http://www.aarweb.org/Meetings/Annual_Meeting/Past_and_Future_Meetings/2003/abstracts.asp
2003 AAR Abstracts
A280
Noted oral historian Clifford Kuhn will conduct a workshop on "Best Practices in Collecting Oral Histories." Kuhn is past president of the Oral History Association. The session will be limited to 25 participants. Contact Barbara DeConcini to register for the workshop. There is no cost, but we hope some participants will agree to conduct interviews as part of the AAR Oral History Project.
A23
Panel: From Side Show to Center Stage: Mainstreaming the Study of Religion at Major Research Universities
Diane Winston, The Pew Charitable Trusts, Presiding
Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University
Robert Sullivan, University of Notre Dame
Angela Zito, New York University
Donald Miller, University of Southern California
James Davison Hunter, University of Virginia
Since 1998, the Pew Charitable Trusts’ funding for academic research on religion has centered on support for centers of excellence and interdisciplinary hubs at major research universities. The Trusts’ goal, funding ten such centers that focus on areas including international relations, urban civil society, media, and democracy, was accomplished last year. This panel will feature five center directors: James Hunter, Center for Religion and Democracy, University of Virginia; Don Miller, Center for Religion and Civic Culture, University of Southern California; Robert Sullivan, Erasmus Institute, University of Notre Dame; Robert Wuthnow, Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University; and Angela Zito, Center for Religion and Media, New York University. The panelists will discuss activities and projects at their centers, the center model as a template for other universities, and research opportunities for doctoral students, post-doctorates, and faculty from other institutions.
A24
Panel: Introduction to the AAR
Richard Amesbury, Valdosta State University, Presiding
Kimberly Rae Connor, University of San Francisco
Carey J. Gifford, American Academy of Religion
Susan E. Henking, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Methodist Theological School in Ohio
Mark Lloyd Taylor, Seattle University
This session provides an orientation to AAR structures, programs, publications, and services. Brief presentations will be given, and ample opportunity for questions and discussion will follow. Panelists will include: Academy Series Editor Kimberly Rae Connor, University of San Francisco; AAR Director of Academic Relations Carey J. Gifford; AAR Board of Directors Secretary Susan E. Henking, Hobart and William Smith Colleges; Status of Women in the Profession Committee member Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Methodist Theological School in Ohio; Regions Committee Chair Mark Lloyd Taylor, Seattle University; and the newly-elected student director.
A25
Panel: New Directions in the Study of Art and Religion: The Case of Self-Taught/Outsider/Vernacular Art
Norman J. Girardot, Lehigh University, Presiding
Paul Ivey, University of Arizona
Charles Russell, Rutgers University
Jenifer Borum, City University of New York
David Parker, University College Northampton
Carol Crown, University of Memphis
Jeffrey Hayes, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Erika Doss, University of Colorado, Boulder
S. Brent Plate, Texas Christian University, Responding
Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, Georgetown University, Responding
This joint session seeks to explore some of the new methodological horizons emerging in the study of art and religion. It brings together scholars in art history and religious studies who have a specific interest in understanding religious experience and practice in relation to the increasingly prominent, and often controversial, phenomenon of self-taught/outsider/vernacular art. This is a kind of art that often has explicit and implicit connections with specific religious belief systems and with multi-cultural forms of religiously expressive behavior and experience (especially creative, psychotic, and/or “visionary” experience). What is needed is a more fully interdisciplinary, comparative, cross-cultural, and collaborative approach to the curious matter of “art” and “religion” as related to self-taught/outsider art. It is the intent of this joint session to explore some of these issues from both a broad theoretical perspective (Ivey, Russell, Borum, Parker) and from the standpoint of particular case studies (Crown, Hayes, Doss).
A26
Medicine, Immortality, and Yoshino
Michael Como, College of William and Mary
This paper takes as its point of departure recent archeological discoveries from the Nara period suggesting widespread use of rites of sacrifice, purification and spirit pacification that were derived from Chinese sources. The paper focuses on a series of legends constructing Yoshino as both a site for Buddhist ascetic practice and the abode of female immortals. The paper demonstrates that these female immortals were claimed as ancestors by a cluster of kinship groups that were at the forefront of the introduction of both the Buddhist tradition and Chinese conceptions of medicine and immortality to the Japanese islands. The paper argues that although Yoshino has long been studied as a key site of interaction between ascetic Buddhist practitioners and local kami, the region is best understood as an example of how Chinese conceptions of medicine and immortality underlay the formation of cults of Buddhas and kami alike.
Caitya Comparisons in Indian Buddhist Texts: A Reevaluation of the Evidence for a Cult of the Book in Indian Mahayana
David Drewes, University of Virginia
This paper reevaluates the evidence for an institutional cult of the book in Indian Mahayana Buddhism. In his well-known article “The Phrase ‘sa prthivipradesas caityabhuto bhavet’ in the Vajracchedikā”, Gregory Schopen reads a number of passages that have previously been interpreted as saying merely that places in which people memorized or worshipped sutras are “like” caityas (shrines), as in fact saying that such places are “true” or “real” caityas. On the basis of this reading, Schopen argues that there was an institutional cult of the book in Mahayana Buddhism. This paper examines a group of passages scattered throughout Indian Buddhist literature that unambiguously compare particular people or places to caityas. By pointing out important similarities between these passages and those cited by Schopen, this paper argues that the latter do in fact merely compare particular places to caityas and suggests that an institutional cult of the book never existed.
Beef, Dog, and Other Mythologies: Connotative Semiotics in Mahāyoga Tantra Ritual
Christian K. Wedemeyer, University of Chicago
Scholars have long debated how the antinomian elements referred to in the Mahāyoga Tantras are to be interpreted. Some have maintained that they are to be taken literally; others that they encode one or several meanings other than the literal. However, both camps interpret these statements as examples of natural language and, in so doing, miss much of the richness and relevance of this tradition’s discourse and ritual. I argue that this discourse is better considered as an example of what Roland Barthes has called “mythical speech” or “metalanguage,” in which signs (a signifier-signified union) from natural language function as signifiers in a higher-order discourse. I suggest that employing a Barthian perspective-thus moving beyond the rather unilluminating question of realist referentiality-enables a more sophisticated understanding of signification in Mahāyoga Tantra discourse and the ways in which it enables the realization of the aims of Mahāyoga Tantra ritual.
Negotiating with the Pali: Lao Buddhist Homiletics and the Kammāvacā Nissaya
Justin McDaniel, Ohio University
The Nissaya manuscripts are the oldest evidence we have of vernacular sermon notes in Southeast Asian Theravada Buddhism. Nissayas work by drawing selected passages and terms from both canonical and non-canonical Pali source texts and explaining the source according to their own contemporary needs. I will offer a close reading of the Kammavācā Nissaya in order to explicate the standard features of the nissaya genre. This reading, with a particular emphasis on rhetorical style, commentarial services, choice of source texts and physical features of the manuscripts, reveals the relationship nissaya authors had with the classical Pali scripture of Theravada Buddhism, as well as with their intended audience. It also reveals their use in an aural/oral educational and ritual context. In the conclusion, I offer some suggestions on how modern pedagogical, translation and homiletic practices in Thailand and Laos can be traced to the textual practices evinced by nissayas.
Unraveling the Paradox of “Canonical Apocrypha” in Chinese Buddhism
Kyoko Tokuno, University of Washington
This paper focuses on a category of Chinese Buddhist texts that may be paradoxically called “canonical apocrypha” or indigenous scriptures that gained the same status as the translations of Indian scriptures. These scriptures were preserved in various editions of Buddhist canon since the medieval period in East Asia. The presence of such texts in Buddhist canon begs a question as to why they were spared of the same fate as other indigenous scriptures that were censored by Buddhist bibliographers and kept out of circulation. This paper explores the textual, contextual, and historical factors that contributed to the production and preservation of these scriptures, some of which played seminal roles in the formation of Chinese Buddhist thought and practice. The exploration is also tantamount to illuminating the dynamics of the conception and practice of scripture and canon in medieval Chinese Buddhism and beyond.
A27
Ethical Foundations for Ameliorative Economic Policies: An Illustration of Why Religion Matters for Social Ethics
Albino Barrera, Providence College
Religious thought has enormous impact on views regarding poor relief and inequality. This paper illustrates this by contrasting Malthusian and Thomistic thought. Using natural theology, Malthus reconciles his dismal finding of a woeful human economic condition with his belief in a beneficent Creator by arguing that God created a world of scarcity to compel people to apply themselves in work and striving. Since scarcity is part of an immutable natural law, meliorative social policy is futile as poverty and inequality are embedded within the workings of nature itself. In sharp contrast, Aquinas’s natural theology argues that God’s order of creation is one of material sufficiency contingent on the human beings” reasoned exercise of freedom. Thus, unaddressed poverty is prima facie evidence of moral failure. Far from being part of natural law, material deprivation is an aberration of God’s intended order that needs to be rectified through activist social policies.
Religious Realism and Inequality in Comparative Analysis
James L. Rowell, University of Pittsburgh
Religious realism is based upon re-examination of the moral principles of Reinhold Nieburhr’s thought, as it is measured against the thought of Martin Luther King Jr., B.R. Ambedkar, Mohandas Gandhi, and Rammohun Roy. Comparative analysis of their thought offers a compelling litmus test for evaluating a realistic religious viewpoint. It reflects a paramount concern for inequality, and the modern critique of religion. This critique, comprised of secular philosophy and critical science places harsh scrutiny upon religious beliefs. If something is believable, it must be plausible, realistic, and not just an inefficacious, reified abstraction, as Marxism would contend. Religious realism accepts the Marxist challenge as well as the secular and scientific critique, in an effort to revitalize the religious view. It also explores religious ethics as it responds to the problems of inequality, industrial economics, and of scientific and rational critique.
Religion, Inequality, and the Common Good: Why Democracy Needs Religion
Joseph S. Pettit, DePaul University
This paper defends two claims. First, the commitment of different religious traditions to advancing the common good is an important and neglected resource for understanding the public role of religion within a democracy. The paper seeks to show that Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism all affirm, each from their own traditions, that individuals should act to increase the common good as an act of religious commitment. Second, this commitment to the common good provides compelling resources for understanding and confronting recent and dramatic increases in inequality, especially economic inequality, both within the United States and globally. The paper also shows how these religious commitments to the common good enable one to defend an understanding of democracy as a social ideal emphasizing mutuality, in contrast to an understanding of democracy that is more individualistic in character, concerned more with maintaining property rights than promoting mutuality.
Colored Justice: A Comparison of the Understandings of Social Injustice in Rawls and King
Randall H. Miller, Graduate Theological Union
Critics of modern theories of justice have charged that neo-Kantian theorists largely ignore or discount the pervasiveness of social injustice as a significant context for theorizing about the role and function of justice in contemporary social settings. In an effort to investigate the merits of this claim, this essay contrasts and compares the theoretical approaches of John Rawls and Martin Luther King, Jr. in three key areas: the infringement of rights and liberties, the unequal distribution of social advantages, and the danger of social disruption. While acknowledging the importance of his work, I contend that Rawls’ theoretical framework is simply inadequate for understanding the full dimensions of social injustice. In contrast, King’s theoretical approach, which I have labeled “contextualized universalism,” explicitly validates social and historical contextualization and considers both the systemic and lived crises of social injustice.
A28
Inheriting the Investigations: Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Philosophy of Religion’s Discipline
Thomas Arnold, Harvard University
In the latter half of the twentieth century the philosophy of religion appropriated Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations in large part to settle how religious language might legitimately be verified or explained. This paper considers how the field might receive the text as an exploration of the desires, fantasies, and disappointments at work in our reflection upon language. Drawing on Stanley Cavell’s work, the paper argues that the concept of the “ordinary” invites readers of the Investigations to put our interests and ideals about language into question, lest they steer us from the ordinary lives in which religious concepts develop. To connect this approach more explicitly to the philosophy of religion I shall discuss the treatment of naming in Investigations §39-§41 and juxtapose it with de Vries’s discussion of the religious character of naming. The paper concludes by suggesting the Investigations might further the field’s incorporation of psychoanalytic and existential concerns.
Religious Experiences and Religious Beliefs in Light of the Private Language Argument
Thomas Carroll, Boston University
Much recent debate over how to understand religious experiences has centered on the issue of whether or not, or to what extent, religious traditions and beliefs frame religious experiences. Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations contains resources that may be appropriated to better understand religious experiences despite the topic not being directly addressed. The standard, fideistic reading of Wittgenstein on religious belief stems primarily from sources that are less reliable than Philosophical Investigations for discovering Wittgenstein’s thought. In this paper, I argue (1) in Philosophical Investigations, there is no basis for the view that Wittgenstein’s thought about religion is fideistic, (2) Wittgenstein’s position on the nature of religious experience should likewise not reflect fideism, and (3) an interpretation of Wittgenstein on the nature of religious experience, in light of Philosophical Investigations and with emphasis on Wittgenstein’s remarks on pain and private languages, will instead reflect the public nature of religious forms of life.
Nonsense and the Mystical: Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Language and New Approaches to Negative Theology
Kaitlin Magoon, University of Chicago
The recent reexamination of Negative or Apophatic Theology has often appealed to the writings of modern philosophers on the issue of the limits of knowledge and language. This paper suggests that by reading Wittgenstein’s later work in the Philosophical Investigations in the light of his early thought in the Tractatus, it becomes clear that his work should be considered an added contribution to how philosophers of religion should understand the tradition of Negative Theology. Specifically, Wittgenstein’s own attempts to explore the possible limits of thought and language helps in deciphering the relationship between “mystical thought” and the via negativa.
The Unorthodox Wittgenstein of the Investigations and Consequences for Category Formation in Religious Studies
Ludger Viefhues, Yale University
Exploring Affeldt’s and Putnam’s non-“orthodox” reading of Wittgenstein I will analyze two claims related to Wittgenstein’s own philosophical method. First, our capacity to follow each other’s words depends on the degree to which we are “attuned” (cf. Cavell) into each other’s understanding of what can be humanly said or doubted. Secondly, like criteria which are only appearing in the processes of justification, shared linguistic forms of life are only appearing in the process of speaking. It is speaking together that creates linguistic community based on a multiplicity of voices attuned and constantly attuning in multiple linguistic interactions. Using Donald Lopez’s Prisoners of Shangri-La, I will finally discuss how this unorthodox vision of language allows us to see not “clashing civilizations,” but multiple processes of attunement and distanciation by scholars and practitiones creating a complex and dynamic picture of multiple linguistic and religious identities.
A29
A Silk Purse out of a Sow’s Ear: Contributions of Psychological Anthropology and Neurobiology to the Study of Transcendence and the Body
Rebecca Sachs Norris, Merrimack College
The study of religious experience, mediated through psychological anthropology, brings transcendence and neurobiology together to inform a new understanding of the transmission and development of religious experience. This paper presents the argument that religious states are transmitted and learned though the body, that particular qualities of perception and memory are necessary for this process, and that neurobiology and cognitive science provide material to support this claim. Scientific and experiential perspectives can coexist without having to either present a reductionist argument that all states of experience are merely biochemical interactions, or regard experience as faith-based and therefore untouchable through scientific means. Psychology, sociology, and anthropology (particularly psychological anthropology) elucidate and complexify discussion of religious states; neurobiology deepens this discussion by including an objective view of the processes taking place in the brain that enable these states.
New Neuroscientific Views of the Unconscious: Implications for Religious Studies
Kelly Bulkeley, Graduate Theological Union
This presentation will look beyond the twentieth century work of James, Freud, and Jung to consider recent neuroscientific findings on the unconscious operations of the human brain/mind system and their relevance for human religiosity. Particular attention will be given to three neuroscientists whose research has especially provocative implications for religious studies: V.S. Ramachandran, Mark Solms, and Antonio Damasio. The presentation will challenge religious studies scholars to develop a more sophisticated and up-to-date understanding of brain-mind science. At a minimum, we need to know enough to be able to critique the reductionistic, anti-religion claims that some neuroscientists put forth. Beyond that, we have an opportunity to initiate new investigations of classic themes in our field (e.g. mysticism, ritual, healing, cultural creativity, symbol and myth, gender and sexuality). Not since the early part of the twentieth century has leading scientific psychological research provided such fertile material for religious thought and reflection.
The Gendered Brain and Mystical Experience: Neuro-Physiological, Psychological, and Social Narrative Views of Sex-Differences in Religious/Mystical Experiences
Alice Maung-Mercurio, Luther Seminary
This study combines the observations of the physiological measurement of brain activity during peak (mystical) religious experiences, and bio-psycho-social contributions to the fields of gender/gender development and religious/mystical experience. The publications Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience (which showed measurable changes in brain activity during deep meditation or prayer - Eugene d’Aquili and Andrew Newberg, 1999), and Zen and the Brain (James Austin, 1999) are compared. The meditative state of experienced Buddhist meditators and praying activity of Franciscan nuns were observed. In addition, Lene Sjorup’s and Theodore T. Y. Hsieh’s studies of gender differences in religious experience are viewed. Hsieh measures differences in brain function/attenuation and constructs a religious system model to interpret these findings, and Sjorup notes statistically significant differences in males’ and females’ verbal (narrative) reports of mystical experiences. A new model based on additional studies helps to view the interplay of gender and religious experience.
A30
Political/Spiritual Kabir
Linda Hess, Stanford University
“There are two types of Kabir songs,” an Indian NGO worker told me. First, he explained, there are religious songs. Then there are songs of social commentary--criticizing caste, hypocrisy, violence, etc. In a collaborative project with Kabir folk singers, his organization intended to foreground Kabir’s social criticism. Among Kabir’s “clientele”--singers, listeners, readers, Kabir Panthis, other nirgunis, religious specialists, scholars, artists--there is often a sharp divide between political and spiritual. Are Kabir’s admirers mainly interested in his inward or his outward gaze? Is one of these aspects the real Kabir, the other merely incidental, even embarrassing? Can the study of Kabir-attributed poetry reveal what he was mainly interested in? Or is there no author to grasp, only social history--how different people in different times and places interpret him? This paper argues that, while the tension will persist, the broad stream of Kabir poetry suggests that political and spiritual are inseparable.
Kabir’s Sadhana
Purushottam Agrawal, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Kabir according to himself was a bhakta (religious devotee, practitioner). Being a bhakta presupposes a system of sadhana. (spiritual practice). Does Kabir propose a new kind of sadhana? If so, what is its nature and what are its implications? Can we claim to “recover” Kabir (as all modern attempts to “read” him tend to do) without going into the issues arising out of sadhana? Most attempts to “discover” or “recover” him have ignored this vital question, and hence become attempts to appropriate him for chosen contemporary political projects. I wish to address the questions of epistemology inherent in Kabir’s notion of sadhana and their implications.
The Inner Citadel of Caste: The Dalit Critique of Kabir in Hindi Criticism
Milind Wakankar, State University of New York, Stony Brook
This paper attempts to trace the shifting representations of the work of the fifteenth century “poet-saint” Kabir in key Hindi critical texts written from within a nationalist frame. I argue that in his epoch-making book on Kabir (1942), Hazariprasad Dwivedi (1907-1979) can be seen to have inverted the tendency of such critics as Ramchandra Shukla (1884-1941) to deride the mystical element in the popular (exemplified for Shukla in Kabir). Dwivedi did this by claiming that it was now the popular as mystery that was to be installed at the core of nationalist discourse as the inner citadel of “individual religious questing” (vyaktigat dharm-sadhana). From the point of view of the recent dalit (“untouchable”) critique of Dwivedi put forward by Dharmvir, it would seem as though Dwivedi may well have transferred the strife within culture to its conflictual core, which “is” caste.
The Weaver of Dignity: Low-Caste Theology in the Songs of Kabir
Nancy M. Martin, Chapman University
Kabir is extremely popular among Hindu and Muslim low-caste communities in western Rajasthan. This paper will offer an analysis of oral song traditions of Kabir recorded among these communities in this region and explore the theological reflection therein. The songs sung in Kabir’s name within these communities are not directed against religious leaders and those of upper castes, as might be expected; the sharp critique found in the Bijak is not present. Instead the songs reflect perspectives of low-caste people speaking to each other, with encouragement and challenge, of what it means to follow a path of devotion to God as a person of low caste. They assert an alternate value system which affirms the dignity of all, regardless of wealth or birth status, and speak of religious realization and of the struggles of following a religious life in a world that neither understands nor appreciates devotion.
A31
Challenging the Globe: Theological Spatiality and Space Theory
Emily Askew, Vanderbilt University
I advocate the use of place theory as a theological hermeneutic. Many disciplines have turned to place theory in the last two decades, including Anthropology, Philosophy, Cultural and Critical Geography and Postcolonial theory. I am suggesting that it is time for theological consideration of this useful interpretive lens. Place theory identifies geography as a fundamental constituent in the social construction of meaning. Particularly, place theorists recognize that geographic boundaries, as culturally constructed, reinforce ideological agendas for right action within those boundaries. That is, geographic boundaries enforce particular social practices that in turn reinforce geographic boundaries. Because geography is a significant factor in global social justice issues among many other concerns, I contend that all theologians must become more intentional in their use of it in theological reflection, beyond that done by theologians whose interests are primarily ecological. I use Postcolonial Theory to articulate the usefulness of place for theologians.
Religio-Economic Systems and the Powers: Toward a Theology of Economic Transformation
Ray C. Gingerich, Eastern Mennonite Seminary
This essay attempts to open a religio-political space to address an issue that theology far too frequently fails to engage. At the intersection of religion and the social sciences, it expands Walter Wink’s development of “the powers” to construct a theology for understanding global systems, specifically capitalism. Market capitalism, within this framework of thought, is a world religion possessing global hegemonic domination. Capitalism, like all powers and all religions, is a human construct. Like all powers it can be transformed, not magically nor metaphysically, but through the Way of the Cross-the socio-political legacy of Jesus as embodied in alternative communities of nonviolence with open economic systems. Historical incidents of such embodiment are found in the first century (CE) communities of The Way and among Anabaptists subsequent to the German Peasants’ Revolts.
Theology and Culture in the Belly of the Whale: Post-liberalism as a Contextual Response to Globalization in North America
Larry Golemon, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
Globalization theory relies on various notions of “culture” to capture the dynamic “flows” (Appadurai) that shape new forms of human life, through time-space compression, disembeddedness, and radical connectivity (Giddens, Harvey, Robertson, Tomlinson). Numerous global theological flows (Schreiter) have been developed to engage these larger dynamics, but what about local strategies of engagement, particularly in North America? In this paper, I argue for postliberal theology as a set of local strategies for engaging globalization flows and effects. First, I revise the postliberal understanding of “culture” (Lindbeck) in a way that addresses postmodern critics (Tanner), by employing revisions of Geertz and a reflexive view of “social practices” (Dykstra, Bass, Wolf). Then I explore two local strategies for engaging globalization: 1) narrativity and symbolic extension, and 2) interpretive and dialogical practices, as shaped by public criteria of meaning and the rule theory of doctrine.
A32
Panel: Deconstructing Captivities: Native Women in the Contact Zone
Eva Garroutte, Boston College, Presiding
Laura E. Donaldson, Cornell University
Michelene Pesantubbee, University of Iowa
Joel W. Martin, University of California, Riverside
Vera B. Palmer, Dartmouth College
Mary C. Churchill, University of Colorado, Boulder, Responding
The importance of American Indian women within their respective nations made them key targets in the historical project of Christian missionization. Euro-American missionaries even spoke of “getting the race” through the influence of Native women on their families and communities. Recently, however, some ethnohistorians have disputed this sentiment by arguing that Native women acted as the particular conservators of their various cultural and spiritual traditions rather than privileged conduits for assimilation. This panel focuses on Native women’s creative responses to the traumas and exigencies of the “contact zone,” a social space where people who are divided geographically and historically come into contact with each other, often under conditions of severe inequality and intractable conflict. The presenters will re-consider such figures as Catharine Brown (Cherokee), Kateri Tekakwitha (Mohawk) and Nancy Ward (Cherokee) in the light of emerging indigenous perspectives on them.
A33
Emergent Issues in the Study of African Medicine
Jude Aguwa, Mercy College
In recent times a whole lot of interest has surfaced around African medicine. Contrary to the predictions by some expatriate scholars many years ago, African medicine has not only survived in the present time but it also is being counted as a promising contributor in solving Africa’s current health problems. This has placed the question of research at the very center of the discussion. By examining the effects resulting from earlier negative depictions of African medicine, one can appreciate the development that has exposed the facts about its validity and potentials. This paper will focus on these emergent issues which have historical, cultural and religious implications and on that basis review some conditions for continuing developments.
Healing Rituals in the Suburbs: African-Based Healing among Middle-Class Americans
Mary Ann Clark, University of Houston
Research on Afro-Caribbean healing rituals has focused on their use in immigrant and lower income communities. In these communities such rituals have often substituted for mainstream medical treatments that are either unavailable or unaffordable. However as these religious traditions move into middle-class and non-immigrants communities, their rituals and techniques of healing have found their way into the lives of white middle-class people. I will explore the ways that Afro-Caribbean healing paradigms are understood by clients and healers in ethnic and economic groups not usually associated with these practices. I will look at rituals performed by practitioners of these traditions for two clients and will examine the understanding of these rituals from the view points of both the practitioners and the clients, the effects reported by the practitioners and the clients, and describe the clients’ long-term evaluation of their treatments.
The Drop of Oil That Puts out the Fire: The Yoruba Orisa Sopanna in the New Age of Smallpox
Mei Mei Sanford, College of William and Mary
The Yoruba deities (orisa) each image and control an area of human experience with its gifts and dangers. Saponna (Obaluaye) is both the source and healer of infectious disease: smallpox, malaria, and most recently, AIDS. What insights do his worship, stories, and praise poetry offer about the climate and control of disease as we confront the return of smallpox, and about the psychological and moral dimensions of human involvement with smallpox--in its eradication, treatment, and political use? The power of Obaluaye story and practice to illuminate the physical elements of disease, and the psychological and moral dimensions of those who wield it, make Obaluaye religion an essential source of information and critique in the new age of smallpox.
A Lusty and Paying Ghost: Voodoo Queen Marie Laveaux’s Tomb as a National Shrine of Healing
Ina Johanna Fandrich, Louisiana State University
Hundreds of visitors arrive daily at the tomb of Marie Laveaux, New Orleans’ legendary Voodoo Queen, flooding the small, old St. Louis Cemetery #1 located just above the French Quarter. During her long lifetime (1801-1881), Laveaux was famous for her supernatural power and healing skills. Though controversial her services were in high demand among all sectors of New Orleans’ population, the rich, the poor, men, women, young, old, slaves and slave masters alike. Today, more than 120 years after her death, her extraordinary popularity has not diminished. The tourist industry cashes in on the ever more popular cemetery tours, and desperate individuals still bring offerings of flowers, money, and liquor while hoping for a miracle in exchange. This paper explores how Laveaux’s tomb has become a secret national shrine of healing.
A35
Panel: Postmodern Medievals? Late Modern Appropriation of Medieval Devotional Culture in Interdisciplinary Perspective
Stephanie Paulsell, Harvard University, Presiding
Candace Hull Taylor, University of California, Davis
Patricia Donohue White, Duquesne University
Stephen Katz, University of California, Berkeley
Elizabeth Drescher, Graduate Theological Union
Readers of late medieval English devotional culture from a variety of disciplinary locations (theology, literature, history, Christian spirituality) take up, by way of direct engagement with texts by figures such as Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe as well as with mystery plays and texts for spiritual direction, how postmodern readings of the period, its figures and texts can be “true” in some meaningful sense to both the original context and the contemporary moment. Influenced by the recent scholarship of Amy Hollywood, Grace Jantzen and Carolyn Dinshaw--itself indebted to postmodern philosophies and methodologies--the panelists consider late medieval spiritual figures and texts both as they have lived and as they may continue to live in the spiritual practices of Christians.
A36
Repositioning Power: How Mandala Installation Affects the Reading of Shingon Ritual Spaces
Pamela D. Winfield, Temple University
This paper discusses three possible display strategies for esoteric Shingon mandalas, and shows how each configuration affects the reading of the ritual space. When the Two World Mandalas are hung facing one another as they are at Kōyasan and Tōji, they empower both the ritual space and the initiate through telescoping architectural spaces and a series of criss-cross iconographic correspondences. When they are hung frontally as at Kokubuji in Osaka, they empower the subordinate deities flanking the main image or honzon, increasing their potency in a kind of ritual technology upgrade. Finally, when individual elements from the mandalas are reworked into wholly novel configurations such as on the ceiling of Hasedera in Nara, imaginative apotropaic and thaumaturgic associations emerge.
Medieval Japanese Cult of Shōtoku Worship
Kenneth Lee, Stetson University
I examine the medieval Japanese cult of Shōtoku worship (Taishi shinkō) and how various groups used Shōtoku to legitimize their claims to authority. I explain how the image of Shōtoku as a cultural and religious icon continued to have a powerful influence on the Japanese people during the Insei (1086-1185) and Kamakura (1185-1333) periods. With the decline of feudalism and the rise of the warrior class during the Kamakura period, new ruling authorities adopted Shōtoku worship as an effective ideology to legitimize their claims of authority over both political and religious sectors. As the Shōtoku cult continued to flourish along with the honji suijaku culture (the assimilation of native Shinto kamis into the Buddhist pantheon) in medieval Japan, the Fujiwara court, the shogunate, and temple establishments promoted their own way of worshiping Shōtoku as an ideal regent, ideal general, and ideal Buddhist king, respectively.
Zen Monks and the Diplomacy of Foreign Conquest in Late Sixteenth-Century Japan
Nam-lin Hur, University of British Columbia
Did Japanese Buddhism, represented by two Gozan Zen monks, promote killing for the glory of the Divine Country? It seems that, in late sixteenth-century Japan, they did. Keitetsu Genso (1537-1611) and Seisho Jotai (1548-1607) conducted Japan’s state diplomacy during the period between 1592 and 1598, when the Hideyoshi regime invaded Korea on the pretext of conquering Ming China. Their involvement was threefold: (1) they articulated the idea of the Divine Country, which was used to justify Hideyoshi’s foreign aggression; (2) they conducted the cease-fire negotiations (which ended in failure) with Ming China; and (3) they appeased Korean war victims by offering memorial services. Based on an analysis of written and visual material pertaining to these two monks, this paper explores the extent and manner of their diplomacy and assesses the implication of their activities for Japanese Buddhism.
Rebirth in the Pure Land or God’s Sacrificial Lambs? Interpretations of the Atomic Bombings by True Pure Land Buddhism (Hiroshima) and Catholicism (Nagasaki)
Yuki Miyamoto, University of Chicago
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have often been discussed from within a discourse based upon nation-state boundaries. When then curator Martin Harwit at the Smithsonian Institution proposed an exhibition of images of the bombing as seen from the ground, a number of WWII veterans opposed this plan as “anti-patriotic.” However, examining testimonials of minority groups, such as Korean, Okinawan, and Japanese-American hibakusha (A-bomb victims) challenges this nation-state discourse: how can we think of the atomic bomb incident as taking place in a total war, which was fought in the name of nation-states, even while the victims did not necessarily fall within nation-state boundaries? As an alternative reading of this historical event, I propose to turn to religious interpretations: that of Mitsudera Shigenobu (True Pure Land Buddhism) and that of Nagai Takashi (Catholicism). Religious interpretations, I argue, provide us with perspectives that interpretations bound by nation-state frameworks have disregarded.
A37
“Your Wish Is My Command”: The Peril and Promise of the Bible as “Letter from the Beloved”
Hugh Pyper, University of Leeds
Kierkegaard uses the metaphor of the letter from the beloved to exhort his reader to immediate obedience to the demands of the biblical text as the reader perceives them. This zeal seemingly exonerates the reader from the consequences of any errors in his or her reading. This is worryingly close to providing a justification for terrorist acts sincerely but erroneaously carried out in the name of the bible. In his poem “Fears and Scruples” Robert Browning uses the same metaphor to express doubt over any claim to authority by scripture. The argument of this paper is that the figure of the silent woman later in Kierkegaard’s text opens up a more nuanced understanding of authority and obedience which may offer a course between the apparently unthinking obedience of JYF and the melancholy offence displayed by Browning and “A.”
Violence and Secularization, Evil and Redemption
Martin Beck Matuštík, Purdue University
We pray to be delivered from evil, hoping not only to avoid temptation to do iniquity, but that evil deeds will be atoned. In our prayers and hope, do we grasp how radical is the “radical evil” that darkens our intellect and weakens our will? Kant argues that evil must be imputed to the weakness of human will, thereby attesting to the dignity of human freedom and rational will’s innate orientation to do good. Building on Kant and using Kierkegaard’s distinction between aesthetic and ethical, I will consider that there is nothing redemptive or holy in war on evil. Yet by translating the religious mode of sin into the moral language of radical evil, does not Kant muddle the issue? Relying on Kierkegaard’s religious grasp of evil, I want to consider that there is nothing wholly secular about violence. Finally, I will meditate on some postsecular consequences of radical evil.
Kierkegaard on Violence and Transcendence: An Ethics of the Sublime
Vanessa Rumble, Boston College
This essay takes its point of departure in Charles Bellinger’s exposition, in Genealogy of Violence, of the many respects in which Kierkegaard anticipates Rene Girard’s understanding of the origin and mechanisms of violence. Both view violence as arising from the absence or refusal of a transcendent telos for human desire. The essay questions, first, whether Kierekgaard’s own writings might be characterized as not only diagnosing violence but also valorizing it. Second, it is suggested that Kierkegaard’s philosophy shares this tendency with that of Levinas and Lacan, all proponents of what might be characterized as a “sublime ethics.” A conception of a sublime, conflict-based ethics is elaborated in contrast to an “ethics of the beautiful,” based on Kant’s Critique of Judgment, and the value and dangers of the sublime aspects of Kierkegaard’s, Levinas’, and Lacan’s writings are discussed.
A38
The Concept of the Public in Korean Neo-Confucianism and Its Modern Transformation
Seung-Hwan Lee, Seoul, Korea
Korean people are often said to have no clear distinction between public/private. Recent studies often trace the reason back to the Confucian & Neo-Confucian culture which prevailed in Korean society for more than five hundred years until the dawn of modern period. However, when we look closely into the Confucian tradition, we can find various mentions made by Confucian scholars emphasizing the rigorous distinction between public/private. The Neo-Confucian thought was based on the sharp distinction between Heavenly Principle/Human Desire which was functionally identical with the distinction between public/private. With these questions in mind, in this paper, I examine the concept of gong in Confucian tradition as well as its modern variation which can be understood as public in English. In doing so, we will arrive at a better understanding of the question, “Do we Koreans really have no clear distinction between public and private?”
The Religion and the Rise of Civil Society
Don Baker, University of British Columbia
Scholars who analyze the rise of democracy in the twentieth century often link democracy to the emergence of a civil society. The birth of a civil society is usually attributed to businessmen organizing to resist government intervention in their affairs. However, religious organizations sometimes pose a similar challenge to the state. When believers fight for religious freedom, demanding limits on a government’s jurisdiction, they too are carving out space for civil society to emerge.
The Irrelevance of the Tragic in Korea’s Religious Consciousness
Hong-Bin Lim, Korea University
Compared with the ancient Greek literary tradition, we have to recognize that neither our Korean cultural nor religious tradition could be influenced by the tragic worldview. Hegel also, who drew his attention to the complicated problem of the tragic in his lifetime, maintained that we are living nowadays in the post-tragic age. But he was convinced by the hermeneutic relevance of the tragic regarding the malaise of the western modern society. This difference between cultures is of crucial importance. It will bring to light some useful parameters of my paper. This will make the element of the tragic relevant to the research of public rationality in Korean society. I will defend a view that there are some relationships between Korean development of public rationality and the non-existent element of the tragic.
Theology of Accompaniment in Post-Minjung Korea
James T. Bretzke, University of San Francisco
As a member of a research group studying religion and civil society in East Asia, I studied in Korea, an emerging new local theology related to both Minjung theology and also traditional Korean Confucian values. This emerging theology is termed by its principal practitioners as a “theology of accompaniment” and my research focuses on how this theology is articulated and practiced in ministry among the farm workers and the urban poor. My research involved field visits and interviews with people strongly involved in a variety of voluntary religious associations, organizations and movements, who see themselves as modern (e.g., progressive), and who expressed a deep concern about social justice which relates also to how they see themselves as citizens, as members of a state, including a responsibility to interact with others who are not necessarily part of their same religious group, thus involving issues of tolerance, pluralism, gender, and harmony.
A39
Panel: Clergy Sexual Abuse: Theological and Gender Perspectives
David James Livingston, Mercyhurst College, Presiding
Donald Cozzens, John Carroll University
Marie M. Fortune, Seattle, WA
Merle Longwood, Siena College
William Schipper, Saint John’s University
Elaine Graham, University of Manchester, Responding
There has been a plethora of journalistic writings on the current sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, not only in this country, but in other parts of the world as well. The recently published Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church by the Investigative Staff of the Boston Globe (2002) is one of the most notable. Other writings have approached this crisis from a social scientific perspective, such as A. W. Richard Sipe’s Sex, Priests, and Power: Anatomy of a Crisis (1995), while others have provided a broader historical perspective, such as Philip Jenkins’ Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Crisis (1996). While acknowledging the value of these perspectives, the members of this panel will be particularly concerned to address the sexual abuse issues in terms of what their impact may have in understanding constructions of masculinity in churches and in the wider society.
On Being a Father without a Script
John Blevins, Emory University
This paper will explore the challenges that gay men with children face in creating an identity as father. The paper will do so in two important ways: 1) by using queer theoretical perspectives to demonstrate how most of our cultural understandings about healthy human development and parental responsibility inevitably require a heterosexual conception of the family; and 2) by analyzing the religious rituals of a particular Christian community in Atlanta to bless the lives of a queer family-- parents and children-- who worship there.
A40
How Prevalent Are New Religious Movements in the American South? A Regional Look at NRMs, with an Exploration of Some Problems with NRMs Methods and Demography
Timothy Miller, University of Kansas
New religious movements are less prevalent in the American South than they are in other parts of the country, with fewer movement headquarters, fewer local organizations, and fewer members per capita than are found the rest of the country. This paper provides documentation for the proposition that NRMs are less prevalent in the South than elsewhere. It then examines several possible explanations for the relative paucity of NRMs in the South. Finally, it examines demographic and methodological problems raised by the study: How are accurate demographic data on NRMs obtained? Just how are NRMs operationally defined? How can our geographic understanding of religion, and especially NRMs, be improved?
The Communication That Heals: Spiritualism and the New Age Movement at Cassadaga, Florida
Phillip C. Lucas, Stetson University
The Southern Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp Meeting Association, an independent Spiritualist community located in east central Florida, has been an anomalous fixture on the Florida cultural and religious landscape since its founding in 1893. In 1981, the camp terminated its erstwhile affiliation with the nation’s largest and oldest Spiritualist umbrella organization, the National Spiritualist Association of Churches. The community is now unaffiliated with any larger Spiritualist association, leaving it free to pursue its spiritual vision in a peculiarly eclectic manner. This paper focuses on an interpretation of the community’s ritual life and its healing/therapeutic work. In addition, I uncover the extent to which the Cassadaga community has assimilated New Age beliefs and practices, while at the same time resisting certain aspects of New Age religion. Throughout the paper, I focus on the camp’s efforts to maintain a coherent self-representation as a Spiritualist community, given its members’ eclecticism and doctrinal flexibility.
Graceland Too: The Ambiguity of Elvis Devotion in the American South
Gregory L. Reece, University of Montevallo
Located near Memphis, Tennessee, Graceland Too is a private “museum” dedicated to Elvis Presley. It has become a favored stop on the Memphis to Tupelo pilgrimages of Elvis devotees. Through its appearance on internet Web sites (including one sponsored by CNN) and in academic accounts of Elvis faith it has gained wider recognition and occupies the ambiguous status of being a symbol of devotion and an ironic joke. Following a description of Graceland Too, including an account of its origins and history, this paper elaborates on the ambiguous reception of Graceland Too by academic / journalists as well as by Elvis fans and tourists. It is hoped that an analysis of the ambiguous reception of Graceland Too may shed some light on the ambiguous reception of Elvis devotion in general.
Walking the Line: Native Pipe and Sweat Ceremonies in Prison
Lee Irwin, College of Charleston
The subject of this presentation is the movement among native prisoners to have access to native religious practices, specifically pipe ceremonies, sweats, and prayer and drum sessions. These practices form the basis of a native spirituality movement that supports a wide range of diverse native traditions and has been organized around a few basic ceremonies now recognized as primary expressions of native religious identity. Beginning in the early 1970s, this movement has fought for recognition in the prisons, in the courts, and in the popular press. Many individual cases will be reviewed, including the seven years struggle of the Trapp vs DuBois suit by native prisoners in Massachusetts. Also covered are the formation of various native societies for the purpose of offering spiritual advisers to prisons, the National Native American Prisoners Rights Advocacy Coalition, and several United Nations proposals in relations to native prisoner’s religious rights.
Unwitting Collaborators: Mary Baker Eddy, Her Critics, and the Development of Christian Science Theology
Amy E. Lorion, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Mary Baker Eddy’s critics argued with her as vocally and publicly as possible. Not one to pass up a good fight, Eddy responded to these challenges just as vocally and publicly as her critics, continually nuancing her basic tenets to explain away the seeming contradictions many were all too happy to point out. This debate played a pivotal role in the development of Christian Science as it appeared at the time of Eddy’s death in 1910, as Eddy worked out the ideas and nuanced the language that would become Christian Science doctrine. Studying both her critics” comments and Eddy’s responses, including resulting revisions to Science and Health, allows us a view into the development of Christian Science theology as well as insight into how one religious founder turned an antagonistic environment to her advantage, involving her most vocal critics in the development of the very theological system they disparaged.
A41
The Earth Charter: Past Challenges and Future Prospects
Rick Clugston, Center for Respect of Life and Environment, Washington, DC
This presentation will: describe the origins of the Earth Charter and movements from the United Nations Earth Summit at Rio, afterward; analyze the intricacies of the international drafting process and highlight the wide-ranging kinds of consultations that emerged around the Charter in draft form; and trace the journey of the Charter from Rio and discuss its reception at the WSSD. It will conclude with a discussion of the future directions of the Charter and highlight its educational uses.
Religion and Ethics at the United Nations’ Earth Summit in Rio, 1992
Heather Eaton, St. Paul University
The Earth Summit 1992 marked a distinct direction in United Nations and global affairs. A global consciousness, worldview and agenda was taking shape. The official event was attended by more world political leaders than prior or since, and was paralleled by a citizen forum of over ten thousand people. The agenda for both was sustainable living on earth. This presentation is part of a collaborative effort to present some of the religious and ethical dimensions from Rio to Johannesburg. Three aspects of each will be presented. One, a spatial anthropology; that is the efforts leading up to and during the Rio events, the rise of democracy, and a global citizen’s movement. Two the unprecedented inter-religious collaboration with and participation in global affairs. Three is a discussion of the rise of a “global green and justice-focused worldview.”
Religion and Ethics at the United Nations’ Sponsored World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, 2002
Bron Taylor, University of Florida
In September 2002 the United Nations’ World Summit on Sustainable Development was held in Johannesburg, South Africa. This presentation, accompanied by photographs, analyzes religion and ethics at the WSSD in three stages. The first analytical stage will provide a spatial anthropology of the site to analyze power relationships. The second stage reviews the critical ethical issues contested at Johannesburg, noting along the way how diverse religions played central roles in presenting them. The third stage focuses on the role of religion in promoting a global ethics of sustainability, focusing especially on the progress of what I call “spiritualities of connection” with the earth, within Civil Society at large, and even in the official UN venue itself. I argue that at the Summit there was, haltingly and in a nascent and fragile way to be sure, signals of what political theorist Dan Deudney calls “Terripolitan Earth Religion.”
The Search for Viable Global Ethics in and around the United Nations
Mary Evelyn Tucker, Bucknell University
This presentation explores historically the search for a viable global ethics, focusing especially on this quest at the United Nations, and among the individuals and groups engaged with it. It will outline some of the historical movements in this direction around the founding of the UN, especially with its Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It will then discuss the movement toward an ethics of sustainability that has several facets including the work of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Earth Charter arising from the Rio Earth Summit, the Global Ethics drafted by Hans Küng, and the interest of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in engaging the world’s religions for environmental protection. The presentation will concluded by highlighting some of the obstacles and opportunities to the engagement of religions in each of these projects.
A42
Religion, Ritual Sacrifice, and the Iconic Serial Killer
Jane Caputi, Florida Atlantic University
The contemporary serial killer is a simultaneously feared and admired criminal and popular icon. It is primarily in the popular and imaginative fictionalizations that the core meanings of this killer’s ascendancy to iconographic status are revealed. That meaning is a religious one. These characteristic themes include: immortality, godlike identifications, and related motifs of genius, ritual sacrifice, misogyny and gender ambiguity (involving masculine incorporation of the feminine). Historically, both the quest for immortality and a foundational misogyny are inherent to blood sacrifice according to Nancy Jay. My presentation will explore these themes of divinity and sacrifice as they occur in popular narratives including: Psycho, Seven, The Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon, and several British and American television productions. I also comment on the elaboration of an alternative anti-patriarchal mythos of female divinity in the story of a woman confronting and ritually slaying a serial killer in The Cell.
Spectacles of Sacrifice in a Theater of Terror: Religion and the Cinema of Adolescence, from Reefer Madness (1936) to Scream (1996)
Jon Pahl, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia
David Considine’s identification of a particular genre of film, the “cinema of adolescence,” does not develop the religious significance of this marketing trend. The genre developed and succeeded, however, precisely because these films both play upon, and create, conventions of discourse and practice that resolve the “crises” of youth by depicting normative connections for adolescents to selective institutions and communities that are invested with transcendent, even salvific, significance. A close analysis of four films, Reefer Madness (1936), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Halloween (1978), and Scream (1996) can reveal both the continuity and development of these conventions in American popular culture. The implications for the study of religion, and especially the global problem of religious violence, will be explored in conjunction with the findings of Girard, Juergensmeyer, Lincoln, Schwartz, and others.
Terror, Violence, Natality, and Revelation: Bowling For Columbine and the Culture of Fear
Whitney Bauman, Graduate Theological Union
The Bush administration portends to end violence and terror through the “War on Terror.” Some would argue that the Bush Administration is actually ruling with terror and thereby creating domestic and international violence. This is what Michael Moore’s movie Bowling for Columbine and Barry Glassner’s book, The Culture of Fear suggest. Using Hannah Arendt’s theories of terror and violence this paper explores how the findings in Moore’s and Glassner’s works give evidence to the statement that the government of the United States is moving toward a “rule-by-terror” model, based upon Arendtian understandings of terror and violence. Finally, this paper will explore how Arendt’s concept of “natality” (compared here with the “newness” or “natality” of God’s on-going revelation) might help us as a nation, “think what it is we are doing” and create an open space for dialogue by which true democracy, “rule-by-people” might emerge.
Tarantino’s Incarnational Theology: Reservoir Dogs, Crucifixions, and Spectacular Violence
Kent Brintnall, Emory University
This paper reads Quentin Tarantino’s film Reservoir Dogs alongside Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Love. By comparing how these respective texts depict and valorize the brutalized male body, the paper exposes the erotics inherent in the veneration of the crucified Christ as well as the theological anthropology subtending Tarantino’s film. In addition, through its methodological approach which treats cinematic and theological texts as equivalent sources of knowledge, the paper demonstrates the potential value of a genuinely interdisciplinary approach to religion and film.
A43
Gnostic Mythology in Disney’s Pinocchio
Tony Chartrand-Burke, Wilfrid Laurier University
The right film can work wonders for helping students understand difficult concepts in religion. Disney’s Pinocchio at once provides a visual metaphor for the Gnostic version of the creation of humanity and conveys the anxiety that must have been felt by prospective Gnostics as they came to the realization that their well-known and beloved traditions could yield such disconcerting interpretations. This paper details the parallels between the creation myth of the Apocryphon of John and the Blue Fairy’s animation of the puppet in Pinocchio, and discusses the pedagogical value of making such parallels.
Constituting and Confronting Evil: Satan, Postmodernism, and the Mythological Language of Film
Andrew DeJohn, University of Chicago
The proliferation of the postmodern affect has brought with it the dissolution of the meaning of language itself and the myths that used to make sense of evil in the world. This is most starkly illustrated in American society’s near complete jettisoning of the concept of Satan. Twentieth century postmodern society has also seen itself face to face with its own historicity and the patent existence of horrific evil in the world. This paradoxical predicament we find ourselves in, then, is one in which we still feel the presence of terrible evil but have lost the ability, the rational language to describe and cope with it. Where rationality and postmodernism have failed, however, particular language has been able to provide a means for constituting and confronting evil: the mythological language of film.
Tolkien and Tillich: A Theological Reading of the Mythology of Evil in The Lord of the Rings
Stephen Butler Murray, Skidmore College
In his epic trilogy The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien articulates a dynamic vision concerning the mythology of evil. While one might point to the figure of the demigod Sauron or his legion of fallen followers, it is the malevolent work of his creation, the One Ring, which embodies corruption as the core of Tolkien’s perspective on evil. Most remarkable about this understanding is that the One Ring does not prey upon the wearers’ weaknesses, but attacks their most noble qualities. It is through the content of their character that they are undone. I would like to explore Tolkien’s corruptive aspect of evil through the lens of Paul Tillich’s explanation of what happens to an uncentered self due to the conditions of existential estrangement. I shall discuss Tillich’s doctrine of evil in conversation with Tolkien’s narrative, focusing on topics such as despair and the individual’s loss of a “world.”
“It Came to Me”: Gift and Reciprocity in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings
Kathryn Blanchard, Duke University
A few years before JRR Tolkein’s Fellowship of the Ring was published, Marcel Mauss published his Essai sur le Don in which he explored the nature of gift giving in non-industrialized cultures, theorizing that people give out of self-interest and reciprocate out of obligation; moreover, he believed gifts had spirits and lives of their own. Tolkein’s books and Peter Jackson’s films provide a striking embodiment of Mauss’s principle; the lesser rings of the title are gifts that put recipients under obligation to the giver, while the “one ring” of power illustrates the way a gift desires to return to its original master. But the evil ring is a non-gift, in a corrupt and broken gift cycle, carried on through theft and betrayal rather than gratuitous gift and spontaneous reciprocity. Narrative and film let us explore the theme of gift in a way that Mauss’s oft-criticized scholarship might not.
Irving Singer’s Reality Transformed and Its Import for the Study of Religion and Film
Greg Watkins, Stanford University
Scholarly work in the area of religion and film has been predominately unsophisticated at the theoretical level, especially by the standards of contemporary film theory. Irving Singer’s recent book, Reality Transformed: Film as Meaning and Technique, serves as an explanation of that theoretical difficulty at the same time that it etches out its own philosophical synthesis of the formalist and realist schools of film theory. While a humanist himself, Singer’s insistence on the place of the imagination in all aesthetic experience leads him to describe superlative works of art as those which present us with an otherwise “absent world” that has been given meaning through insightful representations of it. The essentially imaginative space of that meaningful yet absent world allows for both humanistic and religious interpretation.
A44
Religious Freedom Debates in the Pueblo Dance Controversy
Tisa Wenger, Southern Methodist University
This paper examines the contested category of religion in the Pueblo dance controversy of the 1920s as a contribution to the history of U.S. policies on Native American religious freedom. In this controversy, competing groups of reformers battled over attempts by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to regulate Native American dances. All the reformers in the controversy framed their arguments about the Pueblo dances in terms of what they agreed was the all-American value of freedom of religion, but because they disagreed over what counted as religion, they also disagreed over whether or not the Pueblo ceremonies merited that protection. The controversy demonstrates that religious freedom debates are informed by competing definitions of religion, which are therefore crucial for understanding the history of government policies towards Native American religious practices.
America’s Sacred Ground and the Marketplace: Rediscovering the Religious and Moral Roots of Economic Freedom
Barbara A. McGraw, Saint Mary’s College of California
The "individualism" preserved by the founders in the U.S. Constitution was not intended to be self-sufficient individual pursuit of happiness. Rather, individualism was based on the idea that God’s primary relationship is with each individual person. And the purpose of freedom was to ensure that individuals are free to be and do good according to conscience imbued with God, so that they could build the good society from the ground up. The theories of Adam Smith, the "father" of capitalism, complement these goals. However, they have been misunderstood, resulting in a distorted contemporary U.S. economic policy at home and globally based on an ethic of selfishness. But Smith never intended to carve out of economic life intrinsic moral values. We find, instead, that Smith’s ideas for economic freedom were morally and religiously grounded in much the same way as the American political system was grounded by the American founders.
Taking Worldviews Seriously across the Curriculum: Why Training Public School Teachers to Teach about Religion Is Not Enough
Perry Glanzer, Baylor University
Various authors such as Charles Haynes, Warren Nord, Robert Nash, and Martin Marty have argued that efforts need to be made to ensure that public educators integrate religion into the curriculum in a constitutionally appropriate way. This paper contends that broadening the focus of the discussion from “integrating religion” to “understanding and examining worldviews” is necessary if educators are going to understand and sympathize with the major moral argument undergirding the case for teaching religion in public schools. We need to acknowledge that education takes place within “a tournament of narratives” and that justice in a liberal democracy requires that public school educators must be trained how to show fairness to various worldviews. Without the realization of these points, religious perspectives will always be seen as the province of special interests or a viewpoint to be shown special accommodation and not a class of worldviews that must be shown justice.
Public Activism for American Muslim Civil Liberties after September 11
Hajer Ben Hadj Salem, Mahdia, Tunisia
This paper is an attempt to study the impact of the USA Patriot Act on American civil liberties in general and on American Muslims in particular. It will deal with some aspects of public activism by Muslim public affairs organizations, human rights advocates and other ethnic and faith-based groups, who, in their solidarity with the Muslim community (perhaps, the group that was affected most by the implementation of the Patriot Act), forged a communal bond uniting and strengthening American society. This activism has provided a mode for unifying the American public, providing appropriate tools for citizens to question any further restrictions on their civil liberties, while at the same time maintaining a patriotic stance. In this way, non-governmental and community organizations have provided an alternative patriotism to that put forth in the Patriot Act, one that aims to create solidarity and not mutual suspicion.
Mandatory Monotheism and Some Problems of Religious Freedom in Bali
June McDaniel, College of Charleston
Indonesia is often called the largest Muslim nation in the world. However, it is not a theocracy. Its government policy is tolerance for religions that believe in one Almighty God (the first requirement of the pancasila instituted by President Sukarno at Indonesian independence), and non-tolerance towards other religions. Traditional Balinese religion is animistic with Hindu elements. In order to fit the government requirements, the religion was deliberately restructured by Balinese intellectuals into a monotheistic form of Hinduism with one God, a sacred text, and prophets. This paper explores some of the problems of this political and religious compromise, based on both text and fieldwork. Is it religious freedom if the government imposes religious requirements, but does not mandate belief in a single religion? Is it monotheism if practitioners largely ignore the God? Can a politically motivated theology be called religious? What are the advantages and disadvantages of such a church-state relationship?
A46
The Many Augustines
Robert P. Kennedy, Saint Francis Xavier University, Presiding
Kim Paffenroth, Iona College, Presiding
Paul Rigby, Saint Paul University
James K.A. Smith, Calvin College
Brad Green, Baylor University
Charles A. Wiley, Princeton Theological Seminary
Our session will consider several of the many different roles that Augustine plays in our readings of him. We will be looking at him from the perspectives of psychology and postmodernism, as well as the difference between Catholic and Protestant readings of him.
A47
Relics of National Sacrifice: Toward a Typology
Robert Alvis, Elmhurst College
This paper examines the use of relics in the inculcation of national identity. For my purposes the term relic refers to the physical remains of exemplary individuals, implements they may have employed, or residual memories of heroic action tied to specific locales. Relics of national identity are those so understood by a broad cross section of the national group in question. My approach centers on a close reading of the representations, erasures, and amendments associated with relics in one region (the city of Breslau/Wrocaw and its environs) occupied in succession by two nations (German and Polish), concentrating in particular on the period from 1871 to 1970. I consider the formal language of monuments, hegemonic interpretations of their significance, and alternative narratives emerging from disempowered parties. My analysis bears in mind the larger history of the region and the interests of the agents responsible for the symbols I scrutinize.
Stealing, Hoarding, Guarding: Nagas and the Three Types of Buddha Relics in the Pali Vamsas
Kristin Scheible, Harvard University
Within the literary landscape of medieval Theravada Buddhism, namely in the Pali vamsas (chronicles), nagas (mythical snake-beings) determine the value of relics through theft and hoarding, and they serve to locate and guard relics. In this paper, I will look at these functions and suggest certain connections that arise between the nagas and particular relics representative of the three categories inherent to the Theravada Buddhist tradition. Some are relics of the body (sarira), stolen and swallowed by nagas but eventually enshrined in stupas for human veneration. Some are relics of use (paribhogika), such as the tree the Buddha used as a parasol and gave to nagas to worship. Others are relics of place (uddesika). The relationship between nagas and relics, specifically in accounts of relic enshrinements in the medieval Sri Lankan Pali vamsas, will shed light on the broader topic of relics and sacred space.
Transgressing Claims to Sacred Space: The Advantage of Portable Relics in the Christological Conflicts in Syria-Palestine in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries
Cornelia B. Horn, University of St. Thomas
Based on evidence gleaned from doctrinally diverse sources (Chalcedonian and anti-Chalcedonian) of Late Antique provenance, this study claims that the feature of portability proved to be the decisive moment in an attempt of anti-Chalcedonians in fifth-century Syria-Palestine to redefine their understanding of the necessary relationship between the Sacred and spatial confinement. Based on the hagiographic and biographic tradition surrounding the figure of Peter the Iberian and his dealings with relics, this study critially investigates the dynamics behind a development that allowed relics to become the effective means of constructing new sacred space for a newly emerging anti-Chalcedonian Church in Late Antiquity. The international frame of reference created by the diverse origins of the relics (Persian, Armenian, Syrian, Phoenician, and Palestinian) and by the geographically diverse creation of alternative new sacred space (primarily Egypt and regions of Palestine) allowed the emerging church to redefine its territorial perspective in a global direction.
Osiris’ Head: Relics and Metonymy in Ancient Egypt
Scott Noegel, University of Washington
Though overlooked in comparative studies on relics, there is a great deal of evidence for relics in ancient Egypt, especially within the cult of Osiris. Osiris, a god of vegetation whose cult centered at Abydos, eventually gained widespread popularity as a chthonic deity associated with the flooding of the Nile, the deceased pharaoh, and the judgment of the dead. Osiris’ mythological traditions included a dismemberment and “re-memberment” of his body, and an eventual sexual union between Osiris and his wife (and sister) Isis, an act resulting in the birth of Horus, a god incarnate in the pharaoh. One later finds a temples dedicated to Osiris throughout Egypt, each claiming to possess one of the god’s members. This paper examines the metonymic meaning of Osiris’ relics from the perspective of the Egyptian political and administrative system to offer broad theoretical and historical insights into the value and purpose of relics generally.
The Treasure of the Ka’bah: Relics and Territory in Islam
Brannon Wheeler, University of Washington
Muslim tradition records an account of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandfather, who in the midst of uncovering the Well of Zamzam, recovers a buried treasure of swords, armor, and two golden gazelles. Some scholars link this discovery to the “Treasure of Qusayy” or the hidden Ark of the Covenant buried along with other implements from the Jerusalem temple when it was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. The story of this discovery and its link with other accounts of treasure and text burials is closely associated with traditions regarding the relics of the Prophet Muhammad (hair, nails, footprints, artifacts), relics of earlier prophets (Adam, Abraham, Moses), and Islamic law related to territory and ritual practices. Suggestive comparisons can be made with reference to the bodies of the Buddha, Sumerian Me, and Surfing movies.
A267
Dialectics of Conscience: Subjectivity and Ethics in Ghazali
Ebrahim Moosa, Duke University
This paper first explores the various ways that al-Ghazali construes human subjectivity in terms of heteronomy, autonomy and theonomy. I demonstrate that Ghazali’s notions of the self and selfhood is never really far from his epistemological concerns. This takes place especially after his intense engagement with tasawwuf (mysticism) when he is keen to infuse notions of subjectivity in the study of law and ethics. I argue that a whole new apparatus related to subjectivity and selfhood begins to mediate his conceptions of the law. Ghazali inflects notions of aesthetics (dhawq) and understandings of theonomy, by means of fiqh al-nafs in his exploration of ethics. Examples of how he applies this to the realm of practice will be presented.
Al-Ghazali on Love of God
Eric Ormsby, McGill University
In the presentation I intend to analyze al-Ghazali’s discussion with reference to his predecessors and his successors. I am interested in his strategic approach, beginning firmly in self-love and love of the visible and progressing through love of the invisible to a form of transfigured dalliance with God Himself. I shall also examine his strategies for establishing his case that such love is not only possible but essential and comment more generally on his hortatory techniques in the Ihya” at large. I shall also compare and contrast Abu Hamid’s discussion with his younger brother Ahmad (d. 1126) more radical views on divine love and shall try to show both the affinities and divergences within the two brothers” thought. Finally, I mean to explore the relationship between both thinkers” views and examine the question of whether Ahmad’s thought may represent the oft-mentioned but never- proved “esoteric” teaching of his older brother.
MS London, British Library OR 3126: An Unknown Work by Al-Ghazali on Metaphysics and Theology
Frank Griffel, Institute for Advanced Study, Yale University
Ms. London, British Library Or. 3126 is of all we know the unique example of a text that claims to be written by the influential Muslim theologian al-Ghazali. The beginning of the text which would establish a clear claim of authorship is lost. The authorship can only be determined through cross-references to other works. The titlepage of the ms. was added later and it identifies the text as the Maqasid al-falasifa of al-Ghazali. This text is not al-Ghazali’s well-known Maqasid, but a comprehensive exposition of metaphysics and theology. The subject is introduced in Avicennan terms, but follows clearly al-Ghazali’s views on theology. The paper will discuss briefly the history of the ms., the evidence for al-Ghazali’s authorship, and focus on the importance of this text for the ongoing reevaluation of his teachings in theology.
Al-Ghazali on the Real Religious Science: An Introduction to the Jurisprudence of the Heart (Fiqh Al-Qalb)
Timothy J. Gianotti, University of Oregon
Al-Ghazali begins his compendium, Reviving Religious Knowledge (ihy‘ ‘ul’m al-d’n), with the Book of Knowledge simply because, in his own words, “it is the most important”. It is “most important” for at least two reasons: because it challenges, in a very radical way, conventional conceptions of religious knowledge in Islam, conceptions that al-Ghazali believed had to be overturned if Islam, as a spiritual system was to save its own soul in his day, and because it serves as a general introduction to the science that al-Ghazali regarded as the most crucial. This is the Knowledge of the Way of the Afterlife devoted to preparing the individual for the ultimate, and immanent, encounter with the Divine. Although he was by no means the first Muslim sage to focus on this science of psycho-spiritual formation, al-Ghazali was among the first to systematize it and develop it as a pedagogical discipline.
A Medieval Struggle over Quranic Interpretation: Ibn Taymiyyah’s Critique of al-Ghazali’s Metaphysics in the Mishkat al-Anwar
James Pavlin, Rutgers University
The Mishkat al-Anwar (The Niche of Lights) is considered to be an extremely important essay explaining al-Ghazali’s esoteric interpretation of the well-known Light Verse of the Quran (24:35). In this essay al-Ghazali describes how the Light Verse can be interpreted to reflect a metaphysical reality that is based primarily on the neo-Platonic tradition as received by the Muslim philosophers. This philosophic tradition came under harsh scrutiny by the fourteenth-century Hanbali theologian Ibn Taymiyyah. His specific analysis of the Mishkat al-Anwar appears in his Bughyat al-Murtadd.The purpose of this paper will be to show how Ibn Taymiyyah defined the two competing hermeneutics, that of the hadith traditionists and that of the philosophers, by focusing on his criticism of particular passages of al-Ghazali’s Mishkat al-Anwar.
A275
Panel: Confucianism in Contemporary China: Portents, Prospects, and Ambiguities
Mark Csikszentmihalyi, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Presiding
Mark Allen Berson, Hamline University
Vivian-Lee Nyitray, University of California, Riverside
Thomas Selover, University of Saskatchewan
As a spiritual tradition, Confucianism seems at times to be a form of civil religion, or even religious civility. For much of its history, it has been integrally related to familial responsibilities and government service. After 80 years of cultural critique, and in the context of a perceived need for stable civility, Confucianism seems to be making a public comeback in contemporary mainland China. Aspects include discourse about “governing by virtue” (dezhi), human rights and responsibilities, family policy, the moral compass, and Chinese cultural nationalism. Government investment in promoting Confucian studies has led to a monumental new research center in Qufu, Confucius” birthplace. Our panel will explore these signs of renewed interest in Confucian resources in China and assess the political, social and religious implications of the Sage’s new lease on life.
A48
Panel: Contesting Religions: Prospects and Perils in a Global Context
Ebrahim E. I. Moosa, Duke University, Presiding
Madhu Kishwar, Centre for Studies in Developing Societies, Delhi
Maysoon Melek, United Nations Population Fund
Avishai Margalit, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Enrique Dussel, Universidad Autonoma de Mexico
This forum presents emerging international voices in the study of religion who are articulating new critical and constructive interpretations of religion and its function and role in contemporary societies. The forum will consider changing trends in the study of religion around the world as well as global developments in religions themselves that indicate a need for continual revision of categories of analysis, scholarly roles and the public function of religions and their interpreters. A central concern will be the ways in which these international developments challenge and criticize approaches dominant in the western academy. Participants include: Avishai Margalit, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Madhu Kishwar, Dehli University; Maysoon Melek, United Nations Population Fund; Enrique Dussel, Universidad Autonoma de Mexico; and Ebrahim E. I. Moosa, Duke University.
A49
Panel: Surviving and Flourishing: Challenges and Opportunities of Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession
David Kyuman Kim, Connecticut College, Presiding
Mary C. Churchill, University of Colorado, Boulder
Andrew Sung Park, United Theological Seminary
Joretta L. Marshall, Eden Theological Seminary
Luis G. Pedraja, Memphis Theological Seminary
Marcia Y. Riggs, Columbia Theological Seminary
How can racial and ethnic minority scholars survive and flourish in the midst of the economic downturn, the controversy on affirmative action, and limited growth of religion departments and theological schools? What are the lessons learned in job seeking, promotion and tenure, publishing, and career development for minorities? How have we balanced multiple commitments in the academy and in our communities? How can we nourish and renew ourselves to avoid burnout, ill health, and fatigue? This special forum provides an opportunity for conversations to launch a survival guide for racial and ethnic minorities. Panelists include Mary Churchill, University of Iowa; Andrew Park, United Theological Seminary, Ohio; Joretta L. Marshall, Eden Theological Seminary; Luis G. Pedraja, Memphis Theological Seminary; and Marcia Y. Riggs, Columbia Theological Seminary.
A50
Panel: The Use and Abuse of Adjunct Faculty in Religious Studies
Mark Lloyd Taylor, Seattle University, Presiding
Elizabeth Pullen, Drew University
John Curtis, American Association of University Professors
Carey J. Gifford, American Academy of Religion
Julie J. Kilmer, Elmhurst College
Since the mid-1970s, the number and percentage of faculty teaching on contingent (adjunct, part-time) appointments has increased dramatically - 100% by some estimates - even as tenured and probationary (tenure-track) faculty appointments continue to decrease. This session aims to begin a more intentional, public conversation within the AAR about issues raised by these trends. Stories of several different types of adjunct experience will frame presentations of empirical data on faculty staffing patterns. A variety of resources, including a new statement by the American Association of University Professors, will be shared and discussed. Concerns about systematic injustice in the treatment of those laboring in what has been called the academic "sweatshop" will be articulated. Implications for the future of teaching and scholarship within religious studies, especially for current and prospective graduate students, will be considered. Consciousness raising, survival strategies, and ameliorative actions for current adjuncts will be explored.
A51
Teaching a Key Concept: A Workshop
Patricia O’Connell Killen, Pacific Lutheran University
To gain the most from this session, participants should come with three copies of a brief narrative description of an activity or assignment they have used to teach a key concept. This can be one that worked well, one that did not work as well as anticipated, or one that worked once and then was less successful the second time around. The description should include 1) title, level, short description of course and its main objective, 2) description of activity or assignment, 3) purpose of the activity, and 4) what happened, 5) how the professor concluded that the activity or assignment worked well or less well in meeting its goal. Participants may (not must!) send their narrative description to the facilitator ahead of time via e-mail: killenpo@plu.edu.
A52
Panel: Rethinking Comparative Ethics: A Diverse Division of Labor
Pia Altieri, The University of Chicago, Presiding
Francisca Cho, Georgetown University
John Grim, Bucknell University
Anna L. Peterson, University of Florida
Darlene Fozard Weaver, Villanova University
Robin W. Lovin, Southern Methodist University, Responding
William Schweiker, University of Chicago, Responding
What becomes of “comparative ethics” when we can stipulate neither the entailments of “comparison” nor “ethics”? Is it an enterprise worth engaging? Or one no longer relevant and responsible? Simply put, comparative ethics lingers in methodological limbo. But scratch the surface of many scholarly pieces, particularly those in History of Religions/Area Studies, Anthropology, Theological Ethics, or Method/Theory, and you’ll find “comparative ethics” glimmers-though often, only implicitly. Is there any commonality to such glimmers? And if so, to what end? This panel investigates how scholars from diverse disciplines and fields might join forces, focus their questions and target their analyses with an eye toward cross-culture communication and understanding. It asks how and why an interdisciplinary division of labor might responsibly re-think comparative ethics in contemporary cross-cultural contexts.
A53
Panel: Better People? Eugenics and the Church in U.S. History
Amy Laura Hall, Duke University, Presiding
Sharon M. Leon, University of Minnesota, St. Paul
Dennis Durst, Saint Louis University
Christine Rosen, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington, DC
Stephen G. Ray, Louisvile Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Responding
This year marks the completion of the sequencing of the human genome. Enabling supposed advances in pre-implantation and prenatal diagnosis, the Human Genome Project invites a new way of conceiving reproduction. As diagnostic techniques emerge, we will become a society ever more capable of eradicating those who do not fit the economic and aesthetic calculations of post-industrial capitalism. This panel of scholars will discuss the history of Christianity’s relationship to the eugenics movement in the U.S. from the Roman Catholic, Evangelical and Mainline Protestant perspectives. By attending to the texts and voices of those within the U.S. churches who grappled previously with eugenic science, we may gain a perspective otherwise ignored by standard, ahistorical models of bioethics. We may question more soberly the uses to which a society such as ours will put genomic science and learn from the mistakes and courage of Christians from the early twentieth century.
A54
Panel: Reviewing The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity by Philip Jenkins
Teresa M. Shaw, Claremont Graduate School, Presiding
Vincent L. Wimbush, Claremont Graduate University
Wietse de Boer, Miami University of Ohio
Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton, University of Virginia
Lamin Sanneh, Yale University
Philip Jenkins, Pennsylvania State University, Responding
Philip Jenkins’ The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford 2002) presents a vivid portrayal of Christian communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, areas seldom in the forefront of American scholarly or pastoral attention. Yet, these communities will come to dwarf the Christian communities of America and Europe. And the story is not simply about numbers, but about styles of Christian belief and practice that sometimes diverge sharply from those embedded in American and European communities. In characterizing this development as “one of the transforming moments in the history of religion worldwide,” Professor Jenkins not only offers a picture of the present and future but also one of the past, the history of Christianity from which he draws powerful comparisons to illuminate the current development. This panel will examine the claims presented in this book, claims about the past as well as about the dramatic changes occurring now.
A55
Testimonies, Transition, and Trasnational Mexican Communities
Ethan Sharp, Indiana University, Bloomington
Formulating and relating personal testimonies have been essential to the exercise of faith and the formation of church communities in Pentecostal and other Protestant strains of Christian tradition. Through fieldwork in Mexico and among Mexican im/migrants in the US, I have found that testimonies have also become important forms of expression for Catholic Mexicans. My paper begins to account for the emergence and significance of testimonies among Mexicans. I consider two phenomena: the “privatization” of Christian experience through the influences of Pentecostalism and new pastoral strategies of the Catholic Church, and the “transnationalization” of communities through continued migration and ever strengthening social ties between sites in Mexico and the U.S. I argue that the testimony, or testimonio, is a medium of cultural change: through the testimonio, Mexicans develop faiths, assert identities, and form communities that are more adaptive to transnational life.
The Orthodox (Eastern) Christian Churches in the American Religious Landscape: The Questions of Nature and Identity
Alexei Krindatch, Russian Academy of Science
The Orthodox Christian Churches in the USA have been organized as ethnically-based denominations. Historically, a high priority has been given to the preservation of the ethnic heritage of their members. These “Church-based” ethnic barriers are alive despite the fact that currently a substantial proportion of Orthodox Churches” membership and clergy are US-born. The paper examines the “profiles” and policies of American Orthodox Churches and the role that they play in the integration of affiliated ethnically diverse Eastern Christian communities into the wider American society. The original author’s data were obtained from national survey of congregations of six Orthodox Churches with Ukrainian, Russian, Romanian, Albanian, Syrian and native Alaskan ethnic backgrounds. The data from the nationwide “Faith Communities Today” study allowed for comparisons with Roman Catholic parishes and congregations of Liberal, Moderate and Evangelical Protestant denominations.
The Renaissance of Jewish Religious Life in Contemporary Cuba
Dana Evan Kaplan, University of Miami
Judaism as an active religious sect went into what Teresita Pedraza, referring to religion in Cuba generally, calls a “dormant state.” Today, Cuban American Jews find themselves a distinct subgroup within the American Jewish community. While as many as 90% of the community left, a small group of Jews motivated by ideology, family ties, or love of country, stayed throughout the first four decades of the Castro Revolution. The vast majority of the Cuban Jewish community stood to lose their livelihoods. At the time of the greatest economic troubles for the people of Cuba, religious life began to revive. The contours of a new Cuban Jewish identity begin to emerge from the shadows of Fidelistic Communism. Their history is a fascinating one which has never before been told in full. This paper is the story of those who remained.
Latino and African American Muslim Communities
Abbas Barzegar, University of Colorado, Boulder
While the phenomenon of growing African American conversion to Islam has long been known, little to no attention has been given to the rising role of Islam in the Latino American community. This study highlights the dynamics of the growing communities of Latino Muslims in the United States. We find that both Latino and African American communities incorporate Islam into their lives as a holistic religious system, and by doing so, combat the various obstacles that have hindered these historically disenfranchised groups. We also find that both communities identify with Islam on both religious and ethnic terms. The convergence of material and religious identities seems to contribute to the development, maintenance, and growth of the communities. Recognizing the role of indigenous Muslim American communities as positive social forces comes at an increasingly important time in our history where the relationship between the Islamic and western worlds is becoming increasingly tense.
A56
Philosophy of Religion Section and Theology and Continental Philosophy Group
Michiko Yusa, Western Washington University, Presiding
James W. Heisig, Nanzan University
Yoshio Tsuruoka, University of Tokyo
John C. Maraldo, University of North Florida
Thomas P. Kasulis, Ohio State University
This session will include four papers bringing various features of Kyoto School thought into dialogue with western medieval, modern, and contemporary thought. Discussion will draw on, and to some degree introduce work by main figures associated with the Kyoto School (Nishida, Nishitani, Suzuki, Watsuji, Ueda), proposing fruitful exchange with some related ideas in the western tradition.
A57
Love’s Limits: Religious Nonviolence in the Civil Rights Movement
Roger S. Gottlieb, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
The Civil Rights movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr. is the best known and most respected American example of the use of religious ideas to guide a political struggle. As such it reveals something of the strengths and weaknesses of the role of religious non-violence in progressive political movements. Specifically, it shows that the essentially spiritual understanding of human identity is necessary but not sufficient for comprehending and fundamentally transforming a condition of oppression. After developing these claims, this essay will conclude with some modest suggestions about how the rival theoretical vocabularies and political styles of secular and spiritual progressive political movements can be of service to each other; and briefly apply that model to the present-day anti-war movement.
When Karl Rahner Meets Ashis Nandy: Christian and Postcolonial Resources for Nonviolent Resistance in India
Susan Abraham, Harvard University
The mystical theology of Karl Rahner advocates the attitude of Indiferencia as the attitude of one seeking unity with the Word in the World. When Rahner is pushed to clarify how such an attitude can counter violence, he seems to waver and falter. However, dismissing Rahner’s mystical theology as wholly irretrievable is not the only option in my view. Investigating his mystagogical sources leads us to a more practical way of articulating Indiferencia. This move is occasioned by the postcolonial theorist Ashis Nandy whose Christian reading of nonviolent strategy has Franciscan roots. Since Rahner can be shown to draw extensively from Franciscan-Bonaventurean sources, this paper will argue that his mystical theology requires amplification of precisely those strands that emphasize historical and ethical engagement. Indiferencia is shown to be resilient in this regard.
The Art of Peacemaking and Global Action to Prevent War
Sharon D. Welch, University of Missouri, Columbia
In this paper I argue that our understanding of nonviolence can be enhanced through the work of postcolonial comparative religious ethics. I will describe the task of postcolonial comparative religious ethics, and then take as a test case of such comparative work a critical comparison of three approaches to peace-making and nonviolence, the “art of peacemaking” as articulated by Desiderius Erasmus, the Engaged Buddhism of Thich Nhat Hanh, and the critiques of western social justice movements and the alternative proposals for nonviolent action found in the work of the Zen philosopher Masoa Abe.
A58
Samvada as a Literary and Philosophical Genre
Laurie Louise Patton, Emory University
In this paper I argue that the term “samvada” in Sanskrit literature might well be classified as a loose kind of genre, if we define genre as “a type of literary work characterized by a particular form, style, or purpose” (OED). I will show that samvada has a particular force in narrative and epic literature which is carried over into philosophical thought. Samvada’s semantic basis seems to be a “rule-governed conversation” that mediates a conflict or dispute. I discuss the various meanings of samvada throughout the literature and examine briefly examples of samvada, so named by Hindu texts themselves. Samvada remains, in all of its different forms, a kind of “structured conversation as the best response to disagreement.” Such consistency in form and connotation may qualify samvada as an indigenous genre. As such, the term has intriguing descriptive and normative possibilities for future thinking in Hindu philosophy and literature.
Sarcasm as Strategy: The Dialogics of the Yajnavalkya Debates
Steven Lindquist, Concordia University
This paper traces the use of sarcasm attributed to Yajnavalkya, a figure most well-known from the Brihadaranayaka, throughout early Indian literature. While many have viewed this aspect of Yajnavalkya’s speech as something unique or peculiar to this figure, this paper argues that Yajnavalkya’s sarcasm has a history. I propose that this history allows us to trace the form and function of this dialogical strategy and I suggest a typology for understanding the statements attributed to Yajnavalkya. This typology, I argue, allows us to view the rise of Yajnavalkya as an religious authority in a particular Brahmanical ritual tradition, that is to say, we can see this tradition being made. I conclude by discussing a few possible reasons why this developed dialogical strategy, prevelant in the White Yajurvedic tradition, did not persist in later Brahmanical religious dialogics.
Generous Sacrifice: Buddhist Responses to the Purusasukta
David Gray, Rice University
Buddhists have been portrayed as rejecting the Vedic worldview. Contrary to this common view, I will argue that there were multiple Buddhist perspectives on and points of engagement with the Vedic worldview, which suggests that Buddhists and Hindus were involved in an ongoing dialogue. I will do so by examining two responses to the Purusasukta (RV 10.90), preserved in the Pali Agaññasutta and the Sanskrit Karandavyuhasutra. Examining changing Buddhist responses to this text, I will argue that Buddhists were engaged in a process of adaptation involving the transformation of discursive categories borrowed from the Vedic tradition. This involved the transformation of sacrifice into generosity, a value given great emphasis in Buddhist discourse. This was a crucial step in the development of the Mahayana ideal of the bodhisattva, an ideal which, as exemplified in the Karandavyuhasutra, reveals influence from theistic trends within Hinduism.
Monological Gods, Dialogical Selves: Canon and Monotheism as Strategies for Interreligious Debate in Nineteenth-Century India
Robert A. Yelle, University of Toronto
The interreligious debate between British and Hindus in nineteenth century India was enabled by the prior agreement of each side to abide by certain terms. Religion came to be defined increasingly as a de-ritualized monotheism embodied in a written canon: the dialogue depended on a monologue. On the British side, this reflected earlier Protestant condemnations of Catholic custom and “idolatry,” which were subsequently transferred to Hinduism. On the Hindu side, the acceptance of this normative definition of religion was not merely an imitation of the British, but also reflected some indigenous developments, as an examination of the case of the early Bengali reformer Rammohun Roy shows. Both sides illustrate the logic of monotheism and canon as the foundational gestures of universal discourses translating, asymmetrically, between selves and others.
A59
The Politicization of Gender in Bangladesh
Christi Caldwell, Cambridge, MA
This report is a study of the politicization of gender development work in Bangladesh, with specific reference to the work of the Grameen Bank and its replication projects. It seeks to determine the origins and effects of gender development’s usherance into the political arena. In exposing the forces propelling the gender issue into the context of political dissent, the study reveals that gender’s politicization is the key impediment to a new gender paradigm in Bangladesh. Gender is relegated to the already-loaded arenas of Islamic identity, cultural imperialism, modernization, secularism and syncretism versus religious purism, thereby becoming the beast of burden for Bangladesh’s cultural identity crisis on both sides of the debate. If the gender issue in Bangladesh is not rescued from lesser political agendas, its politically-transcendent vision for both sexes will fall victim to a further legacy of derision.
Fuzzy Reformist-Islamist Borders: Malik Bennabi and Rashid al-Ghannushi on Civilization and Civil Society
David L. Johnston, Yale University
This study reexamines the theoretical constructs of “reformism” and “Islamism” in the recent history of the Maghrib by elucidating the contribution of Algerian Islamic philosopher Malik Bennabi to the thought of exiled Tunisian Islamist, Rashid al-Ghannushi. According to Bennabi, civilizations distill their own proper values and foci, and though they constantly evolve and borrow from other civilizations, they only retain their dynamic distinctiveness by remaining faithful to their own internal logic-and thus the dialectic of openness and authenticity which must guide the necessary efforts at Islamic renewal from within. Al-Ghannushi has carried this thought further as he pursues a project of global, pluralistic democracy, in which Muslim nations, each one in its unique way, seek to reflect authentically the holistic message of Islam, yet leaving room for civil society between the two poles of religion and politics.
Take Me to Karbala: Hazrat Zaynab bint `Ali and the Shi`i Community of Remembrance
Karen G. Ruffle, Univesity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
“This man drowned in the ocean of martyrdom, the waves of whose blood/ Have stained the face of the desert-this is your Husayn!” Zaynab bint `Ali cried out to her grandfather the Prophet Muhammad (Kashani, Karbala-nameh: 9:4). Following the martyrdom of the third Shi`i Imam Husayn at Karbala in 680 CE, Zaynab bint `Ali initiated the tradition of remembrance in Shi`i devotional life through the spontaneous composition of mar’thi (lamentations) spreading the message of the tragedies that had befallen the family of the Prophet. Zaynab’s ability to render every place and time as Karbala is the most important manifestation of her baraka (blessing). This paper calls for a reconsideration of the notion of sainthood in Shi`i Islam in order to accommodate the centrality of exemplary female figures such as Zaynab, whose exemplary faith, bravery, and connection to the divine, is the impetus for the Shi`i community of remembrance.
“How Could Your Wits Attain the Heights of Our Wisdom!”: Voice, Diction, and Authority in South Asian Shī`ī Women’s Sermons
Amy C. Bard, Columbia University
This paper maps a multi-sited, gendered authority in the oral discourse of zakirahs, female preachers in South Asian Shīī women’s gatherings. I apply sociolinguistic categories of “proximate” and “primary” speakers (DuBois 1986; Chafe 1993) to a charismatic young preacher’s delivery of injunctions from the imams, allusions to perplexing esoteric teachings, and exhortations to listeners in her own voice. The speaker’s multiple voices and stylistic range expose complexities in the conceptualization of ritual “propriety,” especially the dynamic between idealized devotional humility and a spirit of competition that spurs articulate orators. Given a broader social context that permits women scant opportunity for public prominence, hints of an identification between the preacher herself and the imam are striking. My analysis of authority and responsibility in mourning assembly speeches highlights everyday teaching and moral instruction in contemporary Muh.-arram ritual, balancing studies that privilege religious books, men’s ritual observances, and lament or suffering.
Muslims Taking It to the Internet: Suffering, Interpretation, and Activism
Kristin Sands, Sarah Lawrence College
The sometimes spectacular acts of violence, oppression, and human rights violations occurring in recent years, in which Muslims have been both perpetrators and victims, raise insistent moral and ethical questions. The problematic of suffering commands attention, serving as a catalyst both for activism and for profound shifts in the way individuals and communities understand themselves and the world. It is being suggested here that in the process of theorizing suffering, Muslims are adopting new ways of articulating Islam and interpreting their most essential text, the Qur’an. The Internet is playing a crucial role in this process as a secure public space in which new kinds of communities are created, identities and ideologies are being debated, and mobilization for action is occurring.
A60
Panel: Women’s Religious Thought: A Conversation on Mary F. Bednarowski’s The Religious Imagination of American Women
Jean H. Kilde, Macalester College, Presiding
Paula M. Cooey, Macalester College
Rita M. Gross, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire
Judith Weisenfeld, Vassar College
Peter W. Williams, Miami University
Mary F. Bednarowski, United Theological Seminary, Minneapolis, Responding
Jane F. Crosthwaite, Mount Holyoke College, Responding
This panel session will discuss Mary Farrell Bednarowski’s The Religious Imagination of American Women (Indiana, 1999), a book which investigates the growing body of women’s writing on religious ideas. Examining a plethora of writers across many faiths and genres, Bednarowski finds that five distinct themes are most frequently addressed by these women: ambivalence, the immanence of the sacred, the revelatory power of the ordinary, relationships, and healing. Suggesting a gendered solidarity in religious thought, Bednarowski’s themes and approach raise a number of questions. Are these themes shared only by women or are they common to broad human inquiry? Do shared themes indicate something important about women’s religious experience? Given these themes, is it useful to think in terms of “women’s religion”? Five distinguished scholars will discuss the methodological and conceptual issues raised by this book as well as its ramifications for the study of women and religion in the U.S.
A61
Panel: Discerning God’s Will: Bonhoeffer’s Legacy in Times of Turmoil
Jeffrey C. Pugh, Elon University, Presiding
Jean Bethke Elshtain, University of Chicago
Stanley M. Hauerwas, Duke University
George Hunsinger, Princeton Theological Seminary
This panel will explore implications of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s legacy in light of the contemporary world political situation.
A62
Construction of Religion as Culture
Norichika Horie, University of the Sacred Heart
In the field of cultural studies and cultural anthropology, the modern concept of culture has been criticized for many years. “Culture” is no more self-evident. It is a relatively new notion produced in modern times. The critique of the concept of culture is also significant for religious studies, since many approach of them have implied the concept of religion as culture, i.e. the idea that one religion can be described as meaningful, coherent, and organic complexity. The concept of religion as culture is considered to have its root in the formation of modern nation state. The presenter shall give a brief overview of the Japanese case. Then, by introducing the concept of subculture and multiculturalism, the future of religion as culture shall be prospected: under the demise of self-evidence of nation state, religion as culture is utilized for rearrangement of the postmodern religious scene.
Thinking at the Boundaries of Religion and the Secular: Talal Asad’s Formations of the Secular
Robert J. Baird, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
Contemporary discourses of religion stress a world-wide revival or reemergence of religious sensibility and practice in public arenas and centers of power. Critics of modern secularism speak of an “energetic re-entry of religion into the public square.” Christianity is increasingly viewed as a rising transnational reality among declining nation-states--religion as a supra-national ideology. Even eminent philosophers like Derrida characterize our time in terms of a “return of the religious.” Talal Asad has made clear that modern religion is only imaginable against the context of modernity, it is linked to secularism. The return of religion depends on the old secularist story: “where could religion have gone to that it could so return?” We are facing a discursive conundrum in which religion’s omnipresence seems dependent upon the forces most directly associated its decline. My paper will explore this irony in light of Asad’s analysis of the co-development of religion and the secular.
Religion as Communication: Do We Need a New Paradigm?
Kocku von Stuckrad, University of Amsterdam
The paper argues that religion should be addressed as an instrument of communal self-positioning. Instead of defining religion with regard to belief, to the transcendence, or to inner states of mind, it is the ability of religious traditions to position individuals and groups in time and space that is of paramount importance for religious studies. To explain the mechanisms of such processes of positioning, it is decisive to change the perspective and look at communication and action. The paper’s subsequent thesis that we in fact need a “communicational turn” is substantiated in three parts: Firstly, I shall give an introduction into Niklas Luhmann’s communicational approach to religion; secondly, I shall address the narrative structure of religious identities, which can only be shaped by means of communication; and thirdly, I shall explore the benefits of Luhmann’s approach for analyzing religion as a powerful component of public discourse.
A63
“Giving Birth to a Dancing Star”: Friedrich Nietzsche and Isadora Duncan on Religion, Dance, and Motherhood
Kimerer L. LaMothe, Harvard University
Friedrich Nietzsche consistently evokes metaphors of morning sickness, pregnancy, and birth to describe the process by which “man” must “overcome” himself and learn to “dance.” Isadora Duncan, a pioneer of American modern dance, called Nietzsche her teacher; she found in his work someone who comprehended the “spirit of dance.” For Duncan, a dance that succeeds as “religious art” is one that enacts the “freedom of woman” by serving as a means for women to come to know the “beauty and holiness” of their female bodies, and become “perfect mothers.” This paper reads Nietzsche’s rhetoric of maternity alongside Isadora Duncan’s dance “Mother” to argue that for both individuals, dance represents a self-reflexive practice through which women and men may generate alternative values to those currents of Christianty which sustain hostility towards embodiment in general, and female bodies in particular.
The River and the Tigress: Indian Religious Ideals of the Maternal and Their Social Implications
Rita Sherma, Binghamton University
This paper attempts to clarify the different constructs of maternality in the religious imagination, and suggests that different rhetorics of motherhood can inform the different ways in which women are perceived and nature is approached. I use the Indian religious and cultural landscape with its long history of engagement with the concept of the divine feminine and comprehensive rhetorics of maternality, to examine the ways in which distinct philosophies of the feminine maternal can impact social and ethical issues.
Embodied Spirit: Subjectivity of Korean Women - A Construction of Narrative Identity from an Autobiographical Ethnography of Han
Jeong Sug Kim, Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary
In this paper, I intend to construct a narrative identity from the autobiographical ethnography contained in my mother’s and grandmother’s stories. The story of han woven into this autobiography highlights the broader experience of Korean women generally, who carry the collective feeling of han from their own experience of suffering. By interweaving Paul Ricoeur’s narrative identity method and Walter Benjamin’s history of philosophy and theology, subjectivity as embodied spirit will transcend the limitation of the modern Western philosophical understanding of human subject to create a theological anthropology from a Korean feminist perspective. While embodied spirit is embedded firmly in the temporal hisotricity of particular Korean women, as spirit it goes beyond the boundaries of specificity to illuminate the experiences of women in many different contexts.
Rhetoric of Motherhood and Resistance in Chile
Lorena E. Cuevas, New York, NY
This paper discusses the competing rhetorics of motherhood in post-Allende Chile by focusing on the Chilean mothers of the disappeared in the early 1970s. This inquiry relies on my interviews with mothers who lost their sons in 1974. The significance is that these women represent the founding mothers of the movement during the first wave of massacres under Pinochet’s regime. Themes such as the mothers’ religious identification with Christ on the way to Calvary and feminist liberation emphasis on experience help to explain how the mothers reflect on their suffering. In addition, this paper will examine how contemporary Chilean feminist understand the role of the mothers. On this thirtieth anniversary of Chile’s September 11, we commemorate how the mothers of the disappeared, through use of their own agency, have used the Chilean right wing rhetoric on motherhood to transform political praxis in Chile into a new form of political creativity.
A64
Analogue Consciousness Isn’t Just for Faeries: Applying Harry Hay’s Insights to Buddhism and Christianity
Roger J. Corless, Duke University
Buddhism and Christianity, although poles apart in their understanding of what is ultimately real, propose structurally similar ways of resolving the perceived split between the absolute and the relative. They both profess a view of reality that is ultimately non-dual (between humanity and divinity, or between samsara and nirvana), but in practice they are both frequently dualistic. This paper will suggest that the disjunction between the theoretical non-dualism and the practical dualism of Buddhism and Christianity arises from their heterosexist models for the spiritual path which compel the traditions to adopt a subject-object stance. Drawing on the work of feminist scholars, the misplaced reification of these models will be exposed. Then, an alternative structure will be proposed, based on Harry Hay’s notion of the analogue or subject-subject consciousness, which would allow both Christianity and Buddhism to accept non-duality in practice as well as theory.
Hagiography as Fagiography
Lars Gardfeldt, University of Karlstad
The LGBT community is part of a greater one in the history of Christianity, that of the hushed ones. Same-sex love has faced reprisals and persecution. Transgender behavior has been associated with shame. At the same time, the SAINT Calendar has been crowded with people whose lives have been characterized more by their queerness than by their normality. In my paper -- accompanied by slides -- I show how gay men and lesbians of today live the queer and holy lives of the saints, and how identification with the defiant saints of the Middle Ages can lead to the liberation of the LGBT community.
Erotic Conversion as a Response to the Priest Pedophilia Crisis
Paul J. Gorrell, Drew University
The abuse of children and associated cover-ups have damaged the laity’s trust in priests, unsettled the church’s finances, and exposed a culture of self-deception. Consequently, there is more focus on priests’ sexual orientation and a clerical culture that includes hidden sexual behavior. Yet, Rome and the bishops are creating an environment which encourages the suppression of sexuality. In this climate, priests may be more prone to a less healthy and less mature incorporation of sexuality into daily living. Meanwhile, little theological discussion has occured regarding the contribution of the church’s narrow view of sexuality to this crisis. As a response, this paper will use Lonergan’s methodology to introduce the notion of Erotic Conversion, or, “turning with” our sexual energies in an affirming manner. This concept will be brought into dialogue with the concept of embodiment and those theologies which have arisen from the gay and lesbian liberation movement.
The Church Colonial: Soulforce, Resistance, and Panic over Native Uprisings
Edward Ingebretsen, Georgetown University
In Sex and the Church, Kathy Rudy observes matter-of-factly that the “issue of homosexuality threatens to divide Christian churches today in much the (same) way that slavery did 150 years ago.” It is within this fissured ecclesiastical scene and political context that Mark Jordan (The Silence of Sodom) and others read the vexatious presence of the homosexual body in institutional Catholicism. The crisis of Sodom in Catholicism is not, in fact, its silence, but its continual loud speaking. In this paper, I will look at the relation of the homosexual in the RC church in terms of post-colonial theory, and, especially, I want to read the fracas at the annual meeting of the National Conference of Bishops (Washington, DC, November 2002) as an example of what happens when the overseers panic at a sign that the natives no longer “know” their place.
Gay and Orthodox? Sexual Orientation and Return to Tradition
Yaakov Ariel, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Hundreds of gay men have chosen to embrace tradition and join an observant Jewish environment. While Orthodox rabbis would not explicitly grant legitimacy to same-sex relations, outreach rabbis encouraged gays to embrace tradition, assuring them that it was better to follow tradition even if they were unable to observe all the commandments. Many in the Orthodox community seem to have adopted a “don’t ask” attitude, which allows gays to maintain their privacy. Some gay men found the close-knit Orthodox community to be friendly and to serve as a surrogate family. The dynamics of Jewish gay Orthodoxy shed light on how men negotiate between what seems at first glance to be almost contradictory values, and find a home in a community that officially does not accept their lifestyle.
A66
True Consciousness Dreaming: Feuerbach’s Critique of Religion Reconsidered
Heiko Schulz, University of Essen
The paper tackles some central ideas in The Essence of Christianity in order to reassess Feuerbach’s theological significance. Four major claims are to be defended: 1. Feuerbach’s anthropology is but a secularised version of (a central ingredient of) the Christian picture of man: no self-fulfilment without radical self-alienation. 2. Being tacitly dependent on certain Christian ideas, Feuerbach’s anti-Christian argument reveals a typical weakness: the inability to account for the “fall” of consciousness into the “sin” of self-alienation qua illusion. 3. At least one important lesson to be learned from Feuerbach’s anthropology is this: We cannot strive to be ourselves without having to be deluded about ourselves. 4. Rereading fundamental Christian sources in the light of Feuerbach’s anthropology, the Christian theologian seems well advised to seriously reconsider the idea of a deceiving God as theologically fruitful.
Stirner’s Egoistic Atheism in Relation to Feuerbach and Bauer
Todd Gooch, Eastern Kentucky University
Max Stirner’s book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum (1844) is one of the classical attempts in modern thought to develop a radical atheism that seeks to break not only with traditional religious faith, but also with such humanistic causes as liberalism and socialism, which Stirner identifies as surrogate religions. This paper traces the line of development leading from Hegel’s philosophy of religion through Bauer’s analysis of religious consciousness to the unmitigated egoism defended by Stirner. It also seeks to clarify the meaning of Stirner’s contention that Feuerbach and Bauer remain “pious folk” at heart, despite their rejection of Christianity. For Stirner, neither Feuerbach’s transformation of theology into anthropology, nor Bauer’s project of perpetual critique, succeeds in overcoming the fundamental condition of religious alienation, since each continues to locate my essence beyond the transitory ego that each one is.
F. C. Baur, Theologian of History: Revisited after Forty Years
Peter C. Hodgson, Vanderbilt University
Forty years after completing a dissertation on the historical-critical theology of Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860), I revisit him and reexamine his relation to Hegel. If Hegel is a philosopher of the Spirit, then Baur is a theologian of history. Emphasis shifts within an underlying continuity, since for Hegel Geist is essentially geschichtlich, and for Baur history is the story of the life of spirit--both of human spirit and of God as absolute spirit. But differences remain. Baur is a disciplined critical historian who attends to the details of historical evidence even as he attempts to interpret them theologically. This theological interpretation has made him suspect in the eyes of many strictly historical historians--doubly suspect since the interpretation is deeply influenced by Hegel, who is sometimes rather cavalier about the details of history, even as he relishes them. History is not his central category in the way it is for Baur.
J. A. Möhler as Historian of Theology
Michael J. Himes, Boston College
Johann Adam Möhler (1796-1838) taught church history in the Catholic theological faculty of the university of Tübingen and briefly at the University of Munich. His influence on Catholic theology and especially on ecclesiology has sometimes obscured his significance as an historian. As a student of J. S. Drey, Möhler’s approach to the study of history was significantly shaped by Schelling’s early philosophy. He was also deeply impressed by research methods and historical visions of G. J. Planck and J. A. Neander. At the end of his short career, an acrimonious debate with F. C. Baur on the interpretation of the Reformation also affected his understanding of historical inquiry. Möhler’s understanding of historical development and the methods appropriate to its study was a bridge between an earlier polemical style of Catholic church history and the critical historical work of Hergenröther and Döllinger.
A67
Julian, Myth, and Platonism
Jeffrey Brodd, California State University, Sacramento
Julian’s writings are an important source for understanding the place of myth in the Platonic tradition. His oration To the Cynic Heracleios offers specific observations on muthos as a category, to be contrasted with modern scholarly definitions of myth. Relative to the writings of his Neoplatonic predecessors, Julian’s writings more fully accommodate mythology into the philosophical framework, and they do so through employing myth in a variety of ways, including especially the allegorizing of myth. It is worth noting a similar variety if the uses of myth set forth by Plato. Julian’s devout belief in the content of mythology also raises interesting issues worthy of attention; for example, Neoplatonic theological innovations granted Julian freedom as he accommodated elements of myth within his Platonic system.
Augustine and the Epiphany of Scripture
Burcht Pranger, University of Amsterdam
I propose to argue in favour of a condensation of the synchronic elements in Augustine’s work in order to get a better grip of the full meaning of his language and thought. In the course of his career Augustine changed his mind with regard to a number of issues. His is not a monolithic and timeless oeuvre. Yet it is precisely the notion of time and temporality that, in my view, has to be honoured to a greater degree than has been done so far. The challenge I take up in this paper is to demonstrate that the Augustinian notions that reflect divine stability and consolation such as the language of Scripture and the (later) concept of predestination as eternity’s version of the design for living operate, as far as the realm of human discourse is concerned, amidst restlessness, a high degree of obscurity and a general absence of fixity.
Ficino’s Demons: The Ambivalence of Phantasia in Fifteenth-Century Neoplatonism
Geoffrey McVey, Miami University
Imagination, at the end of the fifteenth century, was both the faculty of spiritual perception and a vulnerable gateway to the soul. Its ambivalent nature gave rise to two apparently contradictory responses to its value both at the time and in this century. The scholarship of Frances Yates and Ioan Culianu has led to a “positive” interpretation of imagination associated the scholarly esoteric traditions of the Renaissance, notably Neoplatonism and Hermeticism. The “negative” interpretation, meanwhile, has been relegated to the study of the numerous anti-witchcraft texts that were produced in the same time period. I argue, however, that this distinction is an overly idealized one: an examination of Ficino’s work (notably his commentary on Plato’s Sophist but also the Book of Life) reveals a much more complex view of the power and dangers of imagination than has been acknowledged by modern scholars.
Prophecy, Imagination and the Poet’s Fine Frenzy: Reflections of a Cambridge Platonist
R. D. Hedley, Cambridge University
I wish to explore a chapter of the Cambridge Platonist John Smith’s posthumous work Select Discourses on “Prophecy”. In this chapter Smith discusses the Neoplatonic doctrine of inspiration derived from Plato’s Phaedrus with particular reference to Maimonides. One can see in this text how the Early Modern discussion of biblical interpretation was linked to a theory of the imagination with Platonic roots. John Smith’s thesis is that the imagination can be an important organ for the prophet, and thereby becomes a form of aid to a rational intuition of the Divine. He maintains that God can communicate with man in manifold ways and not least because of ecstatic communion with the Divine. Smith is a fascinating and instructive bridge between the Tudor Neoplatonism of Spenser and Shakespeare and the explicit theory of the Imagination in the English Romantics Coleridge and Wordsworth.
A68
The Pragmatism of Paul Tillich, Especially in His Theory of the Religious Symbol
Robison B. James, University of Richmond
Tillich knew there were significant pragmatist elements in his thought. In 1934, he tried to connect his thought with classic American pragmatism, but “with insufficient means” - meaning he didn’t know enough pragmatism to do it. To show how much more “American” his thought was than he knew, and how useful it is today, this paper argues that: (1) Tillich’s understanding of religious truth as symbolic is thoroughly pragmatist, even on his announced principles: religious symbols are true insofar as they work for human beings, empoweringly and healingly expressing their ultimate concern; and (2) the truth of Tillich’s ontology, which he thought was literal, and which he thought was a measure of the literalness-or-otherwise of other discourse, is itself pragmatic - or, in any case, its truth is most aptly construed today as its utility, as a conceptual model, for our human project of making sense of reality as a meaningful whole.
Remaking Tillich as a Pragmatist: From Foundationalist Ontology to Pragmatic Construction
Richard Grigg, Sacred Heart University
This paper takes Tillich’s phenomenological ontology, wherein he derives a self-world structure of finite being with God as the depth of that structure, and argues that that structure can be detached from its foundationalist assumptions and remade as a pragmatic project. The essay asks about the “cosmic complaint” (T. P. Burke) that Tillich’s structure can be interpreted as pragmatically addressing. This leads to a discussion of the “New Being” in Jesus as the Christ as an answer toward which the structure points. The Christ provides a concrete content of consciousness through which to view the divine depth, here conceived as a pragmatic construction, akin to Dewey’s notion of God as the unity of our ideal ends along with the conditions in nature that make those ends realizable.
The Varieties of Mystical Experience: Paul Tillich and William James
David H. Nikkel, University of North Carolina, Pembroke
Paul Tillich and William James both offer rich resources for thinking about mysticism, religious faith, the nature of the object of religious faith, and the ultimate meaningfulness of life. While there are interesting similarities in their efforts, because of differing epistemologies of religious experience they come to contrasting and/or complementary conclusions. This fundamental epistemological difference is that Tillich affirms a mystical a priori embedded in all experience, while James in pragmatist, empirical fashion maintains that mystical experiences are particular experiences that happen to a minority of people. While the primary purpose of the paper is to expound/amplify and compare/contrast the respective positions of the two thinkers, the paper will conclude with brief evaluative remarks.
A69
Panel: The Legacy of Colin Gunton for Reformed Theology
Robert Sherman, Bangor Theological Seminary, Presiding
John Webster, University of Aberdeen
Katherine Sonderegger, Virginia Theological Seminary
Bruce L. McCormack, Princeton Theological Seminary
Richard J. Mouw, Fuller Theological Seminary
Reformed theology has lost one of its most faithful, creative and thought-provoking voices with the untimely passing of Colin Gunton, King’s College, London. This session was originally scheduled to feature Professor Gunton speaking on his latest work (Schleiermacher, Barth, and a Theology from the Holy Spirit), but will now commemorate his many contributions to contemporary Reformed theology. A variety of distinguished panelists will offer diverse reflections on various aspects of Professor Gunton’s work, considering the challenges he sought to address, the theological resolutions he offered, and his enduring impact. Audience members will be encouraged to voice their own understandings, appreciation and even disagreements with Professor Gunton’s work, for there could be no greater tribute to him than a lively and energetic theological discussion in his honor.
A70
Panel: Race, Religion, and Empire
Jeanette Reedy Solano, California State University, Fullerton, Presiding
Walter Mignolo, Duke University
Eduardo Mendieta, State University of New York, Stony Brook
Santiago H. Slabodsky, Duke University
Shelley C. Wiley, Concordia College, Moorhead, Responding
This panel will explore the links between race, religion, and empire in the Americas. It will examine religious discourses and practices in relation to the manifold ways of racializing peoples (indigenous peoples, Jews, Afro-Latin Americans, among others) in the context of empire-building (including neo-imperial ventures) from the sixteenth century to the present.
A71
Strategies of Lineage Construction in the Sutra Empowerment Tradition
Jacob Dalton, School of Oriental and African Studies, London
When the fifth Dalai Lama took control of Tibet in the mid-seventeenth century, he affected innumerable changes to the religious and political power structures. One way he did this was to construct new Buddhist lineages, wresting control of key ritual systems away from his enemies. An instance of this was the new Sutra Empowerment (mdo dbang) lineage he helped to create at the Rnying ma monastery of Rdo rje brag. At the Dalai Lama’s behest, the second throne-holder of Rdo rje brag, Rigs ‘dzin Padma ’phrin las (1641-1717) composed a massive new three volume ritual manual for the performance of the Sutra Empowerment’s initiation ceremony, as well as a new collection of the biographies of the masters of the Sutra Empowerment lineage. This paper examines the strategies of lineage construction employed in these two works and what they can tell us about the functions of lineage in Tibetan society.
The Construction of Esoteric Indian Buddhist Lineages: The Case of the gSar-ma Translators
Ronald M. Davidson, Fairfield University
Tibetan claims to esoteric authenticity rest, in great part, on their affirmations of an unbroken lineage from the living master back through the association between a Tibetan translator and an Indian Pandita, and stretching further on through a line of masters who extend from the revelation from the/a primordial Buddha. Such claims find little verification in the surviving Indian record. When we examine the eleventh-twelfth century translators of the tantric corpus, the manner in which such claims are presented in indigenous Tibetan documents invoke very different strategies of lineage construction when compared to lineages found in Indian esoteric systems. Moreover, eleventh century translators either themselves creatively developed lineages or were attributed them by others. Both circumstances are seen in the cases of ‘Brog-mi and Mar-pa, perhaps the two most famous of the eleventh century translators.
The Role of Illness in Tibetan Historiography
Frances M. Garrett, University of Toronto
Tibetan traditions articulate their identity in specific ways: while recognition of a distinctive doctrine is one part of this self-identification, also important is the naming of a select group of members organized genealogically. Tibetan historical literature assigns characteristics to these members, and a particular set of personal and professional characteristics serves not only to identify individuals, but also to define the group to which the individual belongs. This paper focuses on an experience used by some, but not all, Tibetan traditions to articulate group identity: the experience of illness and recovery from illness. A study of biographical sketches found in Tibetan histories indicates that certain sectarian traditions considered the experience of illness to be an important feature of an individual’s life, while others did not. This evidence will suggest a further implications concerning how the borders of religion and medicine may have been defined in this period in Tibet.
The Construction of Lineages and Cosmological Narratives in Early Medieval Tibet: The rNying ma Creation of a Buddhist Vehicle Termed rDzogs chen
David Germano, University of Virginia
The renaissance of Buddhist culture in Tibet during the eleventh-twelfth centuries witnessed an explosion of esoteric movements driven by new Indian traditions and expanding Tibetan traditions from the eight century Empire. This takes place against the focus on lineal descent as the touchstone for authenticity, here transferred from clan-based models to Buddhist ones stressing the necessity of Indian origins _ a requirement that surpassed the transcendental grounding in a Buddha’s voice. These ideological constraints were in tension with a radical innovativeness, which for the rNying ma involved a creation of unprecedented Buddhist vehicles termed rDzogs chen. The creation of lineages was crucial, including a new cosmogony and cosmology linking divine and human agents, and historical narratives traversing India and Tibet. I will examine the complex processes by which narratives of lineage and cosmology supported the creation of a Buddhist vehicle whose biggest secret was its thoroughly Tibetan origins.
A72
Saving Women: Evangelistic Ministry in Southern Methodism
Laceye Warner, Duke University
Reflection upon evangelistic ministries of women contributes to the academic study of evangelism as well as the rediscovery of dimensions of ecclesial life within the Wesleyan tradition. The selected women in this study-Dorothy Ripley (1769-1831), Belle Harris Bennett (1852-1922), and Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955)-contributed to the shaping of evangelistic ministry within Southern Methodism. In the ministries of these women, a profound synthesis of verbal proclamation and compassionate ministries embodied the good news. This paper gives attention to the place of ministries of compassion, particularly efforts toward racial justice, within the evangelistic ministries of each woman. This paper argues for the re-visioning of contemporary conceptualizations of evangelism in light of these women’s practices.
Conversion and Communitas: Rethinking the Historiography on Early American Methodism
Jeffrey Williams, Claremont Graduate University
The recent upsurge in scholarship on American Methodism has refreshingly paved new ground in our understanding of the movement and its contribution to American history and culture. However, the historiography commonly follows a problematic declension narrative positing a fall from an idealized early history. Through a close reading of American Methodist conversion narratives that form the basis for much of the present romanticization, I attempt to call the declension model into question. Although the conversion experience could generate some of the more or less radical social and ecclesiastical positions that mark Methodism’s seminal years in the United States, the experience also contained some more problematic elements that challenge our optimistic assessments of conversion and the community it helped establish. This revision fosters a more critical assessment of American Methodism’s early history and raises new possibilities for how we narrate the movement’s development over the course of the nineteenth century.
“The Call of My Career”: Anna Howard Shaw as the “New Woman” of American Methodism
Rosemary Keller, Union Theological Seminary, New York
The paper focuses on the vocational journey of Anna Howard Shaw, first woman to be ordained in the American Methodist tradition (Methodist Protestant Church:1880) and president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1904-1915). Feeling ill-suited as a local church pastor, she spent most of her professional career outside the church as a lecturer, nationally and internationally, for social causes: women’s rights, temperance, world peace, and the League of Nations. Recognized as the greatest female public speaker of her age, Shaw understood “the call of my career” throughout her adult life to be a preacher of the social gospel. The paper explores her spiritual journey and formation as a preacher through her experience in several professions. It then turns to her message as a preacher/lecturer to understand how her advocacy of social transformation was a modern day evangelical call to be a prophetic missionary for Christ on earth.
A73
A Synchronic Analysis of Emptiness in Lin-chi’s Zen
Tao Jiang, Southern Illinois University
Modern Buddhist scholars agree that emptiness is the most important doctrine in Mahayana Buddhist philosophy. Emptiness means that things in the world are empty of inherent existence or essence. Scholars generally follow Nagarjuna’s lead in understanding emptiness as equivalent to dependent origination. However, are the two exactly the same or are they different in some ways? I will contend that they address the same problematic of substantialization, in different ways. My argument is that dependent origination adopts a diachronic analysis while emptiness synchronic. Such a synchronic interpretation of emptiness will offer us a new way to look at Zen’s overwhelming concern with the immediacy of the present in realizing enlightenment and freedom. I will use Lin-chi’s teaching as an example to demonstrate how the synchronic understanding of emptiness is operative in his, and to a large extent other Zen masters’, teachings of liberation and freedom.
How “Living Words” Function in Zen Soteriological Practices: Philosophical Investigation of Three Types of “Living Words”
Youru Wang, Rowan University
One of the things distinguishing Chinese Zen/Chan from the scholastic tradition of Buddhism is its claim of using “living words.” Although “living words” got more popular in the Song dynasty, with such Chan masters as Yuanwu Keqin and Dahui Zonggao, its earliest articulation could be traced back to those Chan masters in the Tang dynasty. Baizhang Huaihai might be the first one proposing to distinguish “living words” from “dead words.” However, the Chan masters did not elaborate a theory of “living words.” Their notion of “living words” is rather involved in their actual use of words. In this paper I will examine three types of “living words”: paradoxical, tautological and poetic words. The purpose is to see how these different types of “living words” are used and how they function in Chan soteriological practices. By this examination, we will see more clearly how Chan discourses deviate from scholastic approaches.
Poetry and Chan Gong’an: From Xuedou Chongxian (980-1052) to Wumen Huikai (1183-1260)
Ding-hwa Evelyn Hsieh, Truman State University
This paper explores the unique role of poetry in Chan gong’an literature by examining two anthologies: the Baize songgu by Xuedou Chongxian of Yunmen Chan and the Wumen guan by Wumen Huikai of Linji Chan. Although poetry had long been a part of Buddhist literary tradition, it was in Song Chan that poetic composition and religious doctrine became integrated into a distinct literary genre. This paper discusses how Chan masters used poetry not only to capture the “intents” of earlier masters’ “words” but also to convey the Chan notion of spontaneity and immediacy. Most importantly, from Xuedou to Wumen there was a shift regarding the soteriological role of poetry. While Xuedou used poetry to demonstrate spiritual attainment, Wumen used it as a pedagogical device to deepen religious insight. This study thus illustrates how poetry has evolved as a vehicle for transmitting Chan orthodoxy in the form of “live words.”
Gihwa’s Analysis of the Relationship between the Worded and Wordless Teachings: The O ga Hae Seoreui
A. Charles Muller, Toyo Gakuen University
Korean Seon Buddhism has been engaged for most of its history in an active debate over the relationship between the path of meditation (seon) and the path of scriptural study (gyo). There were numerous occasions where exclusivist advocates of either the seon or gyo position disparaged the views of the other as heterodox and inferior. In reaction to this polarity, many Korean Buddhist thinkers devoted their scholarly energies to its conciliation, and the sustained attention paid to this issue in Korea resulted in the birth of a form of Buddhist practice consisting of a distinct blend of these two approaches. One of the most articulate discussants of this matter was the early Joseon monk Gihwa (1376-1433), whose most essential pronouncements on this topic, as found in his influential work on the Diamond Sutra, the O ga hae seoreui, are the main focus of this paper.
A74
I Will Also Forget Thy Children: Childhood in Jewish Studies
Lesleigh Cushing, Colgate University
What is the child in Judaism? Jews often assert that Judaism is a child-conscious religion. Yet, there is a dearth of scholarship about the Jewish child. There been no systematic compilation of classical Jewish texts treating the child, no taxonomy for locating it in halakhah. Neither has the child in Jewish literature been considered. Recently, Naomi Sokoloff treated literary constructions of the voices of Jewish children. But how do Jews themselves construe and construct the child? How is childhood theorized? There is a growing body of sociological literature on the education of Jewish girls; there is a proliferation of Orthodox parenting manuals; there is a budding feminist discussion of conception and birth. But there remain vast topics yet unexplored. This paper will outline the work undertaken thus far, point to the many holes in the scholarship, and suggest future directions for the study of children and childhood in Jewish Studies.
The Christian Ethics of Children: Emerging Questions and Possibilities
John Wall, Rutgers University
Although there is no clearly defined field today of the Christian ethics of children, a critical mass of questions has recently emerged from diverse theological quarters around children and politics, poverty, health, education, marriage, fatherhood, culture, and the professions. This paper examines this emerging set of issues in light of larger Christian ethical traditions around children and the difficulties of developing a Christian ethics of children today. It shows that a more coherent and substantive moral conversation about children can be developed around four key questions of ontology, teleology, deontology, and practice. Such a conversation is needed in order to cross traditional political boundaries that hinder the development of the Christian ethics of children as a robust discipline in its own right.
Childhood in Islamic Studies
Ruqayya Yasmine Khan, Trinity University
Childhood is a subject that warrants attention in Islamic Studies and Religious Studies in general. Without privileging any approach, this paper assesses the importance that the sacred text of one major religious tradition assigns to this human developmental stage. A given society’s scriptural and religious traditions can shed much light on the conceptions of childhood and childrearing specific to it. This paper seeks to explore and analyze Qur’anic content on children and childhood. In addition to drawing attention to Qur’anic pronouncements on issues such as child-parent relations and the rearing of children, the paper will also take up portrayals of particular child/children in the sacred text (e.g., depictions of the infant Jesus). A related subject--that of mothers and motherhood--is also addressed through a consideration of Qur’anic portrayals of mothers (e.g., Maryam and the mother of Moses) and Qur’anic comments on motherhood as a phenomenon.
Reflections on Children and Religion in American
Historiography
Ray Hiner, University of Kansas
In this paper I (1) explain briefly the importance on children in understanding the past, (2) identify five basic questions to guide research on the history of children and religion, (3) assess the major historical studies that speak to these questions, (4) discuss the implications of these studies for future research, and (5) consider the benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration among scholars in religion, history, and childhood studies.
Children and Children’s Spirituality in Religious Education and Popular Spiritual Literature
Bonnie Miller-McLemore, Vanderbilt University
This paper explores the state of research on children among scholars in religious education. In Let the Children: Reimagining Childhood from a Christian Perspective (Jossey-Bass, 2003), I observe that over the last century theology has become increasingly adult-centered, focused upon the mature adult as primary actor. The subject of children is relegated to the field of religious education. Yet, on closer investigation, many classic texts in religious education also seem more concerned about adult faith than children and family religious practices. This paper determines the extent to which this is the case and assesses more generally understandings of children, children’s spirituality, and parenting. I suspect that when people seek help on raising faithful children, they turn instead to a growing body of popular spiritual literature often ignored by the academy. The paper will conclude then with a brief assessment of this literature and its implications for future research.
A Critical Analysis of Children’s Ministries: Implications for Scholarship in Practical Theology
Karen-Marie Yust, Christian Theological Seminary
Drawing on qualitative evaluations of a diverse set of American Protestant congregational children’s ministries, this paper identifies and examines the lived religious experience of children within a diverse set of eleven churches from across the United States. Significant trends and characteristics in these embodied curricula that serve as markers of beliefs about children’s nature (religious anthropology), learning styles (pedagogy), relationships with God (theology/spirituality), and roles in the church (ecclesiology) are described and analyzed in terms of their implications for shaping future research in practical theology. The paper specifically identifies both theological and pedagogical issues that need further exploration if Christian communities are to be effective in nurturing and sustaining children’s spiritual formation and links the critical discussion of children’s ministries practices to the broader discourses of the vocation of teaching, moral development, acculturation theory and multi-sensory learning.
A84
Panel: Religious Studies in the Japanese Context
Manabu Watanabe, Nanzan University, Presiding
Makoto Hayashi, Aichi Gakuin University
Tsuyoshi Nakano, Soka University
Fumiko Nomura, Kawamura Gakuen Women’s University
Susumu Shimazono, University of Tokyo
William E. Paden, Vermont College, Responding
Paul Swanson, Nanzan University, Responding
The academic study of religion in Japan was institutionalized when the University of Tokyo established the first chair in religious studies in 1905. Unlike the West, religious studies in Japan did not develop from a background in, or in response to, Christian theology. How, then, did religious studies develop in Japan? How did the Japanese socio-cultural environment influence its development? How does the academic study of religion in Japan relate to Buddhology and other academic fields, and to its Western counterparts? Are there any Japanese contributions to the field of religious studies in general? This panel attempts to reflect on the field of religious studies in Japan, and to provide a forum for discussing the internationalization of religious studies. The panel will be preceded by a brief presentation by Professor Susumu Shimazono of the University of Tokyo, President of the Japanese Association for Religious Studies.
A85
Panel: Religion in the 2004 Election
Laura Olson, Clemson University, Presiding
Diane Connolly, Religionlink
E.J. Dionne, Brookings Institute, Washington Post
Allen D. Hertzke, University of Oklahoma
Allison Calhoun-Brown, Georgia State University
This panel brings together perspectives from journalism and politics about the probable impact of religion on the 2004 election campaigns. To what extent will religious constituencies, religious and moral issues, and candidates’ own religious commitments affect the outcome of the primary and general elections?
A86
Panel: Site Visits in the Study of Religion: Practice, Problems, Prospects
Barbara A.B. Patterson, Emory University, Presiding
Marcia Hermansen, Loyola University, Chicago
Patrice Claude Brodeur, Connecticut College
Jeffrey D. Carlson, Dominican University
Karen McCarthy Brown, Drew University
Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger, Emory University
Grace G. Burford, Prescott College
This session will address pedagogical and ethical issues and questions around using site visits in the teaching of religion in North American colleges and universities. Participants represent a variety of teaching settings and courses across North America - big city/small town/rural settings; introductory/upper-level specialized/graduate courses, etc. Participants will address the learning opportunities and limitations of site visits, kinds of preparations of students for the experience and methods of assessment or evaluation of both the visit and students’ analyses of it, the kinds of ethical questions that arise in the site visit, and alternatives to the site visit.
A87
Getting Marketing and Publicity for Your Scholarly Book
Jana Riess, Publishers Weekly, Presiding
Roger Freet, HarperSan Francisco
Kelly Hughes, DeChant-Hughes Public Relations
Rudy Faust, Oxford University Press
You’ve worked hard and have written a fabulous scholarly book. But as an author, your work isn’t quite finished; it is up to you to work with your publisher to get the word out to the people who will read it. This panel guides you through the process of marketing and publicizing the scholarly book, whether it is published by a university press or a “trade” house. Panelists will discuss the difference between marketing and publicity, outline the mechanics of getting reviews, and how you can capitalize on the media contacts you have as a scholar. They will give tips on conducting successful media interviews, refining the “pitch” of your book, and turning competition into a potential feature opportunity. This session is a practical help to scholars at all stages of their careers, whether already published or not. Half of the session will be devoted to audience questions.
A88
Teaching Ethics in a Time of War: Pathways to Place-Based Ecosocial Transformation
Beth Blissman, Oberlin College
Because we live in a time when our species is confronted with increasing ethical dilemmas related to the continuation of life on this planet, we need constructive ethical perspectives that recognize and value process, complexity and particularity. I explore new language from a liberation feminist ethical perspective and pedagogical insights that attempt to enable humans to address ecological and social justice issues simultaneously. This exploration follows the contours of three pathways to ecosocial transformation: starting points, exercises of solidarity, and systems-based bioregional perspectives. These pathways offer ideas for a whole-body experience, embracing mind, body and spirit. A consciously liberationist perspective can support, challenge and re-shape the criteria we have to think, judge and act as moral agents in the world. In sum, such an ethic has an orientation of praxis, not of final and absolute truth, and is but one piece in the multi-colored quilt of ecologically responsible action.
Catholic Social Teaching and Today’s College Classroom: The Missing Link of Advocacy
Peter Ellard, Siena College
College courses on Catholic Social Teaching rightly are concerned with theological underpinnings and historical expressions. The question arises, how the bridge between advocacy and theology can be crossed successfully in the undergraduate classroom? How can one teach religious studies or theology with one eye on the texts and one eye- and both hands- on the poverty in the street? This paper will spot light the work that is done at Siena College, a private Franciscan School in the Catholic tradition in Albany, New York. At Siena, the Franciscan Center for Service and Advocacy, “serves as Siena’s principle vehicle for promoting service to the poor, disadvantaged, and marginalized people as a Franciscan value and civic virtue.” An examination of the Service and Advocacy minor and the corresponding course will be the center of our research and presentation.
The Religious Studies Introductory Course and the Jesuit Mission in Higher Education in the United States
Sheila E. McGinn, John Carroll University
Jesuit higher education aims to form leaders in our society in service of the common good. Religions link the personal and social, cognitive and affective, intellectual and aesthetic, belief and praxis. But how ought these links to be made? What ought to be the interplay between gaining intellectual knowledge and developing as a human person in the religious studies classroom? To what extent and in what ways should religious studies teaching and learning aim for transformation of the self and society? This is a conversation now taking place at American Jesuit colleges and universities. I will analyze the religious studies introductory course at these Jesuit schools-how it is done, to what end, and with what results-to initiate a discussion of how the Jesuit conversation might contribute to the discussion of the balance between the informational and formational aspects of religious studies curricula at academic institutions with other foundational philosophies.
Religious Ethics and the Vocation of the Public Intellectual
Stephen A. Wilson, Earlham College
This paper seeks to recover an academic discourse in which multiple religious traditions may contribute formal ethical categories to public debate without imbuing its outcome with tradition-specific content. It is regrettable that such a discourse has lost ground against more purely historical, comparative and/or theological approaches to religious ethics because it provides a more comprehensive profile of the public intellectual than each can support singly. It is also curious; because however underrepresented this alternative discourse may be in the scholarly literature, it remains a prominent teaching methodology. A classroom exploration of the converging invocations of forgiveness in an eighteenth-century Quaker tract and a recent book on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is illustrative. Establishing that normativity can be shared in religious and secular responses to the common human potential for evil recommends the academic teaching of religion as a forum wherein religious ethicists can contribute to the common good.
A89
Spiritual Aphrodisiac: Praise and Worship Music and the Re-enchantment of Western Culture
David H. Perkins, Vanderbilt University
The trade name Praise and Worship (P&W) denotes a style of hymnody and a style of worship. P&W music is big business in record stores and church pews. A multi-million-dollar industry, P&W is also the contemporary liturgical movement sweeping England and the United States, and proliferating worldwide. P&W continues two and one-half centuries of evangelical revival, taking otherworldliness and the cultivation of feeling and religious experience to new heights of sophistication. It is a spiritual aphrodisiac, crafted to impassion worship and resist a culture that jettisons its myths and constrains religious imagination. P&W would win the hearts of worshippers and bridge “religion of the heart” to the culture of rationalism by employing culturally relevant musical styles to revivify the mythical Biblical world. P&W would be culture’s savior by facilitating culture’s mythical re-enchantment.
Aleatoric Rheotoric: P(r)o(ph)etic Freestyling from Ancient Israel to the Backalley Cipher
Cyril Guerette, University of Toronto
Freestyling, the practice of creating poetic rhymes spontaneously over a hiphop beat, is the quintessential form of aleatoric rhetoric. Combining the random constraints of time and space and the strict laws of musical order, the resultant language is an unparalleled and powerful art, which may possess a unique penchant for revelation. The ancient Hebrew prophets, poets in their own right, similarly utilized the accompaniment of musical instruments in delivering unrehearsed the words of God to their people (1 Sam.10: 5-6; 1Chron. 25:1; 2 Kings 3:14-15). It is suggested that in the majestic conjoining of the musical meaning of emotional expression with the semantic meaning of truth expressed in words, a new aesthetic pleasure is forged, more powerful than either by itself, and therein lies an indication that it may offer revelatory insight for the modern age.
The Power to Enchant: Meaning and Context in African American and Turkish Religious Music
James R. Newell, Vanderbilt University
This presentation compares perceptions of music in African American and Turkish religious practice. I suggest that the tendency of both traditions to see music as a force that may either enchant the listener in a positive, transcendent way, or in a negative, sensual way, underlines the contextual nature of meaning in musical engagement in these traditions. I discuss the Sufi understanding of Halal and Haram music in Sufism along with the practice of sama in Sufism, and compare these ideas with the early separation of spirituals and blues, and the later separation of gospel and soul music in African-American culture. I further suggest that understanding the contextual frames of both listener and performer in these and other traditions allows us to understand the choices made, whether consciously or not, which assign meaning to music.
A90
Polycentric Buddhism in Peripheral Regions of South and Central Asia
Jason Neelis, University of Florida
Mariko Namba Walter, Harvard University
Jacob Dalton, School of Oriental and African Studies, London
Vesna Acimovic Wallace, University of California, Santa Barbara
This session explores Buddhism in border/frontier regions that have been traditionally considered Buddhist centers in South and Central Asia. Polycentric Buddhism refers to multiple features of Buddhism in these peripheral and understudied regions. In this session, we cover historical Buddhist centers such as Gandhara, Turfan, Dunhuang, and Mongolia. Among these regions, Mongolia is the only region where Buddhism is still vibrant, having revived after the collapse of the Soviet power in the 1990s. Each paper addresses the center-peripheral relationship in Buddhism in its reference to geo-politics, textual formation, and/or religious history/culture of the region.
A91
Ethnic Diversity and the Culture of Discomfort
Kathleen Garces-Foley, University of California, Santa Barbara
In the last decade the racial reconciliation movement has become a major force within American evangelicalism. In churches and college ministries across the country, evangelical leaders are seeking ways to overcome ethnic boundaries of prejudice and cultural familiarity, which work to keep communities ethnically homogenous. Despite a strong commitment to racial reconciliation, honoring ethnic differences while trying to create a unified Christian community has proven a difficult balance to achieve. This paper compares the strategies used to achieve racial reconciliation by two evangelical communities in Los Angeles: one an Asian American church trying to become more diverse and the other a multi-ethnic college ministry working for greater understanding across ethnic groups. Though their approaches differ considerably, both institutions try to create a “culture of discomfort” that strongly values the courage to form relationships outside one’s ethnic group.
Multi-Ethnic Congregations in a Microcosm of World Religions: Snapshots from Flushing, Queens
R. Scott Hanson, Philadelphia University
Studies have shown that predominantly white churches in changing neighborhoods are often unwilling to reach out to new residents; consequently, by failing to open their doors and actively welcome racial and ethnic minorities, such churches risk becoming culturally isolated, dying congregations. Flushing, Queens is an extreme case of religious and ethnic pluralism in New York City that has changed from an old white and black Protestant-Catholic-Jewish community into a microcosm of world religions since the Immigration Act of 1965. Many religious leaders and their congregations in Flushing have realized their future may depend on how well they can accommodate a wide range of new members, and some also see a local opportunity for aggressive mission work among the new immigrant groups. The variety of multi-ethnic congregations in Flushing demonstrates how embracing integration and ethnic diversity can lead to a religious center’s vitality.
Power and Class: Faith-Based Organizing in a Multi-Ethnic Community
Russell Jeung, San Francisco State University
This paper examines the possibilities and contradictions of faith-based organizing in a multi-ethnic and multi-class context. In this case study, Cambodian and Latino tenants successfully worked together to win a legal settlement against their slumlord. Beyond coming together around material interests, how did this group develop solidarity? What religious and class factors assisted and challenged this solidarity? In particular, the role and privilege of the organizers will be discussed. Given the current political support of faith-based initiatives, are these church ministries truly effective in empowering communities and effecting change?
Can Lightning Strike Twice? A Comparative Analysis of Two Large Multi-Ethnic Congregations in Los Angeles
Gerardo Marti, Whittier, CA
While multi-ethnic churches are rare, Mosaic and Oasis are two large (1600+) Los Angeles congregations integrating at least four ethnic/racial groups. Their histories show pronounced differences in theological emphasis and style. But similar accommodation to social change and leadership response to growing attendance accounts for a congregational convergence. Both churches exemplify innovation in organizational structure. Both have experienced their fastest growth with single adults in their 20s and early 30s. Both have significant ties to the entertainment industry. Yet Oasis explicitly pursues racial awareness and diversity training; Mosaic does not. There are more African Americans at Oasis; however, such racial emphasis may suppress the number of Asians and Hispanics -- prominent segments at Mosaic. Different racial orientations help explain differences in actual ethnic composition. Comparative analysis helps uncover emerging social trends that help and/or hinder diversification and the composition of multi-ethnic churches in America in the near future.
A92
Redeeming a Violent God-Image: Eugen Drewermann’s Contribution to a Theology of Nonviolence
Matthias Beier, Drew University
How can religion and theology become truly non-violent rather than inadvertently promote violence? Why is “God” invoked to justify violence in form of terror and war against terror? Eugen Drewermann, a leading European theologian, psychotherapist, as well as one of Germany’s most prominent peace activists, argues that violence in the name of religion is due to the human spirit’s tendency to metaphysicize psychological, ethological, social, and existential fears as soon as it experiences the ultimate fear to have no justification to exist. Theologically a violent God-image emerges through projective dynamics if the existentially needed sense of absolute justification of one’s existence is lost under the spell of fears experienced by the self-reflective human spirit. Drewermann’s innovative and multidisciplinary perspectives on the emergence and socio-political effects of and redemption from a violent God-image within the Judeo-Christian tradition will be presented.
Shackling the Holy: The Intersection of Criminal Justice and Theology
Kaia Stern, Emory University
How does religious ideology influence our practice of punishment? In this paper I will concentrate on the intersection between theology and criminal justice in terms of Christianity and the U.S. penal system. Particularly interested in the contemporary prison population, in part because Jesus aligned himself with communities that were condemned from society, my work explores connections between the punitive ethos in our society and a common understanding of Christian theology. First, I will focus on the theological conception of ontological otherness (difference in being as discussed by T. Richard Snyder) and the allure of violence. Calling people of all faiths to sever the nation’s yoke to prisons, I will then employ Mark Taylor’s idea that the U.S. functions as an empire generated by various forms of economic and racist exploitation. In conclusion, I will outline different aspects to resisting injustice and organizing in opposition to the terror of “lockdown America.”
Towards a Responsible Apocalypse: The Apocalyptic Discourse of the American Nonviolence Movement
Brandi Denison, University of Colorado, Boulder
This paper aims to disclose the prominence of apocalyptic thought in American culture as expressed by prominent members of the contemporary non-violence movement. I do not intend to criticize the non-violence movement’s use of apocalyptic language; to take an anti-apocalypse stance is to engage in apocalyptic rhetoric. It is a lens through which to observe the presence of apocalyptic language United States culture, so strong of an influence that even subcultures such as the non-violence movement cannot avoid the use of the language. Yet, this paper is not merely an observation; it also aims to construct a responsible use of apocalyptic language. Apocalyptic language can be harmful and undermine the non-violence movement’s philosophy; however, if it is used mindfully it can become an effective tool. Through this examination, I intend to propose a responsible use of apocalyptic language for the non-violence movement.
The Rhetoric of Evil and Eradicating Terrorism
Caryn D. Riswold, Illinois College
When the President of the United States asserts that “you are with us or you are with the terrorists.…,” and that “freedom and fear are at war… we know that God is not neutral between them…,” he assumes and suggests that struggles against evil are clear-cut, easily distinguished from the good, and able to be simply resolved. When it comes to the present “war on terrorism,” this is not a satisfactory approach. The complexities of theological and philosophical discourse on the nature of evil, social scientific resources informing nonviolent responses to the war on terrorism, and pedagogical consequences of this work inform this paper as it responds to the presidential rhetoric about evil and the war on terrorism. This paper seeks complicated answers to address complicated problems, and will join in the conversation about nonviolent alternatives to violent ideologies.
A93
Panel: Progressive Islam
Zayn Kassam, Pomona College, Presiding
Farid Esack, Xavier University, Cincinnati
Amir Hussain, California State University, Northridge
Omid Safi, Colgate University
Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons, University of Florida
Kecia Ali, Duke University
Tazim Kassam, Syracuse University, Responding
This panel aims to present and analyze the emergence of the movement known as Progressive Islam. There is today a nascent community of Muslim activists and intellectuals who readily identify with the term “progressive Muslims.” Progressive refers to a relentless striving towards a universal notion of justice in which no single community’s prosperity, righteousness, and dignity comes at the expense of another. This movement is also Islamic, since it involves openness to rethinking fundamental assumptions about Islamic thought and practice. Central to this notion of a progressive Muslim identity are themes such as social justice, gender justice, and pluralism. The panelists will not present formal papers, but rather will lead a conversation in which they will discuss the relevance of various issues for this emerging Progressive Islamic identity. The format will be a dynamic one, consisting of brief informative presentations by panelists, followed by audience questions, critique, and participation.
A94
Panel: Blessing Over Evil: Baruch Dayan Emet
Peter Ochs, University of Virginia, Presiding
Menachem Lorberbaum, Tel Aviv University
Dina Stein, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley
Martin Kavka, Florida State University
The topic of the proposed session is the traditional “Blessing Over Evil” baruch dayan emet, “Blessed be the true judge.” Moshe Halbertal’s main essay will examine the last chapter of Mishnah Berachot on the topic of baruch dayan emet, along with two talmudic commentaries on the Mishnah (from the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds). After introducing his method of reading and interpretation (a variety of textual reasoning), he will ask how the rabbinic Blessing Over Evil relates to the complex relationship between asking and thanking in prayer. The respondents, Martin Kavka and Dina Stein, will re-examine the primary rabbinic texts, Halbertal’s method of reading them and the relations among rabbinic text reasoning, prayer, and the phenomenology of asking and thanking.
A95
Panel: Theological Reflection and Other Animals: Recognizing Our Heritage, Recognizing Today’s Realities
John A. Grim, Bucknell University, Presiding
Richard Foltz, University of Florida
Laura Hobgood-Oster, Southwestern University
Paul Waldau, Tufts University
Christopher Chapple, Loyola Marymount University
Stephen H. Webb, Wabash College
Anne Elvey, Monash University
This panel addresses various theological traditions’ engagement with the living beings outside the human species. It does this by examining the intersection within theological traditions and religious life generally of “heritage” (that is, our inherited traditions of interaction, claims, concepts, and discourse) and “realities” (including both contemporary practices and knowledge claims regarding the nonhuman life forms on this earth). The traditions on which there will be specific presentations include Islam, Buddhism, Jainism, and Christianity. The discussion among the panel will broaden the discussion to other traditions as well.
A96
Panel: The Fifteenth Year of Rita Nakashima Brock’s Journeys by Heart: Reflections on a Christology of Erotic Power
Grace Ji-Sun Kim, Knox College, Presiding
James H. Cone, Union Theological Seminary, New York City
Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, Drew University
Catherine E. Keller, Drew University
Kwok Pui-lan, Episcopal Divinity School
Joan M. Martin, Episcopal Divinity School
Fumitaka Matsuoka, Pacific School of Religion
Rita Nakashima Brock, Starr King School for the Ministry, Responding
When it was published in 1988, Journeys by Heart was the first book-length christology by an Asian American woman and among the first by a feminist. It broke new ground in critiquing ideas of abuse and power in traditional theology and constructed a feminist theology based in relational understandings of the human self, captured in the concept of “erotic power,” drawn and expanded from the works of Audre Lorde, Haunani Kay Trask, and Susan Griffin. The panelists will discuss its contributions to theology and its impact on their students and reflect on its place in theology fifteen years after its publication.
A97
A Balm in Gilead: The Social Gospel Ministry of Henry H. Proctor
Moses N. Moore, Arizona State University
This presentation will examine the ministry of Henry H. Proctor. Born in Tennessee in 1863, Proctor was educated at Fisk University and Yale Divinity School enroute to becoming the first black minister of Atlanta’s First Congregational Church. Amid Atlanta’s urban, industrial, and racial sprawl he transformed First Congregational into an “institutional church” that would serve as the base of his multifaceted ministry for almost twenty-five years. Proctor envisioned First Congregational Church as the model for a string of black institutional churches that would extend throughout the nation. To advance this agenda he accepted the call to Nazarene Congregational Church in Brooklyn, New York in 1920. There amid the increased challenges posed by black migration, urbanization, industrialization and a more sophisticated racism and racialism, Proctor struggled to advance his social gospel ministry until his death in 1933.
The Negro Soldier and the Sacralization of Military Service
Judith Weisenfeld, Vassar College
This paper explores religious themes in the U. S. Army’s 1944 film, The Negro Soldier, produced in Frank Capra’s Why We Fight series. Originally intended to raise the morale of African-American soldiers, the film became mandatory viewing for all troops and was also released in movie theaters. Most scholars who have written on the film note the fact that it presents its recounting of the history of African-American military service in the context of a black minister’s sermon and yet none has taken account of the centrality of the religious setting to the film’s universalizing view of the relationship between religion, race, and war. The Negro Soldier positions African Americans as standing in for all Americans in their economic and intellectual contributions to the growth of the nation and in their armed defense of it. I argue that the film’s blending of Protestant and military idioms makes this move possible.
Academic and Popular Images of African-American Islam 1920-1945
Richard B. Turner, University of Iowa
This paper explores the political and social significance of the academic and popular images of African-American Islam from 1920-1945. The paper also analyzes how African-American Muslims in mainstream and heterodox communities constructed identities that challenged these images.
A98
Justice to Future Generations: The Contribution of Theological Bioethics
Rachel Muers, University of Exeter
The question of justice to future generations is highly significant in many debates around research into human genetics. The paper argues that the intergenerational character of genetic material raises unique questions about its appropriate “stewardship” for future generations. The human genome has been called the “common heritage” of humanity, but existing literature on “common heritage” and the stewardship of resources (for example, in environmental conservation) do not apply easily to genetic material. I suggest that theological reflection within the Abrahamic traditions, on how responsibility is exercised in relation to texts that are both constitutive for individual identity and the means of communal “inheritance”, can make a valuable contribution to thought in this area. On the basis of an account of the “ethics of reading intergenerational texts”, I offer a critical analysis of the use of “future generations” in the rhetoric of clinical research.
In Suffering and Hope: Moral Obligations for Mental Health Care
Janet R. Nelson, Meredith College
In this paper I present an argument for the moral obligation incumbent upon a society to provide mental health care based on our duty to alleviate pain and suffering. While this obligation applies to all medical conditions and disabilities, I argue that our social responsibilities may be even greater with respect to mental disorders in that much of the pain and suffering that accompanies mental disorders is socially caused. Persons with mental disorders suffer not just from the symptoms of their medical conditions, but also from the social stigma that attaches to mental illness. I conclude by suggesting that the fostering of hope is inextricably tied to the goal of relieving pain and suffering, and that it is also integral to meeting the challenge of overcoming the stigma of mental illness.
Universal Health Care: A Common Good and Imperative Self-Interest
James C. Peterson, McMaster University
The last census estimated 41.2 million Americans do not have medical care insurance. Appeals to justice or rights has led to some provision, and appeals to nurturing life, to love one’s neighbor, and other religious commitments have encouraged important service, but not enough to make medical care universally available. Considering human nature as long described by a number of religious traditions influential in the USA, and the concurring observations of more recent theories such as sociobiology, the more effective course may be to appeal to each citizen’s naturally deep commitment to self-preservation. Recent developments in urbanization, the threat of biological terrorism, proven alternatives, and genetic testing, have dramatically strengthened the case that each citizen’s own personal good depends on the common good of universal access to health care.
“To Count among the Living”: What Black and Latina Women with Cancer Know about Healthcare Quality
Aana Vigen, Union Theological Seminary, New York
This essay contends that the most vulnerable of a society ought to be the measure of adequate healthcare quality and respect for persons. It shares the learning from a qualitative field study comprised of interviews with Black and Latina woman with cancer. Their experiences and perspectives lend important insight into such questions as: At times of serious illness, what contributes to a sense of being well-cared for and respected as a full human being? What dynamics and structural elements frustrate such care and respect? Additionally, it shares the insights from a few healthcare providers that parse out how some of the issues raised by the women with cancer relate to constraints on providers and to healthcare structures. Fully appreciating the particular lives and experiences of those most vulnerable may make U.S. healthcare more humane for all persons.
A99
Panel: Ambivalence of Pattern: New Historical Approaches to Early Medieval Chinese Religions
Michael Puett, Harvard University, Presiding
Gil Raz, Indiana University, Bloomington
Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Indiana University, Bloomington
Rob Campany, Indiana University, Bloomington
Religious practices in the early medieval periods of China were constantly contested: they emerged in arenas of debate, were articulated in opposition to competing practices, and were formulated amidst conflicting social and political movements. To recover the significance that a given set of religious practices would have had at the time, it is necessary to recover at least part of that context within which the practices emerged and became meaningful. Working from a body of texts or religious practices, and identifying the contexts within which those texts or practices were produced, we can examine what social groups created these practices, who they were responding to, and what types of inter-religious rivalries resulted in the practices developing as they did. We will also be concerned with exploring difficulties: What methodologies can be used to recover historical and social contexts? What can one recover, and how reliably can one do so?
A100
“Forgive Us Our Debts as We Forgive Our Debtors”: Forgiveness and the End of Economy
Dan Bell, Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary
This paper considers the economic effect of the Christian practice of forgiveness. In particular, the argument is that the gift of divine forgiveness in Christ, as articulated by Anselm, interrupts “economy” (with its logic of scarcity, debt, and finally death) and puts in place an aneconomic order (with its theo-logic of abundance, ceaseless generosity, and resurrection) that is full of the promise of deliverance from the affliction of capitalism. Also addressed here is the way that the human reception of divine forgiveness takes shape in the Works of Mercy, how these works are not rightly understood as “mere charity” at home within “economy” but in fact constitute the appearance of an order that heralds the end of economy, and, finally, how this practice of forgiveness redeems/reconfigures what is commonly called “economic justice.”
Painful Forgiveness: The Wrath and Love of God in the Forgiveness of Sins
Anna Madsen, University of Regensburg
This paper will use Kazoh Kitamori’s thesis of the pain of God as a springboard to consider the implications of God’s action on the cross for divine and human forgiveness. It maintains that Jesus’ death on the cross represents utter vulnerability, namely that of the Father handing the Son to death, and the Son willingly accepting death. The Spirit, denoting and giving life (Genesis 2:7), also suffered death’s victory on the cross, demanding then a Trinitarian look at the nature of forgiveness in light of the cross. The evolution of the Trinitarian view of forgiveness seen from the perspective of pain will be considered in light of contemporary theological developments as affected by modern historical events.
The Space of Forgiveness: Theological Reflections on Forgiveness from a Space In-between
Michael Nausner, Drew University
This paper approaches the issue of forgiveness in terms of the elusive character of the gift given in forgiveness. The exchange taking place in forgiveness radically challenges the principles of judicial/economic human relations in a contemporary Western society devoted to the market economy. Forgiveness is less an event of active giving and more a letting go of the stifling effects of experienced injustice in order to allow interrelatedness to prevail. Texts by theologians Kathryn Tanner, Miroslav Volf, and Graham Ward are employed to highlight the complexity of divine and human forgiveness and the necessity to keep issues of power and justice in mind. In order to construct a non-binary understanding of forgiveness, a postcolonial analysis of the hybrid subject as emerging in interstitial spaces will be employed. (Homi Bhabha) Forgiveness functions as a space, where broken down communication is taken up again and so facilitates reconciliation.
The Interpretation of Forgiveness and the Forgiveness of Interpretation
Margaret B. Adam, Evanston, IL
Forgiveness involves the interpretation of our lives into the narrative of Christ’s death and resurrection. Interpretation-as-interpretation is a gift of creation. As a gift, interpretation should be celebrated and exercised with charity and truth. As a human practice, particular interpretations will reflect our sinfulness and will require forgiveness. The church as the body of Christ is called to attend to the interpretation which is part of forgiveness and the forgiveness which is part of interpretation, through engagement with Scripture, charitable acts, and truth-telling.
A101
Pictures and Popular Religion in Early Christianity: Visual Art as the Book of the Illiterate?
Robin Jensen, Andover Newton Theological School
The common claim that visual art serves the purposes of the church as a textbook or scripture of the illiterate has certain implications. It suggests that visual art has a distinct audience from written materials - an uneducated, underprivileged, or humble group within the community who learns and expresses religious faith in non-verbal modes. Some historians have then assumed that a study of visual art can illuminate the faith of this group as distinct from the “official” theology that is reflected in written documents. This paper challenges these assumptions by examining the origins, patrons, and audience of visual art in early Christianity, the validity of distinctions between private and public imagery in this period, and the arguments for and against the use of visual art in the church.
Unpopular Christian Literature: The Case of the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions and the Apocryphal Acts of Peter
Matthew C. Baldwin, Mars Hill College
Treating both the third century apocryphal Acts of Peter and the pseduo-Clementine Recognitions, here representative of apocryphal Christian narrative in Late Antiquity, this paper challenges studies which assume that these works represent the “popular” piety of non-elite Christian society. Such studies do not account for emerging critiques of the very category “popular religion,” and actually reinscribe traditional ecclesiastical approbation of the apocrypha. The very same elements of apocryphal works which once earned censure from ecclesiastics because of “vulgar” naivete and “superstition” are taken by modern scholars, for parallel reasons, to be the proofs of emergence from marginal social location and of connection to the popular element in religion. Although this literature does indeed stem from marginalized loci, these are locations representing a threat to ecclesiastical order not because they express the vox populi but because they express the views of counter-institutions, alternative complexes of rival elites and their followers.
The Paradox of Islamization: Tombstones and the Problem of Religious Change
Leor Halevi, Texas A&M University
The earliest Muslim tombstone inscriptions on record, dating from the 650s, do not display any distinctively Islamic signs. Islamic markers, such as prayers for the Prophet Muhammad and quotations from the Qur’an, emerged in the period between 690 and 720; and it was only in the 790s that a formulaic pattern became established, including a standardized confession of faith. These changes in the tombstone record reflect a gradual process of Islamization, I would argue, yet it is important to realize that the doctors of Islam in no way took for granted this process. Certain traditionists actively opposed the popular practice of inscribing tombstones, despite the fact that they contained pious religious sentiments. They decried the practice as a blameworthy innovation that violated the customs of Muhammad’s age. I will examine tombstone inscriptions alongside the traditionist discourse, while exploring the tension between popular piety and orthodoxy in the early Islamic period.
A102
Panel: The Ramakrishna Mission and the Face of Contemporary Hinduism
Francis X. Clooney, Boston College, Presiding
Gerald J. Larson, Indiana University, Bloomington
Anant Rambachan, Saint Olaf College
Gwilym Beckerlegge, Manchester, UK
Rachel Fell McDermott, Barnard College
Lola L. Williamson, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Responding
This panel explores the Ramakrishna Mission (1894) as it shaped its earliest identity, composing a new face for Hinduism by innovative communal style, social and educational institutions, publications and translations, and global missions. The first panelist explores its early identity formation, focusing on the hermeneutics of memory and the constructive uses of hagiography early on and in the 1980s. The second panelist explores how Swami Vivekananda and later swamis created an intellectual identity for the Mission, re-interpreting Vedanta in light of western ideas. The third panelist explores the Mission’s social involvement as it established its identity by “practical Vedanta” and service in India and the UK. The fourth panelist focuses on the contemporary tension between western and Indian identities, as the Mission struggles to maintain traditional continuities while adjusting yet again to global cultures. The respondent is currently researching the development of the Mission in the west.
A104
Home, Home on the Web: Use of the Internet in Neopagan Religions
Alyssa Beall, Syracuse University
Neopaganism is becoming an extremely popular religious choice in the United States. This paper will address the popularity of Neopaganism in the context of the growth of the internet, and explore reasons why a nature religion would find a home on the Web. The paper looks at three main areas: first, the demographics of both Neopagan groups and internet users; second, the possible connections between the popularity of Neopagan festivals and Neopagan internet use; third, the idea that the internet can be seen as an expression of Neopagan religious beliefs and worldviews. Use of the internet can be an expression of religious beliefs and worldviews. In addition, for at least some Neopagans the internet is their primary (or sole) means of religious interaction, by choice. These last two factors make the study of the internet in Neopaganism an important part of the full religious picture.
New Korean Religions in North America, and on the Web
Don Baker, University of British Columbia
South Korea is well know for having one of the largest Christian communities in Asia as well as for harboring a vibrant Buddhist community. It is less well known that South Korea also has over 200 new religions, some of whom have grown large, rich, and self-confident enough to reach beyond their homeland to attract new members. Four of those new religions, with the help of English language publications and websites, have been particularly successful at establishing a presence in North America and attracting non-Korean converts. One of those new Korean religions has Buddhist roots, another has its origins in Christianity, a third grew out of folk traditions, and a fourth borrows heavily from Daoism. However, they all share one thing in common. They believe that Korea is now the spiritual center of humanity.
Desert Dreams: Reflexivity, Ritual, and the Media at the Burning Man Festival
Lee Gilmore, Graduate Theological Union
The Burning Man festival is a celebration of art, community, and ritual that takes place annually in northwestern Nevada’s Black Rock desert. Drawing upon my extensive ethnographic research at this event, and utilizing ritual studies theory, this paper will explore the reflexive interplay of the media and new religious movements in the construction of culture as expressed through this festival. My analysis will consider: 1) how the mainstream media utilizes certain tropes that parallel ethnographic narratives; and 2) how the work of prominent scholars such as Turner, Eliade, Durkheim and Frazer among others, has subtly permeated our culture such that the ritual frameworks proposed by these theories serve not only as apt descriptions of Burning Man, but likewise have helped to define the context in which such an event takes shape. I conclude that these two reflexive mechanisms work in tandem to shape and transform our cultural consciousness.
Gatekeepers of (Ir)Religion: The Scientific Religion of Heaven’s Gate
Benjamin Zeller, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
The new religious movement known as Heaven’s Gate occupies a nexus between religion and science. A religious movement that sought to distance itself from religion, it attempted to claim the cultural legitimacy of science for itself. Heaven’s Gate not only rejected the category and concept of religion, but also attempted to reshape its religious ideology in a scientific or natural manner, eliminating or subduing the superstitious supernaturalism it critiqued in other religions. Yet, the movement was as critical of a naturalist scientific epistemology as it was of a supernaturalist religious one. Its appropriation of the science fiction genre demonstrates its desire to invoke the cultural legitimacy of science yet transcend the boundaries of acceptable scientific discourse. I argue that Heaven’s Gate represents the contested nature of scientific knowledge in American society.
Rael, from Contactee-Prophet to Messianic Scientist: A Study in Charisma
Susan J. Palmer, Dawson College
This paper offers an analysis of the charismatic career of Rael, the messianic prophet-founder of the world’s largest UFO religion. On the basis of 15 years of research in the field in the group’s headquarters in Montreal, including early interviews with Rael himself, I trace the development of his charisma-building enterprise from his roots in the French laicite, philosophical tradition and the European ufological “cultic milieu” (Campbell 1975) of the 1970s. I argue that the peculiar nature of his charismatic leadership and much of its appeal derives from his attempt to bridge the chasm between the scientific and the religious worldview.
A105
Negotiating Death and Life: Six Feet Under and the Middle Space
Shelly Rambo, Emory University
Death and life are the themes of HBO’s series, Six Feet Under. Its unique articulation on these themes rests in its depiction of the powerful inextricability of death and life. Theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, believed that the question of death’s relationship to life stood at the center of theology. This stemmed from his serious investigation of the “middle day” between death and life. Holy Saturday transforms the landscape of death and life. In this paper, I explore death and life in Six Feet Under alongside theological reflections on the “middle day” in Balthasar. I suggest that Six Feet Under depicts Balthasar’s middle space by presenting human beings struggling to understand their lives as profoundly marked and shaped by death. Theologizing from the “middle day,” I argue that theology can engage a critical dialogue about loss, sex, and love, terms emerging from the middle landscape of life and death.
The Space Between: Purgatory in Contemporary Popular Culture
Diana Walsh-Pasulka, University of North Carolina, Wilmington
Contemporary scholarship portrays purgatory as the fictional construction of an historical agenda, and locates its zenith within the Western medieval era. In such popular cultural texts such as The Sixth Sense and Six Feet Under, purgatory is a thriving imaginative construction. Contrary to scholarship that claims that purgatory was eradicated by the Protestant reformation, this paper will address its pervasiveness in contemporary popular culture. Through a brief examination of the space between life and death as conceived in diverse historical eras and societies, I will attend to those aspects of the representations of purgatory that function as moral regulatory practices. Specifically, I will claim that although the rational belief in purgatory has declined, purgatory as an imaginative category has not declined and is functioning in many of the ways it did in its medieval manifestation. In particular, through its emphasis on retributive justice, popular purgatory mandates moral conduct.
The Care of The Dying in America: The Ethics and Theology of Hair Dye, Botox, and Prozac
Laurie Zoloth, Northwestern University
How ought we to live in the “time of Prozac?” In part, we understand despair as loss because we are living in a culture of great yearning and great expectation. It is a yearning for a time and a place as far as we can get from death--it is an imagined childhood. How do think about this problem of despair both personally and professionally, in our work in which we thinking about the care of the dying, and in our lives in which the temption of pretended youth, hair dying, botoxing and male ponytails is always present? In this essay, I will explore the cultural phenomena of the yearning for childhood framing our understanding of depression; seek limits of this analysis in the face of some examples of clinical depression; and suggest alternative ways of thinking about the problem of depression, social anxiety and despair from Jewish intellectual philosophic traditions.
The Use of Popular Songs in Funeral Services in Britain: Pastoral and Liturgical Implications
Ian Bradley, St. Andrews University
Data collected by the Co-operative Funeral Service, Britain’s largest provider of funeral services, shows an increasing demand for and use of popular songs, and especially songs from stage and film musicals, in funerals in churches, chapels of rest and crematoria. The “top ten” most requested songs at funerals include “When You Walk through a Storm” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic, Elton John’s "Candle in the Wind", “Bring Him Home” from Les Miserables and “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again” from Phantom of the Opera. In the context of the increasing “crossover” of show songs into pastoral, liturgical and communal use, this paper looks at the phenomenon of the increasing demand for and use of popular songs in British funerals. It assesses their implicit and explicit theological agenda and pastoral message and the view which they present of death and what lies beyond it.
A106
Sex, Continence, Power
Gustavo Benavides, Villanova University
Moving away from the current neglect of the bodily/ritual/ascetic components of Catholicism, I shall examine whether the dismantling of the ritual apparatus that surrounded both the exercise of priestly sacramental powers and the body of the priest may have contributed (a) to changes in the way in which lay people relate to embodiments of ritual power; (b) changes in the way in which people react to the priest in case the priest makes demands of a sexual nature; (c) the unleashing of the revelations about sexual abuse. I shall also explore whether the emphasis on priestly celibacy, besides being related to the maintenance of institutional loyalty, is related to Catholic claims concerning priestly sacramental power -- claims which depend upon notions concerning the bodies and the maleness of priests, as well as upon the belief that those who sacrifice the satisfaction of a natural urge gain something in return.
Putting Sexual Abuse by Catholic Priests in Context: Authority, Power, and Clerical Malfeasance
Elizabeth Pullen, Drew University
Journalistic coverage of incidents of sexual absue by Roman Catholic priests has obscured the examination of social aspects of clerical malfeasance. Using theories drawn from Michel Foucault, Antonio Gramsci, and the sociology of professions, this paper will situate recent disclosures of abuse in the complex and intimate fiduciary relationships of trust and authority that are created between clergy and laity. Examples will be drawn from a case study of a Roman Catholic religious community in California that organized a response to nuermous disclousres of sexual abuse by priests during the 1990s. Positioning themselves as advocates of institutional reform at local, regional and nation levels, members of this parish sought both a pastoral response to individual survivors as well as structural changes in the institutional church. An appraisal of their strategic tactics and of their success will be framed as one positive response that can occur when clerical misconduct is uncovered.
Systemic Issues Regarding Child Sexual Abuse in the Roman Catholic Church
Eamonn Conway, University of Limerick
Victims/survivors of child sexual abuse by clergy speak of two types of abuse that they suffered: the actual sexual acts of abuse, and the abuse that occurred when their cases were reported to Church leaders. This paper argues that key systemic issues, mostly denied by the magisterium, arise from both forms of abuse. Drawing on theories of corporate culture, which suggest that behaviour is a function of deeply-held, taken-for-granted constructs, values, beliefs and identities that are “below the surface”, it will be argued that operative as well as professed theologies of ministry, sexuality, and most fundamentally, revelation, have enabled both forms of abuse. The image of an iceberg will be employed to explain the relationship and distinction between “above the surface” behaviour and “below the surface” constructs, values and beliefs. The final part of the paper explores how this operative theology of revelation can and should be challenged.
Grassroots Catholic Reform Movements and the Evolution of the Dialogue Strategy, 1966-1986
Mary J. Henold, University of Rochester
This paper investigates the ways grassroots reform movements challenged the Catholic hierarchy in the twenty years following the Second Vatican Council, with the goal of placing Voice of the Faithful, founded in 2002, in historical perspective. Specifically, I am interested in the strategies grassroots reformers employed to challenge the hierarchy’s abuse of power, and redress the laity’s lack of power. How did reformers, speaking from a position of loyal opposition, approach the non-democratic Catholic hierarchy? Did they believe it was more effective to reform the church by converting the bishops to their cause, or force the bishops to change by converting the people? Reformers usually opted to pursue “dialogue,” a strategy designed to open lines of communication between activists and the hierarchy. But could dialgoue work if power was distributed so unequally between the parties involved? How and when did reformers abandon “dialoguing” to pursue public protest and disobedience?
A107
Anamnestic Rationality and Solidarity for Otherness of Others: Johann Baptist Metz’s
Political-Theological Discourse
Sung Lim Lee, Seoul, Korea
Post Cold-War globalization, which is driven by economic greed at the cost of the environment, the workers, the poor, women, children, and indigenous people and, at the same time, exacerbates global fragmentation/conflicts due to ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity, requires a new consideration of ethical-political responsibility, a concern for others who suffer, and a more just community. A new conservatism in the political-cultural domain, however, has brought confusion to moral-political theory and action. In this setting, Metz’s political-theological discourse has strong relevance for the interruption of the current blind globalization in neo-conservatism and the construction of a cosmopolitan solidarity that should be added to the current discussion of a cosmopolitan ethics. This presentation discusses a cosmopolitan ethics that protects otherness of others, using Metz’s concepts of anamnestic rationality, solidarity, and community.
Metz as Anselm: The Ontological Argument and Political Theology
Alan Revering, Quincy University
Anselm of Canterbury, in his version of the ontological argument, contends that “that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the understanding alone.” Johann Baptist Metz’s political theology, which is so different from Anselm in so many ways, nevertheless includes this markedly similar assertion: “Christ must always be thought of in such a way that he is never merely thought of.” Metz’s conclusion, however, is very different from Anselm’s. Where Anselm speaks in the indicative, Metz’s formulation is an imperative: it is not ontological but political. An analysis of the similarity of these two claims about reason’s relation to God, and of the differences in the two conceptions of theology that contain them, will reveal important aspects of the “turn to the political” in modern and postmodern theology.
A Storm Blowing from Paradise: What Metz’s Critique of Bourgeois Temporality Owes to
Benjamin, Horkheimer, and Adorno
J. David Franks, Boston College
Johann Baptist Metz’s turn to “post-idealist,” political theology, and away from the “transcendentalist-idealist paradigm” determining Rahner’s theology, was initiated by his confrontation with the “Marxist challenge.” This paper will explore this fruitful interaction by specifically focusing on what Metz learned from Benjamin, Horkheimer, and Adorno concerning the ideological mystification of temporality and history. This paper will concentrate on Metz’s Faith in History and Society and will include a treatment of Adorno’s Negative Dialectics. The title of this paper refers to the most celebrated of Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” Benjamin presents a vision of history that contradicts the most basic bourgeois notions of time and history as a linear, evolutionary continuum, based on an undialectical concept of progress. Nothing is more central to Metz’s political theology than his trenchant demystification of this evolutionistic ideology that runs roughshod over the victims of history.
The New Political Theology of Metz: Confronting Schmitt’s Political Theology and the Violent Identity Politics of Exclusion
Derek Simon, McGill University
The New Political Theology has always raised questions regarding the contrast implied by its description as “new,” which asserts a comparison resulting from an innovation, a departure. Precisely which comparison, however, is at stake? In contrast to various standard accounts of this comparison, a different reading proposes that the New Political Theology is specifically directed at delegitimating the political theology of Carl Schmitt, with its antidemocratic and antisemitic identity politics of exclusion. While transgressing Schmitt’s exclusivist definition of political theology, the identity politics of difference pursued by the New Political Theology remains challenged by i) Schmitt’s theorization of the limits of representative democracy and ii) Habermas’ proceduralist theorization of deliberative democracy. On the basis of a theologically mandated epistemology of anamnetic reason, the New Political Theology pursues an identity politics of difference as the basis for a reconstructive engagement with deliberative social democracy in a pluralistic society.
A108
Half a Pilgrim: Religion, Tourism, and Sacred Spaces
Thomas Bremer, Rhodes College
What distinguishes the pilgrim from the tourist? This paper pursues the implications of this question through analyzing the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in Mexico City--a sacred space that attracts both pilgrims and tourists on their respective itineraries. In particular, it discusses how the sacrality of an auspicious site heightens its touristic appeal while at the same time the presence of tourists enhances its sacred character. In a process that seems counterintuitive to the modern mind, tourism, that most secular of modern pastimes, helps sustain the sacredness of sites where visitors gather for both religious and touristic purposes. In fact, attention to the convergence of practices and the parallel discourses of pilgrims and tourists reveals an alliance that supports the sacred powers of auspicious places. This in turn suggests the need for sustained reflection on the anthropological implications of the terms “pilgrim” and “tourist” as interpretive categories of experience.
Ignatius of Antioch: A Mediterranean Cruise to Martyrdom
Alexei Khamine, Drew University
Ignatius of Antioch, a second century martyr and bishop, presents an interesting case of religious tourism and pilgrimage: he is escorted from Antioch to Rome to be executed in the arena. This paper looks into the complexity of Ignatius’s journey, which is a cultural performance that juxtaposes a religious sacrificial procession and a pompa, a solemn entrance to gladiatorial games. Ignatius sets himself on a display as a hybrid: on the one hand, he is a liturgical sacrifice. On the other hand, he is a gladiator, a slave who hopes to attain to his final destination, God, through the performance in the arena. On his way to his martyrdom Ignatius orchestrates visitations of local Christian congregations, who become a part of the grandiose spectacle of martyrdom. Staging the fascinating performance of religious tourism, Ignatius sets on display both himself, as ritual body, and his audience, as a liturgical chorus.
Monument or Mall: Pilgrimage and Tourism in Indonesia
Clare Fischer, Graduate Theological Union
The study of religious tourism associated with two major sacred sites in Java and Bali indicates the complexity of methodological and theoretical approaches that recognize the fluidity of global religious movement. Probing the distinguishing features of pilgrim and tourist visiting two sites best known as Buddhist and Balinese Hindu monuments respectively, the paper will build on the salient findings of two studies addressing the character of the contemporary religious tourist in an effort to argue for an interdisciplinary methodology and attention to cultural integrity.
Pilgrimage and Protest: Travel by Religiously Motivated Activists to Anti-globalization Protests
Laurel Zwissler, University of Toronto
Mass demonstrations, such as the protest against the WTO in Seattle in November 1999 and the FTAA in Quebec City in April 2001, are attended by many different groups and coalitions that come from all over the continent and world. Among them are religiously affiliated groups. There are important similarities between pilgrimage as traditionally conceived and travel by religiously motivated activists to participate in anti-globalization protests. I investigate this link between pilgrimage and travel by religiously motivated protesters. Comparing and contrasting these phenomena contributes to understanding the relatively new phenomenon of mass, anti-globalization protests, in the West generally and in North America particularly, and its relationship with religious world-views. Moreover, this project investigates how older patterns of religious travel and pilgrimage may influence contemporary religious expressions and understandings of religious experience.
A109
Lessons from East Germany: Intersections of Historiography, Ethics, and Theology Moving into the Twenty-First Century
Brendan Ozawa-de Silva, Emory University
How will the problematic history of the communist period be understood by religious communities in Europe; how can this history be ethically faced and written; and how will this process inform theology and the public role of the churches for the coming century? Based on archival research and numerous interviews, this paper traces various competing theological understandings of the role of the church in socialist state and society to argue that there was no “one” role of the church under socialism. Moreover, it suggests that there is a responsibility within the church and the academic community to an ethical historiography that does not simplify the past into camps of political winners and losers, or legitimate the status quo, but which calls us to an understanding of the continual unfolding of history and historiography. The way forward will lie in understanding the past.
Religion and Social Reconciliation in Translyvania
Joseph A. Favazza, Rhodes College
Romania is a country whose present context is inextricably linked to its past and whose future hangs in the balance. As in other nations burdened with a past filled with systematic violence against its citizens, the question of social reconciliation has emerged as a strategy to deal with the legacy of the past. This paper will explore the role of religion in the process of social reconciliation in the region of Transylvania. The first half of the paper engages contemporary scholarship and develops a theoretical argument that the process of social reconciliation is informed by both religious and political praxis. The second half of the paper reports the findings of a qualitative research project where representatives from the Romanian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Reformed traditions provided narrative responses about the role of religion and the role of their own religious tradition in the wider context of social reconciliation.
The Problem of Secularization in the Post-communist Societies: The Cases of Bosnian, Croatian, and Slovenian Catholicism
Slavica Jakelic, Boston University, University of Virginia
What will happen in the encounter of the collectivistic and public religions that characterize some former communist societies and secularized Western Europe with its experience of private religiosity and decreased collective and institutional authority of religion? In the sociological and historical analysis of the Catholic Church in post-communist Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia, I will propose that the encounter of these three societies with the European private and individualistic religiosity will be influenced by the historical and structural differences in the position of the Catholic Church in Bosnian, Croatian and Slovenian lands over several centuries, and not simply by their common communist experience and/or post-communist revival of nationalism.
Christian Ethical Analyses of the post-Communist Economy and Society in Hungary
Leslie A. Muray, Curry College
Economic reform in post-Communist Hungary has brought prosperity for a few, but hardship for many within the social fabric. In connection with this, various Christian churches have identified and addressed urgent ethical concerns, around such issues as: the massive social crisis that has been occasioned by economic reform, public support for designated “historic” churches, and the return of confiscated church properties. This paper explores critically these ethical analyses, focussing in particular on the work of the Roman Catholic Church in Hungary.
A158
Sacred Fools and Heroic Crips: Science and the Myth of Religious Consciousness
Nancy Berlinger, The Hastings Center, Garrison, NY
This paper will build upon Greg Peterson’s treatment of preliminary neuroscientific research into religious consciousness, in Minding God: Theology and the Cognitive Sciences, to explore the discourse of spirituality and medicine, which has become prominent within medical education and clinical medicine in the U.S., as a discourse between, and about, religion and science. The paper will focus on two myths - the “sacred fool” and the “heroic crip” - that appear to influence how religious consciousness is perceived by the culture of clinical medicine, with attention to the depiction of religious experience in contemporary medical and scientific literature; to influential literary case studies of neurological conditions associated with religiosity; and to the ethical implications of using “sacred fools and heroic crips” as explanatory models in scholarly and clinical considerations of the role of spirituality in the practice of medicine.
Minding God and the Body: An Embodied versus a Functionalist Understanding of Mind
David H. Nikkel, University of North Carolina at Pembroke
Gregory Peterson, in Minding God, defines “functionalism” as an understading of the human mind and its “properties, including consciousness, in terms of information processing in analogy with modern computers.” As a generalization, cognitive science does adhere to such a functionalist viewpoint. However, Peteson labels the radically different neurobiologgical approach of Gerald Edelman and Antonio Damasio as “essentially functionalist in character.” This paper contends that this is a serious mistake. The paper summarizes the work of Edelman and Damasio, which revolves around the mind as essentially embodied. This insistence on the essential embodiment of mind opens up the possibility of, indeed may imply, an incarnational metaphsics or theology. Embodied consciousness is inherently meaningful, in stark constrast to functionalism, which concerns the manipulation of arbitrary symbols, of intrinsically meaningless information. Embodiment makes all the difference in the world. The paper concludes with reflection on the significance of a universe conducive to embodied consciousness.
Minding God/Minding Pain: Christian Theological Reflections on Recent Pain Research
Jacqueline Cameron, The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church
In his book Minding God, Gregory Peterson claims, “all forms of theology stand to be affected by a serious dialogue with the cognitive sciences.” He is correct. Theology that is unwilling to engage science undermines the value of the physical world and of the humans who seek a deeper understanding of it. Much recent theological and scientific attention has been directed toward consciousness and mind/brain. Pain research--a somewhat more focused area of neuroscientific inquiry--also raises intriguing theological questions and suggests insights which may contribute to the larger discussion. Christian theology--particularly doctrines of incarnation and eschatology--addresses questions of pain, suffering, healing and hope, and may be enriched through reflection on humans” experience of pain and from recent advances in pain studies. This paper will review basic neurophysiology of pain and explore possible thological insights raised by reflecting on these processes and their effects on human living and human encounter with God.
Pneuma and Pratityasamutpada: Cognitive Science, the Christian-Buddhist Dialogue, and the Human Person
Amos Yong, Bethel College
Recent discussions of the mind-brain and the soul-body problems have been both advanced and complexified by the cognitive sciences. This paper will focus explicitly on emergence and supervenience theories of personhood and explore how they have recently come together to open up new understandings of the unity of the human person. The strengths of the resulting emergence-supervenience model, also known as nonreductive physicalism, over other competing models will be noted, even as its potential limitations will be identified. At the same time, the further importance of this new model can be appreciated in light of recent advances in the Christian-Buddhist dialogue. While traditional self and no-self views pitted Christianity versus Buddhism versus science, I will show how the nonreductive physicalist proposal regarding human personhood both contributes to and is enriched by the Christian concept of “pneuma” (spirit) and the Buddhist concept of “pratityasamutpada” (codependent origination) toward a more holistic perspective.
A112
A Conversation with the AAR Executive Committee and Board Members
Robert A. Orsi, Harvard University, Presiding
Carol S. Anderson, Kalamazoo College
Barbara DeConcini, American Academy of Religion
Frederick M. Denny, University of Colorado, Boulder
Susan E. Henking, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Hans J. Hillerbrand, Duke University
William K. Mahony, Davidson College
Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Georgetown University
Mary McGee, Columbia University
Vasudha Narayanan, University of Florida
Please join members of the AAR Executive Committee and Board for this presentation and discussion of the new AAR Centennial Strategic Plan 2004-2009 (available online). The forum focuses on open-microphone conversation about the plan, including the Board's recent decision to hold AAR Annual Meetings on our own, starting in 2008 (i.e., instead of concurrently with SBL meetings).
A113
How Religion Matters in Crisis Situations: Perspectives from Law Enforcement, News Media, and Religious Studies Scholars
Eugene V. Gallagher, Connecticut College, Presiding
Eileen V. Barker, London School of Economics
Mark Juergensmeyer, University of California, Santa Barbara
Mary Walsh, CBS News
Representation from members of the FBI
Events as diverse as the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the 1996 standoff between FBI agents and the Montana Freeman have raised questions about how religion and law enforcement agents face similar interpretive challenges in trying to discern when religion is a primary motivating factor, a subsidiary factor, or when it may conceal other, more important motives. Decisions about the salience of religion in a crisis situation can have immediate and far-reaching practical consequences. The framing of stories about religion and crisis situations can contribute to shaping events. Scholars can also be drawn into events when they serve as news sources or as consultants. This panel will discuss analytical perspectives and criteria for determining how religion matters to each of the three areas in responding to crisis.
A114
The Legacy of Franz Rosenthal for Islamic Studies
Jon Brockopp, Pennsylvania State University, Presiding
Bruce B. Lawrence, Duke University
Gordon D. Newby, Emory University
Frederick M. Denny, University of Colorado, Boulder
Vincent J. Cornell, University of Arkansas
Wadad Kadi, University of Chicago, Responding
Franz Rosenthal, Sterling professor emeritus of Arabic and Comparative Semitic Languages at Yale University, died this past April. He left behind a tremendous legacy of scholarship, students, and friends. A prolific scholar, Rosenthal is remembered for works on history, including his 1952 History of Muslim Historiography, his translation of Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah (1958), and his general editorship of al-Tabari's entire History (1985-1998). Famous for his devotion to nuances of language and translation, his Grammar of Biblical Aramaic (1961) is still a standard work. Of particular importance are his extraordinary topical studies, such as “The Muslim Concept of Freedom" (1960), "Knowledge Triumphant" (1970), and "Complaint and Hope in Medieval Islam" (1983). Rosenthal's passing provides an opportunity to assess the study of Islam over the past century. Members of the panel, all leading scholars of Islam, will place Rosenthal's work in this context while pointing toward new challenges for the field.
A115
Living Buddha Images in Japan: Statues and the Transmission of Buddhism in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
Sarah Horton, Macalester College
Buddhist images in Japan, as well as many other countries, have often been regarded as living. In twelfth- and thirteenth-century Japan, Buddhism made amazing progress in reaching various levels of society. This is usually attributed to the activities and writings of certain prominent monks, such as Hônen and Dôgen. I argue, however, that belief in the power of living Buddha statues played an important but often overlooked role in encouraging Buddhist faith among not only common people but also monastics and aristocrats. I will use the example of migawari (body-substitution) Buddhas to illustrate this point. These are images which take the place of a suffering person, with the marks of suffering appearing on the image rather than the person.
Architectural Prototype of Borobudur
Hudaya Kandahjaya, Graduate Theological Union
To date there has been no fixed answer to the question “what is Borobudur?” Nevertheless, an examination of sources, otherwise left out of consideration, reveals some valuable data associated with the origin of Borobudur. These data give us glimpses of architectural information as well as the meaning of the name Borobudur. Rooted in the spiritual sense of the term vihara, Borobudur is a vihara of an excellent Buddha-rupa that embodies the multitude of virtues of the Sugata, including teachings not spoken by mundane Buddhas. Hence, mysteries in Borobudur are not only part of its esoteric teachings, but also are deliberately embedded in its construction. This construction, however, had to undergo certain modifications in order to match the architectural design prescribed in the Lalitavistara-sutra.
Dissent and the Dharma: Tales of Transmission from behind Bars and Banishment
George A. Keyworth, University of Colorado, Boulder
In the case of Chinese Buddhism, art and image often provoke doctrine and practice. Yet the political and institutional conquest of the Buddhist samgha in medieval China by members of the Chan lineage is too often merely explained in terms of the textual transmission represented in the sectarian genealogical histories. This presentation examines how the apocryphal Book of Heroic March Absorption (Shoulengyan jing) and specific images of the Bodhisattva of Compassion (Guanyin) were used to legitimate Song dynasty (960-1279) Chan communities of monastic and lay disciples. Juefan Huihong (1071-1128), and his exile to Hainan island between 1112-1114, form the basis for an exploration into how members of the nascent Chan lineage connected texts, images, places, and experiences with cultural and literary icons to transcend traditional boundaries of authority to establish a separate transmission of the buddhadharma.
Universal Appeal: Transmitting the Dharma through Text and Image at Baodingshan
Karil Kucera, Saint Olaf College
Narrative works combining both text and image at Baodingshan [1179-1249] near Dazu, Sichuan, provide insight into the transmission of Buddhism to a twelfth-century audience of laity and clergy. The site could be utilized on three different levels. First, the narratives were designed to educate. Composed of apocryphal texts, they highlight the popular nature of Buddhism, and necessitated an intercessor for those who were illiterate. Second, a complimentary interaction between the texts and images existed for the literati. The image does not simply illustrate the text, nor does the text explain the image, making the literate viewer no longer a worshipper, but an actual participant in the carved narrative. Finally, we consider Baodingshan’s enormous amount of textual inscriptions. The placement and repetition of certain texts points to a monastic community seeking to preserve and transmit the Buddhist teachings across time.
Popular Lectures: Liturgical Origins of Art and Text at Dunhuang
D. Neil Schmid, North Carolina State University
In medieval China, the proselytization of Buddhism occurred through merit-making liturgical performances known as popular lectures (sujiang). Though widespread and crucial to the transmission of Buddhism throughout China, these ritual enactments have been little studied in the West. In this paper, I articulate how a detailed examination of the manuscript discoveries from Dunhuang and the remaining artistic legacy of cave murals reveal a complex program uniting text, image, and ritual in an aesthetically rich program. Moreover, I will demonstrate how later Dunhuang caves are in fact hypostatizations of the popular lecture, instantitations of the event, configuring in perpetuity its merit-making potential.
A116
What Are Inside and Outside Myths: Japanese Study of Myth
Takeshi Kimura, University of Tsukuba
The term “shinwa” (literally “narrative about deities”) has been used as a Japanese translation of Western word “myth” since the Meiji era when the intellectual attitude of science prevailed and objectified “religions” themselves, then, modern academic study of religions became established. In addition, Kojiki was academically called “shinwa,” but in the political context, it had been designated as “history,” as a narrative transmitting what really happened and as intellectual source of legitimate knowledge about the past of Nation, supporting the Imperial reign until the end of WWII. In this historical context, the historical study of Kojiki as “myth” began as a historical criticism. And, studies of myths have been done mainly outside the study of religion, mainly by historians, anthropologists and mythologists. These Japanese scholars’ study of Japanese myth sometimes tend to focus upon clarifying unique Japaneseness. By using comparative perspectives.
The Ongoing Christian Myth: On the Necessity of Myth in Religious Studies
Lesley A. Northup, Florida International University
Today’s religion scholars and yesterday’s myth scholars generally perceive “myth” as largely the province of indigenous traditions and folklore. Others, including psychologists of religion, have taken a more universalist view. Campbell complained that the only problem with Christians was that they didn’t understand their own myths. Among scholars of new religious movements and of myth interpreted broadly, it is a simple truism that the Bible is myth. This view has also won in the wider marketplace, and is reflected in aspects of the New Age movement and current “seeker” Christianity. Even a cursory glance at the American religious picture reveals a multitude of Christianities that continually challenge the received wisdom about the Christian story. We are always crafting and refining myths that participate in the ongoing Christian story--witness the events of September 11. If, in Bruce Lincoln’s phrase, myth is “ideology in narrative form,” we must include it in our scholarship.
Judaism Re-Mythologized: The Case of Phinehas and the Category of “Myth”
Gregory Spinner, Central Michigan University
It is not uncommon to find biblical and rabbinic narratives exempted from the category “myth.” Behind this is a long history of apologetics. Since the Enlightenment, defenders of Judaism have been keen to divest their texts of any element of unreason; therefore “myth,” along with mysticism and magic, were jettisoned. More recently, the fortunes of “myth” have changed; now that the word is seen as validating, some are eager to claim their narratives constitute myth. Rather than replicate these value judgments, scholars of religion must refine their working definitions of “myth” if it is to be a useful instrument of comparison. In this vein, I propose to analyze both biblical and rabbinic narratives about the priest Phinehas, and to discuss how these narratives fit our current categories. My reading of the Phinehas story underscores how certain narratives provide legitimation for priestly lineage and for religious claims to sacred land.
The Utopian “Power to Live”: What the Miyazaki Phenomenon Signifies
Hiroshi Yamanaka, University of Tsukuba
In this paper, I try to analyze the reasons for astonishing popularity of Miyazaki’s animation film in Japan which I call “Miyazaki phenomenon.” Even though an art form like animation and comics has been disregarded as a child-centered popular culture before, its cultural value is now recognized by many. After I analyze the personal background of Miyazaki, the strategy and technique of his movie production, and the audience, his animation film, especially “Spirited Away”, appears to function as a sort of alternative religion, that means, the animation helps the audience recognize their own “power to live”, inherent human nature, and provides a sense of liberation and a psychological healing to them in the historical and social context of Japan in which “traditional” sense of community is now being threatened by the economic and competitive globalization, where individuals are feeling lost.
A117
“Fashions of Worldly Dames”: Dress, Gender, and Visible Sainthood in Early New England
Martha L. Finch, Southwest Missouri State University
In his Dialogue, composed in 1648, William Bradford, governor of Plymouth Colony, described an event that had occurred in Francis Johnson’s Amsterdam church, with which Bradford and his separatist congregation had briefly affiliated before migrating to New England. The incident involved Johnson’s young wife Thomasine and his brother George, who publicly and vehemently opposed Thomasine’s “proud,” merchant-class clothing, which George described in elaborate, even voyeuristic, detail. For George, Thomasine literally embodied the epitome of immodesty, particularly inappropriate in a godly woman. Commentary by the Johnsons, Bradford, and Bradford’s pastor John Robinson and colonial sumptuary laws reveal ways that clothing and related modes of self-representation functioned in the contestation of meanings of the body and the public performance of gender, social status, and visible sainthood in early New England.
The First Moral Majority: The New England Watch and Ward Society, Moral Reform Politics, and the Battle over Commercial Culture in Early Twentieth-Century Boston
Paul Charles Kemeny, Grove City College
The history of the New England Watch and Ward Society, a Boston-based anti-vice moral reform organization, demonstrates how the so-called mainline Protestant establishment enjoyed a preponderant influence over literature well into the 1920s and also reveals how and why it was forced to give up control over this one particular area of commercial culture. An examination of the cultural modernists’ efforts in early twentieth-century Boston to curtail the religiously-inspired moral reformers” cultural authority over one particular form of commercial culture, the publication of modernist magazines and other inexpensive forms of mass-produced print culture, reveals that conflict-persistent, violent, and very public-lay at the heart of religion and urban commercial culture in the early twentieth century.
Abolitionists, Spiritualists, and Exodusters: The Mythic Aura of Kansas in the Late Nineteenth Century
Jennifer Rycenga, San José State University
Kansas’s pivotal admission to the union as a free state in 1861 was perceived by many progressive northerners as a triumph of idealism. The state’s reputation as a hotbed of radical ideas and social equality (far outstripping a more contradictory reality) continued to draw progressive dreamers to the state, especially in the later 1870s. This paper examines three interlocking pathways that brought radical religious thinkers to Kansas: African-American Exodusters leaving the South (paradigmatically viewed through Alfred Fairfax, a minister and, later, state legislator), Quaker philanthropists coming to their aid (represented here by Elizabeth Comstock, Laura Haviland, and Daniel Votaw), and Spiritualists, notably Abolitionist educator-heroine Prudence Crandall. I consider how utopic religious visions simultaneously sustain radical thinkers, yet often leave them ill-equipped for practical struggles, especially across racial lines.
Funerals without God: Victorian Humanism and the Ritualization of Death
Lawrence Snyder, Western Kentucky University
This paper examines how partisans of the “Religion of Humanity” sought new symbols to express their faith through the development of non-theistic burial ceremonies in the final decades of the nineteenth century. To fill the liturgical void created by their renunciation of Christian orthodoxy, radicals published new service orders to guide the significant rites of passage, including death. The paper reviews these texts, funeral sermons, and extant accounts of internment ceremonies from the period. Examination of this liberal ritualization of death reveals much about their reinterpretation of the human body as finite being, their redefinition of authentic spirituality, and the role of ceremony in uniting the liberal community. The development of an alternative ceremonial system was thus one way in which practitioners of the “Religion of Humanity” created a new, comprehensive “religious world.”
The Leo Frank Case: Sidelights and Shadows on Religious Intolerance
Lynn S. Neal, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
In 1913, police arrested Leo Frank, the Jewish superintendent of the National Pencil Factory in Atlanta, Georgia, for the murder of fourteen-year-old employee Mary Phagan. In this case plagued by poor police work, imposter Pinkerton Detectives, and rampant media coverage, intolerances based on region, religion, race, and gender intersect. Analyzing these intersecting categories illumines the multi-faceted character of religious intolerance. This paper exposes some of the “sidelights and shadows” that characterize religious intolerance--the ways religious intolerance intersects with other fears and prejudices.
A118
The Material of History in Sikh tradition
Anne Murphy, Columbia University
This paper, explores what constitutes the writing of history in Sikh sources. History and its forms of evidence were a concern within pre-colonial Sikh intellectual history, even as they were deeply tied to apparently “traditional” and religious meanings so often distinguished from the writing of history that is constituted by the Modern. The paper is situated within a broader field of South Asian Studies concerned with the writing of history within the context of South Asian intellectual traditions. It is also situated in relation to critiques of how history has been engaged in “Sikh Studies” (as a discipline), and how this “history” is constructed against “tradition.” At the intersection of these two concerns lies an interest in how the past is constituted and represented within Sikh “tradition,” and what this representation can reveal about the writing of history on broader terms.
For Guru, God, and Country: Envisioning the Resurrection of Divine Rule in Medieval Tibet
Bradford Phillips, University of Virginia
This paper presents a Tantricized royal deity cult in Tibet and the (re)visionary contributions of its key medieval perpetrator. By the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the powerful Tibetan empire of the Yarlung hierarchs (seventh through ninth centuries) had disintegrated, leaving behind a landscape of disparate religious communities with shifting, unstable political alliances. It was during this malaise, then, that Guru Chos-kyi dbang-phyug (1212-1270 C.E.) embarked on a prophetic career under the tutelage of the ur-guru for Tibetan Buddhists, the Indian adept Padmasambhava. The task put to Chos-dbang was the constellation of a particular trinity of veneration for Guru, God, and country called bLa-rdzogs-thugs. In assessing Chos-dbang’s pious reinterpretation of Imperial Tibetan history, the presentation will dwell less on the question of the “veracity” of his system’s claims, and more upon assessment of its efficacy, currency, and operacy-both within its own historical context and in subsequent historical circumstances.
Performing the Past, Present, and Future: History and the Urdu Ghazal in Banaras
Christopher Lee, Canisius College
Among the sizable Muslim community of Banaras - indeed, throughout northern South Asia - poetry is a popular pastime. It is shared between friends in small, intimate gatherings, and performed to audiences of tens of thousands in the large-scale poetry gatherings called mushaira. Poetry records, reflects upon, and shapes the world for many Urdu speakers. This paper will do two things: engage Urdu poetry as a way of literally “making history,” and examine the starkly different and competing understandings of Muslim history in South Asia as represented in different styles of contemporary performed Urdu poetry.
Through the Historiographic Lens: Religion in Arampur
Peter Gottschalk, Wesleyan University
The north Indian village Arampur has served as the subject of Western landscape painting, ethnography, religious studies and architectural studies. The Western travellers and scholars who have visited include Thomas and William Daniell, Francis Buchanan, William Crooke, and contemporary American academics. This paper explores the Western ways of knowing Arampur’s past, demonstrating the reliance on historiographic paradigms in the effort to create a unified and disciplined field of knowledge regarding India, Indians, and Indian religions. The parameters of this historiography come into particular focus in an examination of these scholars’ treatment of an orally-transmitted social memory that many residents take as not only an important aspect of their religious devotions but as the central element of their identification with the village.
Remembering Shivaji: Narrative and Counter-Narrative in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Maharashtra
Karline McLain, University of Texas, Austin
In the late nineteenth century, Indians began to write histories of the emerging nation. In Western India, the majority of these centered upon the seventeenth-century king Shivaji. I will examine how Shivaji has been remembered - textually and visually - from the late-nineteenth century to the present. I will discuss how Shivaji figured in the histories of India constructed by colonial historians, Hindu nationalist leaders, and the non-Brahman movement in Western India. Although each of these narratives differs greatly from one another, they all depict Shivaji as a “Hindu” leader (as variously defined) who fought against “Muslim invaders.” This communal element of the Shivaji narrative has influenced later memories of Shivaji. In conclusion, I will examine the Amar Chitra Katha comic book narrative of Shivaji in order to demonstrate how a dominant narrative, framed by previous narratives but drawn primarily from Hindu nationalist narratives, was consolidated in the twentieth century.
A119
Divine Commerce: A Postcolonial Christology for Times of Neo-Colonial Empire
Marion S. Grau, Graduate Theological Union
The intractability of neo-colonial economic imperialism often leads to resignation. Reinforced through institutions of economic liberalization, new forms of slave labor have proliferated around the globe and increased economic disparity. How can theology respond to these structures of injustice? Which christologies are helpful in forging such responses? Beyond the false alternatives of God as supreme giver and a “circular economy”, ancient texts offer a largely unexplored investment option in the divine economy: divine counterfeiting. Any reconstruction of such red-emption (from red-emptio, to buy back) from the location of the “Western metropole” must ponder imperialism and map the crisscrossings of “transnational capitalism and the impoverishment of the third world” while attempting to locate an “agency of empowerment” (Bhabha). Knitting together motifs of divine deception in Origen with Gregory of Nyssa’s account of divine fraud, a postcolonial christology of “divine commerce,” of redemptive divine tricksterdom emerges.
Virtually Religion: Towards a Postcolonial “Sikh Theology”
Arvind Mandair, Hofstra University
This paper argues that the nationalisation of Sikh traditions, as an outcome of the encounter between Sikhism and European colonialism, is indissociably linked to the formulation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of a systematic concept of God and the redefining of the meaning of gurmat (lit. the guru’s teaching) as “Sikh theology”. Though rarely recognised, the parallel constructions of “Sikh theology” and a Sikh nationalist identity constitute a mimetic response, a “performative utterance” by reformist Sikh elites to the conditions of colonial rule. While this response enabled Sikhs and Sikhism to enter into an international and inter-religious “politics of recognition” grounded on the principle of individual subjectivity, nevertheless, in recent years it has also brought Sikhism to the brink of political suicide, leaving Sikh religious thinking largely devoid of an “authentic” middle ground.
The Postcolonial Mediation of Transcendence
John May, Irish School of Ecumenics
Is there an understanding of transcendence which can bridge the gap between Israel’s God, Jesus’ God, and the God mediated to colonized peoples by European categories and interests? Europe, having given rise to modernity, is now being defined by the colonial Others it created in a public sphere which is no longer Western but global. European theologies can now be viewed through the prism of non-European cultures which question the identity, universality and domination of European Christianity. Alternative conceptions of transcendence could lead to a new understanding of God and help break the link between transcendence and violence. Postmodern theology needs to be confronted by postcolonial mediations of transcendence. European theology could then overcome its loss of praxis, transcendence and nature in non-violent communication with its religious Others.
Beyond Orientalist Constructions of Religious “Others”: Christian Encounters with Other Religions in a Postcolonial World
Jan H. Pranger, DePaul University
Orientalist constructions of non-Christian religions have played a constitutive part in the legitimation of Western dominance and control during the European colonial period. Such constructions defined other religions according to (Christian) European colonial interests and desires, including missionary ones. But at least as important, these representations of religious “others” also had a constitutive function in the construction of European Christian identity itself. Focusing on nineteenth and twentieth century European Protestant Christian thought, this paper explores the functions of representations of other religions within theological constructions of Christian beliefs and identity. As the paper demonstrates, rather than being directly related to the encounter between Christians and peoples of other faiths, representations of other religions are at best indirectly related to the encounter between Christians and peoples of other faiths. Instead, they function primarily to (re)articulate (European) Christian identity, and secondly to position Christianity in relation to the European colonial project.
A120
Panel: Sexual/Domestic Violence and Accountability in Religous/Spiritual Communities: Exploring New Women of Color Activisms
Justine Smith, Harvard University, Presiding
Joy R. Bostic, New York, NY
Renee L. Hill, All Saints Church, Pasadena, CA
Kimberleigh Jordan, New York University
Andrea Smith, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
This panel will utilize an alternative format to explore new women of color activisms in religious/spiritual communities. In particular, panelists will present an organizing model developed by Incite! Women of Color Against Violence (a national organization of feminists of color which organize around the intersections of state and interpersonal violence). This model is premised on the notion that because women of color live at the intersections of interpersonal gender and state violence, any model used to combat interpersonal violence should not rely primarily on the apparatus of state violence (i.e. the criminal justice system). Instead, the most effective way to stop violence is to create structures of community accountability such that violence is no longer implicitly or explicitly tolerated in communities of color or society at large. This panel will present this model experientially, using a combination of theoretical analysis, embodied meditation, theological reflection, small group participation, and performance.
A121
Exploring the Sources of Inspiration for African Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Alisa LaGamma, Columbia University, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Developing special exhibitions of African art at an international cultural institution such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art affords an opportunity to present important ideas to the field and draw upon current scholarship to inform a general audience. Given the nature of the institution that I work in, exhibition projects I have developed attempt at once to address issues that are central to a more profound appreciation of African art and that are also relevant to the larger field of art history. This paper will provide an overview of several of these projects, “Art and Oracle” and “Genesis: Ideas of Origin in African Sculpture,” and how they have attempted to advance an appreciation of the underlying significance of African sculptural artifacts and the frameworks of ideas and beliefs to which they relate.
Crowning the Spirit: Orisa Altar Crowns in South Florida
Joseph M. Murphy, Georgetown University
This paper examines a facet of African religious symbolism in the Americas: the metalwork “tool crowns” that adorn home altars for the Yoruba deities called Orisa. Miami-based artists in the Lucumi tradition have worked the aesthetics and meanings of Yoruba and Eurpean crown symbolism into elegant restatements of Yoruba religious values in diaspora. Each part of the crown recalls a variety of dimenstions of the Orisa being honored and multiple historical and cultural associations for devotees. This plural experience is brought together in the crowns as they present a material arrangement of multiple religious and cultural meanings.
Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water: Incarnating Sango, the Yoruba Thunderstorm Deity
Babatunde Lawal, Virginia Commonwealth University
Sango is the thunderstorm deity (orisa) of the Yoruba of the republics of Nigeria and Benin in West Africa. The deity’s popularity within and outside Yoruba culture stems from the widely-held belief that he has the power to bestow on his devotees good health, fertility, prosperity and long life, in addition to protecting them from thunderstorms and social injustice. This paper focuses not only on the interconnectedness of the visual and performing arts in Sango worship, but also on how they are used to incarnate, honor and communicate with the deity.
A122
Panel: Religion and Social Transformation: The Liberating Scholarship of Vincent Harding
Rachel E. Harding, Iliff School of Theology, Presiding
Jennifer Graber, Duke University
Victor Anderson, Vanderbilt University
Bernice Johnson Reagon, Smithsonian Institution
Vincent Harding, Iliff School of Theology, Responding
Vincent Harding’s work on the religious grounding of social movements has made a valuable contribution to the scholarship on democratic and civil rights movements. His focus on the role of religion in social transformation through studying historical and contemporary movements for social change has generated a new historiography.
A123
Kenosis and Resistance: Protest Ecclesiologies in Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Willis Jenkins, University of Virginia
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s witness to the church’s failure to offer resistance to Nazi Germany issued in his provocative, though unspecified, proposal for a “religionless Christianity”. Martin Luther King was witness to a similar failure of church, leading him to reconceive the ecclesial practice of resistance. Examining the distinctive ways Bonhoeffer and King revised and theologically intensified vital commitments to Easter themes of brokenness, suffering, and redemption, this paper explores the possibility of ecclesial kenosis for the sake of the world as a form of political resistance. Juxtaposing respective analyses, the paper further suggests that King’s protest church might serve as a lived instance of what Bonhoeffer could have meant by a religionless Christianity: whereas Bonhoeffer came to see church as a sign of God’s cruciform givenness for the world, King directs, through the movement’s practice of non-violent protest, an analogous giving over of the church in order to redeem the world.
Ontological Obedience: Examining Bonhoeffer’s Hermeneutics of Non-Violence in Light of the Bruderhof Community
Steven Bezner, Baylor University
This paper discusses the connection between the hermeneutics of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Bruderhof community, specifically focusing on how ontological obedience results in the practice of non-violent conflict resolution. Eberhard Arnold, founder of the Bruderhof, utilizes an approach to the Sermon on the Mount quite similar to that of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship, specifically focusing on radical obedience to the teachings of Jesus, not the least of which is non-violence. Examining correspondence between Arnold and his oldest son, Hardy, a connection can be demonstrated between the Bruderhof and Bonhoeffer, specifically focusing around obedience. Similarities and differences between Bonhoeffer’s hermeneutics and those of the Bruderhof are examined closely, and paths for constructive theological discourse are explored within the context of ontological obedience.
The Gospel of Cheap Grace: Rituals of Forgiveness and Convicted Perpetrators after the Holocaust
Katharina Von Kellenbach, St. Mary’s College of Maryland
This paper critically evaluates Protestant systematic theology on forgiveness in post-war (West) Germany and its practical application in the pastoral care of Nazi convicts in the prison system. Drawing on archival materials by Protestant prison chaplains working with Nazi defendants as well as scholarly theological approaches to forgiveness, I will argue that Bonhoeffer’s criticism of “cheap grace,” first published in 1937, virtually predicted the general outline of the massive missionary efforts at re-converting former Nazis in the post-war period. The gospel of cheap grace must be reconsidered in light of Jewish-Christian dialogue. A Christian doctrine of grace that is divorced from law and its Jewish roots looses credibility. Bonhoeffer’s account of “precious” or “expensive grace” read in light of Jewish-Christian dialogue can provide a critical vocabulary to begin the development of theological criteria for limiting unconditional forgiveness for Nazi perpetrators in the context of prison ministry.
A124
Personal and Impersonal Interpretations of “Meditation on the Lord” in Patanjali’s Yogasutra
Lloyd W. Pflueger, Truman State University
Patañjali’s Yogasutra describes īśvara-pranidhāna, meditative repetition of OM, the mantric name of God, as the means par excellence for attaining samādhi, meditative absorption. In this paper I will contrast two interpretations of this meditative absorption in the divine name. The first understands “meditation on the Lord” as a progressive absorption in the divine name that eventually transcends the name itself, effecting a nondual experience of identity with God as impersonal pure consciousness, the meditator’s Self. This interpretation is in harmony with the philosophical strictures of classical Sāmkhya-Yoga. The second interpretation, that of the traditional commentaries, is more influenced by devotional theism. This tradition emphasizes use of the name with devotional visualization to invoke the personal God’s grace for attaining samadhi and pure consciousness. In both interpretations classical Yoga makes the Lord’s name (and possibly the Lord himself), however exalted, instrumental and subordinate to a transcendental meditative goal.
Mantra and Meditation in the Upaya Classification of the Saiva Tantra
Paul E. Muller-Ortega, University of Rochester
In his masterful Tantrāloka (Light on the Tantras), the tenth-century Kashmiri Śaivācarya Abhinavagupta organizes the meditational and mystical practices of the Śaiva Tantra under a single subsuming rubric of upāya (“method” or “means”), in a hierarchy ranging from the effortless and grace-driven anupāya (nonmethod) to the increasingly more effortful practices of the śāmbhavopāya (divine method), the śāktop&āya (empowered method), and the ānavopaya (limited method.) The focus of this paper will be to examine the important and often contradictory understandings of notions of “meditation” and mantra and their interrelationship within each of these four fundamentally different and gradated levels of mystical yogic praxis. At stake is a greater understanding of the ways in which notions of mantra and meditation (and, indeed, all of the buttressing theoretical notions intertwined with them) were innovated, renegotiated, and redefined in the medieval ūaiva elaboration of particularly Tantric meanings and approaches to mantra and meditation.
Seeing the Eye That Sees: Embodying the Name in the Meditation Practices of Prophetic Kabbalah
Elliot R. Wolfson, New York University
This paper will focus on the meditation practices of prophetic Kabbalah expounded by the thirteenth-century Spanish kabbalist Abraham Abulafia. These practices involve the combination of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet-each considered to be a name contained in the most sacred of names, YHWH-in order to release the mind from the body so that it could attain a state of conjunction with the divine intellect. Having mastered the practice of letter combination in its three phases-writing, verbal recitation, and mental contemplation-the adept attains the culminating state of contemplation whereby one passes beyond the threshold of thought and speech. The state of mindfulness devoid of concepts, images, and words leads experientially to the breakdown of the perceptual distinction between inside and outside. At that moment the heart of the mystic takes on the form of a “translucent mirror,” the lens through which the internal is externalized and the external internalized.
Sacred Names in Late Kabbalah
Pinchas Giller, University of Judaism
The tradition of sacred names is a relatively unexplored subtheme of Kabbalah studies. Scholars have been content to probe the underlying erotic mythos of various kabbalistic systems or the overarching historical themes that are asserted as the traditions’ major trends.Yet the systems of sacred names, which constitute the building blocks of the form, remain a desideratum. This paper will trace the use of sacred names within late Kabbalah, commencing with traditions found in the vast Lurianic corpus of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These traditions were systematized in two similar liturgical rites-in pre-Hasidic Poland and in eighteenth-century Jerusalem, where they remain the normative form of mystical prayer to this day. Each system adapts certain parts of the Lurianic use of names. The Polish system in particular makes use of other more elemental forms of Kabbalah yet retains an emphasis on the sacred name as the core of the practice.
A125
“We Shall Take No Account of the Soul”: An Assessment of the Cognitive Basis of Religion
Michael T. Bradley, Jr. ,Decatur, GA
During the past several years, the cognitive science of religion has emerged as a new subdiscipline within the academic study of religion. Proponents maintain that a “cognitive turn” has occurred and that the focus of religious studies has shifted as a result. The cognitive science of religion examines the ways in which the mind, structured by its evolutionary origins and propelled by its developmental plasticity, enables the construction and maintenance of religious ideas and practices. In this paper, I review several recent works in the cognitive science of religion. I then indicate both the strengths and weaknesses of this approach and suggest some possible future trajectories as the discipline continues to develop and mature over the years to come.
Religion, Off-Line Cognition, and the Virtues of Embeddedness
Matthew C. Day, Florida State University
The modern cognitive sciences began with the conviction that what happens inside the head is important. However, this emphasis on internal processes obscures the ways we structure and draw on the external environment for generating adaptive success. More specifically, the mainstream cognitivist tradition overestimates the brain’s natural computational prowess and underestimates the consequences of cognitive technology. The paper argues that recognizing our ability to expand the brain’s computational aptitude by “environmental off-loading” has two consequences: (1) It casts doubt on evolutionary psychology’s commitment to massive, innate, domain-specific modularity. The paper offers an alternative model of extended and embedded cognition that treats the context of human thought as both a domain of adaptive problems and a source of solutions; (2) It highlights the computational challenge of religious cognition by emphasizing its “off-line” qualities. The paper suggests that the gods might be “unthinkable” without the elaborate material culture associated with religious traditions.
Neuropsychology and Its Critics
Jonathon S. Feit, Boston University
“Neurotheology” is a new quasi-scientific hybrid discipline to which the biological sciences (particularly neurology and neuropsychology) and religious studies contribute equally, at least in theory. The field’s intention is to examine so-called “religious experiences” and ascertain whether there might be some part of the brain responsible for sensations so classified, or if there is some neural area that manifests increased activation during incidents described as religious, mystical, transcendent, etc. However, instead of progressing toward greater knowledge of its subject, neurotheological research has stagnated, but not before establishing parameters: “Reductionism” e.g., Michael Persinger; and “Religionism” e.g., Andrew Newberg and the late Eugene d’Aquili. This paper examines the contributions of each perspective (and their camps of followers) as well as their oversights, and then presents suggestions for future research, to lend the field some balance and hopefully stimulate the solution of its quandaries.
A126
Luther and Theosis: Deification in the Theology of Martin
Paul Lehninger, Wisconsin Lutheran College
Throughout his career, Martin Luther spoke of deification as an aspect of God’s redemption of mankind, and affirmed the Athanasian formula that God became man in order that man might be made God. This teaching of deification, or theosis, by Martin Luther became an issue especially in the last decade of the twentieth century among some Finnish and German theologians because of ecumenical dialogs held between Finnish Lutherans and representatives of the Orthodox Church in Russia. The question is posed in this paper as to how Luther dealt with the following issues: is deification accomplished by the human person’s participation in the essence of God, in a created grace, or in the energies of God; can the teaching of deification be reconciled with the doctrine of justification; and by what means is deification accomplished?
Poesis and Inversion: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sergei Bulgakov in Von Bathasar’s Dramatics of Salvation
Anthony D. Baker, University of Indianapolis
While Bulgakov features significantly in the von Balthasar’s Theo-Drama, his “kenosis of the Spirit” does not, resulting in a “trinitarian inversion”: Christ, in the economy, is dominated by passivity to the Spirit’s acting. The implication of this inversion is demonstrated in the earlier Aesthetik, where “seeing the form” unwittingly assumes a bifurcation of passive reception from active poesis. A more complete account of theosis (as receptive poesis) would emerge from a stricter adherence to Bulgakov, for whom Christ’s form is the church, and its availability for vision is tied to the history that transforms both seer and form.
The Idea of Theosis in Martin Luther’s Soteriology:
The Ecumenical Significance of a New Interpretation of Luther’s Theology of Salvation
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Fuller Theological Seminary, University of Helsinki
This presentation argues not only that the idea of theosis is one of the main images of salvation in Martin Luther’s theology of salvation, but also that the idea of union with God is the guiding soteriological motif in Luther. Justification, based on the idea of Christ’s real presence in the believer, is not contrary to deification but rather complementary. This leads to a new view of the relationship between faith and works as well as between faith and love. The argument is based on the New Perspective in Luther studies by the so-called Mannermaa School at the University of Helsinki.
The Concept of Theosis in Recent Research: The Need for a Clarification
Gösta Hallonsten, Catholic University of America
Comparisons between the Eastern concept of Theosis and possible Western counterparts have been prominent in recent research, especially with regard to Luther and Thomas Aquinas. A clarification is needed here on the usefulness of the concept of Theosis. The theme of deification or “the happy exchange” is clearly present in Latin theology. Other parts of the Eastern doctrine do not play the same role, however. This is especially true as to the role of the distinction between image and likeness in anthropology. A further problem regards the relation between God and creation as a basis for Theosis doctrine. Specifically this relates to the Palamite distinction between the Essence and Energies of God. Yet, on a more general level the question of different notions of participation or union with God has to be discussed here.
A127
Sexuality, Race and Politics: California’s 2000 Primary Election
Elizabeth Currans, University of California, Santa Barbara
This paper will address the relationship between Propositions 21 and 22 which appeared on the March 7, 2000 primary election ballot in the state of California. Proposition 22 was California’s version of the national “Defense of Marriage Act” signed into law by President Clinton in 1996. Proposition 21 addressed “Juvenile Crime.” This initiative was explicitly aimed at gang violence and provided harsh sentences for crimes considered gang related. The family is the entity designated to be at risk in arguments in favor of Proposition 21 and 22. In Proposition 21, racialized violence figures as a threat to the presumably white, middle-class heterosexual “family.” In Proposition 22, gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people are the threat to the “family” the law is meant to keep in check. These legal actions are excellent examples of how sexuality and race are defined in relation to each other.
Is Same-Sex Marriage a Must or a Bust? Lessons from the Intra-LBGT Community Debate about Civil and Religious Marriage
Marvin M. Ellison, Bangor Theological Seminary
Although same-sex marriage is intensely debated within the LBGT community, there is no disagreement that as long as heterosexual couples have a civil right to marry, that freedom should also be extended to same-sex couples. The disputes are located elsewhere, in terms of the institution of marriage, the role of the state in regulating sexual morality, and the goals of the LBGT movement. What are the implications for same-sex couples and LBGT families of recent feminist legal discourse that calls for the abolition of civil marriage? If marriage were to be defined primarily as a religious category, what insights might progressive religionists offer with respect to de-centering marriage and breaking with Christian marriage fundamentalism, the notion that sex is morally acceptable only within heterosexual, procreative marriage?
LGBT Rights and the Relativism of Human Rights
D.Ø. Endsjø, University of Oslo
The discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is in contradiction to human rights; this has been unequivocally established by the United Nations Human Rights Regime. In spite of this, there is a general tendency to exclude LGBT people from those groups who should be protected by human rights. The leading force behind this exclusion is represented by various religious movements. >From a human rights perspective, the most serious consequence, however, is not the rampant discrimination and many attacks against LGBT people. The exclusion of LGBT rights from the greater context of human rights where they rightly belong, means a relativism of the very concept of human rights. Once anyone accepts that there are certain groups that, due to certain religious or cultural restrictions do not qualify to be protected by human rights, the very universal principle of these rights is undermined.
Are Fetuses More Full-bodied than the Rest of Us? The Christian Right, the Court, and the Struggle for Human Rights in the U.S.
Beverly W. Harrison, Cedar Mountain, NC
This paper examines the intersections of Reproductive doctrine and Sexuality doctrine. The current trend of legal interpretation in the Court is against a broadening of standing of citizenship and the privileges thereto. While most people think that the U.S. has a strong tradition of rights, this is not so, and therein lies the problem. We are faced with the incoherence of current constitutional legal theory and the deep problem, under our system, of any claims or coherent doctrine involving bodies. This incoherence is a grave problem not only for gays and lesbians, but for any strategy to strengthen human rights. At this point in time, the strategic questions must be how to enhance human rights concretely and how to interlink the claims of marginal peoples of all sorts.
A128
The Confluence of Peace and Nonviolence in the Mystical Theology of Howard Thurman
Ridgeway Addison, Catholic University of America
As a Baptist minister, theologian, and “spiritual father” of the American civil rights movement, Howard Thurman (1900-1981) made significant contributions to the religious and ethical life of twentieth-century America. The most famous of his works, Jesus and the Disinherited (1949), deeply influenced the thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. King and other black leaders were particularly interested in Thurman’s treatment of nonviolence within a Christian perspective. In this paper, I will analyze the confluence of peace and nonviolence in Howard Thurman’s mystical theology. Particular emphasis will be given to Thurman’s notion of “whole-making” as related to mystical experience, particularly as this process occurs on the individual level as a prerequisite for peacemaking at the interpersonal/social levels. By focusing on Thurman’s mystical theology and its practical implications for his pastoral ministry in this context, my research will highlight how his mystical theology may open into a theology of peacemaking and nonviolence.
Simone Weil’s Radical Mysticism
Lissa McCullough, Muhlenberg College
Simone Weil declined to enter the Catholic church due to her objection to the church’s triumphalism and undue authoritarianism. Pursuing her own mystical and theological thinking, she conceived a radically unorthodox understanding of God’s relation to the world and to the human soul that she believed would purify theology of this triumphalism, as God is understood to reign not in power and glory, but in powerlessness--by means of suffering love. Weil’s radical mysticism centers on an unorthodox understanding of creation as a withdrawal of God. In order to create, it is necessary for God to undo God’s perfect unity and bring into existence something other than God: an infinite otherness, a “nothingness.” Given that creation is effected “from nothing,” we ourselves are made of nothing, and only when we consent to be nothing are we able to consent to the self-abnegation of God in creation.
Interspirituality and Unsaying: Apophatic Strategies for Departicularizing Christ and the Church in Current Roman Catholic Mystical Movements
Kenneth T. Rose, Christopher Newport University
The Trappist monk Thomas Keating adapted Zen and TM contemplative methods for use by Roman Catholics in the Centering Prayer movement. Now other Roman Catholic contemplatives are taking the methods and theories of Catholic mysticism out of their monastic and Christian context in order to create an “interspirituality” that has its source in Roman Catholicism. This paper will explore how this recent movement has begun to move beyond Christian particularism and to resituate Christian theology as pluralistic. This paper will argue that the Catholic interspirituality movement displaces Christian particularism by using the classic mystical theological strategy of apophatic theology--what Michael Sells calls “unsaying.” To test whether interspirituality’s apophaticism is in keeping with the Catholic apophatic tradition, I will apply the analysis of mystical theologies formulated by Denys Turner in The Darkness of God to interspirituality to determine whether it is guilty of substituting mere apophatic imagery for the apophatic dialectic.
Postmodern Mystical Healings
G. William Barnard, Southern Methodist University
This paper focuses on the centrality of mysticism in an alternative healing school in New York City. Visions, out-of-body journeys, otherworldly presences, ecstatic transports, and unitive mergers are an everyday occurrence in this school. Here is a mysticism that belongs to the twenty-first century, not the Middle Ages; a mysticism of people who could well live next door instead of in the cells and monasteries of hermits and monks; a mysticism that is neither overtly religious nor even vaguely traditional. This paper will begin with a brief outline of the historical underpinnings of this postmodern form of mysticism, then will go on to note its central belief systems and modes of praxis, and finally, will demonstrate the crucial connection that the healing school makes between mystical experiences and healing, indicating how this connection is relevant for a more complete understanding of other non-traditional forms of mysticism.
A129
A Phenomenology of Psyche, Self, and Soul: What Can We Learn from a Name?
Felicity Brock Kelcourse, Christian Theological Seminary
If the routinely accepted division of mind and body is suspect, distinctions between psyche, self and soul are even less verifiable in any objective sense. What I propose is that these distinctions, although ultimately arbitrary, are none the less useful ways of sorting out subjective phenomena that have a different “feel” to the person experiencing them. The definitions we use do matter since they serve epistemic purposes. In other words, naming the subtle differences between ways of knowing can itself advance the project of internal and interpersonal dialogue, promoting broader awareness of self and others.
A Winnicottian Transpersonal Psychology
Franz Aubrey Metcalf, The Forge Institute
I present a Winnicottian transpersonal psychology. The baseline of that psychology is first person evidence supporting the notion that the self itself functions as a transitional object. I use such evidence to illustrate how religious experiences of self-dissolution and mysticism further human development. The original transitional object eases the transition away from the infantile illusion of omnipotence to the newly created, relativized self. Similarly, meditators and others may eventually use that same self to ease the transition away from the very notion of independent existence. In doing so, they are using the self as a transitional object allowing a new, transpersonal area of experiencing.
To Never Wholly Die, Never to Fully Live: Death and Rebirth in the Emergence of Self in the Therapeutic Process
Marsha Hewitt, Trinity College
The paper will combine theoretical and clinical themes exploring the experience of the emergence of self and the barriers confronting this process in the psychotherapeutic context. By way of illustrating these themes, the paper will include a clinical case study of a woman whose struggle to become her/self continues to be predominantly mediated and expressed in the symbols, metaphors and language of death and rebirth.The paper will explore the internal dialectic of destruction of the self in the efforts to preserve the self, which characterize the process of dissociation. It will also explore those social and cultural forms of domination and submission that produce and sustain this kind of personality development, with specific but not exclusive reference to women’s experience. The regenerative aspects of “dying” to negative internal object ties in the rebirth that takes place in the emergence of the self will also be discussed.
Souls that Materialize: Implications of Judith Butler’s Psyche on the Christian Self
Wil Brant, Chicago Theological Seminary
This paper begins by laying out a scheme of the self that brings together Judith Butler’s views on the materialization of the psyche, performativity and the body with Foucault’s views on regulatory power, subjection, techniques of the self, and the soul. The second part of this paper will provide an overview on how this scheme operated in the formation of a Christian self as it relates to the religious soul of Christianity and the modern psyche of Psychology. This scheme of the self troubles notions that ideologically separate spiritual practices from secular practices and psychological/therapeutic practices from religious practices. This proposed scheme of the self is one of a post-secular self whose concerns are more focused on performative acts of a self who has an interrelated body and soul/psyche rather than on seeking to identify those concerns as being of the body in separation from the soul/psyche.
A130
Debunking the Myth of Platonic Dualism through a Consideration of Platonic Myth: Phaedrus 246a-256e
Jennifer Rapp, Stanford University
Dualistic characterizations of the Platonic account of embodiment erroneously represent his treatment of this issue. A consideration of his mythical account of the embodied soul (see Phaedrus 252a-256e) illustrates that alternate interpretive directions better express his account of embodied experience, especially with regard to the role of eros. Plato’s use of the genre of myth is constitutive of his philosophical account of embodiment and is not merely an element of style. Attending to this particular use of myth opens alternate interpretations of his account. The Platonic account need not entail a flight from humanity (see e.g. Nussbaum’s critique) but rather expresses the possibility for a transformed, more radically human, experience of embodied eros.
Imagination and Myth in Islamicate Neoplatonism
Aaron William Hughes, University of Calgary
The medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophers worked within an intellectual framework in which the only way to grasp something was to abstract a formal structure encased within a material substratum. Although knowledge is not about sensual particulars, the latter becomes necessary because they function as prolegomena to all understanding. Within this context, the divine world is taxonomically unique because it does not conform to the materiality of this world. The divine world is essentially closed to sense perception and, thus, intellection. The only way in which the individual can apprehend the divine world is by means of experiencing it, not just describing it in terms of something else. This is why the imagination is so important to the philosophical enterprise: It is ultimately responsible for the creation of images or symbols that capture the Divine’s ineffability. Imagination thus becomes the vehicle whereby the individual grasps that which exists without matter.
The Manifest Image: Revealing the Hidden in Halevi, Saadya, and Gabirol
Sarah Pessin, California State University, Fresno
Through analyses of the works of Judah Halevi (eleventh - twelfth century), Saadya (tenth - eleventh century) and Solomon Ibn Gabirol (eleventh century), this paper shows how apophasis leads to positive religious valuations of images, itself resulting in the reconceptualization of the Divine/human encounter in terms of Eros. In the case of Gabirol’s Neoplatonism, I argue, it is precisely the act of philosophical theorizing itself-and not only “prophecy” in some more narrow religious sense (as in Halevi and Saadya)-which becomes the imaginary space in and through which we encounter God. In this way, Gabirol represents what I show to be a unique Neoplatonic turning point in Jewish thought in which the spoken word itself becomes an imaginary means through which to encounter the Divine. For the Neoplatonist, I argue, the words used to create theory themselves become the imaginary “something” spoken to enable a momentary encounter with the divine “no-thing”.
Awakened to the World: Coleridge and the Imaginative Reading of Scripture
Stephen Edmondson, Virginia Theological Seminary
Christianity, for Coleridge, was congruent with the Christian platonic appropriation of Plato’s myth of the cave, effecting an “awful Recalling of the drowsed soul from the dreams and phantom world of sensuality to actual Reality.” But for Coleridge, this mission was incarnational-the awakened one turns not to a reality beyond the world, but rather perceives the living truth within it. This vision is manifest in the “myth” of Christian Scripture, which weaves spiritual truth into mundane reality. Imagination stands at the center of this enterprise. Scripture is an imaginative work, an weaving of the spiritual and material into a symbolic system, while we entire into its truthful vision only as we appropriate its imagining. Indeed, just as Scripture calls us to truth only in the mundane, so that truth is realized a Life and Will.
A131
From Miracles as Revelation to Miracles as Evidence: How the Enlightenment Shaped the Reformed Doctrine of Cessationism
John Perry, University of Notre Dame
The Reformed doctrine of the cessation of miracles provides a valuable case study for understanding Reformed theology’s relationship to Enlightenment thought. When Catholics demanded miracles of Calvin to validate the Reformation, his cessationist response treated miracles more clearly as evidence than was previously seen. Such a view of miracles only increases in significance during the Enlightenment. With the discovery of fixed laws of nature and with Locke’s evidentialist apologetics, miracles gain evidentiary value in the strong sense. Such developments in the understanding of miracles are at odds with certain aspects of Reformed thought. Epistemologically, this view is in tension with itself because its basis for accepting Scripture as revelation is eliminated by its skepticism of miracles in general. Ethically, such a view obscures how miracles can reveal God’s character as Healer and Liberator. Barth’s reminder that miracles do not (merely) confirm revelation, but are revelation, provides a helpful corrective.
Appealing at “The Bar of Common Sense”: Nathaniel Taylor, Reformed Theology, and the Scottish Enlightenment
Jason A. Nicholls, Redeemer Missionary Church
The dominating scholarly viewpoint judges Nathaniel Taylor as a rationalistic Arminianizer who, under the pervasive influence of the Scottish Enlightenment, sacrificed Reformed orthodoxy by ameliorating Calvinism so as to render it compatible with an emergent democratic ethos. This paper takes issue with this century-long interpretive trend by reexamining what is alleged as Taylor’s most dominating philosophical influence-Scottish Common Sense philosophy. In short, many scholars portray Taylor as one who interpreted all doctrine through the “decisive norm” of Common Sense. By way of a corrective, I utilize a key article by Taylor that demonstrates his selectivity in using Common Sense. In sum, he was willing to lay it aside in instances where it threatened to contradict Reformed doctrine. This fact, in conjunction with other differences between Taylor’s thought and that of the Scots, should lead us to modify misinterpretations of Taylor that would relegate his theology as an Enlightenment byproduct.
Jacques Ellul as Critic and Heir of the Enlightenment
Virginia W. Landgraf, Princeton Theological Seminary
French Reformed theologian, sociologist, and historian Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) was critic and heir of the Enlightenment. Ellul traces contemporary technical excess to distortions of reason in the Enlightenment: the reduction of reason to the abstractly objective, a doctrine of progress based on application of this rationality, the eventual exaltation of technical efficacy as an end in itself, and the growth of structures of technical power closed to human intervention. Yet Ellul’s interpretations of the Reformed doctrines of God’s sovereignty, finitum non capax infiniti, and the uses of the law owe a debt to Enlightenment affirmations of the secularity of the world. God gets what God wants by giving the world a degree of autonomy. Ellul’s doctrine of inherent human covetousness incorporates Kant’s belief that our mind shapes our perceptions of reality. Societal vitality, an analogue to civil righteousness, depends on the secularity of public institutions.
I and We: A Reformed Pattern to Human Freedom
Gregory W. Love, San Francisco Theological Seminary
Enlightenment thinkers defined freedom as freedom from coercion. A free act was one in which the individual was the sole originator of her action. Along with differences in their criticisms of this view and frameworks for understanding freedom, a pattern emerges in Reformed responses to the Enlightenment view, exemplified in four twentieth century and contemporary theologians’ works. Karl Barth, Michael Welker, Anna Case-Winters and John de Gruchy each reject determinately the Enlightenment understanding of freedom as based in an absolute and individualistic view of the will. They reframe human freedom within a relational ontology and a conception of time which includes a (in some fashion) determinate end. Nevertheless, each ultimately embraces rather than repudiates a central motif of the Enlightenment view: that our willing and acting emerge from an internal “wellspring” of agency that is genuinely our own. From this, Enlightenment emphases on human choice, responsibility and individuality remain intact.
A132
PBS at the Jabbok
Kerry Wynn, Southeast Missouri State University
Bill Moyers’s ten-part PBS series, Genesis, broke on the scene in 1996 showing that it is possible to have an intelligent and engaging discussion about sacred texts within the public forum. This paper will focus on the ninth program, “God Wrestling,” and Genesis 32:23-33. The treatment of disability in the PBS broadcast will be compared to the biblical text in order to identify the able-bodied or “normate” bias held by the discussion group. Removing the normate hermeneutic, it will be shown that the disabling act is a cosmic action intrinsic to the creation of the people of Israel linked directly to the act of naming. The paper will examine how Jacob’s disability is actualized through the observance of the halakhah set forth in Genesis 32:33 and thus plays an ongoing role in the identity and continuing existence of the people of Israel.
Images of Disability in Hebrew Prophetic Literature
Rebecca M. Raphael, Southwest Texas State University
Biblical prophetic literature is rich in the language of disability and illness. This paper examines the language of disability in the pre-Exilic and Exilic prophets. Four categories can be discerned: divine disability, audience disability, prophetic disability, and audience healing. Whether sickness and disability are valued or devalued depends on several factors: who has the disability, whether it is intentional or involuntary, and whether it represents an inner condition or an outer one. When the prophet is condemning his audience, images of disability function as metaphors of failed communication. In the passages of future reconciliation, there is a shift from metaphoric to literal use of disability and illness. I evaluate the philological foundations for either reading, and also the implications both readings have for disabled persons. I consider the historical context of these prophets and suggest that the corporate traumas of invasion and exile motivate the transposition to individual physical trauma.
Physically Challenged, Spiritually Lost? Examining the Blind in the Gospel of John
Jennifer Koosed, Albright College, and Darla Schumm, Hollins University
This paper argues that the metaphorical and literal depictions of broken bodies in the Gospel of John perpetuate a situation where persons with disabilities are excluded from full membership within the Christian community. Focusing on the trope of blindness, as exemplified in chapter 9, I examine how John’s use of double entendre bind two meanings of blindness together -- blindness as a physical state (literal and mundane meaning) and blindness as spiritual ignorance or faithlessness (metaphorical and cosmic meaning). My analysis entails a three-fold approach. First, I examine the complex relationship between broken bodies and whole bodies in the healing narratives of the Gospel of John. Second, I discuss the implications of this narrative for the contemporary Christian community. Finally, I conclude by situating this language within a network of exclusionary metaphors that link spiritual perfection with physical perfection.
A133
Creating Violence in Colonial Brazil: Imagining Encounters with Amazons and Cannibals
Carole A. Myscofski, Illinois Wesleyan University
The European reports of their first encounters with native Brazilians in general, and women in particular, reveal their entrenched expectations for the colonial enterprise. As the explorers and missionaries struggled to render alien places and beings comprehensible, they selected motifs from the European imaginary to fix and manipulate the alterity of America’s inhabitants, portraying them as first compliant, but later resistant to the imperial powers. This study will focus on the increasingly violent images of native Brazilian women as symbolic of Portuguese and Spanish attitudes, and consider the role of religious writing in the justification of violence in the colonial setting.
Principalities and Powers: French and Spanish Violence in Florida as Holy Warfare
Jeffrey Mallinson, Union College, KY
Recent research has argued that the original purpose of sixteenth-century French settlement in Florida was never to provide a Huguenot refuge. Without rejecting this opinion, this paper will arge that, at least by 1565, the main participants--Pedro Menéndez, Francisco Mendoza Grajales, Jean Ribault, and the Huguenot colonists--conceived their actions in this interesting chain of events as battles for the global relevance of their confessional traditions. I will argue that, while politics and wealth were always important motivations for French and Spanish exploits, defense of or opposition to the ideology of the Treaty of Tordesillas cannot be underestimated. Granted, several political complications led to the conflicts of the 1560s, however, it seems unlikely that politics alone can explain why the leaders chose to massacre opponents, rather than treat them as prisoners of war, especially when Spain and France seeking to avoid open warfare.
The Iconography of Suffering: Indigenous Perspectives on Christian Self-Inflicted Violence and the Brutality of the Crucifix in Colonial Mexico
Jennifer S. Hughes, Graduate Theological Union
Devotion to graphic and violent images of the crucified Christ pre-date and perhaps at times even surpassed devotion to images of the Virgin in colonial Mexico. Yet, scholarly attention has focused almost exclusively on less troubling image of the Mexican Mother of God. This paper compliments current reflections on the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe by exploring the origins and significance of the cult of the crucified Christ among poor and marginalized Latin Americans. Based on original historical research, this paper offers a case study of the relationship between a sixteenth-century penitential hermit, Antonio Roa, and an indigenous community in central Mexico united in devotion to a miraculous and particularly brutal image of Christ crucified. Engaging in an extreme practice of physical self-discipline, Roa transforms himself into a sort of living crucifix, a tableau vivant, modeling and interpreting for the “Indians” the profound nature of Christ’s suffering.
Ahora la Luz: Transnational Gangs, Violence, and Religion
Lois Lorentzen, University of San Francisco
This paper analyzes the macro-context, including economic and political conditions which form the larger world in which gangs operate; the transnational character of gang activity; conditions shaping migrant life which make gangs an attractive and understandable option for first and second generation migrant youth; tattoo symbolism; and the role of religion in encouraging youth to leave gangs. The paper is based on three years of fieldwork at a tattoo removal program in San Francisco, CA, and in San Salvador, El Salvador.
A134
Exploring Tillich’s Frontier: Logos in History for History of Religions
Pia Altieri, The University of Chicago
Tillich’s response to the question posed in the abstract for this session is concrete universalism. It intersects systematic theology with history of religions. For Tillich, revelation is historical - and diverse. And “universally human.” As such, revelation is not bound to any historical community’s experience or interpretation of it. But herein lies the paradox: revelation as understood (and critiqued) by oneself and/or one’s community is the launching point for bridge-building dialogue and praxis. Indeed, one is standing at the frontier of one’s truths, looking through and beyond them, moving toward one’s encounters with others. This self-conscious movement and other-conscious decision identifies and expands essential limits. It creates fruitful space for peace. Bridging boundaries and moving between them explores the freedom of concrete expressions, the creativity of universal frontiers and the depth of cultural and human unity. This is the “peace of the comprehensive”: the logos in history.
The Boundaries of Agape: Resources in Paul Tillich for a Post-Modern World
Darlene Fozard Weaver, Villanova University
Tillich’s understanding agape accounts for the possibility of conversation across boundaries and provides a criterion for conducting it. Agape does the former because it captures the moral connection between self and other; for Tillich agape accomplishes the moral act of establishing oneself as a person in a community of persons. Importantly, the other person comprises a limit to attempts to constitute oneself and to interpret the world. This means agape functions as a criterion for conducting conversation across boundaries. Agape is creatively just,
capable of adapting itself to the concrete demands of a changing world; yet this adaptation is always accountable to the unconditional demand to love in a manner that does justice to the other. Thus, the principle of agape illuminates Tillich’s own attempts to balance particularity and claims to universality in ways that make him a nice bridge between modernity and post-modernity.
Original Grace, Not Destructive Grace: A Feminist Appropriation of Paul Tillich’s Notion of Acceptance
Rachel Sophia Baard, Princeton Theological Seminary
Feminist critics have argued that Paul Tillich’s doctrine of justification aggravates passive tendencies in women, and have called for a stronger affirmation of female agency in understandings of the divine-human “relationship.” But women’s problems cannot be reduced to “passivity”: being overworked, shouldering the responsibility for relationships, and constantly told that they are not acceptable, women do not need a soteriology that calls for “performance” without some basis for their being accepted for themselves. This paper argues that, when Tillich’s doctrine of justification is seen in relation to his understanding of God as the Ground of Being, and of sin in terms of estrangement that is overcome by acceptance, the sado-masochistic tendencies in the Protestant doctrine of justification are overcome. Then grace is not “destructive,” but “original,” that which declares women acceptable humanity and thus enables free female agency that is not aimed at “pleasing” God or patriarchal authority figures.
“Icons” and “Artifacts”: Tillich on Religion and Culture
David S. Blix, Wabash College
Tillich says that religion provides the substance of culture, and that culture provides the form of religion. Is he right? I test his idea by using it to adjudicate two cases in which the relation between religion and culture is contested. One is the Case of the Confucian Reformers in the late-nineteenth-century, who, distinguishing between the “substance” of cultural practices and their “use,” tried to weld parts of Western culture onto Chinese culture and failed. The other case is the Case of the Silk Road Archaeologists in the early twentieth century, who either “rescued” or “stole” cultural treasures from western China, depending on how you distinguish between “religious icon” and “cultural artifact.” I conclude that Tillich is half right. He doesn’t distinguish clearly between either “substance” and “use,” or “icon” and “artifact,” and so doesn’t let us do a good job of describing the “essence” of either culture or religion.
A135
D. F. Strauss’ Life of Jesus, F. C. Baur, and Modern Historical Consciousness
Darrell Jodock, Gustavus Adolphus College
The publication in 1835 of Strauss’ Life of Jesus produced a whirlwind of controversy. Although Strauss regarded several features of the Gospel accounts as historical, these received little attention. The book left many with the impression that nothing historical remained. Strauss’ critique added the element of historical myth and arrived at conclusions more radical than his predecessors did, but he remained a transition figure, whose work prompted others to move beyond his own. Strauss expected his teacher, Ferdinand Christian Baur, to approve what he had done. Baur did defend Strauss against dismissal from his teaching post, but also criticized him for ignoring the distinctive character and context of each Gospel. If “modern historical consciousness” includes not only a developmentalist understanding of the past but also attention to when, where, and why a document was written, Baur’s response was more indicative of modern historical consciousness than was Strauss’ Life of Jesus.
Newman and Acton on Papal Infallibility: Modern Historical Consciousness and Theology
Kenneth L. Parker, St Louis University
John Cardinal Newman and Lord Acton were among the best minds of the nineteenth-century English Catholic Church. Both opposed the formal definition of papal infallibility prior to the first Vatican Council and used their considerable skills as historians to justify their positions. Yet their historiographical approaches reveal very different understandings of the relationship between history and theology. This paper explores these approaches and their implications for the burgeoning nineteenth-century field of historical theology among Catholic intellectuals.
A136
Reading Women Out of the Text: Breaking the Hermeneutical Circle of Confucian Exegesis
Vivian-Lee Nyitray, University of California, Riverside
From the Han dynasty forward, underlying scholarly gender anxiety and the increasing overlay of political allegoresis combined to make it difficult to accurately see or hear women in the poems of the Book of Odes [Shujing]. Centuries of interpretation set aside some of the most strenuous attempts at allegoresis, but in order to find women-rather than essentialized “woman”-traditional interpretive structures must be examined carefully. Although the Odes’ love songs are now read routinely as erotic poetry, Confucian and Chinese literary studies of the texts continue to encourage androcentric exegesis. Prescriptive readings inform the scholarly imagination, and modern studies ironically reinscribe traditional exegetical aims. In this paper, I first review the historical process whereby women were rendered invisible or inaudible. Then, using the work of both Eske Mollgaard and Mary Daly, I will illustrate grammatical and other exegetical techniques for moving to break the Confucian hermeneutical circle.
Manhood in the Analects
Paul Rakita Goldin, University of Pennsylvania
Recent interest in gender in early China has resulted in several publications that problematize the Confucian view of women. By contrast, comparatively little has been written on Confucian ideas of manhood. If, as some scholars charge, Confucius deprecates women and excludes them from the project of self-cultivation, then it is worthwhile to ask how Confucius conceives of the ideal man. Does this paragon exhibit characteristics that women, by their nature, cannot share? The ideal man of the Analects cultivates and displays the following virtues: honesty, integrity, industry, decorum, filial piety, humility, and a commitment to universal moral transformation. It is noteworthy that not one of these virtues is conventionally perceived as particularly masculine-even in the cultural context of early China. Confucianism engages women and men equally inasmuch as women and men can equally attain the moral qualities that Confucians have always admired.
What Is Distinctive about Confucian Feminism?
Pauline C. Lee, Santa Clara University
In recent scholarship on Confucianism, a number of scholars have argued for the compatibility of Confucianism and feminism. In my paper, I argue for the existence of a feminism within the Confucian tradition. I first examine the works of the Ming Neo-Confucian Li Zhi (1527-1602) and identify the ways in which he is a feminist. Following, I suggest that distinctive to Li’s feminism is a focus on the Confucian project of self cultivation as a means to attaining gender equality. For Li, self cultivation involves, for example, reading of the Confucian classics, meditation, and writing. In order to bring out the unique aspects of self cultivation as a feminist tool, I compare Li’s ideas with those of contemporary cultural feminist Mary Daly.
Shame and Sex in Early Confucian Ethics
Jane Geaney, University of Richmond
In response to allegations that China is a “shame culture,” scholars of Confucian ethics have made use of studies in psychology, anthropology, and philosophy that present shame in a more favorable light. These studies contend that shame involves internalization of social moral codes. By adapting these new internal models of shame, Confucian ethicists have reinterpreted the emphasis on shame in early Confucianism. The new understanding of internal shame features illustrations of shame that seem to have no counterpart in early Confucian texts. The sinological adaptation of these models inadvertently calls attention to the striking absence of such prominent shame-metaphors as being seen, particularly with genitals exposed. Is this, then, the same emotion? This paper examines the shame vocabulary in the early Confucian texts in light of the sexual metaphors underlying the new internal models of shame. Ultimately, it proposes a new formula for understanding the shame vocabulary in early Confucianism.
A228
The Photographic Medium: The Specular Production of Religious and Racial Selves in Early American Pentecostalism
Matthew S. Waggoner, University of California, Santa Cruz
Early American Pentecostalism has been called a “radically inclusive spiritual fellowship in which race and gender discrimination virtually disappeared” (Cox 1995:17). Since the 1970s, black historians challenged white Pentecostalism’s multicultural thesis, insisting, “whites came to an already black Azusa Street revival” (Lovett 1975:136). These discrepant claims converge in a photograph of William Seymour-the black minister who founded Pentecostalism’s first revival mission (1906)-posing with four white, itinerant leaders of the movement. Here, in the contestation of meanings that has taken the scene from Azusa Street, one glimpses the urgency of the image to the production of history described by Walter Benjamin: “The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized” (1968:255).
Our Good Religion: Constructing Deviant Religion in the Finnish Media
Titus Hjelm, University of Helsinki
“Every version of an “other”… is also the construction of the “self” wrote James Clifford in his Writing Culture (1986). With Clifford’s idea as a guideline, this paper analyzes the constructions of religion and religiosity in Finnish media. Using a discourse analytical framework, I aim to present an array of public constructions where certain kinds of religion or religiosity are seen as problematic or deviant. Looking at the arguments and rhetoric used in constructions of “bad religion”, the paper also illustrates what the public image of a “good” religion in Finland is. As a result of this analysis, I present a typology of discourses used in labelling religion as deviant and discuss its applicability in global contexts.
No Longer Sitting on the Curb: Virtual Heroes and Re-emerging Hagiography in Post-September 11 Media/Religion
Claudia Schippert, University of Central Florida
Contrary to Edelstein’s claim in 1996 that Everybody is Sitting on the Curb: How and Why America’s Heroes Disappeared, contemporary American culture has produced/proclaimed more heroes than we can count. In addition, occasional calls for sainthood are appearing. This paper will examine the recent call - in American news media or on the Internet - for the canonisation of Mychal Judge, NYC Fire Department chaplain. What does the shift in the “hero”-category tell us about American culture - what do we learn about American popular religion when exploring the motivations/representations involved in the “Saint Mychal”-campaign? Is this a shifting genuine religiosity? An example of the ongoing commercialisation of religion (and American Catholicism), as the internet-giftshop would suggest? Is “Saint Mychal” about re-emerging heroic Christian masculinity? Or is something else going on in a nation that desperately tries to come to grips with meanings of nation, justice, and masculinity?
www.vatican.va: The Encoded Ecclesiology of the Vatican Website
Brian Flanagan, Boston College
The paper analyzes the Vatican website as an ecclesiological text in which a particular understanding of the papacy is encoded and presented. It begins with methodological reflections on the requirements of critical website analysis. Drawing upon Turner’s anthropological studies of the phenomenon of pilgrimage, the paper will outline some basic principles for a “hermeneutics of the web.” It will then apply those principles to decode the ecclesiology found in the content and particularly in the “form” of the site, that is, in the particular tropes available to the html programmer in juxtaposing text, symbols, and links in a theologically and rhetorically effective manner. It argues that the website presents and promotes a complex argument for the centrality of the papacy in Roman Catholic ecclesiology.
A138
Publishing in AAR/OUP Series
Cynthia Read, Oxford University Press, Presiding
Kimberly Rae Connor, University of San Francisco
Mark Csikszentmihalyi, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Susan E. Henking, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Jacob Kinnard, College of William and Mary
James Wetzel, Colgate University
The AAR publishes five books series with Oxford University Press: Academy; Cultural Criticism; Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion; Teaching Religious Studies; and Texts and Translations. This forum provides an opportunity to become familiar with the five series and to meet series editors. Those attending will be able to determine if their current or proposed book project might fit into one of the series, and to learn the steps needed to submit a book proposal.
A139
Panel: Women, Religion, and Global Conflict
Janet R. Jakobsen, Barnard College, Presiding
Loretta Ross, Center for Human Rights Education
Patricia Martinez, University of Malaya
Ziba Mir-Housseini, University of London
Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
No issue is more pressing in today’s world than that of global conflict, and the question of the role that religion plays in contemporary conflicts is much debated. Analysis of the issues from the perspective of women is less frequent, however. Women are increasingly involved in global conflict as both combatants and casualties. Feminist perspectives on global conflict also provide important alternatives to those offered by mainstream media. Feminist scholars have given a great deal of thought to violence and to possible responses to violence and have developed ways out of the cycle in which each act of violence merely leads to a new intensified act. This special topics forum provides a unique opportunity to hear from women around the world on this important topic. Panelists from various areas of the world will come together with AAR members and Atlanta human rights activists to discuss the causes of global conflict, the role of religion in current conflicts, the implications for women, and possibilities for conflict resolution.
A140
Honoring African-American Experience in Teaching about Islam
Edward E. Curtis, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Honoring African-American experience in teaching about Islam means telling a more racially inclusive story of Islamic history and religion. Citing American Muslim newspapers, oral history interviews, and comic strips, this presentation will offer concrete ideas to specialists and non-specialists alike for incorporating African-American Muslim voices into any introduction to Islam. Emphasis will be placed on African-American Muslim interpretations of Islamic history, including the classical age of Islam and Islam’s expansion into Africa. In addition, the political implications of teaching a more racially inclusive Islam in the contemporary United States will be explored.
"This Little Light of Mine" and Other Subversive Texts and Strategies
Shelley C. Wiley, Concordia College, Moorhead
Teaching the Black Church and other African Caribbean traditions in a predominantly Scandinavian-American college community is a challenge. Effective strategies include using films and personal narratives about slavery to bring the history of African Americans alive, requiring readings that connect slavery to both a profound sense of community as well as to racism, and singing the spirituals as we explore the rich layers of meaning encoded in them. The African American religious traditions come alive in the context of their histories, and students not only learn about these traditions, they develop respect for the strength of the slaves and the many religions with roots in their lives and communities, and they begin to critique their own religious traditions in light of justice and hope and respect for all people.
Academic Teaching and the Study of Native American Religion(s): Teaching with and for Respect
Pamela Owens, University Nebraska, Omaha
Many Religion departments are reporting that their course in “Native American Religion,” has become the most popular elective they offer. Departments with no one to teach such a course are wondering how to add it to their offerings. Using an interactive approach, this presentation will engage both philosophical and practical issues of teaching “the other” as those issues arise in teaching Native American Religion. It will offer practical suggestions for devising a course in Native American Religion, even if one is not an expert. It will recommend that persons teaching Native American Religion courses engage four interrelated categories crucial for understanding contemporary issues in Native American spirituality: 1. Identity and Respect, 2. Land, Creation, and Origins, 3. Elders, Ceremony, Medicine, and Healing, 4. Power and Resistance. Finally the paper will show that the goal of student transformation necessarily accompanies goals of content and analysis in teaching Native American Religion.
Playing Buddha Golf: Pedagogy and Perspective
Frederick E. Detwiler, Adrian College
Teaching courses in religion requires sensitivity to the perspective of the tradition being addressed. In a team-taught upper-level course in Asian religions, we developed a course structure that attempted to move the students toward the native’s point of view. The course structure required students to present their learning in collaborative group projects that engaged a number of different learning styles. Student groups were responsible for producing museum rooms and a final musuem project that presented the materials of the course in a way that was sensitive to the perspective of the “other.” We also developed assessment strategies that reflected the perspective of the tradition under consideration. The result has been that students have exhibited a great deal of creativity and that our assessment of student projects also serves as a pedagogical device.
Pedagogical Dialogue: The Pesantren Tradition of Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Florian Pohl, Temple University
A vital issue in programs for teaching religion in culturally and religiously diverse classroom settings is the question of how different religions can be represented accurately and authentically. With teaching methods often limited to “western,” Christian concepts of religious education, the search for a wider range of methods more adequately fit for teaching and learning different religions, and thereby giving justice to the individuality of each religious tradition, is imperative. Religion is studied more pervasively in Indonesia than in any other country in the world. Among Indonesia’s educational institutions the Islamic pesantren provide religious instruction to millions of students throughout the country. By entering into a pedagogical dialogue about curricular content and didactic approaches, the presentation draws conclusions about the applicability in the North American college classroom of those instructional foundations upon which Muslims themselves base their own communities’ religious education.
A141
Facing Evil: The Parable of the Ring in the Hands of Abraham Abulafia and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Barbara E. Galli, McGill University
Since the Middle Ages, and recounted most often in the form of a parable, the tale of the ring has appeared with different twists and emphases in various versions, cultures, and languages. It has attracted some of the finest poetic writers, including Dante and Boccaccio. Three rings symbolize, on the one hand, the three religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and on the other, the possibilities of knowing truth as monotheistically understood. The focus will be on the version by the medieval kabbalist, Abraham Abulafia (1240-c.1291), in his work Or ha-Sekhel (Light of the Intellect), composed within the mystical mindset of a logic of coincidences of opposites, and on the version offered by Lessing (1729-1781), who was likewise addressing perceived evils in his contemporary intellectual and historical climate.
Ivan’s Rebellion: Love and the Excess of Evil
Eric Boynton, Allegheny College
I propose to explore the enigma of evil and the question of theodicy in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brother’s Karamazov, specifically in the single chapter titled “Rebellion.” I will read this chapter and Ivan Karamazov’s biting criticism of theodicy through the interpretive lens of post-Holocaust philosophical reflection on evil. Four themes will guide my reading: the “intentionality of evil,” the “end of theodicy,” the “excess of evil,” and the “command to respond to evil as transcendent.” The work of Emmanuel Levinas will supply my basic stance toward Ivan’s argument, but my reading will also employ the insights of Hans Jonas, Hannah Arendt, and retrieve Sigmund Freud’s analysis of mourning.
Comic Theodicies: Laughter and Divine Responsibility in Modern Literature
Anita Houck, Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame
If we define the comedy by its happy ending, we can find the comic in any theodicy that justifies present suffering by the promise of a future reward. But the comic is defined also by laughter, and it is that aspect of the comic that this paper will examine. By portraying the divine as laughing or laughable, literary works can offer responses to the problem of human suffering and divine responsibility. In works of Mark Twain, Isak Dinesen, Archibald MacLeish, and Anne Sexton, laughter doesn’t strive to answer what reason can’t resolve, but instead offers an image of what it means to live, both critically and affirmingly, within that irresolvable tension.
Reading the Letters and Journals: Virginia Woolf’s “Poetics of Reality”
Alyda Faber, Atlantic School of Theology
“Life is of a hardness that still fairly terrifies me” (Woolf 1 March 1937). In this essay, I place Virginia Woolf’s sensuous reckoning with negativity and beauty next to philosophical theologies (like Tyler Roberts’ Contesting Spirit and the late Charles Winquist’s Desiring Theology) to ask about the powers and limits of language to express the being-of-things-as-they-are. I call Woolf’s affirmation of all that life is a “poetics of reality.” Such a poetics suggests possibilities for theological language that finds its nerves in the myriad pathways of human flesh. It means thinking human facts, naming them, forming fictions and metaphors around them, and in these acts, somehow transfiguring them. Or, as Woolf tells her friend Ethel Sands, “Facts are what I like; but fiction is like praying, no body should listen; it relieves the soul” (24 April 1924).
A142
The Disappearance of Women in World Religions Textbooks
Carol S. Anderson, Kalamazoo College
The last decades of the twentieth century saw a brief rise in the presence of women’s experiences and religious lives in world religions textbooks. Since the 1990s, however, with one notable exception, the presence of women in such textbooks has been on the decline. After documenting this phenomenon, I raise several questions about this fact: first, what is the goal of such a textbook? Second, should we try to incorporate women’s religious lives into a course that would use such a text? Third, what resources do we have in the genre of “women and religion” texts? Finally, I explore the methodological questions raised about the ways in which “religions” are generally characterized as male-dominated.
Shinto in World Religions Textbooks
Mark Wheeler MacWilliams, St. Lawrence University
I will focus on the following issues: First, why is “Shinto” included in world religions surveys? It is not at all obvious why Shinto, found only in the archipelago of Japan with its small population would end up in a text like Morre’s with the likes of the religions of India, Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria, or Fisher’s Living Religions. Second, how does Morre’s characterization of Shinto compare with the way it is presented in contemporary textbooks like Living Religions? Third, what does the history of Shinto as a survey category reveal about the usefulness of world religions textbooks for teaching about religions?
The Quest for a Balanced Representation of South Asian Religions in World Religions Textbooks
Selva Raj, Albion College
From Huston Smith’s World Religions textbook that focuses almost exclusively on religious ideas and beliefs to the more recent Oxtoby’s World Religions that, despite its welcome section on women and women’s rituals, the discussion of South Asian religions has been lop-sided. Most world religion textbooks accord a preferential treatment to the elite Sanskritic traditions of Hinduism. The non-Sankritic popular Hinduism that defines and guides the religiosity of the vast majority of Hindus is sorely neglected. Furthermore, almost all texts limit the study of South Asian religions to Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. Equally neglected in textbooks are the minority religious traditions of South Asia such as South Asian Christianity (elite and popular) and South Asian Islam. My paper will reflect on the text and sub-text of this intellectual bias and its theoretical implications and argue for a balanced treatment of majority and minority traditions in their elite and popular manifestations.
World Religions and the Miscellaneous Category
Kay A. Read, DePaul University
Historically, the category of “world” religions grew up in contradistinction to a wide range of very diverse religious traditions all lumped together under one category labeled “primitive.” This unfortunate past raises major difficulties for the many of us who teach classes on world religions. First, I will summarize the colonialist history behind the “primitive” category. Second, I will consider recent attempts to re-habilitate the category with alternative names such as “primal,” “tribal,” “native,” or “indigenous.” I will argue that such efforts do little to change the essentialist nature of the category itself, which remains mired in its colonialist heritage. Finally, using my own area specialty of Aztec studies as a case study, I will raise some key questions for discussion: Where do we go from here? Is it possible to teach world religions responsibly? If so, how? If not, with what do we replace our popular world religions classes?
Revisiting the Question of “Religion” in the World Religions Textbook
Joanne Punzo Waghorne, Syracuse University
The irony remains: the most contentious and perplexing issues of our field end up at this introductory level reduced to a few pages in our world religions textbooks and then are lost amid the “isms” or the wilds of an (often imaginary) world map of the world’s religions. The very choice of religions to include or exclude and the language used to describe the subject in question, comes within a world of assumptions about the nature of religion/s. Rather than challenging the student-readers many textbooks end up playing to their own preconceived notions or worse enforcing assumptions long discarded in our major theoretical work. I will review a few of our most popular world religions texts with an eye to this problematic of comparison and definition. Our courses on religion/s in a global context remain important because of, not in spite of, their theoretical challenges.
Creating a World Religions Text for the Twenty-First Century
Ross Miller, Prentice Hall/Pearson Higher Education, and Melanie White, London, UK
Commissioning and producing a world religions textbook for use by students at the beginning of the twenty-first century is a daunting task. Religion is not a museum piece but a vibrant and evolving force in the lives of many people around the world. Producing a book which captures this “force” by exploring the many aspects of the world’s religions from historical development and doctrine to contemporary beliefs and practices is a stimulating challenge. Current debates over the nature and study of religion, concerns about the approach and coverage, and the need to present material in a student-oriented way all color the production of any new text. Here we will review key aspects of publishing for the world religions market: the importance of market research, the commissioning process, developing the text to meet the needs of the market, devising pedagogy, using new media to enhance the text and aid student understanding.
The Forgotten South: African Religions in World Religions Textbooks
Robert M. Baum, Iowa State University
While African religions have figured prominently in the development of theories about religion, from Charles de Brosses and his invention of fetishism, to Victor Turner’s concept of communitas, African religions are either ignored altogether, lumped together with other “primal” religions, or given brief treatment at the beginning of world religion textbooks. After a brief discussion of the importance of African religions in the comparative study of religions, this paper will explore the representation of African religions in a representative sample (20) of world religions texts. Then, it will proceed to analyze the assumptions underlying such representations. It will conclude with an analysis of their consequences for the way we teach world religions and the way we represent Africa in our field of comparative religions.
A143
Religious, Social and Political Conflict in a Small Town in Japan
Dorothea Magdalena Filus, University of Tokyo
This paper, based on field research in the Japanese town of Sotome, analyzes the conflicts between denominations of Buddhism, Catholicism and Hidden Christianity. The area had been christianized in the sixteenth century yet after the prohibition of Christianity in 1614, its people were forced to convert to Buddhism. However, Christianity has survived underground in Sotome until the present day. The violent history of Christianity in Japan is often blamed on Christian doctrines and Western imperialism. This paper argues that Christianity is not the only religion which has been involved in conflict with the state and other religions; all religions which have preached monopraxis (and thereby rejected assimilation into existing matrices) have been persecuted in Japan. Interestingly Sotome is a place where followers of four monopraxis religions now coexist. The paper will examine how said conflicts, and corresponding modes of resolution, have behind them a complex of political and economic causes.
Strategies for Resolving Christian Conflicts in Early Modern Japan
Ikuo Higashibaba, Tenri University
“Conflict” is perhaps a common topic in the history of Christianity in early modern Japan, when number of religious, social, and political disputes developed concerning the Church. However, this issue has not been fully explored. A salient question remains to be explored: How did Christianity solve these conflicts to succeed in evangelization of the Japanese and flourish in the country? This paper attempts to explore Christian strategies taken by European missionaries and Japanese followers. Choosing specific examples broadly from such sources as missionaries” reports and the writings by Japanese inquisitors, it will demonstrate a structured process in which conflicts were solved. It will particularly stress the significance of the roles played by native followers, who skillfully incorporating disaccording religious elements into their Christian system of belief and practice.
The Second Coming of Christ Movement: A Discourse on Salvation and Rationality in Modern Japan
Mira Sonntag, University of Tokyo
At the height of the government’s efforts in the 1910s to champion rationality, alternative movements began to spring up in Japan to explore more spiritual ways of living. One such movement was the Second Coming of Christ Movement of 1918-19, established as an interdenominational lecture series by three Japanese Christians: Uchimura Kanzo, Nakada Juji, and Kimura Seimatsu. This short-lived movement was nevertheless one of the most successful Christian movements in Japanese history. By focusing on why and for what purpose the evangelists chose to preach their beliefs rather than on a theological analysis of their speeches, we will be able to see that it was so successful because it touched upon urgent issues of the intellectual climate of the time. Such analysis of the lectures and articles as speech acts will reveal their roles in this unleashed discourse on the relationship between salvation and rationality.
A144
Converts in a Strange Land: Catholic missions in North Carolina under Bishop Vincent S. Waters, 1945-1974
Elesha Coffman, Duke University
Upon becoming bishop of North Carolina, Vincent S. Waters clearly stated that it was his goal to “make every North Carolinian a Roman Catholic.” It was not always clear how his policy decisions related to that goal. In the early 1950s, Waters earned approbation from progressives for racially integrating his parishes. Two decades later, in 1971, he became the first American bishop to order all female religious in his diocese to return to the habit. On the surface, the two headline-making decisions seem incongruous. Certainly, the bishop’s apparent shift had much to do with upheavals in American Catholicism. A focus on the upheavals, though, would obscure the thread that tied Bishop Waters’s career together: mission. The bishop could be painted as a liberal or a conservative, but he always considered himself a missionary. This identity, adapted to the religious landscape of North Carolina, made Waters unique among his clerical peers.
Moral Majority and the Mobilization of White Evangelicals in Alabama
Seth Dowland, Duke University
Ronald Reagan’s staggering presidential victory in 1980 marked the coming-out party for the New Christian Right. Political scientists’ and historians’ cursory attention to religious questions typically trains the spotlight solely on a few preacher-politicians who led the movement in groups like Moral Majority and Christian Voice. But that is not the whole story. Laypeople’s response to the New Christian Right depended on a variety of motivations. Leaders of the movement ably used political and biblical language to convince conservative Christians that liberal politicians posed a significant threat to the “Judeo-Christian heritage” of the United States. I address this phenomenon by looking at a specific campaign: the 1980 Republican congressional primary in Alabama. The race pitted two members of the same Baptist church against one another: eight-time incumbent John Buchanan and Moral Majority-supported challenger Albert Lee Smith. The study opens a new window onto the New Christian Right’s theological appeal.
Pax Christi, Pacifism, and the New Catholic Landscape of Richmond, Virginia
Jennifer Graber, Duke University
Born in the turmoil of the post-Vietnam era, Pax Christi has brought the Catholic pacifist perspective to the American laity through educational programs since the 1970s. The group’s presence in dioceses around the country provides an opportunity for exploring how lay activity and the peace movement have developed in contemporary Catholicism. An examination of Pax Christi in Richmond, Virginia presents additional questions related to its setting in the upper South. How does the ethnic makeup and history of the Catholic population in an area shape the laity’s work in diocesan life? How do Catholic peace movements function within dioceses with a high percentage of military personnel? What effect does a supportive bishop have on local peace activism? In this paper, I will examine the development of Pax Christi in Richmond. Through this group’s story, I will trace the dynamics of lay activity in the emerging Catholic landscape of the South.
A145
Panel: Mark C. Taylor: Recent Work on Religion, Philosophy, and Network Culture
Thomas A. Carlson, University of California, Santa Barbara, Presiding
William G. Doty, University of Alabama
Glenn William Shuck, Rice University
Amy M. Hollywood, The University of Chicago
John D. Caputo, Villanova University
Mark C. Taylor, Williams College, Responding
Focusing on several recent works by Mark C. Taylor--including Hiding; About Religion: Economies of Faith in Virtual Culture; and The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture--this panel aims to explore and debate the religious and philosophical significance of contemporary network culture in its aesthetic, economic, and techno-scientific dimensions, among others. Taylor will respond to presentations by William Doty, Glenn Shuck, Amy Hollywood, and John Caputo, and the panel as a whole will engage in discussion with the audience.
A146
A Liminal Age and Religious Consciousness
Heather Eaton, St. Paul University
Setting the conceptual stage for the subsequent presentations, this paper sketches the contours of the current liminal age in light of the socio-ecological challenges. The focus moves to a nascent, yet ancient, religious consciousness that is dawning at the threshold of these “in between” times, where the answers of the past are inadequate for the future, and where responses to the future are nebulous. Into this liminal space, and as yet faint, is a form of religious consciousness that is emerging in response to the ecological crisis and its appending exigencies. Unprecedented inter-religious collaboration is engendering a sometimes harmonious chorus of voices. Religion and science are being mutually transformed. Innovative minds are connecting cosmological horizons to social movements. With the loosening of meta-narratives and the suspicion of social constructions, joint commitments to ethics, solidarity and advocacy are discernable. Wonder and awe are reemerging as a basic dimension of religious experience.
Another World Is Possible: Contributions of the World Social Forum to the Ethics of Alternative Globalization
Lee Cormie, St Michaels College
A second panelist explores the reality that interwoven with this religious consciousness is an historic convergence of communities, causes and movements around the world. In part this convergence occurs through shared opposition to the agenda often referred to as “globalization,” and specified as neoliberal globalization, corporate power, or the Washington Consensus. This convergence is manifest and expressed in the burgeoning World Social Forum (WSF) process, with its insistence - in a stunning diversity of voices and languages--that another world is possible. Voices constituting the WSF and related expressions in local processes worldwide witness to emerging forms of multi-centered, diverse, pluralistic and participatory cultures, ethics, and post-ideological politics, linked by shared values and shared spirit. These are voices of a liminal age. In helping to articulate these values and spirit, Christian theologians and ethicists confront many challenges and opportunities.
Ethics in a Liminal Age: Critical Mystical Vision
Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Seattle University
The third panelist hones in on one disciplinary player in the broad landscape sketched in the first and second presentations. The concern here is Christian ethics in the liminal age between fossil fuels and the future. The presentation proposes an approach to Christian ethics aimed at enabling it to resource the movement toward an age of sustainable Earth-human relations wed to increasing social justice. The proposed approach to ethics--“Christian Ethics as the disciplined and dangerous art of seeing”--responds to two questions: 1) What methodological faultlines in the discipline of Christian ethics, as it has unfolded in the North Atlantic world, have contributed to the two-fold moral crisis emblematic of the age of fossil fuels: unsustainable Earth-human relations wed to a life-shattering scale of inequity between and within human societies? 2) How might ethical method shift to mitigate against those disciplinary inadequacies?
Fossil Fuels and Faith: Energy Issues and a Sustainable Future
Laurel D. Kearns, Drew University
The constituent member groups of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, the National of Council of Churches Eco-Justice Working Group (EJWG), the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL), the United States Council of Catholic Bishops (UCCSB) and the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN) found one topic upon which they could all agree to focus: Global Warming. Doctrinal or organizational differences seriously limited a sustained action campaign on other possible topics. With global warming, they all agreed, a religious response was demanded, for a religious response could turn a contested (the contestation is greatly exaggerated for political reasons) scientific theory into a moral, justice issue. This paper details the history and scope of the various campaigns led by members of this group, as well as an attempt to set this effort in it broader U.S. religious context and to assess the successes and failures of these attempts.
Saying L’chaim to a Post-Fossil Fuel Future: Religious Identity, Environmental Activism, and American Public Life
Rebecca Kneale Gould, Middlebury College
This paper will examine recent religious efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption with particular (but not exclusive) attention to Jewish voices. Drawing on interviews, participant observation and institutional literature, this paper will explore contemporary articulations of “eco-Judaism,” as well as related forms of inter-religious activism. I will examine such efforts as retrofitting synagogues for solar power, encouraging congregants to use alternative energy sources and transportation, lobbying policy makers and revitalizing ritual practices with attention to their potentially ecological dimensions. My purpose is not only to give an overview of these relatively new developments, but also to examine what is at stake when religious commitment is mobilized on behalf of a “beyond fossil fuel” future? In what ways is religious life being revitalized by this newly awakened environmental concern and, by contrast, what are the risks involved (in terms of religious identity, political effectiveness and institution-building) when fostering the religion-environment connection?
A147
Dirty Dirhams and Righteous Rebels: A Controversy Surrounding the Inscription of Qur’anic Text on Early Muslim Coins
Stuart D. Sears, American University, Cairo
My paper ties a controversy surrounding the inscription of Qur’anic verse on early Muslim coins to a broader debate about the conception of right authority. The introduction of these coins by the Umayyad caliph ‘Abd al-Malik b. Marwan raised the objections of many piety-minded Muslims. The Qur’anic verse incribed on them was subject to the touch of ritually impure persons as they circulated. Behind these complaints, however, lie a deeper conflict over the demarcation of the righteous authority of the caliph and his community. The caliph’s coins allude to an absolutist ideal. They cast the caliph as the prophet Muhammad’s successor in both temporal and spiritual functions. The objections of the piety-minded Muslims rested on the egalitarian norms of the prophetic community. Piety gave them the basis by which to promote these norms and attack the caliph’s pretensions.
“Rarer than Red Sulfur”: Women and the Early Shi`ite Movement
Maria Massi Dakake, George Mason University
During the early centuries of Islamic history, Shi`ism evolved from a small, legitimist movement, to an activist religio-political group, to a refined theological and legal school. Yet none of these manifestations of Shi`ite identity included a clear role for women, since few women had the freedom to participate in clandestine religio-political movements or the intellectual training to contribute to theological and legal debates. Yet, by the tenth century, Shi`ism had become a large, self-contained sectarian community, suggesting the development of a more generalized notion of Shi`ite identity that included women as well as men. This paper explores the interrelationship between notions of Shi`ite identity and the role of women within the Shi`ite community, focusing specifically on the determination of Shi`ite affiliation in the case of women and the implications this had for intra-communal marriage.
A Sethian Genealogy: Connecting Futuwwa, Akhis, and Ribat-Based Sufism in the Early Thirteenth-Century
Erik S. Ohlander, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Guided by an interdisciplinary approach, this paper explores a moment of intersection between three socio-religious institutions prevalent across pre-modern Islamicate religious and socio-cultural landscapes: the chivalric brotherhoods, Anatolian akhis, and ribat-based Sufism. Focusing on the writings and activities of an individual who attempted to link these institutions - Umar al-Suhrawardi (d. 1234) - the paper shows how a powerful Sufi shaykh was able to capitalize upon religious and cultural codes in order to forge linkages between his own ribat-based Sufi system and the chivalric and akhi brotherhoods. Focusing on three main avenues of linkage: 1) ritual initiation and investiture; 2) mytho-history and initiatic genealogy; and, 3) a coded language of paternity, the paper shows how al-Suhrawardi was able to encode the key authoritating structures of his own ribat-based system of Sufi praxis in vertically situated social arenas which in turn allowed for affiliation and participation across socio-cultural and religious boundaries.
In the Presence of the Master: The Malfuzat of Sayyid Jalal al-din Bukhari
Amina Steinfels, Gettysburg College
The compilations of oral Sufi teachings, known as malfūz. or malfūzāt, make up a genre of religious, didactic, and hagiographic writing peculiar to South Asian Islamic culture. From the early eighth/fourteenth century onward, many South Asian Sufi shaykhs had their teachings compiled by their disciples and these malf?z.?t texts have become a leading source of information on Islamic life and history in South Asia. This genre presents certain problems and peculiarities, notably the complex relationships between saint and disciple/amanuensis, and oral and textual traditions in the production of these texts. This paper proposes to explore these questions through an examination of a number of malfuzat texts devoted to the teachings of Sayyid Jal?l al-d?n Bukh?r? (1308-1384), also known as Makhd?m-i jah?niy?n. The polyphonic nature of malf?z.?t texts will be related to their overriding purpose: the preservation of the experience of being in the presence of the shaykh.
Unseemly Women in Sacred Biographical Literatures: A Comparison between Early Christian Texts and Early Muslim Narratives about Muhammad
Alfons Teipen, Furman University
The Sîra of Ibn Ish.âq (d.767CE), and the Kitâb al-Maghâzî of Muhammad b. `Umar al-Wâqidî (d. 823), as early records of the communal memory of the historical beginnings of Islam, contain a large number of reports about Muslim and polytheist women. Anecdotes about unseemly polytheist women constitute a significant part of the narrative, yet their precise role within the overall narrative structure has baffled scholars. Studies in the New Testament, particularly the Gospels and Acts, as well as research on post-canonical Christian literatures have in recent decades developed a sustained interest in exploring the function of women not as primarily representative of historical realities, but rather as literary devices intent on producing effects on perception of communal status. This paper will attempt to bridge methodologies between these two areas of research.
Swords Thrown into the Sky: The Decontextualization of Quranic Verses on Jihad in the Fatwa of the World Islamic Front
David Dakake, Temple University
One of the most important texts detailing the position of Osama bin Laden in regard to jihad is the “fatwa” released by the “World Islamic Front” and printed in al-Quds al-`Arabi on February 23, 1998. Despite the fatwa’s renown, no scholarly analysis of its use of Qur’anic verses in relation to classical asbab has yet been published. This study will examine the Qur’anic verses quoted in the fatwa as prooftexts for its arguments with some of the well-known traditional commentaries on these same verses. The purpose of this examination will be to determine the degree to which bin Ladin’s use of these verses corresponds to their classical interpretations. In order to accomplish this task I rely upon the classical commentaries of Tabari, Ibn Kathir and Wahidi, as well as some of the early historical literature on jihad.
A148
Panel: The Zohar: Pritzker Edition--An Assessment of Daniel Matt’s New Annotated Translation
David R. Blumenthal, Emory University, Presiding
Daniel Matt, Shalom Hartman Institute Elliot R. Wolfson, New York University
Moshe Idel, Hebrew University
This fall Stanford University Press is publishing the first two volumes of a projected ten-volume work entitled The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, Translation and Commentary by Daniel C. Matt. This panel will be devoted to the publication of this work-a major event in the world of Jewish scholarship. The Zohar, the masterpiece of Kabbalah, is a mystical commentary on the Torah, composed in Aramaic in thirteenth-century Spain. It has never been adequately translated directly into English-the only Jewish classic of which this can be said. This new edition consists of a translation and an extensive commentary. It is based on a new critical Aramaic text of the Zohar, reconstructed by Daniel Matt from original manuscripts. Daniel Matt will discuss his method of establishing the Aramaic text, his philosophy of translation, and the scope of the commentary. Elliot Wolfson, Moshe Idel, and Arthur Green will offer evaluations of the volumes.
A149
In the Image of God: The Human Capability for Moral Creativity
John Wall, Rutgers University
This paper asks about the possible role of creativity in moral life. Is there a meaningful sense in which ethical action requires the creative production of something new? If so, what might such moral creativity have to do with the mystery of Creation? Using recent insights from Ricoeur, Nussbaum, and Kearney, and placing these within a larger historical conversation about the relation of ethics to aesthetics, the paper argues that moral life presupposes a core human creative capability. Humanity should ultimately be affirmed, through religious symbolism, as not only, like other creatures, created by its Creator, but also created creative in its Creator’s image. On this basis, persons can imagine facing the tragic historical narrowness and incommensurabilities of actual moral life with the impossible possibility for creative social transformation. An illustration is provided by the issue of human reproductive cloning, which raises issues precisely of the human “creation” of humanity.
Witnessing Death and Life: Theologians Occupying the Middle Space
Shelly Rambo, Emory University
Holy Saturday stands between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. By attending to this middle day, positioned between crucifixion and resurrection, death and life, I unearth a rhetoric of middle spaces, a geography where violence and suffering, life and hope intermingle. Drawing on the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar and the insights and ethical force of trauma theory, I investigate the “middle day” to demonstrate theology’s unique contribution to the interdisciplinary study of trauma. I suggest, as well, that theological reflection is transformed by this engagement. Occupying this fragile middle space, theologians witness to the forces of violence that dismantle human persons. They testify both to the impossibility and possibility of life coming from death.
Vectors and Junkspace: Reconfiguring Theological Reflection
Neal E. Magee, Syracuse University
This paper considers theological reflection - what Charles Winquist characterized as the search for thinking which does not disappoint - as an intellectual space. Such a terrain witnesses political and geographical upheaval (globalism) and generates theorists to think through its design (architecture). Drawing on the work of Mckenzie Wark, who relates globalism in terms of center and periphery and its ideological strategies in terms of enclosures and vectors, the paper first argues that theology, once well enclosed in the center, now finds itself on the periphery and only able to make sense of itself as a discourse of vectors: spontaneous and open connections of resources. Second, it argues that Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas’s notion of “junkspace” - the partitioned, physical space of construction which is always-already in transition, perpetually in a state of becoming - has become a new metaphorical site for theological reflection, now rendered provisional, incomplete, and migratory.
The Public Theologian: Insights from Interstitiality
Rosemary P. Carbine, College of the Holy Cross
This paper explores the ethics of theological reflection relative to the political space and theological practices involved in doing public theology. It applies the notion of “interstitiality” distilled from feminist theology to interpret and enhance American public theology. Public theology in general positions theologians in-between religious and extra-religious arenas in order to pursue an “ecclesial” or community-building imperative. When viewed from a feminist theological perspective, the notion of interstitiality helps re-draw the shape of the self and of social communion in light of this imperative. Feminist theological commitments to an interstitial portrait of the theologian better enable public theology to identify practices (political, moral, and prophetic) crucial to performing its work of community building. An appeal to interstitiality in effect casts light on a public theology of place, of personhood, and of practice that emerges when theologians increasingly play a mediatorial role in bridging religion and society.
A150
Hindu, Sikh, and Sufi: Recreating a Regional Heritage in the Context of Atlanta
Steven W. Ramey, Furman University
Sindhi Hindus traditionally participate in religious activities typically associated with Hindu, Sikh, and Sufi Islamic traditions. To maintain their heritage as a diasporic minority in Atlanta, Sindhi Hindus conduct ritualized activities in gurdwaras and temples that other regional groups have established. The Sindhis also use venues that become temporary sites of sacrality, such as rented facilities for special festivals and homes for meetings associated with various Sindhi gurus. As Sindhis work to recreate their traditions in Atlanta, their use of institutions associated with other regions of South Asia, such as Punjabi gurdwaras and a South Indian temple, creates new dynamics for their regional heritage. Their practices also challenge the academy to recognize the complexity of regional practices in diaspora, the impact of ritual activities that cross regional and religious boundaries, and the multiple ways of understandings religious boundaries.
Desis in Dixie: Indian American Experiences of Religion and Race in Atlanta
Khyati Joshi, Fairleigh Dickinson University
In a qualitative study of 21 second-generation Indian Americans in Atlanta, most research participants described experiences of religious or racial discrimination during their K-12, college, and/or adult years. The qualitative data reveal a major difference in how experiences of religious discrimination - as compared to racial discrimination - affected individuals’ ethnic identity development process. Because of the personal and cultural meanings attached to religion, experiences of religious oppression had an impact different in quality, resonance and duration from those based on race. This held true for research participants of all religious backgrounds (Catholic, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Jain ). This discussion of the interview data attempts to distinguish experiences of racial discrimination from those of religious discrimination and to explore the nuances of the latter’s impact on second-generation Indian American ethnic identity development.
Bible Belt Jainism: The Rise and Development of the Jain Tradition in the Mid-South
Thomas Russell, Western Kentucky University
Since 1965, with the relaxation of immigration laws, adherents of the Jain tradition have settled in the American Bible Belt. The region is dominated by conservative Protestants who believe in an inspired Word of God, a unique saviour and being born-again. Jains, on the other hand, are on a self-dependent (not God-dependent) spiritual quest to be liberated from the cycles of birth and rebirth. The purpose of this paper is to examine the development of one Jain community in the Bible Belt by dealing with four issues: history, leadership, lived religion and interfaith relations. This exploration of one Jain community hopefully helps us to understand the challenges faced by an Asian religious community establishing itself in the North American context, especially in the Bible Belt.
A151
The Politics of Imago Dei: The Communitarian Anthropology of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Desmond Tutu and the Struggles of Resistance and Reconciliation
Hak Joon Lee, New Brunswick Theological Seminary
This paper studies the role of black and African anthropology for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s and Desmond Tutu’s movements of resistance and reconciliation in South Africa and America. It will show how black and African anthropology have served as the source of both critique of racism (resistance) and vision for a new community (reconciliation) for King and Tutu. With the awareness that for Africans and blacks, a racist anthropology was a major hindrance to their individual and communal spiritual fulfillment, King and Tutu utilized their indigenous and ethnic spiritual resources to contruct liberating and inclusive spiritual anthropologies which were communitarian in nature. In discussing the communitarian nature of their anthropologies, this paper will also pay attention to the differences between King and Tutu in terms of their theology, spiritual formation and ethics. The paper finally will draw implications for other contemporary spiritual movements such as ecological justice and feminism.
Clarence Jordan: Resistance and Reconciliation in the Cotton Patch
Ann Coble, Westminster College
In the early 1940s, a white Southern Baptist minister named Clarence Jordan moved to a farm outside Americus, Georgia to begin an interracial, pacifist farm commune called Koinonia Farm. While remaining numerically small, Koinonia Farm became well known in Baptist circles, among the rising Christian counter-culture, and among a slice of both the liberal and conservative churches that were interested in community life and fighting racism. By the time Jordan died in 1969, he had become well-known for his Cotton Patch translations of the New Testament, and Koinonia Farm was considered a model community because of the non-violent stand against racial injustice. This paper asks: What shaped Jordan’s spirituality? Why and in what ways did his spirituality support his pacifism and his stand against racism? How was his spirituality reflected in his Cotton Patch versions of the New Testament books?
Ritual and Forgiveness: Inscribing God’s Forgiveness on the Human Body of Christ
Kevin Mongrain, St. Mary’s University, San Antonio
Louis-Marie Chauvet and Daniel M. Bell, Jr. both argue that developing the capacity of human persons to give and receive forgiveness is the necessary condition for peace and justice, and they agree that developing the capacity of human persons to give and receive forgiveness depends on the renewal of a Christian spirituality centered on the Paschal Mystery. Chauvet’s liturgical theology and Bell’s liberation theology can mutually inform and challenge each other. Chauvet’s understanding of liturgy as ritual “symbolic exchange” can supply the framework for the “therapy of desire” Bell advocates. Bell’s understanding of the role of capitalism in human society can buttress Chauvet’s case that the power of a religion comes not from doctrines but from the desires it creates. Moreover, Bell’s analysis of capitalist “technologies of desire” can ground Chauvet’s sometimes very abstract understanding of sin and give some specific direction to his assertions about the Church’s mission.
A152
Syriac Demonology: Rhetoric and Reality
Catherine Burris, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
This paper discusses the rhetoric of Syriac demonology, and the perceived reality that lies behind the rhetoric. Demons are referenced or depicted in inscriptions, hagiographical texts, and manuscript illustrations from late-ancient Syria. Using these materials, I will discuss some of the specifics of Syriac demonology. For instance, do Syriac translations of Egyptian monastic literature exhibit the same demonology as the originals? Is that demonology comparable to what appears in indigenous Syriac monastic and hagiographic literature? Is the demonology assumed in the monastic literature the same as the demonology implicit in the incantation bowls and other apotropaic devices? These culturally-external and culturally-internal comparisions allow the reconstruction of a baseline Syriac demonology, and further illuminate the rhetorical strategies employed by Syriac hagiographers.
Unutterable Beauty and Unnatural Acts: Gender and the Demonic in Two Egyptian Monastic Communities
David Brakke, Indiana University, Bloomington
This paper examines the gendered dimension of the demonic in two bodies of monastic literature, the texts from the Pachomian federation and the writings of Shenoute, abbot of the White Monastery. Both originated in coenobitic communities that included monasteries for women, yet exhibit significant differences in how the categories of gender and the demonic are related. While Pachomian literature includes anecdotes that suggest that the devil is (in some sense) female, Shenoute rarely (if ever) depicts the devil or demons as female, but sees the devil’s lack of gender or confusion of genders as indicative of his evil. While the Pachomians’ rigid alignment of the devil with femininity and the virtuous monk with masculinity may reflect ambivalence about the women in their midst, Shenoute’s more intentional efforts to create a “genderless monasticism” (Krawiec) and his vigorous anti-pagan/anti-heretical activities required a more complicated articulation of the demonic in gendered terms.
Astrology as Demonology in the Testament of Solomon
Sarah L. Schwarz, University of Pennsylvania
This paper explores the demonization of astrology in the Testament of Solomon (TSol). This composite text, known from late medieval manuscripts and a fifth/sixth century papyrus fragment, presents the decans and stars as malevolent forces to be controlled by exorcistic technique. I suggest that this reflects a worldview in flux from one religious and cosmological system to another. The recasting of decans as demons takes place within the inherited model, and works by translating old beliefs into a new idiom. Rather than denying astrology’s power, the TSol maintains this underlying belief, and even while recasting it as negative, maintains a methodology (in “magical” technique) for addressing the problems created by the demons. The fundamental beliefs about how the universe operates remain the same, from which forces have power to the ways they can be influenced, but demonology is employed to mark the transition to a new religious vocabulary.
Fire, Blood, and Water: Demonology and Halakha in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies
Annette Reed, McMaster University
This paper will use the demonology of Pseudo-Clementine Homilies as a focus for a fresh approach to the ritual practice therein, which looks beyond assumptions about “Jewish Christianity” and contextualizes this text within a range of late antique views of purity and pollution, on the one hand, and illness and health, on the other. Interpretations of this material that forefront its relationship to “Judaism,” “Christianity,” and “Jewish Christianity” tend to distract from the task of investigating how its prescribed practices could have functioned as a coherent system of its own and what we may thereby learn about the social setting(s) in which this text was composed, redacted, and transmitted. By following the text’s own interest in demonology and ritual practice, I will attempt to highlight its commonalities and connections with other practices, rituals, and discourses in Late Antiquity, not limited to Jewish and Christian ones.
Roman Christian Demonological Ascent Formulae in Mortuary Context
Nicola Denzey, Bowdoin College
Following Clifford Geertz’s definition of ritual as a form of “cultural performance,” this paper will explore the symbolic horizons of early Christian “sectarian” demonological ascent formula in a specific ritual context. Recent scholarship has placed these passages within the context of ecstatic or shamanic ascent; this paper, by contrast, locates them within the sphere of mortuary ritual. Specifically, this paper will examine the evidence for Marcosian death rituals in second-century Rome. These rites were unrelated to the later Catholic viaticum, but had analogues in baptismal or chrismatic practices within early Christianity. Furthermore, these rites were likely not confined to Marcosians but were practiced by a variety of Christian groups, as their widespread dissemination suggests. These “Books of the Dead” allude to second-century ritual practice developed specifically to prepare individuals for a final confrontation with daemonic powers on their way to eternal repose.
A153
Panel: Connections, Tensions, Dissentions: The Current State of Evangelical Theology
John G. Stackhouse, Regent College, Presiding
Molly Marshall, Central Baptist Theological Seminary
Henry H. Knight, St. Paul School of Theology
William Pannell, Fuller Theological Seminary
Michael S. Horton, Westminster Seminary
This session features a panel discussion of 4-5 scholars who will address the salient issues in contemporary evangelical theology. The session will begin with a 15 minute presentation from each panelist with the discussion to follow moderated by John Stackhouse. Panelists will discuss some or all (but of course, are not limited to) of the following topics: changing definitions and perceptions of evangelical theology; current theological tensions within the evangelical community; challenges to evangelical theology; adjudicating controversial issues in evangelical theology; global/regional, gender, ethnic, racial and other methodological issues vis-a-vis evangelical theology; and the future of evangelical theology.
A154
Dialogic Fecundation of Western Hermeneutics and Hindu Mimamsa in the Critical Era
Purushottama Bilimoria, University of New York, Stony Brook
I develop another response to contemporary debates in the “science” of hermeneutics. After tracing the growth of the Western hermeneutics and its presuppositions about text and meaning, I argue that there remains an aporia, because a serious and productive fecundation from a cross-cultural perspective has been all but ignored or passed over. Turning to the much older tradition of hermeneutics in the Hindu tradition, of the Mimamsa in ritual and jurisprudential praxis, and to literary theories, I outline a cross-cultural hermeneutical thesis based on unique features of signifier-signified relation, apauruseyatva (erasure of personal signification), speech-acts, etc. I examine its utilization in the Dharmasastras and moral-ethical treatises. Finally, I draw on the rich area of dialogic hermeneutic in Hindu feminist and postcolonial critiques, where a third space is opened up for women, marginalized groups, the “other”, and colonized subjects.
Truth, Diversity, and the Unfinished Project of Modern Hinduism
Jeffery D. Long, Elizabethtown College
This constructive philosophical/ hermeneutical project seeks to begin the reconception of Neovedanta, in order to better approximate its aspiration towards universality and pluralism, and enable it to provide a more insightful lens with which to interpret social and religious categories of the modern world. Focusing on the thought of Ramakrishna, Aurobindo, and Gandhi, I explore an incorporation into Neovedanta of aspects of Whiteheadian process thought and Jain philosophy. The compatibility of these systems with Vedanta is examined, as well as their ability, in combination, to articulate, in a logically elegant and compelling way, deeper assumptions underlying the views of the three major Neovedantic thinkers on the issue of truth and religious diversity. The goal to which this project aspires is the initiation of a pluralistic Hindu cross- cultural hermeneutics that can contribute to the full development of Hinduism as a world religion.
Hinduism’s Socio-Political Response to Western Hermeneutical Theories of Religion
Arvind Sharma, McGill University
Western hermeneutics operates with a concept of religion which it has uncritically applied to Hinduism. Two elements of its conceptualization of religion are of key significance in this context: (1) that one can only belong to one religion at a time and (2) that religion can be distinguished from and differentiated from culture. It is the argument of this paper that the ideology of Hindutva has arisen as a response to the application of the Western concept of religion to the Indian reality.
Muller and Textual Management
Sharada Sugirtharajah, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
Employing the current critical category, postcolonialism, this paper examines the construction of Hinduism by the nineteenth-century Western Orientalist Friedrich Max Muller (1823-1900). I will be drawing on many of his works but will focus particularly on his well-known Cambridge lectures. Muller constructs a textualized Hinduism which is informed by nineteenth century notions of evolution, historicism, and comparative philology. He forges a non-ecclesiastical Protestant form of Hinduism which eventually impacts Hindu self-definition. Muller fashions a Hinduism that serves his own hermeneutical presuppositions - a Hinduism that has much do with his own nostalgia for an uncontaminated European past. The aim of this paper is not to undermine the contributions of Muller but to bring to the fore the underlying intentions governing his hermeneutical exercise and their impact on Hindu self-understanding.
A155
Contending Voices of Meaning in the Contemporary Hanamatsuri
Lisa Kuly, Cornell University
The Hanamatsuri is a winter festival that takes place in about twenty villages clustered around the Tenry River that runs through the provinces of Aichi, Nagano, and Shizuoka. A type of yudate kagura, various rites involving blessings of prosperity, pacification of evil spirits, and fertility amongst village residents are performed. Moreover, there are elements of the festival that indicate participants of the Hanamatsuri engage in shamanic communication with the kami. To explore how practitioners and participants in this festival construct a discourse of “the authentic” in the Hanamatsuri, this paper will explore the various contending voices that contribute to the production of the lore about this festival. Furthermore, the discussion in this paper will seek to understand how the practitioners and audience derive meaning and significance from the Hanamatsuri based on the dialogue generated by these voices.
Reconsidering Authenticity in Religious Revival and Renewal in Japan: Theoretical Considerations
Jane Marie Law, Cornell University
This paper discusses “authenticity discourses” in Japanese religious life. From kokugaku scholars, I show how categories got transformed by early folklorists incorporating categories imported from Europe. Tracing Japanese religious studies outside Japan, I demonstrate how early agendas of kokugaku got incorporated into Western scholarly concerns, in turn becoming normative concerns for Japanese scholars. I discuss mid-twentieth century popularizers of Japanese religious studies, tracing their dependence on categories of cultural essentialism and authenticity discourses with earlier roots, noting the rise of preservation movements, “folk religion” and “folk performing arts” booms. I examine the critical backlash, citing key anthropological and literary critical studies identifying commodification and tradition invention as key features. I explore how a new generation of agents in the revival movements has taken more control over commodification and signification. Interplays of power, money, tourism and commodification have led to the need to reformulate understandings of “authenticity” discourses.
Inventing Zen Tradition and Its Authenticity: The Inside Problems of Tradition Maintenance in Contemporary Rinzai Zen
Kakuju Matsubara, Cornell University
This paper explores the “successor/practitioner problem,” in Rinzai Zen and focuses on the process of tradition maintenance in the Myôshinji- sect. This problem is based on three interrelated questions: 1) How can the tradition avoid dying out? 2) How can successors be found and trained? 3) How do contemporary Zen monasteries maintain their practitioners while ordaining priests with little training? We see: 1) Decline in number of those becoming priests. 2) Increase in people wanting to enter monasteries. 3) Increase in people unable to spend much time in monasteries. 4) Lack of sons as successors. 5) Disparities of economic power among temples. These trends imply the complex difficulty of maintaining temples, monasteries and the tradition itself. Based on extensive observations over the past decade, this paper explores the many creative solutions people in the tradition are making to keep the tradition working, while inventing new ideas of “authentic tradition.”
Moments of Recognition and Healing: Shugendô Asceticism and Cultural Property Designation in the Folk Performing Arts of Japan
Mark McGuire, Cornell University
Shugendô, a marginal tradition grafting Buddhism, Daoist, and Shintô elements onto existing local landscapes and presenting a form of ascetic pilgrimage and retreat carried out upon Japan’s sacred mountain ranges since the Medieval period constantly reinvents itself throughout Japanese history. Though retreats in former days spanned a period of several weeks or months, they are now foreshortened to accommodate modern schedules. Miniature replicas of famous pilgrimage trails have been created nearer cities for those who cannot spare the time or expense to visit the “real” sites. Yet one hears that the potency, meaning and authenticity of Shugendôs ascetic trials persist, offering participants the possibility of transcendence and transformation. This paper, based on ethnographic fieldwork, explores the many claims made both historically and in contemporary times about the efficacy of Shugendô, and reveals the competing understandings of “authentic” religious experience different agents laying claim to Shugendô practice make.
A156
Picture This: The Role of Iconography in Contemporary Yakama Identity Formation
Joel Geffen, University of California, Santa Barbara
Art historians, anthropologists, artists, writers, and photographers have explored art and identity in native communities. Few if any religious studies scholars, however, have addressed this. Research is lacking regarding how images seen on tribal logos/insignias are constituted by and constitutive of identity in relation to place. Examinations of the ways that contemporary iconography relates to experiences of genocide and assimilation are needed. I present preliminary research about how members of the Yakama Nation of Washington State employ iconic images of “Indianness” as crucial elements in the construction of identity/identities in relation to their homeland. Discussions of identity follow Stuart Hall’s model. Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels provide grounding in iconography. Interviews with tribal members, included with their express permission, provide insight into the messages that the logos are intended to convey.
Steering the Canoe: The Kaswentha Principle in Haudenosaunee Struggles for Land and Self-Determination
Janet Parker, Chicago Theological Seminary
Native American nations have a unique relationship to their lands that is threatened by the ongoing predatory efforts of settler colonies to steal, regulate, and abuse the traditional lands of Native peoples. Native peoples worldwide are striving to protect their lands through the movement for self-determination. Informed by international law and international debates surrounding self-determination, land, and indigenous rights, this paper focuses upon the particular relationship of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy to their lands. The Kaswentha principle, or the Two Row Wampum Treaty, is explored as a primary way in which the Haudenosaunee seek to exercise self-determination. The visual representation of the Kaswentha on the treaty belt denotes two vessels traveling side by side without interference, illustrating the principle of government to government relations in a context of friendship and respect. The paper demonstrates how the Kaswentha principle still guides the Haudenosaunee as they seek self-governance of their traditional territories.
Inquisitions at Home and in the New World: Success in Italy and Negotiated Settlements in the Americas
Adam Darlage, University of Chicago
The Beneficio di Christo of 1542 and the Andean Haurochirí Manuscript of 1598 are indicative of two radically different inquisitorial strategies. The Beneficio di Christo, written from European theological and cultural assumptions about Christian belief and practice, was easily recognizable as a distortion of Catholic orthodoxy. The very things that Italian Catholics and Protestants shared determined that the Beneficio di Christo recoded existing doctrinal assumptions in a familiar cultural tongue. New World spirituality, on the other hand, offered little that could be easily subsumed under Catholic European cultural categories of religious belief or practice. As the Haurochirí Manuscript demonstrates, deeper fissures separated the Spaniards and the peoples of the New World. Thus the European encounter with the wholly Other, not simply the doctrinally Other, made any success of the Inquisition and the Catholic Church in the New World contingent on the negotiated sharing, borrowing, and assimilation of basic cultural assumptions.
Indians in Unexpected Places
Philip J. Deloria, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
This paper will argue that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Indian actors, athletes, musicians, and writers came to understand the ways in which struggles for Native rights and autonomy were inescapably linked to the politics of representation. Though constrained by the structures of representation created by mass media economics, they nonetheless experimented with ways in which they might shape, contest, and even control representations of Indianness. In doing so, they demolished prevailing notions of social evolution, which insisted that Native people “progress” through a series of stages. Rather, they leapt headfirst over those stages into a full-blown alternative modernity, a modernity particularly Native, but which also existed in close dialogue with global mobility, technological innovation, and the developing mass and popular culture industry.
A157
Panel: Pragmatism and Democracy: Assessing Jeffrey Stout’s Democracy and Tradition: Religion, Ethics, and Public Philosophy
Wayne Proudfoot, Columbia University, Presiding
Stanley M. Hauerwas, Duke Divinity School
Cornel West, Princeton University
Richard Rorty, Stanford University
Jeffrey L. Stout, Princeton University, Responding
Jeffrey Stout’s new book Democracy and Tradition: Religion, Ethics and Public Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2003) presents a provocative new argument for pragmatism as democratic traditionalism, engaging social critics, philosophers, and theologians such as Emerson, Dewey, Ellison, Rorty, Milbank, MacIntyre and Hauerwas. This panel seeks to highlight and interrogate the major issues and arguments of the book, as well as assess their cogency and critical contribution to the ongoing debate.
A159
Profaning the Sacred, Sacralizing the Profane: Ritual Space and Ritual Practice among Thai Buddhist Nuns
Lisa Battaglia, Vanderbilt University
This study examines the ritual practices of Buddhist monastic women in Thailand. It evaluates the applicability and accuracy of feminist theories of gendered ritualizing against the backdrop of women’s ritualizing in an Asian Buddhist context. This examination of the ritual practices and symbolic appropriations of Thai Buddhist nuns addresses two major questions. First, is there a distinct women’s way of ritualizing? Second, are feminist critiques of major theories of myth and ritual pertinent in the context of Buddhist monastic women in Thailand? Examining women and ritual through the lens of the lives and practices of Thai Buddhist nuns both calls into question the relevancy, accuracy, and adequacy of supposedly “universal” theories of myth and ritual and offers new insights into how gender informs ritual practices and invests ritual with meaning in particular contexts and locations.
Feminist Wiccan Ritual Magic as Effective Cultural Practice
Constance Wise, Iliff School of Theology, University of Denver
This paper employs a framework from ritual studies theorist Catherine Bell to assess the nature and effectiveness of Feminist Wiccan ritual magic. Bell asserts that all rituals are (1) situational, (2) strategic, (3) embedded in a “misrecognition” of what in fact they do, and (4) able to shift power relationships to the benefit of participants, a factor she calls “redemptive hegemony.” The practice of ritual magic fits each of these characteristics; however, I employ concepts from process thought to modify the element of misrecognition to allow for more conscious awareness and intentionality on the part of Feminist Witches than Bell posits for ritual participants. I conclude that Feminist Wiccan ritual magic is a highly effective cultural practice, generating a redemptive hegemony through which participants take on a sense of power to achieve their vision of healing their personal lives and replacing the patriarchy with an egalitarian, feminist social order.
The Very Idea of a Practical Canon: The Body as a Key Rubric in Monastic Training
Jeffrey Samuels, Western Kentucky University
By questioning the role that texts play in the early training of Buddhist novices, this paper contributes a voice to the growing collection of literature within the field of ritual studies that explores the role that doing and speaking play in the production of ritualized agents. Drawing on fieldwork recently conducted in Sri Lanka, this paper argues that the majority of young newcomers to the community of monks come to learn about monastic behavior and practices not through reading texts but through doing. In outlining an "action-oriented pedagogy," this paper
considers how engaging in such activities as eating, walking, chanting, and sweeping in a particular manner creates "monastic" agents imbued with an understanding of what it means to be a monk and how a monk should ideally act.
Encountering Spirit in the Body: Divine Messages in Pentacostal Ritualizing
Donna Lynne Seamone, McMaster University
What can we know about the phenomenon of glossolalia (ecstatic speech) and the modalities of ritual performance if this religious phenomenon is understood in the context of patterns of interaction in the whole ritual event? This paper posits a ritual analysis of “prophetic tongues” based on ethnographic study of Afro-Caribbean Canadian Pentecostal experience. By approaching the phenomenon of “the anointing” or “Prophetic tongues” as an event set in the context of the performance sequence of the whole worship event we see the important ritual role of the group in the experience of glossolalia. As well, the relationships of ritual participants to scripture--that come to life through a matrix of scripture related practices--are pivotal to understanding the occurrence of Prophetic tongues. The performance- based analysis of the religious practice of this group challenges ritual theoretical approaches that treat individual and corporate experiences in a dualistic or unrelated way.
A160
Schleiermacher as Romantic: Joyful Experience, the Individual, and the Whole
Philip Clayton, Claremont School of Theology
We owe much of our understanding of Romanticism to technical studies of its origins. But technical debates can lose the forest for the trees. Following Goethe’s model, “Ein Dichter hat uns alle geweckt,” in this paper I pursue the question from a new angle. After describing family resemblances between Schleiermacher’s early work and the key Romantic figures of the period, I argue that these Romantic features remain fundamental in the Dialectics, the Hermeneutics, and the Glaubenslehre. At its heart, Romanticism turns on the role of the individual and the irreducibility of her experience. Yet each individual part participates in the encompassing whole (Spinoza). This dialectic eventually gave rise to the core premises of Schleiermacher’s philosophical lectures and his systematic theology. Schleiermacher learned from Schelling the viability of panentheism. The unitary framework of panentheism offers, I suggest, the best hermeneutical key to unlock Schleiermacher’s system as whole.
Kunstreligion in Early German Romanticism: Schleiermacher and Caspar David Friedrich
David E. Klemm, University of Iowa
What is the essential relationship between art and religion? Where is it actualized? In Part I, I show how these questions arose and were answered in the concept of Kunstreligion within early German Romanticism. In Part II, I analyze Schleiermacher’s contribution to early German Romanticism, as well as his agreement with and deviation from the concept of Kunstreligion. In Part III, I show in a slide presentation how the artwork of Caspar David Friedrich in fact actualizes Schleiermacher’s concept of the ideal relationship between art and religion. In Part IV, I expand beyond Schleiermacher’s early writings of 1799-1800, to show how Friedrich’s art also the forms of immediate self-consciousness in Schleiermacher’s Berlin lectures on psychology: social feeling, nature feeling, aesthetic feeling, and religious feeling. Friedrich’s art individualizes Schleiermacher’s understanding of feeling as immediate consciousness of the self in relation to others, nature, and the transcendent ground.
Schleiermacher’s “Romanticism”: The Singular, the Whole, and the Unconditional
Eric Nelson, University of Toledo
This paper explores the question of Schleiermacher’s romanticism by considering whether and to what degree his later thought continues to be informed by the questions that shaped his early writings. Critics of Schleiermacher, such as Barth, Gadamer, and Grondin, have often misinterpreted the goals of his Romanticism. In response to these critics, and on the basis of the works of Novalis and Schleiermacher, Romanticism is interpreted in this paper as a concern for the singular, the whole, and the unconditional, i.e., that which is suggested in experience and yet escapes and resists cognitive or theoretical knowledge. As such, Schleiermacher’s early and later works are in different ways both committed to understanding individuality, relational context, and God through language, feeling, and community. I also trace the development of these questions in his work by focusing on how he responded to them in his account of thought (dialectic) and language (hermeneutics).
De-Romanticising and Re-Romanticising Schleiermacher: Self-Reflexivity and Kant
Peter Foley, University of Arizona
Some of the most wide-ranging claims made for Schleiermacher as a Romantic revolve around his use of self-reflexivity. Reevaluating this element of Schleiermacher’s philosophy will show that it is possible to reveal a new more Kantian Schleiermacher who is nonetheless a Romantic. The consequences of this reevaluation for Schleiermacher’s Romanticism and for his use of self-consciousness in his philosophical thinking are far-reaching. While rejecting many of Kant’s ideas, this reinterpretation of the locus of self-consciousness will bring Schleiermacher into much closer proximity to Kant. This Kant however is a much more Romantic late Enlightenment Kant that we are only coming to know from such work as that of Jane Kneller on Kant. This paper then will show are more gentle transition of Schleiermacher’s thinking from Kant’s who was himself already heading towards a form of rational Romanticism that is a direct precursor of Schleiermacher’s reception of rational thinking and consciousness.
A161
Tibetan Female Revenants
Bryan Cuevas, Florida State University
Sometime around the twelfth century Tibetans began recounting individual descriptions of the afterlife. The concern in these personal narratives was more about sins and virtues acquired in this life to be tested in the next than it was about the achievement of Buddhist enlightenment. The central protagonist in this literature is called delok, “one who has passed away and returned”. These Tibetan revenants are usually ordinary laypersons, predominantly female, who die, tour the netherworld, and return to report their afterlife experiences and to convey messages from the dead about the importance of moral conduct and religious commitment. This paper demonstrates the value of the delok narratives as social-historical documents capable of providing insights into the status of women as powerful and influential religious personalities in Tibetan society. I also provide a few preliminary remarks on the nature of Tibetan popular perceptions of death and the afterlife.
Hell Hath No Fury: The Lady Tshe-ring Bkra-shis and the Death of Sde-srid Sangs-rgyas
Rgya-mtsho
Robert Trent Pomplun, Loyola College in Maryland
Several fascinating women have played important roles in Tibetan history, culture, and politics. Among them, the Lady Tshe-ring bkra-shis, the wife of the Qoshot ruler Lha-bzang Khan, played a decisive role in the politics of early-eighteenth century Tibet. Famously spurned by the regent Sangs-rgyas rgya-mtsho, she led one of the three columns of the advancing Mongol army that defeated the regent’s armies at the battle of Stod-lung, leading to his death and the ascendancy of the Qoshot in central Tibet in 1705. After outlining her life from the relevant Tibetan sources, I will offer some speculations about Tshe-ring bkra-shis’ role in the death of the regent and her portrayal in subsequent Tibetan historical literature.
A Comparative Look at Himalayan Nunneries
Alyson Prude, University of California at Santa Barbara
My paper will discuss the contemporary reality of Nepali Tibetan Buddhist nuns’ lives in two Himalayan regions of Nepal. Based on fieldwork carried out in 1997 and 2000-1, I will begin by describing the three nunneries in the Muktinath valley of lower Mustang. Within their historical context, I will compare the present status of the three nunneries and the impact of recent developments on the nuns and local villages. As Muktinath provides an interesting contrast to the nunnery at Debuche in Khumbu, especially in terms of its historical importance and the support its nunneries receive from the local population, I will then discuss this more recently established nunnery. I will conclude by relating my presentations to current issues surrounding women practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism, the impact of the exile community on native Tibetan Buddhist communities in Nepal, and the effects of foreign aid and globalization on these communities.
A Royal Nun in Fifteenth-Century Tibet
Kurtis Schaeffer, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
The Life of Chokyi Dronma (c. 1422-1455) ranks among the most interesting hagiographies of Tibetan women known to contemporary scholarship. The work of unknown authorship thematizes difficulties encountered by women wishing to enter religious life while at the same time showing that women-or a least those from royal families-were influential actors in the religious life of fifteenth century Tibet. The daughter of rulers in the Gungthang royal line in southwest Tibet, Chokyi Dronma played an important role in the development of the Bodong tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, both as patron and practitioner. The work also offers a glimpse of patronage relationships between scholars, yogins, rulers, and ruler’s daughters. The Life also takes up the controversial issue of monastic ordination and women. This paper introduces select themes in the Life.
Buddhist Women and Social Change in the Spiti Valley
Karma Lekshe Tsomo, University of San Diego
The villages of Spiti, with a total population of 20,000, are linked by a meager network of unpaved roads and are often snowed in for more than half of the year. Spiti is the home of a flourishing Buddhist culture with a long, vibrant history, which is now part of the Indian polity. The people of Spiti embrace Buddhism’s promise of universal liberation, yet patriarchal attitudes nevertheless have remained a powerful influence in both the social and religious spheres and have only recently begun to be reexamined. A major factor in this reexamination has been the establishment of two Buddhist studies programs that provide women access to systematic religious education for the first time. This paper investigates the effects of these programs on social and religious institutions, and argues that they are precipitating a major restructuring of attitudes toward women, as well as institutions.
A162
Panel: Unspeakable Things Unspoken: Interdisciplinary Explorations of the Work of Toni Morrison as Fulcrum for Religious Discourse
Marcia Y. Riggs, Columbia Theological Seminary, Presiding
C. Dale Gadsden, Harvard University
Charles H. Long, Chapel Hill, NC
Carolyn Medine, University of Georgia
Emilie M. Townes, Union Theological Seminary, New York
David Carrasco, Harvard University
This panel engages the multifaceted work of Toni Morrison as a productive resource for exploring religious discourse from an interdisciplinary perspective. Drawing on the disciplines of American Studies, Christian Ethics, History of Religions, and Religion and Literature, each panelist will ground her or his work within the notion of religious discourse as a key element of the theme explored.
A163
Communal Healing in Korean Tradition of Music and Dance in Performance of Mask Dance, Pansori, and Kut
Sunju Chong, Chicago Theological Seminary
The conception of illness varies according to context and culture. For Koreans, disease may be understood to come from spirits, human disharmony, and the cosmos. Imbalances in one’s body and relationships result from imbalanced circulations of Ki (Qi) according to the principles of yin and yang. The treatment of illness involves the restoration of harmony within the body. As Korean culture restricted emotional expression and showing one’s individual feelings, people developed public plays like Talchum (mask dance) and other expression such as Pansori (song), and Kut (shamanistic ritual) to master and sublimate such feelings. These perfoming arts and ritual transform the concrete reality of han in its classism, sexism, and hierarchy by demonstrating and communicating the pain of oppression, broken relationship, meaninglessness, anxiety, conflict and anger, promoting the psychological bonds and solidarity of the whole community.
The Zar Ritual: Healing Tradition of Islamic Middle East and Africa
Bridget Blomfield, Claremont Graduate University
This paper investigates the healing, psychological and medicinal benefits of indigenous Zar rituals as practiced by numerous Islamic cultures in the Middle East and Africa. Zar is the name of spirit possession, as well as the ceremony that cures or pacifies it. Using dance, chant and drumming Zar helps alleviate spirit possession and mental and physical illnesses that are culture bound. In some instances Zar rituals have been forced underground as a result of Islamic fundamentalism. However, Zar is currently making a resurgence in villages and large cities where women have desire agency and authority. Looking at cultural, religious, social and psychological needs this paper proposes that Zar is the appropriate ethnomedicine in communities that lack psychological support systems for women. Zar is a culturally appropriate, therapeutic treatment modality that is immensely important in the lives of many women, a true spiritual psychology that heals the personal and social dimension.
Kongo Nkisi/Canaanite Repartee/Black Savvy: Possession and Healing at the Crossroads
James W. Perkinson, Ecumenical Theological Seminary
This essay represents a thought-experiment in cross-cultural healing, orchestrated in a “syncopated signification” typical of Afro-artistic sensibilities. The first part of the presentation will juxtapose Bakongo nkisi medicine-statue and Christian proverb-amulet in a bi-focal reading of two “texts” of healing from radically disparate cultures. The second part will mobilize the cross-reading of the first section in relationship to the problematic of race as identified in W. E. B. DuBois’s way of textualizing (his own) racial wounding as a child (demonstrated in the first three paragraphs of The Souls of Black Folk). In the process, multiple questions about healing and meaning, possession and representation, performance and percussive resonance will be raised and roused in a paper that is itself a performance text.
A277
Caring for Nature: From Fact to Value, from Respect to Reverence
Ian G. Barbour, Carleton College, Presiding
Holmes Rolston, III, Colorado State University
Holmes Rolston, III, winner of the 2003 Templeton Prize, is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. He has written seven books, most recently Genes, Genesis and God (Cambridge University Press) and Science and Religion: A Critical Survey (Random House, McGraw Hill, Harcourt-Brace). He is a founding editor of the journal Environmental Ethics and has served on the Zygon editorial board for two decades. Rolston has spoken as distinguished lecturer on all seven continents. He is a founding member of the International Society for Science and Religion. Rolston has been an invited lecturer at many academic institutions around the world as well as serving as a consultant with over two dozen conservation and policy groups, including the U.S. Congress and a Presidential Commission.
A173
Panel: Preparing Teachers to Teach about Religion: Current Practices and Models
Diana L. Eck, Harvard University, Presiding
Bruce Grelle, California State University, Chico
Stephen N. Dunning, University of Pennsylvania
Diane L. Moore, Harvard University
With exploding religious pluralism and the challenges of creating a civil society from a diverse population, the role of religion and religious liberty in K-12 education is crucial and timely. This session will offer a brief overview of the history of the AAR’s involvement in the issue of preparing secondary teachers to teach about religion, followed by presentations of some current training models being used at various universities. The session will begin with an historical overview, and will continue with a panel discussion and presentation of models involving Bruce Grelle, California State University, Chico; Diane Moore, Harvard University; Steve Dunning, University of Pennsylvania; and Diana L. Eck, Harvard University, presiding.
A174
Top Ten Ways to Survive Your First Year on the Job
Richard Amesbury, Valdosta State University, Presiding
Sandie Gravett, Appalachian State University
How do I manage four courses in a semester? How do I teach a subject outside of my discipline? How do I handle inappropriate behavior in the classroom? How often do I provide office hours? How do I keep on track for tenure? How can I maximize my time in and out of class? How do I deal with departmental duties and my chair? These and other questions will be addressed in this introductory professional development workshop for graduate students. Sandie Gravett, Appalachian State University, will provide strategies for time management, tips on how to teach outside your specialty, and other helpful hints to get you through your first year teaching. There will be plenty of handouts, lots of practical advice, and ample time will be available for questions and discussion. This workshop is free and open to all graduate students preparing to enter the profession.
A175
Religion, Race, and Liberalism: DuBois and Rawls on the Issue of Justice
Terrence Johnson, Brown University
The Rawlsian citizen as “free and equal” is political and not metaphysical, and in this sense, it presupposes a universal subject. It assumes that all citizens possess either the existential or ontological capacity to envision -- in the strong sense -- notions of justice irrespective of race, gender, and class. In this respect, Rawls” theory of justice creates two problems: it fosters a political project that precludes comprehensive claims, and it constitutes citizens as universal “White subjects.” In this paper, I shall argue that the emergence of a “Black” subject complicates Rawls’ theory on several grounds. Defined as “irrational” and “sub-human” in modern philosophical discourse, Black subjects emerge as the antithesis of what counts as human, autonomous, and rational persons. My goal is to show that race consciousness, and more specifically, double consciousness, is critical for articulating a theory of justice that is not partial to White rationality.
The Motif of the Stranger in The Souls of Black Folk
Arthur Sutherland, Loyola College in Maryland
In the opening chapter of The Souls of Black Folk, DuBois writes, “Why did God make me a stranger and an outcast in mine own house?” This paper argues that the motif of the stranger is a significant one that appears in DuBois, not only in this work but also across the corpus of his writing. There are three reasons why the motif needs to be closely investigated. First, it signifies DuBois as the prototypical representative of the social dislocation he saw in, to use his term, the American Negro. Second, it reflects his twin engagement with theories fragmentation and the biblical idea of lament. Third, his use of the motif prefigures its use in the writing of the Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance that in almost every instance paints some aspect of the picture of Blacks as migrants, outcasts, strangers, and exiles.
The Gift of W. E. B. DuBois: A Sociology of Vision and Spirit
Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Colby College
This presentation will examine the implications of DuBois’s understanding of the view from within the veil as a gift of “secondsight” on the part of African American people. I will pay special attention to Du Bois’s analysis of the importance of the Spirit and its impact within the black experience and its impact on American society in general. In addition to his insights presented in The Souls of Black Folk, I will also discuss his
volume The Gift of Black Folk that represents an extension of some of his theses in Souls, especially his challenge concerning the gift of black people expressed in the essay “Of the Sorrow Songs. Overall, Du Bois argues for a primacy of an African American “Standpoint” and anticipates the problems of assessing the black contribution to a multicultural America.
A176
Sufis in the City: The Predicament of Pluralism
Markus Dressler, New York University
Based on research in the New York City area, the paper firstly addresses the problem of how to define Sufism in a non-Muslim, pluralist environment. As becomes clear, there are in fact many “Sufisms” significantly differing from each other. In order to distinguish between them, I argue in favor of a pragmatic criterion: commitment to Islam. In relation to the problem of definition, the paper secondly investigates issues of identity and authenticity. The traditional Sufi orders come from non-pluralist societies used to state control of religion. Hence, the move to a culturally and religiously pluralist system raises the question of social location. Actors are confronted to the task of maintaining authenticity in an unauthentic environment. Responses to this task range from two ideal typical extremes: total seclusion or active involvement within the pluralist society.
Transglobal Mysticism or a Case of Cultural Binary Fission: The Transmigration of Sufism to Britain
Ron Geaves, Chester College
The second half of the twentieth century has seen a number of tariqas relocate in the western world, often attributed to globalisation processes. The paper will argue that although some countries such as the USA have demonstrated a new popularity for Sufi movements amongst the non-Muslim population, the British case is distinctly different. In the British case, Sufism has arrived primarily as a result of migration and is more an example of reproduction of traditional culture than a renewed interest in mysticism or changing forms of spirituality within the non-Muslim populations. These movements demonstrate a complex relationship between the traditional reasons for relocation such as promotion of Islam and a more conservative hidebound transmission and maintenance of culture that attempts to resist change and finds itself on the defensive within a rapidly transforming Muslim minority population.
“Global Sufism”: Theirs and Ours
Marcia Hermansen, Loyola University, Chicago
This paper will explore the broader panel theme of Sufi Orders in Western societies through considering the Sufi Order in the West. This Order is transnational and hybridized. It originates in a twentieth century charismatic teacher, Hazrat Inayat Khan, who came from an Indian Chishti Sufi background. In practice the Order is eclectic, not requiring formal adherence to Islam and promoting the unity of religions through a shared “spirit of guidance”. The reasons for considering this movement as part of the proposed panel is that the interactions of its teachings, style and leadership with intellectual, cultural and political trends--Islamic, Western and global--of the twentieth century, might shed light on broader issues of “local” and transnational factors impacting Sufi movements in Western societies.
Re-Traditionalizing Spirituality: The Burhaniya Sufi Order in Germany
Gritt Klinkhammer, University of Erfurt
The paper argues that the original interest of the Germans in Sufism has fundamentally changed within the last ten years. There appears to be a trend to re-traditionalize Sufism by emphasizing its Islamic roots and its respective local homeland traditions. The German branch of the Burhani-Community, which has its roots in the Sudan, demonstrates this process with all its facets. Concurrent with the establishment of the Burhani community in Germany in the last ten years, the relationship between its German members and orthodox Islam is visibly intensifying. In its beginnings, the German Burhanis were spiritually oriented mystics who practiced Sufi dhikr. Today they claim to be orthodox sharia-oriented Muslims. Sudanese advisers act as teachers of the German Burhanis, leading them to an understanding of orthodox Islam. In the course of this change the German Burhanis have claimed to be “the better Muslims” by speaking for and representing Islam in Germany.
Globalizing Sufism in a Virtual World: Sufi Orders on the Internet
Juliane Hammer, Elon University
This paper examines the Internet presence of two Sufi orders, namely the Jerrahiyya and the Nimatullahiyya in relation to their historical roots, their existing world-wide branches and their literature in English (and German). It shows the response of two particular turuq to the realities of Muslim migration, modernity and globalization. Their websites are analyzed for the presentation of Sufi images and ideas and are related to their “real” branches and literature. One central question is the motivation for going “online” in relation to the traditional emphasis on personal interactions and community experience within the tariqah and the self-perception of many Sufis as a spiritual elite. In a second step, the impact of information about contemporary Sufi orders and Sufism is put in the context of media images and self-perceptions of Muslims in the West and Islam in general.
A177
The Temple That Won’t Quit: Constructing Sacred Space in Orlando’s Holy Land Theme Park
Joan R. Branham, Providence College
The ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalem has captured the religious and popular imagination from antiquity to today. This paper analyzes typological tactics employed in the newly built Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando, Florida, to weave Judaism and Christianity into a seamless, sacred, and historical narrative, presenting the two traditions as co-existent and compatible entities. Located in the tourist mecca of the world, this so-called “living, biblical history museum,” deploys large-scale replicas of both the Tabernacle in the Wilderness and Herod’s Temple. In its “it’s a small world approach”--condensing 4,000 years of distinctive histories into 15 acres of geographical and theological narrative--the Orlando Herodian Temple serves as a literal backdrop to evangelical Christianity in an effort to merge Judaism and Christianity into a homogeneous and harmonious entity.
Conflict, Commemoration, Community, and Making Space Sacred: The Response to Racist Violence at St. John Baptist Church, Dixiana, South Carolina
Stephen Murphy, University of Virginia
Throughout its history, the African-American congregation of St. John Baptist Church in Dixiana, South Carolina has been under constant threat of harassment and vandalism, especially by whites associated with local racist groups. On August 16, 1995, the church was burned to the ground. Yet after each act of violence, the congregation has reaffirmed its commitment to repair the church and to remain on the same isolated site - the present building was rededicated in 1998. The congregation’s resolve to rebuild provides an opportunity to examine both their response to racist violence and the ways in which this struggle has influenced their community and their beliefs. The example of this Christian faith community demonstrates that conflict and commemoration are central to making this space sacred and to creating a response to violence that ultimately reinforces this congregation’s belief in brotherhood.
Art and Architecture as Religious and Moral Language? Assessing Contemporary Theological Responses through a Liberationist Example
Ki Joo Choi, Boston College
Taking a recent liberation theology approach to aesthetics as a case study, this paper suggests that the issue of the religious and moral specificity of aesthetic objects, such as art and architectural objects, is often neglected in many contemporary theological reflections on aesthetics. As such, many of these contemporary reflections fail to understand the functional significance of aesthetic objects. To that extent, this paper argues that sustained attention to the intrinsic qualities of aesthetic objects can help us to see how aesthetic objects are necessary for religious and moral flourishing.
Readers of the Lost Ark: Containing the Sacred
Crystal Downing, Messiah College
Focusing on the development of the Noah’s Ark pageant in English Corpus Christi play cycles, I will argue that the modernist mystification of belles-lettres reflects an age-old analogy between architectural sanctuary and the sanctity of texts. Deconstruction, then, was a response to the construction of ark-like containers of meaning, sacred spaces where everyday discourse could be transubstantiated into the language of art.
A178
Panel: An Appraisal of Ronald Davidson’s Indian Esoteric Buddhism in the Context of the Social History of Medieval Esoteric Movements
David Germano, University of Virginia, Presiding
Ryuichi Abe, Columbia University
Edward L. Davis, University of Hawaii
Phyllis Granoff, McMaster University
Jeffrey Stephen Lidke, Berry College
Robert Sharf, University of California, Berkeley
Michael D. Swartz, Ohio State University
Hugh B. Urban, Ohio State University
Ronald M. Davidson, Fairfield University, Responding
This panel will discuss Ronald Davidson’s new social history of Indian esoteric Buddhism, Indian Esoteric Buddhism. The book represents a landmark in the study of esoteric Buddhism in medieval India, and offers a powerful paradigm for understanding the social matrix of tantra in its country of origins. The panel will bring together specialists focusing on medieval esoteric traditions from different cultures to discuss the wide ranging implications of Davidson’s study in its own right, and in its relationships to the study of other esoteric Buddhist and non-Buddhist traditions in Asia and Europe. In the process, it will address methodological issues pertaining to the study of medieval esoteric traditions, as well as specific points pertaining especially to the social history of such movements.
A179
Assets, the Poor, and Democracy
Jim Bailey, Duquesne University
The gap between rich and poor in the United States continues to widen, amidst much concern about the effect this may have on our democratic institutions. While the inequalities in income are significant, inequalities in wealth are even greater, with the top 20 percent controlling 83 percent of the wealth. By contrast, the bottom 40 percent own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth. Inasmuch as wealth tends to be positively correlated with increased social, economic and political participation, the failure to promote asset accumulation in our poorest citizens has important implications for the vitality of our democracy. This paper reviews recent proposals aimed at promoting asset accumulation in the poor and reflects on the implications of such policies for democratic participation. It concludes by observing that there are significant parallels between these recent policy proposals and key social, economic and political themes in Roman Catholic social teaching.
Empowerment of the Poor and Democracy: New Dimensions on the Question of International Development
Maria T. Davila, Boston College
After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks diverse international organizations analyzed their role in addressing some of the causes of terrorism. As an example, the World Bank has determined that the war on poverty and the war on terrorism have more in common than originally thought. This paper will examine how the concept of empowerment of the poor and disenfranchised in poor countries is being utilized by agencies such as the World Bank and the United Nations to address economic poverty, political agency and participation, and the discontent that has been linked to fundamentalist terrorism. I use the work of Amartya Sen and his approach to poverty and democracy in Development as Freedom to analyze the effectiveness of different approaches to empower the poor, mainly, micro-lending enterprises and political empowerment training as promoted by the World Bank, in the integration of the poor into fair and representative forms of government.
Earth in Play: Globalization and Religious Ethics at the World Summit on Sustainable Development
Bron Taylor, University of Florida
This presentation, drawing on fieldwork at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, analyzes the diverse ethical principles and fact-claims contested there, concluding that: (1) little progress was made in part because of a decision made at Rio Earth Summit to include multinational corporations as key members of “Civil Society” in future UN environmental meetings, a reality that both reflected the strategy of big business and well serves such interests; (2) Civil Society has powerfully articulated a counter-ethics to challenge unbridled globalization with its extension of market capitalism and genetic engineering to every corner of the planet; but (3) this challenge is largely moot as the inertia of globalization, aided and abetted by business and government elites worldwide, transforms nature in irrevocable ways, eliminating even the possibility for ethical decision-making by the global community.
Union Democracy and Global Change: Prospects for the Working Classes
Ken Estey, New York, NY
The emergence of labor-religion coalitions throughout the United States in the last decade indicates renewed religious interest in labor as a key constituent in social movements and struggles against globalized capitalism. The prospect for a vigorous working class voice for participatory, grassroots, democratic change depends on the ability of the working class to structure and control its own work life. The goal of this paper is to offer a study of labor unions and the disputes over their internal structure as an impediment for change in other venues. This paper offers a new perspective to consider the effectiveness of coalitions between labor and religious groups for local and global challenges to corporate neo-liberalism.
A180
Panel: Paulist Press’s Classics of Western Spirituality Series Twenty-Fifth Anniversary
Christopher Bellitto, Paulist Press, Presiding
Bernard McGinn, University of Chicago
Sandra M. Schneiders, Jesuit School of Theology
Ewert H. Cousins, Fordham University
In completing its 25th year of publishing translations of primary texts from spiritual traditions within Islam, Judaism and Christianity, Paulist Press’s Classics of Western Spirituality Series has not only shaped and sustained but in many ways initiated contemporary interest in spirituality. Its influence has been felt not only in the area of spirituality, but also in theology, history, psychology, religious studies, ecumenism, and inter-religious dialogue. The panel is part of a year-long celebration of the Series and its impact. Panelists will discuss the initiation and growth of the series, its contribution to relating past and future spirituality at the start of the third millennium, its contribution to the academic study of spirituality, and its effect on interreligious dialogue and ecumenism. It is anticipated that lively audience participation will address these and other issues related to the series.
A181
Holy Nation, Holy War: The Controversy over the Pledge of Allegiance in Times of Conflict
James McBride, New York, NY
On June 26, 2002, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Pledge of Allegiance, amended by a 1954 federal statute to include the phrase “under God”, violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and therefore was unconstitutional. Newdow v. U.S. Congress, 2002 WL 1370796 (ninth Cir. Cal.) In the hysteria that subsequently swept the nation, the decision was labeled by members of Congress as “crazy,” “outrageous,” and “nuts” and by President Bush as “ridiculous.” The purpose of this paper is threefold: to examine the reasons why the Ninth Circuit held the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in the public schools unconstitutional; to review the history of the Pledge of Allegiance and its transformation during the Cold War; and to analyze the link between American civil religion and its reawakening during military confrontations with enemies promoting different cultural worldviews (Soviet atheism and Islamic “fundamentalism”).
Bush, Clinton, and American Civil Religion
Justin Watson, Le Moyne College
President George W. Bush’s frequent references to God and the Bible in his public statements have been criticized as unwise and even dangerous. In response, the President’s defenders claim that such references reflect the accepted traditions of American civil religion. Is Bush’s religious rhetoric really that unusual? In order to examine this question, I compare Bush’s use of religious language and ideas with that of President Bill Clinton. I propose that Clinton and Bush have each appealed to contrasting themes in civil religion, themes that seem false or dangerous to those who do not share them. Using the categories developed by James Davison Hunter in Culture Wars, I suggest the contrast between Bush and Clinton is rooted in the long-running conflict between what Hunter calls the “orthodox” and the “progressive” moral visions of American public life.
Healing the Student Body: Spirituality, Yoga, and the Law
Avi M. Spiegel, Harvard University
Situated at the intersection of the study of law and religion, this paper critically examines recent proposals to include yoga instruction in public schools. Are current legal constructions of religion equipped to handle the changing American religious landscape? Can spiritual practice not associated with particular religious doctrine or belief be distinguished from “religion” under the law? To what legal lengths can teachers and schools go to heal an increasingly anxious and “stressed-out” student body? In analyzing recent court decisions concerned with yoga and defining religion, this paper shows how existing frames of legal analysis, by emphasizing mind over body, belief over practice, do not account for emerging modes of spiritual healing practice in the United States. I consider the legal ramifications of deeming yoga instruction a religious practice versus a healing practice and propose a new conceptual framework for how the two pursuits might be reconciled.
A182
Panel: Thinking Ritual
Randi Rashkover, York College of Pennsylvania, Presiding
Peter Ochs, University of Virginia
Robert Gibbs, University of Toronto
Steven D. Kepnes, Colgate University
Graham Ward, University of Manchester, Responding
Because the everyday character of Jewish liturgy structures the experience of time, space, and experience in general, Jewish liturgy offers unique possibilities for insight into Jewish religion. When Jewish theologians and philosophers turn to jewish prayer, they can reconstruct the theological commitments and doctrines that the prayers express, or they can look to the performance of the ones who pray. This panel, drawing on the insights of various modern Jewish thinkers, will look at how the practices in their concreteness inform the way the praying Jew understands his or her world, via his or her experience of time and history. Moreover, this thinking about ritual has a second dimension, since the everyday ritual also trains the thinking of the one who prays. In other words, the panelists are thinking not only about ritual, but also looking at how the Jewish liturgy is a ritual training of thinking.
A183
Authority and Performance with/in Medieval Women’s Mystical Texts
Trish Beckman, University of Missouri, Columbia
In the mysticisms of fourteenth-century Germany, women’s vernacular writings formed a vital component of religious education and practice. Instructions for reading of manuscripts, marginal instructions to share books among houses, and the use of mystical works in meditative practice all point to manuscripts’ performative, didactic, and imitative purpose in houses of women (both lay and religious). For my case study, I will provide a reading of women-authored, German mystical texts: Mechthild of Magdeburg’s Flowing Light of the Godhead, Margarete Ebner’s Revelations, and, most intriguingly, a little-examined letter exchange between Margaret and a famous promoter of women’s mystical works, Heinrich of Nördlingen. In this exchange they quote verbatim from, strategize about use of, and suggest performative techniques for the reading of Mechthild’s mystical treatise. Tracing the mystical themes of Mechthild and their subsequent use in Margarete and Heinrich’s epistolary exchange, reinforce the performance and authority in women’s religious works.
Embodied Embedded Mysticism: Affirming the (Female) Body and the World Body
Carol P. Christ, Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual, Lesbos, Greece
Feminist mysticism is “embodied embedded mysticism,” affirming the presence of the divine in physical, material reality. Embodied embedded mysticism affirms the body, rather than negating it through ascetic practices. It does not seek to rise above the world, but rather is a sense of being part of a larger whole-including human and nonhuman life-that is infused with divine presence. As I discuss in my new book She Who Changes, process philosophy affirms the body and the world as the body of Goddess/God. Correcting the theological mistakes of classical theism that arise from denying the female body through which we are born into the physical world, process philosophy provides a conceptual framework that is compatible with a feminist understanding of mysticism. Not the via negativa, but a via positiva, reflection on embodied embedded life, is the appropriate method for feminist work in religion. Ethical consequences will be considered.
Green Mysticism and Spiritual Madness: The Committed “Lunacy” of an Eco-Woman Warrior
Sarah M. Taylor, Northwestern University
Rather than dismiss contemporary forest activist and “treesitter” Julia Hill as merely a delusional tree-hugger, a hysterical woman “driven up a tree,” I argue that the story of Hill and her redwood host “Luna” provides valuable insights into the dynamic relationship between the sexual politics of madness and the mystical dimensions of the contemporary environmental movement. Many of the most outspoken “green mystics” today are women. As they relate their powerful experiences with nature, eco-women warriors are bringing new critical dimensions both to classic feminist works on women and madness (Rigney 1978; Chesler 1972) and to the growing discourse on mysticism and social transformation (Ruffing 2001; Egan 1987). Ultimately, Julia Hill affirms her own madness as “sacred madness.” Her experiences of “Luna” and “lunacy” provide an intriguing window into the ways Hill and other self-defined “eco-woman warriors” are actively and uniquely shaping a popular “green mysticism” in contemporary North America.
“The Guest of My Inmost Heart”: Images of the Divine Beloved in Female Sufi Poetry
Maria Massi Dakake, George Mason University
In the works of Islamic mysticism, one finds the image of the Sufi seeker consumed by desire for the Divine Beloved, represented as a “veiled” woman. This image conceives of the Sufi seeker as the male lover in relation to this symbolic “feminine.” However, women themselves were not infrequently the practitioners of the mystical path in Islam, and it is clear from the words attributed to them that female Sufis developed their own image of the Divine Beloved, who was very clearly the masculine object of their female desire. In this paper, we examine the short poetic pieces and sayings attributed to Sufi women in both hagiographical and biographical works in an attempt to identify a specifically feminine brand of Islamic “love” mysticism that reflected a distinctly and traditionally female experience of loving and spiritual longing.
A184
Panel: Gay Gene? Religious and Policy Implications of a Possible Genetic Basis for Sexual Orientation
Rebecca T. Alpert, Temple University, Presiding
Dena S. Davis, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
Suzanne Holland, University of Puget Sound
Kathleen M. Sands, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Recent decades have seen numerous scientific studies attempting to prove a genetic basis for sexual orientation. This panel will explore the challenge such a genetic basis would pose to religious traditions that currently oppose homosexuality. Panelists discuss: the current state of the science; attitudes toward homosexuality in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; elements within the traditions that are brought into play as they grapple with the challenge of incorporating or rejecting scientific knowledge; potential public policy and legal implications of a change in religious atittudes toward homosexuality.
A185
The Correspondence of Aesthetics with Doctrines of Revelation and as Theological Method
Alejandro Garcia-Rivera, Jesuit School of Theology
A proposal is given for a theological method that is congenial to explore doctrines of revelation. This method is based on a theological aesthetics that has its origins in Latino/a theologies.
Sophia the Hybrid: A Latina Postcolonial Theology
Mayra Rivera, Drew University
This paper is a Latina postcolonial theological analysis of the feminine personification of God as Sophia. It uses the concept of hybridity in relation to Mestizaje/Mulatez as a tool for an interpretation that can reclaim the subversive potentialities of that figure. Sophia’s role has proved utterly resistant to any simple classification, which poses an interesting challenge for theological reflection. This paper will deal with the indefiniteness of Sophia’s identity as a central trait in her ancient portrayal. It will read her as a complex and living hybrid, socially, nationally, religiously and even ontologically. As a figure of one whose social position emerges in and through the contest within and between power structures Sophia stands as a potential symbol of resistance and subversion of normative positions.
Sources and Products of Revelation: “Religious Experience” and “Culture” in the Works of Latina/o Theologians
Stephen L. Stell, Austin College
Experience as a source for Latina/o theologians emerges from cultural-historical traditions, rather than universal conceptions of experience. “Religious experiences” for Latina/o theologians reveal mutually constitutive relations between culture and experience. Granted serious challenges (reductionism, syncretism), this approach fosters insights into revelation/incarnation. Moreover, this inter-relational field of “culture” and “religious experience” re-define these terms according to mutual relations and relational identities. The multidimensionality of this re-definition engenders multiple interpretations, since an inter-relational framework has no “natural” or “fixed” boundaries. Thus one creates distinctive theological positions specifically in relation to other constructed identity-configurations. Accordingly, reflections on relational identity are never simply comparative, but are necessarily constructive. This inter-relational framework celebrates the distinctiveness of Latina/o theologians and highlights inherent connections with other communities - without blurring the two. The relations unfolded between “revelatory experience” and “culture” are both a reflection of and a constructive contribution to the dynamic interpretive framework of theology.
A186
Love’s Desire: Eros and Divinity in the Poetry of Solomon Ibn Gabirol
Sarah Pessin, California State University, Fresno
Through a close reading and analysis of the poem “I love you” by Solomon Ibn Gabirol (eleventh-century Jewish Neoplatonic philosopher and poet), I show how, by stressing the centrality of love and longing within God’s own nature, Gabirol offers a unique vision of the erotic nature of the relationship between God and the human subject. Through an exposition of various biblical, philosophical, and mystical intertextual clues, including analyses of ideas from both Gabirol’s own philosophical text Fons Vitae (Fountain of Life) as well as various Jewish and Islamic Neoplatonic and mystical textual traditions, I show how Gabirol presents us with a unique existential and theological vision in which receptivity and presence-and not “knowing God” in any cognitive sense-are the keys both to God’s encounter with man and to man’s encounter with God. Desire, and not knowledge, is shown to emerge as the key to the human-divine embrace.
To Desire or to Love? That Is the Question!
Yehudit K. Greenberg, Rollins College
Jewish metaphors of and references to the experience of loving God emphasize longing rather than fulfillment. This paper seeks to illuminate and illustrate this claim by offering an examination of the Platonic distinction between love and desire as delineated by the neo-Platonist renaissance philosopher Judah Abrabanel (ca. 1460-1535) in his Dialoghi D’Amore (Dialogues on Love). Having clarified this distinction, I offer a deconstruction of a selection of rabbinic and philosophical commentaries on the Song of Songs that focus on the erotic dimensions of loving God, including Midrash Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah and references from Bachya Ben Asher, Rambam, and Rosenzweig. I discuss how these textual sources provide important locations for understanding Jewish views of loving God and show that these ideas of divine love are based on the privileging of erotic love whereby longing rather than fulfillment is perceived as the higher state of loving God.
Extravagant Beholding: The Love of Two Bodies and the Language of Excess in the Song of Songs and South Indian Devotion
Steven P. Hopkins, Swarthmore College
This paper tackles a persistent and compelling literary motif in the Hebrew Song of Songs: the so-called was.f, which describes in erotically charged detail the body of the Beloved (male or female) from the foot to the head or head to foot. The was.f is meant to inspire emotion through a surplus of extravagant metaphoric energies, dissembling metaphors, and similes that expand the boundaries of the Beloved’s body into a rich idealized landscape. In medieval South India, saint-poets composing in Sanskrit and Tamil use a similar trope to describe the beautiful body of the god Visnu. The anubhāva, like the was.f, is meant to inspire a direct experience of amorous feeling through exaggerated erotic language inherited from Sanskrit kāvya. My paper explores thematic connections between these Jewish and Hindu forms of lyric description and their implications for a theology of beauty and erotic love of God in both traditions.
Union and Separation from the Kāma Śutra to the Gītagovinda
Rita Dasgupta Sherma, Binghamton University
The use of erotic imagery to emphasize passionate devotion to God is a familiar theme in Hindu bhakti traditions. This paper posits that the choice of eros as the vehicle to express love’s tenor is not indicative merely of the need for an emotive mode of expression but the need to initiate the body itself into the practice of surrender required by bhakti. Examining the permeable boundaries between Sanskrit “secular” literature and devotional poetry, I suggest that this initiation is achieved by the adaptation of elements of Sanskrit poetics theory and the erotic aesthetics of the kāma śastra by bhakti poets as well as writers such as Jayadeva (Gītagovinda) and applied to the elicitation of an acute functional response to the soteriology of love. These elements include juxtaposition of union and separation, aesthetics of remembrance, and the significance of physical “signs” of passion that inscribe belonging and intensify love.
A187
Ungraspable Phantoms: The Emergence of the Culture Concept in Antebellum America
John Lardas, University of California at Santa Barbara
Genealogies provided by Raymond Williams, Marvin Harris, and Christopher Herbert have done much to clarify the ideological and epistemological concerns that informed the emergence of culture as a discursive formation in the nineteenth century. What they have lacked, however, is a rigorous exploration of the religious history that gave rise to the notion of culture as a metaphysical force and unconscious influence, particularly on American soil. By exploring various sites within antebellum America I will argue that the idea of culture emerged as a highly contentious and religiously inflected argument about the nature, problems, and prospects of the social whole. This argument surfaced not only in the religious musings of Horace Bushnell and spiritualist mediums but also in the ethnographic work of Lewis Henry Morgan, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851), and the ethnological critiques of Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown.
Consumer Culture and Remaking “Lost Cause” Religion in the South
Kent McConnell, Dartmouth College
This study is concerned with the reconfiguration of religious expression by commercial forces. Focusing on the history of Atlanta’s Stone Mountain, the research examines the phenomenon of “Lost Cause” religion among former Confederates and successive generations of Southerners who negotiated issues of race, religion, and sectional identity as America turned to the twentieth century. Taking its methodological cue from religious scholars such as Edwin Gaustad who suggest an essential but often overlooked relationship exists between religious piety and geography in the United States, the work details how Stone Mountain, one of the most visible geographic features of the South and its Confederate past, was slowly transformed by economic forces from a ritualistic site of ceremonial celebration by Southern evangelicals and the Ku Klux Klan members, to its current status as the self-proclaimed “number one family destination of Georgia.”
Religious Experience and Racial Uplift in the Art of Henry Ossawa Tanner
Kristin Schwain, University of Missouri, Columbia
In this paper, I examine the early religious paintings of the African American artist, Henry Ossawa Tanner, and argue that his selection of Biblical subjects, interpretive methods, and conception of art’s social role were informed by his affiliation with the AME church. Through an examination of his Orientalist style and visual exegesis I argue that Tanner translated the Biblical hermeneutic of the AME church and its popular expression in the sermon into visual form. However, he did not picture an essentialized notion of Black religious practices. He promoted a brand of controlled religious experience--consistent with the aims of the northern Black elite--that countered the “shout” tradition popularly associated with southern Blacks.
The Cold War, the Humanistic Study of Religion, and the Fallacy of Insufficient Cynicism
Russell T. McCutcheon, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
This paper constitutes an initial investigation into whether sufficient material evidence exists to support the thesis that the development of the humanistically-based academic study of religion in the U.S. was, to whatever degree, a product of mid-twentieth-century Cold War politics. The paper is therefore an attempt to counter the seemingly apolitical “history of ideas” approach adopted my most scholars who write a history of the study of religion. Contrary to this model, which charts the development of the field against a backdrop of intellectual debates over doctrine and belief (i.e., the theology vs. religious studies debate), this alternative approach places the debate firmly within the realm of geo-politics by tracing some of the government and private endowment funds that made the humanistic study of religion an institutional reality.
A188
Fleshing Out Christ: Maximus the Confessor’s Christology in Anthropological Perspective
Ian A. McFarland, University of Aberdeen
Maximus is best known for his insistence on the presence of two (natural) wills in Christ. Anything less would compromise Christ’s full humanity, and thus his capacity to restore and perfect human nature. Yet in some of his works Maximus seems to suggest that contemplation of the Word in the flesh is only a very preliminary and imperfect stage on the road to divinization. At first glance, this apparent devaluation of Christ’s humanity accords ill with Maximus” refusal to brook any compromise of its integrity in the monothelite controversy. The
solution to this apparent inconsistency lies in appreciating the way in which Maximus relates Christology to anthropology. From this perspective it can be shown that what at first glance may seem a depreciation of the physical is not to be understood as the negation of Christ’s (or our) humanity but rather as its fulfillment.
The Georgian Life of the Virgin attributed to Maximus the Confessor: Its Authenticity and Importance
Stephen J. Shoemaker, University of Oregon
In 1986, Michel van Esbroeck published a lengthy vita of the Virgin Mary, preserved in Georgian and attributed to Maximus the confessor. Although this work had long been known and studied by scholars of Georgian literature, van Esbroeck is the first to bring this fascinating and potentially important document into the broader discourse of Eastern Christian Studies, by publishing and edition, translation, and lengthy introductions. The work is very complex, drawing on a number of preexisting traditions to create a complete and well crafted account of the Virgin’s life. In his introduction, van Esbroeck argues at length that the work’s attribution to Maximus is reliable, and he presents a case that is at least plausible and worthy of examination. Nevertheless, scholars of Maximus have heretofore almost completely ignored this potentially important document, which is most unfortunate.
Theoria and Praxis in St. Maximos the Confessor’s “Quaestiones et Dubia”
Despina Prassas, Providence College
This paper will address St. Maximos’ understanding of theoria and praxis, as well as their modes of transmission. There will be a discussion of his use and definitions of the two concepts. Lastly, I will explain how St. Maximos employs theoria and praxis within each specific question of the text itself, thereby providing for his reader an example for their use.
A189
Japanese Print Media Reporting of Two New Religions in Occupied Japan
Ben Dorman, Australian National University
Although the Allied Occupation authorities guaranteed freedoms of religion and expression after Japan’s defeat in 1945, new religions faced substantial social opposition fueled mainly by a hostile press. Jiu and Tensho Kotai Jingu Kyo were the first of the new religions in the immediate postwar period to receive intense and critical coverage in the Japanese national print media. Jiu virtually disintegrated in 1947 after a widely reported incident and media attacks. On the other hand, Tensho Kotai Jingu Kyo managed to weather the media storm and turn it to its advantage. Although their relations with the media had a substantial effect on the growth of these groups, other factors, such as their dealings with the Japanese and Occupation authorities, the social conditions of the immediate postwar period, and widespread prejudices against new religions were also important.
The Question of Self Presentation in Tenrikyo
Saburo Morishita, Tenri University
Of the older Japanese “new” religious movements, has constantly struggled with its self presentation, especially during its quest for legal recognition earlier in its history, but also when responding to the public suspicion and media attacks it faced as a new religion. While its responses were designed to present a positive image of the movement to the public and media, they should not be seen solely as a public relations exercise designed to promote growth and acceptance. A case in point is its social welfare work, which especially aided people suffering from Hansen’s disease (leprosy) in Japan. This paper examines such activities and shows that they should not be seen primarily as activities carried out as a reaction to media criticism or to create a positive public image, but that they represent also the movement’s ideals of working for the betterment of society.
Aum Shinrikyo and Its Utilization of Media
Manabu Watanabe, Nanzan University
Aum Shinrikyo spread its “truth” through the mass media, and this paper will analyze the development of its use of this media, especially in relation to the development of the anti-Aum movement. There are five phases in this development: first, from its foundation to its recognition as a religious corporation in 1989; second, from the first Aum bashing in 1989 to the day before the TV debate in 1991; third, from the TV debate in 1991 to the day before the sarin attack in 1995; fourth, from the sarin attack to the enforcement of the so-called new Aum laws in 1999; and fifth, after the new Aum laws are enforced in 1999. It will be argued that Aum was basically successful in utilizing mass media especially in the third phase and the early fifth phase, and the reasons for this success will be analyzed.
Cult Controversy and Strategies of the Unification Church of Japan
Yoshihide Sakurai, Hokkaido University
The Unification Church can be identified as an example of failure in the process of institutionalization that most new religions in Japan have successfully negotiated. The reason why it has been called a controversial religion since the early 1960s, and a “cult” more recently, is not just because of its esoteric dogma and ritual, but more importantly because of its strategies of fund-raising and the recruitment of new members. In response to severe criticism by the mass media and anti-Unification Church movements, the movement engaged in the fraudulent sale of spiritual goods in order to raise funds and hid their identity in order to recruit new members. Since the early 1980s they have modified their church organization into a resource-mobilizing machine, but in the process they furthered their loss of credibility, and their aging membership calls into question the long-term viability of the group in Japan.
A190
John Henry Newman as Historian of Christian Thought
Paul Misner, Marquette University
J. H. Newman, as Claude Welch has suggested, loosened the hold of two mutually reinforcing prejudgments in regard to the history of Christianity and its theologies. One was that any change in Christian beliefs subsequent to the New Testament origins was at best a temporary compromise and otherwise a turn for the worse. The other was that the truth of Christian doctrines must necessarily be held, taught, and believed in the present in the same terms in which it has always been held, taught, and believed by faithful Christians (Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus). The Catholic/Protestant polemics over change in doctrine could not but change after Newman proposed his theory of developments of doctrine (cf. Harnack/Loisy). He proposed the theory “to account for a difficulty,” at a time that assured his theory a hearing.
Defining Protestantism in Albrecht Ritschl’s Historical Method
Gregory Walter, Princeton Theological Seminary
Albrecht Ritschl’s method of interpreting the history of dogma owes itself to many roots. A source not considered is his definition of Protestantism. This definition results from his appropriation of the tradition of speaking of Protestantism as a Prinzip and the Christian Freedom as found in Luther’s treatise on Christian liberty. The shifts in his method will be demonstrated by examining the editions of Ritschl’s Rechtfertigung und Versöhnungslehre and important methodological work between the two. The use of Protestantism to interpret history will be raised in light of the search for a basic difference between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism has played in contemporary ecumenical theology.
Adolf von Harnack as Historian and Theologian
Walter E. Wyman, Jr. Whitman College
Adolf von Harnack is remembered seventy years after his death primarily for his monumental History of Dogma and for his Essence of Christianity, seen by many as the quintessential statement of liberal Protestantism. This paper explores the relation between Harnack’s historical work and his liberal theology. Is Harnack best understood as a theologian who also did historical research, a historian with theological interests and premisses, or a historical theologian?
Convergences in Historical Theological Method in J. H. Newman and A. von Harnack
Thomas Buchan, Drew University
Newman and Harnack, though independently from one another, were of the same mind in their definitions of the problem of doctrinal development, in their insistence on the importance of the earliest centuries of Christianity as the decisive period for the whole of its history, and in their view of the “apologetic” purpose of historical theology. Secondly, there are matters on which Newman and Harnack may be seen to find agreement, but with qualifications. Here one notices their respective but congruent judgments concerning Catholicism, and their treatments of the process of its establishment and expansion, spoken of by Newman as Assimilation and by Harnack as Hellenization. Finally, though they disagreed profoundly in answering it, the question of the validity of presuppositions in historical inquiry was as centrally important for Newman as it was for Harnack.
Ernst Troeltsch’s Method for Discerning the Normative in History
David T. Ball, Methodist Theological School in Ohio
Der Historismus und seine Probleme represents the culmination of Troeltsch’s lifelong struggle with the problem of how normative values are to be discerned amidst the constantly changing flux of various historico-cultural contexts. Ultimately, in Der Historismus, Troeltsch set forth the method that he believed to be the solution to this problem of discerning normative value across history and across cultures. This paper will retrace the decades-long process through which Troeltsch’s thought evolved and matured, culminating in his method for discerning the normative in history. This will include critical attention to the assumptions and foundational commitments upon which Troeltsch based his thinking. At a minimum, however, we should not fail to appreciate the fundamental reorientation that Troeltsch proposed for the Western normative quest, from a search for normative truth to an appreciation of normative wealth.
A191
Scholarship and Healing: Two Worlds, One Life
G. William Barnard, Southern Methodist University
As part of the PCR discussion on “Practicing Theory and Theorizing Practice,” this talk underscores some of the challenges and joys that arise in the process of juggling an academic career with a more “hands on” profession. Specifically, the talk focuses on the difficulties and rewards of integrating two disparate “worlds” -- the religious studies classroom and an alternative healing school -- into a single life.
Making a Place for the Soul: The Pedagogy of Silence
Stanford J. Searl, The Union Institute, San Diego
This presentation examines the theory and practice of pedagogy of silence and contemplation in the classroom. Drawing upon theory connected to tacit knowledge and an epistemology associated with silence, the paper explores the incorporation of silence into College classrooms, shifting the learning approach from an emphasis upon speaking and argument to one of listening and meditation. In addition, the presentation describes the implications for a kind of teaching and learning that integrates one’s mind, heart and soul through the pedagogy of silent contemplation.
Ethics, Levinas, and Psychotherapy
Al Dueck, Pasadena, CA
This presentation explores the implications of Levinas’ ethics as first philosophy for psychotherapy. The first part will review the dimensions of Levinas approach that will be relevant to a critique and constructive model of therapy as an ethical process. If much of contemporary psychotherapy assumes a foundationalist stance grounded in ontological perspectives vis-à-vis clients, then Levinas perspective poses a severe challenge. He argues that that which confronts me is not being, but the face of the other, a face that makes a demand on me rather than my discovering an order in nature. The face of the other cannot be reduced to being. Levinas contribution has implications for the way we view the client, the therapist and the therapeutic process. The client is then the radical other who places an ethical demand on me. He or she is radically other, beyond my conceptualizations.
From Theory to Student to Parish/Client and Back Again: Pastoral Theology as Praxis
Lee Hayward Butler, Chicago Theological Seminary
Pastoral theology challenges the nature of reality and the constructs that define human nature by holding in tension religiosity, spirituality, faith, hope, and human suffering. More than simply learning how to apply psychological theory to the practice of ministry, pastoral theology is about the work of restoring persons to living humanly. The pastoral theological dialectic is not a conversation between theory and practice, but a conversation between theology and the human condition. By shifting the categories conversation from theory to theology, and from practice to human condition, the reflective and motivational activities ultimately result in praxis. Through a critical examination of the issues of autonomy and power in human relationships, I will explore the ways in which a pastoral theological method that is reduced to theory and practice becomes destructive of human agency and promotes the abuse of power.
A192
Blessed Haman and Wicked Mordechai: Inversion of the Story of Esther in Veit Harlan’s Jud Suss
Meredith Hammons, Vanderbilt University
In later analysis of the Nazi propaganda film Jud Suss (1940), one aspect of this film which has escaped detection is its mirroring of the biblical story of Esther. In the film, the Jewish villain Suss plays the role of wicked Haman, while the ideal Aryan woman, Dorothea, plays the role of the Jewish Esther. Although far from the textual meaning or from Jewish interpretations of Esther, from the Nazi perspective, the story contains several themes attractive to propagandists: Jewish trickery, miscegenation, and Jewish bloodthirstiness. Through inversion, the filmmakers were even able to rewrite the ending. While it is unlikely that the allusions in both character and structure would have been consciously understood by the audience, the subtext enhanced the message that the Jews were a threat to Germany. By placing a negative spin on this foundational text, Jud Suss used the Jews’ own history in order to impeach them.
The Cinematic Lives of Edith Stein
Theresa Sanders, Georgetown University
This paper will examine two films about Edith Stein. The first, Edith Stein: Stations of an Extraordinary Life, was produced in Germany in 1982. The second is a 1995 film entitled The Seventh Chamber of Edith Stein. Both films, despite commendable effort, fall prey to the stereotypes that so often characterize cinematic portrayals of Jews. In the first, Edith expresses the widely-held Christian notion that the God worshiped by Jews is harsh and angry while the God of Jesus is kind and loving. She does this despite the historical Edith’s repeated assertions that she felt proud to share the Jewish heritage of Jesus. The second exemplifies what historian Judith Doneson identifies as “a sexual attitude whereby the male Christian saves a female Jew because he loves her.”
As If You Were There: Knowledge and Identity in The Devil’s Arithmetic
Liora Gubkin, University of Southern California
This paper offers a close reading of the 1999 film The Devil’s Arithmetic as a visual narrative about the Shoah and its incorporation into American Jewish identity through the Passover seder. The Devil’s Arithmetic presents the Holocaust, specifically the concentration camp, as incommensurable and thus favors experience as an authentic and exclusive mode of knowledge. By framing Hannah’s “Holocaust experience” with a seder, the film engages questions about ceremony and ritual as privileged ways of knowing. I argue that the film is compelling but problematic in its epistemological assumptions and positing of the Shoah as a focal point of Jewish identity. This paper concludes by placing the film in a larger context as part of current practices to ritualize the Shoah within the Passover seder and examines several haggadot that incorporate alternative embodied ritualizations of the Shoah.
A193
Panel: Bush, the War, and Religious Rhetoric
Kenneth Woodward, Newsweek, Presiding
Steven Waldman, Beliefnet.com
David Brooks, The Weekly Standard
Peter Steinfels, The New York Times
Mark Silk, Trinity College
A panel of nationally recognized journalists discuss the relationship between religious rhetoric, the conflicts in the Middle East, and the Bush Administration.
A194
Portraits and Piety: Wesleyan Iconography in the Methodist Tradition
Richard Heitzenrater, Duke University
This presentation examines the visual representations of Wesley that have been created by a variety of artists over the last 280 years, especially paintings, engravings, and porcelains. The goal is to analyze what these representations seem to portray of Wesley as a person-his piety, learning, character, attitude, focus. The analysis will note, when possible, the known biases of the artists, possible geographical influences, and any trends that can be perceived over the years. Questions concerning power, critique, mission, and tradition are of major concern. While the work is grounded in the scholarship of both Wesley studies and art history, the presentation in the working group will be supported by visual impressions through a PowerPoint program that summarizes and demonstrates the main conclusions.
Sanctified Singing: The Role of Hymnody in Shaping Wesleyan Traditions, 1736-1915
Candy Gunther Brown, Saint Louis University
This paper argues that the hymnody tradition initiated by John and Charles Wesley played a critical role in connecting the doctrine of entire sanctification with the life experiences of lay and clerical Methodists. The discussion opens with the publication of John Wesley’s first hymnal, a Collection of Psalms and Hymns (1736-37), and closes with the death of the most prolific of all Methodist hymnists, Fanny Crosby (1915). Although scholars of Methodism have long recognized the importance of entire sanctification to Wesleyan traditions, hymnody has received relatively scant attention, despite the close connection between sanctification and hymnody. This paper accordingly analyzes Methodist hymnal organization, hymn texts, and the practices of hymn writing and singing, in order to trace how eighteenth and nineteenth-century Methodists used hymns to embody the Wesleyan doctrine of entire sanctification.
Wesley’s “Main Doctrines” Were Life Experiences: What This Means for Spiritual Formation and Teaching Doctrine in the Wesleyan Tradition
Gregory S. Clapper, University of Indianapolis
John Wesley once summarized his “main doctrines” as being “repentance, faith and holiness.” While these three terms are hardly “doctrines” as normally understood, they do express Wesley’s vision of the Christian enterprise. If we are to be true to this vision, we should not see theology and spiritual formation as related to each other as “dialectic” is related to “rhetoric” in the medieval trivium. Instead, we need to re-envision both disciplines as inseparable and symbiotically related. In attempting to do this, I will consider the relations between “practice,” “practical theology,” and the life of the “heart,” showing how straying from Wesley’s emphasis on the “affections” and “tempers” can lead to fatal misconstruals of his basic vision. In conclusion, I will answer the question “Should good Wesleyans relate to the “official” doctrine of our day any differently than Wesley related to the “official” doctrine of his day?” My answer is “no.”
Open Tables and Closed Minds: United Methodist Attitudes toward the “Open” Communion Table
L. Edward Phillips, Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary
The United Methodist Holy Communion Study, authorized by the 2000 General Conference, has addressed numerous matters of United Methodist eucharistic theology and practice. The most controversial issue in the study has been the topic of the “open table.” The vast majority of United Methodists in the West seem to accept a “completely open table” that places no restrictions on those who desire to receive the sacrament. Furthermore, many consider this position to be un-debatable, despite theological, historical and ecumenical questions around the practice. This paper give a report on the “completely open table” as an emerging status confessioni within United Methodism, and suggests how this reflects an uncritical acceptance of the world-view of modern liberalism.
A195
Discourses of Space
William E. Deal, Case Western Reserve University
This paper explores ways in which discourses of religious space are articulated from at least three (interrelated) perspectives: 1. Experiences of religious space are typically translated into narratives that become part of discourses with resonances to issues of power, knowledge, subjectivity, and other Foucauldian cultural measures. 2. Contemporary scholarly descriptions of religious space and spatial experiences are often expressed without benefit of any firsthand experience. Yet, academics often talk authoritatively about these spaces. This constitutes
an academic discourse of space and has its own problems and peculiarities. 3. Scholarly descriptions of religious space as a generic, cross-cultural category have their own changing discursive history. The discursive logic of, for example, Eliade’s notion of sacred space, does not necessarily fit with, say, postmodern notions of religious space. What is at stake in this shifting terminology?
Towards a Regional History of Later-Roman Palestine: The Making of Provincial Space
Hayim Lapin, University of Maryland
This discussion brings together archaeological and literary evidence for the articulation of a social geography (e.g., demographic and settlement-pattern change, regional agricultural specialization or its absence, or urbanism) in fourth century Palestine. I made use (with mixed results, and with justified criticism from early reviewers) of central place theory, a framework of regional economic analysis developed in the 1930s and utilized sporadically by social scientists since then. I claim that the history of Palestin must be studied as a history of provincialization and that provincialization happened spatially. Seemingly “indigenous” developments such as the rise of the rabbinic movement are tied to urbanization: third and fourth century rabbis known to us appear to have been part of an urban, literate (sub-) elite. By emphasizing the creation of a provincial landscape operating at several levels at once, we have the opportunity to rethink the intersections of political, material, and cultural processes.
Daughter Zion as a Gendered Space in the Book of Isaiah
Christl Maier, Yale University
Edward W. Soja’s critical spatial theory develops a threefold perspective on space with regard to its materiality, its conception, and its being experienced. This paper aims at using Soja’s theory as a tool to examine the concept of Zion as a mountain and as a city in the book of Isaiah. Because of the city’s strong female personification, especially in the second part of the book, one may assume that the gender of the spatial depiction is crucial. Thus, the feminist relocation of spatial patterns by geographers such as Gillian Rose and Linda McDowell will be used to analyze the function of the feminization of space and the power relations inherent in this image. How were Israelite men and women likely to have experienced this space? How do feminist theologians today think about Zion-deconstructing or re-constructing it as a place worth living in or as a utopia?
A Bakhtinian Reading of Narrative Space and Its Connection to Social Space
William R. Millar, Linfield College
This paper offers an analysis of Mikhail Bakhtin’s understanding of narrative space and its applicability to a recent claim by Claudia Camp, linking narrative space and social space: “Spatial analysis that brings narrative to bear can...provide a window, precisely through literature, into the ancient world.” The method will be tested with selected texts used to reconstruct a history of the Levites.
Ideology of Apocalyptic Spaces
Tina Pippin, Agnes Scott College
The spaces of the last book of the Bible, the Apocalypse of John, are gendered spaces. John’s travels take him and the reader across a multitude of terrains, from the throne room of heaven through bloody battlefields and mass slaughter to the chaos of the abyss to the bejeweled heavenly urban space. In my paper, I am employing an interdisciplinary discussion of the ways that apocalyptic spaces operate in the biblical text and in contemporary U.S. society. I am looking at the textual and spatial ideologies at work in the gendered nature of space using critical studies of space (Gaston Bachelard and Henri Lefebvre), sexuality and space (Margaret Wertheim), urban and postmodern geography (e.g. Mike Davis, David Harvey, Edward Soja, Yi-fu Tuan), architectural theories (especially postmodernism), utopian studies (Ernst Bloch), and studies of sacred/holy sites of pilgrimage.
Spatial Analysis in Modern Historiography Relating to the Book of Judges
David M. Gunn, Texas Christian University
A report of some results from a preliminary investigation of spatial analysis used in historiography related to the book of Judges. Samples examined will be drawn from both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Picturing the Past: The Use of Illustrations in Recent Presentations of Biblical History
Burke Long, Bowdoin College
This seminar activity interrogates the uses of drawings, maps, and photographs in several recent accounts of biblical history. It views the interaction of text and visual image as both occasion and artifact of a historian’s socio-spatial practices. By interrogating these artifacts, I seek to discover unexamined notions of biblical and Holy Land space embedded in narratives that typically focus not on space, but on persons, groups, events, and sometimes arguments over how to reach objective results. I seek the cultural, social, historical, political, and ideological entanglements that disrupt not only methodological disputes, but the unifying rhetoric of settled factuality or weighted probability built into such illustrated presentations of the past. </