe’s 1984 collage entitled “Wisconsin Rape.” My paper points out the overlapping relationship between representations that enact dehumanization (and are thought to morally disable the viewer), and those holy representations that are meant to inspire empathetic identification and faithful imitation.

Ignatius of Antioch: A Postcolonial Reading
Alexei Khamin, Drew University

Postcolonial inquiry provides additional layers of insight into the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, a second century Christian martyr. Ignatius, who is eager to die in Rome, recognizes it as the universal center of colonial power, but in his letters he attempts to de-center and interrogate this power. Ignatius’s presentation of his journey as a triumphant procession is a case of colonial mimicry and even mockery. Ignatius uses his authority of a martyr-to-be to construct the novel Christian identity, Christianismos via separation from and opposition to what Ignatius calls Ioudaismos, Jewishness, which is a fluid identity in this period. This strategy involves the construction of the Other as a source of one’s identity, which is defined in opposition to the Other. Yet this strategy is a source of ambivalence, instability and fear of adulteration because the new identity, Christianismos, finds its being in the gaze of the Other.

Buddhism Section

Theme: Chinese Scholarship on the Dunhuang Manuscripts: New Perspectives on Buddhism
 

Saturday - 1:00 pm-3:30 pm
MM-Torrance

Stephen F. Teiser, Princeton University, Presiding

Theme: Chinese Scholarship on the Dunhuang Manuscripts: New Perspectives on Buddhism

Panelists:

Chunwen Hao, Capital Normal University

Victor Mair, University of Pennsylvania

Xin Yu, Fudan University

Responding:

Paul Copp, University of Chicago

Abstract

Buddhism Section

Theme: Chinese Scholarship on the Dunhuang Manuscripts: New Perspectives on Buddhism

The cache of more than 40,000 manuscripts discovered near Dunhuang (Gansu province, northwestern China) in the early 1900s casts new light on the complex religious life of a large Buddhist community on the Silk Road that flourished between 400 and 1000 C.E. Despite a century of study, the Dunhuang corpus remains under-studied, even by specialists in Chinese Buddhism. Since 1980, a new generation of scholars in China has pushed the field in new directions. This panel takes the Dunhuang region as an example of one particular Buddhist cultural formation in the medieval period, asking what it can tell us about the study of Buddhism elsewhere. Specific topics include Buddhist congregations of laypeople organized by local monks acting as priests, concepts of morality and karmic retribution that filtered into secular poetry written in the vernacular language, and the intermixing of Buddhist deities and gods deriving from the local pantheon.

Christian Systematic Theology Section

Theme: Cross Examinations: Interrogating the Cross and Atonement for Their Meaning Today
 

Saturday - 1:00 pm-3:30 pm
MM-Coronado

Kathlyn A. Breazeale, Pacific Lutheran University, Presiding

Theme: Cross Examinations: Interrogating the Cross and Atonement for Their Meaning Today

Panelists:

S. Mark Heim, Andover Newton Theological School

Joanne Marie Terrell, Chicago Theological Seminary

J. Denny Weaver, Bluffton University

Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Seattle University

Rita Nakashima Brock, Faith Voices for the Common Good

Responding:

Marit Trelstad, Pacific Lutheran University

Business Meeting:

Cynthia Rigby, Austin Theological Seminary, Presiding

Abstract

Christian Systematic Theology Section

Theme: Cross Examinations: Interrogating the Cross and Atonement for Their Meaning Today

Based on the volume Cross Examinations: Readings on the Meaning of the Cross Today (Fortress, 2006), this panel presents theologians whose recently published books have helped define the conversation concerning atonement and redemption as they have addressed the role of the cross in racial and gender oppression, in human or environmental experiences of suffering, and lastly, as tool of imperialism, violence and peace. In the past thirty years, the cross has been both heralded and critiqued by Christian theologians. Critics claim that the cross reinforces victim passivity and violent oppression. Other theologians claim that a theology of the cross is crucial because it encourages one to know reality through suffering and respond to the world compassionately. The panel includes both perspectives and considers atonement theories and the cross as symbol. All in all, this conversation signals emerging models of atonement and reveals common assumptions that inform current “cross examination.”

Ethics Section

Theme: Innovative Methods in Religious Ethics: Social Scientific Perspectives
 

Saturday - 1:00 pm-3:30 pm
MM-Solana

Ronald Green, Dartmouth College, Presiding

Theme: Innovative Methods in Religious Ethics: Social Scientific Perspectives

Ulla Schmidt, Centre for Church Research
Understanding “Religious Ethics”: A Case-Study of the Relevance of Social Scientific Perspectives to Religious Ethics

John Senior, Emory University
What to Do with Practice? Interpreting Ethnographic Data in Constructive Theological Ethics

Kerry Danner-McDonald, Graduate Theological Union
How Cognitive Linguistics Supports a Virtue Method

John Teehan, Hofstra University
Religious Ethics: An Evolutionary Analysis

Business Meeting:

Jane Hicks, Colgate Rochester Crozier Divinity School, Presiding
Miguel A. De La Torre, Iliff School of Theology, Presiding

Abstract

Ethics Section

Theme: Innovative Methods in Religious Ethics: Social Scientific Perspectives

Understanding “Religious Ethics”: A Case-Study of the Relevance of Social Scientific Perspectives to Religious Ethics
Ulla Schmidt, Centre for Church Research

This paper uses an empirical, social scientific study of moral communication among informants identifying with a protestant, Lutheran context as a case for discussing the relevance of social scientific perspectives to religious ethics. It claims that not only morality, but also (religious) ethics can be viewed as a practice and therefore meaningfully subjected to social scientific studies, and that the results of such studies might inform theoretical accounts of religious ethics. This is exemplified by showing how informants engage their religious tradition in ways that resonate with a question prominent in current debate: how to understand the notion and phenomenon of “religious ethics” (exemplified in W. Schweiker’s and S. Hauerwas’s / Wells’ introductions to Blackwell companions on religious respectively Christian ethics). This example is used as a basis for a general discussion of possible connections between social scientific insights into ethics as a practice, and theoretical approaches to ethics.

What to Do with Practice? Interpreting Ethnographic Data in Constructive Theological Ethics
John Senior, Emory University

There is growing interest in the use of ethnographic research methods as an approach to constructive religious ethics. But there hasn’t been much sustained reflection on what work different empirical models actually do (or don’t do) for the constructive theological ethicist. I offer an example of an incarnational theological framework informed by three sociological approaches to religious experience. My first section is a critical one in which I respond to the influence of the virtue ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre on constructive practical theology. In the second section, I begin on the level of human experience, drawing on Michael Jackson’s existential anthropology. In the third section, I move to the level of culture and social institution, looking to Ann Swidler and Pierre Bourdieu. In conclusion, I move back into a theological framework which juxtaposes these moments as necessary for thinking about the incarnational presence of God in the world.

How Cognitive Linguistics Supports a Virtue Method
Kerry Danner-McDonald, Graduate Theological Union

Jesus rarely provided clear-cut answers to moral issues. Rather, he told stories and parables that were insightful to the degree the listener examined/engaged their personal and cultural inferences and images. Findings from cognitive linguistics provide a way to cull out the patterns embedded in Scripture, our various cultures, and individual discourse. This paper brings these insights to bear on a virtue ethics approach. Framing, conceptual metaphors systems, prototype effects of categorization, and conceptual blending help decipher the complex interaction of patterns of Scripture, individuals, and culture(s) that shape moral vision, character and give substance to virtues. An analysis of the story of the Good Samaritan, informed by cognitive linguistics, demonstrates various ways one story may be personally appropriated. Looking at how these patterns interact fosters moral growth and points toward increased dialogues with cognitive scientists and social scientists.

Religious Ethics: An Evolutionary Analysis
John Teehan, Hofstra University

The thesis of this presentation is that religious ethical traditions can be understood as cultural expressions of underlying evolutionary processes. It begins with a discussion of elements of evolutionary accounts of morality, specifically kin selection, reciprocal altruism and commitment theory, and then discusses some recent work on the evolution of religion, setting out those features of religion that prepare it to take on a moral function in society. In order to support this thesis the theoretical framework will be used to analyze the Decalogue as a cultural expression of an evolved moral psychology— focusing on the prohibitions against murder and adultery. Suggestions will be made as to how this framework may be applied to Christianity and its implications for understanding religious violence.

History of Christianity Section

Theme: Contested Texts and Contexts: Exegesis in the History of Christianity
 

Saturday - 1:00 pm-3:30 pm
MM-Carlsbad

Teresa M. Shaw, Claremont Graduate University, Presiding

Theme: Contested Texts and Contexts: Exegesis in the History of Christianity

Russell C. Kleckley, Augsburg College
Following the Star: Matthew 2 as Guiding Light in Early Modern Theology and Natural Philosophy

Franklin Harkins, Valparaiso University
Inscribing Supersessionism into the Scriptural Text: Esau and Jacob in the Glossa Ordinaria

Ariel Bybee Laughton, Duke University
Avoiding the Bridegroom: Negotiating Masculinity in Ambrose of Milan's De Isaac vel Anima

Cameron Partridge, Harvard University
Teleios Anthropos and “No Male and Female”: The Exegesis of Galatians 3:28 in Maximus the Confessor

Jeffrey W. Barbeau, Oral Roberts University
Thoughts “Too Refined to be Popular”: Sara Coleridge, Biblical Exegesis, and Theological Method

Business Meeting:

Teresa M. Shaw, Claremont Graduate University, Presiding
Nathan Baruch Rein, Ursinus College, Presiding

Abstract

History of Christianity Section

Theme: Contested Texts and Contexts: Exegesis in the History of Christianity

Following the Star: Matthew 2 as Guiding Light in Early Modern Theology and Natural Philosophy
Russell C. Kleckley, Augsburg College

Early modern theologians and natural philosophers alike looked to the star of Bethlehem of Matthew 2 as a sign of God’s action in the past and as a precedent for continuing divine communication through the “book of nature.” While existing knowledge of nature informed interpretations of the text, the text also shaped assumptions about the order of nature and its relationship to God and humanity. Theologians such as David Chytraeus and Matthias Hafenreffer, along with mathematicians and astronomers such as Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler, used the star as a point of reference in their own understanding of the theological and natural significance of the cosmos. Their perspectives anticipated the emerging worldview of the modern period while illuminating the thinking and faith of their own time.

Inscribing Supersessionism into the Scriptural Text: Esau and Jacob in the Glossa Ordinaria
Franklin Harkins, Valparaiso University

From the early twelfth through the sixteenth century, the Glossa Ordinaria was the definitive reference edition of the Bible used in the schools and universities throughout Western Europe. Surely because the Glossa Ordinaria is largely a compilation of patristic and early medieval interpretations, scholars of medieval exegesis have paid relatively little attention to the hermeneutics of the Glossa. The proposed paper aims to begin to fill this scholarly lacuna by investigating the exegetical practice revealed in the glosses on Esau and Jacob (Gen. 25 and 27, and Rom. 9). We will argue that the glossators or editors of the Glossa on Genesis and Romans, by adopting and adapting patristic and early medieval commentaries, not only read Esau and Jacob allegorically as the Jewish people and the church, respectively, but in so doing also inscribed supersessionism into the very text of Scripture.

Avoiding the Bridegroom: Negotiating Masculinity in Ambrose of Milan's De Isaac vel Anima
Ariel Bybee Laughton, Duke University

Following Marcia Colish’s assertion that Ambrose of Milan’s treatises on the patriarchs functioned to instruct baptismal candidates in appropriate social behaviors, this paper argues that they also served to reinforce proper Greco-Roman conceptions of masculinity among catechumens as they prepared to become part of the church at Milan. This is manifest most clearly in On Isaac or the Soul where Rebecca becomes a dominant figure in Ambrose’s allegorical exposition of the soul’s moral progress toward unity with Christ. Ambrose heavily draws upon imagery from the Song of Songs to compensate for the lack of detail concerning the life of Isaac in the Genesis account, but preserves Isaac from emasculating bridal language by employing Rebecca as a type for the soul in passages where the soul must act passively toward the Bridegroom. Thus Ambrose is able to preserve Isaac as an exemplar of Roman virtue and masculinity for his audience.

Teleios Anthropos and “No Male and Female”: The Exegesis of Galatians 3:28 in Maximus the Confessor
Cameron Partridge, Harvard University

In this paper I argue that the seventh century C.E. Byzantine theologian Maximus the Confessor’s exegesis of Galatians 3:28 takes up the early Christian topos of "becoming male." He elaborates this process by arguing that the human person "shakes out of nature in every way the distinctive, natural properties of male and female" (Ambiguum 41). To Maximus, however, this state of "no male and female" does not equal the end result of "becoming male," however. Rather, it unfolds a process explicitly of "becoming human." This humanizing process is the first step in a fulfilling the unique human vocation of unifying the entire cosmos. Ultimately, although this abolition of sexual difference appears to trouble Maximus’ characteristically integrative, unity-with-distinctions methodology, the Confessor’s vision of the human person as a “laboratory” and “bond” of the entire created whole carries forward this vision in a consistent manner.

Thoughts “Too Refined to be Popular”: Sara Coleridge, Biblical Exegesis, and Theological Method
Jeffrey W. Barbeau, Oral Roberts University

Sara Coleridge (1802–1852) remains almost wholly unknown in studies of modern Christian history and theology. Overshadowed by her famous father S. T. Coleridge, titanic figures of the age such as John Henry Newman, and prominent friends whose published writings set the tone of Victorian theology (including F. D. Maurice), Sara Coleridge concealed her reflections on the Bible and the Christian faith by limiting her productions to brief notes and long appendixes to editions of her father’s works in the 1840s. In this paper, I recover Sara Coleridge’s unique work on the Bible. Sara develops a critique of historic conceptions of biblical authority and explores a full account of the nature of redemption through careful exegesis of the Apostle Paul. Sara Coleridge’s private correspondence, defense of her father’s writings on the Bible, and extended treatise On Rationalism reveal her distinct contribution to the history of biblical interpretation.

Study of Islam Section

Theme: Women's Religious Authority, Islam, and Agency
 

Saturday - 1:00 pm-3:30 pm
GH-Manchester B

Dorothea Kahena Viale, Claremont Graduate University, Presiding

Theme: Women's Religious Authority, Islam, and Agency

Zahra Ayubi, Atlanta, GA
“Of All the Lawful Acts the Most Detestable to Allah Is Divorce”: American Muslim Women Challenging Traditional Views and Reinterpreting Islamic Divorce

Bahar Davary, University of San Diego
A Twentieth-Century Shi’a Mujtahida: Images and Self Images

Jamillah Karim, Spelman College
American Muslim Youth Networks: Negotiating Sisterhood, Gender, and Generation

Sara Omar, Harvard University
Al-Qubaysiyyat: A Female Religious Authority in Damascus

Joni Podschun, Wesley Theological Seminary
Diverse Sisterhood: Ethnographic Research with Muslim Women in Central Arkansas

Responding:

Juliane Hammer, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Abstract

Study of Islam Section

Theme: Women's Religious Authority, Islam, and Agency

Common impressions of Islam include assumptions of patriarchal domination in many domains of Islamic discourses, particularly those of law and theology. In this panel, the speakers present multiples sites of contestation in which Muslim women, some scholars and some lay, are asserting their own agency to contest interpretations of Islam through authoritative discourses of their own.

“Of All the Lawful Acts the Most Detestable to Allah Is Divorce”: American Muslim Women Challenging Traditional Views and Reinterpreting Islamic Divorce
Zahra Ayubi, Atlanta, GA

Drawing on my field interviews with divorced American Muslim women, I discuss a range of experiences that reveal ways Muslim women in the US incorporate Islamic law into their lives and negotiate legal, religious, and social aspects of their divorces. In the absence of Islamic courts in the US, some immigrants tightly hold onto family law, marriage and divorce practices of their home countries, while others, including many mainstream Muslim leaders, consult traditional fiqh to determine the permissibility of divorce and Islamic divorce terms. In doing so, imams, community elders, and sometimes people from women’s social circles discourage or prevent female initiated divorce, while implicitly supporting men’s unrestricted ability to pronounce talaq. Driven by belief in gender justice in Islam and having access to Islamic legal debates and egalitarian interpretations of scripture, some women re-define Islamic divorce for themselves and challenge traditional, patriarchal practices.

A Twentieth-Century Shi’a Mujtahida: Images and Self Images
Bahar Davary, University of San Diego

It is often cited that women have had little share in developing the textual tradition of Islam, that their voices have been marginalized, and that if women were interpreting the law, things would have been different. These assertions raise some questions: How would things be different if women were to interpret the law? Would their interpretations be radically different? A twentieth century Shi’a woman, known as Banoo Amin composed a fifteen-volume commentary on the Qur’an. Her expertise in fiqh and usul earned her the title Mujtaheda, the only one known in the recent history of Ja’fari law. How is her commentary different than that of her male counterparts? To what extent is her representation of Shi’a woman affected by the views of male commentators? Does this have any bearings on Shi’a women’s assessment of their own self-worth and role within the private and public domains?

American Muslim Youth Networks: Negotiating Sisterhood, Gender, and Generation
Jamillah Karim, Spelman College

In this paper I portray the experiences and voices of African American and South Asian Muslim women college students. The ideal of Islamic sisterhood creates a space for these young women to cross ethnic boundaries; but it means navigating gender expectations and parents’ expectations. On college campuses, Muslim women are often exposed to a range of possibilities for interethnic friendship and marriage. Exposed to these possibilities more than their parents, young Muslims rethink and challenge many of their parents’ expectations at the same time that they accommodate some of their expectations. As Muslim women form interethnic friendships, they also encounter different gender norms. Different gender norms between cultures sometimes challenge cross-ethnic friendships or relationships; other times, they function as the space for interethnic exchange.

Al-Qubaysiyyat: A Female Religious Authority in Damascus
Sara Omar, Harvard University

The continued ascendance of Islamic revivalist groups throughout the Muslim world poses two important research questions: How do these new groups establish their religious authority when founding their groups? And, do they claim exclusive adherence to medieval Islamic thought, reinterpret canon, or exercise a mixture of these two approaches as a means of gaining such authority? This study will apply these questions to one of the most influential revivalist groups in Syria, known as al-Qubaysiyyat. Based in Damascus, the group is exclusive to women, and attracts a transient student body from throughout the world. While their subject of study and outward appearance may appear to conform to a highly taqlid-oriented approach, they are also highly unusual within the context of traditional Islamic revivalist groups. As an entirely female group, they escape traditional understandings of gendered authority and are consequently able to organize themselves in novel and innovative ways.

Diverse Sisterhood: Ethnographic Research with Muslim Women in Central Arkansas
Joni Podschun, Wesley Theological Seminary

Drawing on anthropology and feminist theory, I add ethnographic detail to the study of women in Islam by focusing on the participants of an English-speaking halaca (or Sisters' Circle) in a Little Rock mosque. The halaca provides a shared space for the study and practice of Islam for a diverse group of women. Despite the similarities they share as practicing Muslims, the women's choices and beliefs about appropriate dress, marital relationships, women in the labor force, parenting, other religions, and American culture differ dramatically. The juxtapose profiles of two sisters demonstrate the diversity of faith within the halaca and the Little Rock Muslim community as a whole. Secondly, I elucidate the ideology and hermeneutic of the halaca. My research demonstrates that the women's activities and views, though diverse, serve as an example of their agency as they reevaluate their practices, Qur'anic reading, and learning within the framework of patriarchal Islam.

Augustine and Augustinianisms Group