http://www.aarweb.org/Meetings/Annual_Meeting/Past_and_Future_Meetings/2006/abstracts.asp

AAR Abstracts

November 18-21, 2006
Washington, DC, USA

    A17-2

Chairs Workshop – Personnel Issues: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Sponsored by the Academic Relations Committee

The workshop will deal with a multitude of personnel issues that come up within departments and will address individual, departmental, and higher administration concerns. In addition, it will address life-cycle, legal, and conflict issues that arise at each level. Plenary, panels, and interactive break-out sessions are featured, including an address by a Georgetown higher education attorney.

You may register for the workshop here: www.aarweb.org/department/workshops/2006Washington/default.asp.

    A17-3

Religion and Media Workshop - The "Muhammad Cartoon" Controversy: Perspectives on Media, Religion, Law, and Culture

This year’s media and religion preconference will be an interdisciplinary conversation setting a broad scholarly context for understanding the meanings and emerging consequences of this event. Brief formal presentations will focus on such things as visual culture, religious authority, media representation, local and global identities, and emerging ideas about human rights and expression. The meeting will be structured to maximize interchange and dialogue among presenters and participants.

Questions about the workshop should be directed to Stewart Hoover, hoover@colorado.edu, Michele Rosenthal, rosen@research.haifa.ac.il, or S. Brent Plate, b.plate@tcu.edu.

    A17-4

Women's Caucus Workshop

Includes three mini-sessions on Strategies for Women in the Profession; Women and Academic Freedom Issues; and Women’s Health Issues in the Academy.

    A17-100

Arts Series/Films: Dawn of the Dead

Sponsored by the Religion, Film, and Visual Culture Group

Through its witty and pointed criticism of consumerism, materialism, and other sins such as racism, sexism, and violence, George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead rises above the average horror movie, or Hollywood movie in general, to become a timeless classic of social criticism and theological reflection. For Romero, it is not the zombie’s bite that turns us into monsters, but materialism and consumerism that turn us into zombies, addicted to things that satisfy only the basest, most animal or mechanical urges of our being. This is repeatedly shown throughout the movie in the behaviour of both the zombies and the human characters.

Directed by George Romero, 1978, 128 minutes, R rated (color, USA)

    A17-101

Arts Series/Films: Les Maîtres Fous

Sponsored by the Religion, Film, and Visual Culture Group

Les Maîtres Fous (The Masters of Madness) is a documentary film produced by the prominent French anthropologist and ethnographic filmmaker Jean Rouch on the possession ritual of the Hauka movement, which was practised by Songhay migrants from Niger in Accra, Ghana, during the time of French colonialism. In 1954 Rouch was invited by the Hauka to make a film on their possession ritual, which became a classic in the history of French cinema. It is currently known as one of the most prolific contributions to the cinéma vérité. Even though this film turned out to be a major point of departure for the rise of visual anthropology in the 1970s, it is continuously neglected in the field of religious studies in general and even in the field of what is recently called “visible religion.”

Directed by Jean Rouch, 1954, 35 minutes, unrated (color, France)

    A17-103

EIS Center Orientation

The EIS Center orientation will feature a short presentation which will include an overview of the center, an explanation of how to best utilize the center, and a question and answer session. After the presentation, the center will be open for use, with the exception of the Interview Hall. Employers will be able to review candidate credentials, leave messages for registered candidates, and make reservations for booth space. Candidates will be able to pick up their copy of the Annual Meetings Special Edition of Openings, and leave messages for employers. The center will also

accepting onsite registrations at this time. Employers and candidates are encouraged to participate in orientation but are not required to attend.

    A17-104

AAR Program Unit Chairs and Steering Committee Members' Reception

Program unit chairs and steering committee members are invited to a reception in their honor hosted by the Program Committee.

    A18-2

International Members' Breakfast

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

    A18-3

Regional Officers Breakfast

Networking Breakfast for AAR Regional Secretaries and AAR Regional Officers.

    A18-4

Theological Education Steering Committee Meeting

Carey J.Gifford, Acting Chair

    A18-5

Student Liaison Group Annual Business Meeting

Appointed and elected Student Liaison Group members will gather to discuss business.

    A18-7

Special Topics Forum

Theme: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the On-Campus Interview

Sponsored by the Graduate Student Committee

So you finally get that coveted on-campus interview—now what? Come hear advice from seasoned interviewers on what they are looking for (and what they are not). This is an invaluable behind-the-scenes look to help doctoral students in religion conquer the process of interviewing for a professorship on campus.

    A18-8

Academic Teaching and the Study of Religion Section

Theme: "When You See the Teacher on the Road, Kill Him": Contemplative Practice as Pedagogy

A Practical Approach to Mysticism
Ramdas Lamb, University of Hawaii, Manoa

My proposed paper will address my methods and approaches in teaching a course entitled “Mysticism: East and West.” In it, student participation and experience are integral to their understanding of the subject matter. The course is taught every summer and typically has a waiting list of students to enroll. Over the years, I have added a number of homework assignments meant to stimulate students into a more “practical” approach to the subject. These include a 24-hour fast and day of silence. Students are also taught a basic breathing practice and method of concentration. Additionally, religious teachers and practitioners from a variety of traditions are invited as guest lecturers to help bring a more comparative approach to the material. As a result of this methodology, students find they are better able to perceive and appreciate mystics and mystical traditions and have a more practical and experiential understanding of the topic.

Contemplative Exercises in an Undergraduate Buddhism Course
Andrew O. Fort, Texas Christian University

I propose to describe and then discuss two experiential exercises which students undertake in my junior/senior level seminar called Buddhism: Thought and Practice. First, students are asked to do a week-long exercise which introduces basic Theravada vipassana (noticing) meditation, during which they keep a daily journal. The second exercise is an opportunity to reflect on the attempt to follow the first five ethical precepts of the Buddhist tradition. These exercises seek to give students a flavor of Buddhist contemplative practices in a liberal arts university setting, providing an alternative, ideally more Buddhist, mode of inquiry or “learning style,” which allows better realization of two goals of liberal education: a more accurate understanding of others’ worldviews and increased reflective “self”-awareness. Students report that these exercises are valuable in gaining a more “lived” understanding of the Buddhist tradition. I hope to hear feedback from colleagues: recommendations, reservations, and experiences with similar exercises.

Contemplative Practices in Higher Education: Silence and Social Action
Stanford J. Searl, Union Institute

This paper will explore the connections among silence, education and social action, with particular attention to a Quaker perspective. The paper will be experiential, in the sense that it will offer a worship sharing approach to knowledge, meaning a way to develop a communal and experiential understanding of silence, contemplation and education. The presentation draws upon the theoretical perspectives from the literature, based upon a theoretical literature as presented by Kalamras (Reclaiming the Tacit Dimension), Mack (Visionary Women), Dandelion (A Sociological Analysis of the Theology of Quakers) and Searl (The Meanings of Silence in Quaker Worship).

Contemplation in Creativity and Inspiration
Richard M. Carp, Appalachian State University

'Creativity and Inspiration' is an elective class for upper division undergraduates. Students shuttle back and forth from personal experiences of contemplative practice to studies of creativity. These seem to connect creativity (phenomenologically and theoretically) with the personal experience of contemplation and with the world revealed therein (to the extent that these can be separated) or with the non-dual unity of self/world uncovered in contemplation.

This challenges the heroic, individualistic, 'talented genius' view of creativity with which most students begin the class. It also engages students' religious histories, personal spiritual experiences, current grapplings with religious issues, and ongoing contemplative experience during the semester. Because the class is not explicitly about religion, and because students engage in contemplation as an experiment in enhancing creativity (not, explicitly, for religious purposes), they are remarkably open in disclosing their experiences and reflecting on them and in accepting and responding to others' experiences and reflections without judgement.

    A18-9

Buddhism Section

Theme: Omnibus Panel: Critical Perspectives on Interpreting Buddhist Texts and Traditions

Transdiscursivity: Japan’s Shōtoku Taishi as “Author” of Buddhist Texts and Tradition
Mark Dennis, University of Wisconsin

In describing early Western studies of Buddhism and its founder, Charles Hallisey argues that “knowing the biography of the Buddha was an essential part of any attempt to understand the Buddhist texts which were attributed to him.” This approach, common in the field’s “classical paradigm,” is also evident in studies of other “founding” figures in Buddhist history, including Japan’s Shōtoku Taishi (574-622). Modern studies of Shōtoku and the Sangyō-gisho (three Buddhist commentaries attributed to him) have sought to recover the “authentic” Shōtoku, and scholars have expended great effort trying to prove the truth or falsity of his authorship of these texts. This paper will draw on the ideas of Michel Foucault and Alexander Nehamas regarding texts, authors, and tradition as a means to offer an alternative angle of critical vision to this established approach.

Alternate Ways of Categorizing Buddhist Doctrinal Systems: The Textual Organization of Qixinlun in Commentaries
Tao Jin, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

As a part of a larger study on the exegetical tradition of Qixinlun, this paper looks at the textual organization, or kepan, of Qixinlun by both the author and the commentators, and, particularly, at the latter’s elaborate and amplified reconstruction of the authorial version. By examining and delineating the intricate and complex processes of such acts of organizational innovation, this paper distinguishes between the authorial and the commentarial in terms of kepan and, in doing so, clarifies certain thematic misconceptions about Qixinlun. In the meantime, such an examination/delineation also demonstrates how kepan structurally transforms the original text, an act that allows us to appreciate and show the extent of sophistication in the writing of exegesis, and thus presents an instance of Buddhist scholasticism in the exegetical tradition of Qixinlun.

Jodoshinshu’s Two-Truth Theory and the Politics of Religion in Meiji Japan
Mark L. Blum, State University of New York, Albany

The Meiji period (1868-1912) in Japanese history turned government policy against Buddhism for the first time, resulting in persecution, loss of land and a felt need to justify the value of Buddhism for society. The combined branches of Jodoshinshu made it the largest form of institutional Buddhism, and it was particularly suspect because of its deep roots in rural communities. Both intellectuals and church leaders frequently voiced an earlier strategy of fusing the Buddhist doctrine of two-truths, one ultimate and one historical, with ancient norms of the harmonious balance of Buddhist "law" and king's "law." But because the original Buddhist formulation was not dierected at secular doctrines, these statements varied in defining the relationship between these two truths, and in doing so they reveal different presumptions about the relationship between religious authority and political authority.

Literatis' Interpretations of the Suramgama Sutra in Seventeenth-Century China
Jiang Wu, University of Arizona

This paper explores the role of Buddhist texts in a special cultural and social environment. It will focus on literati commentaries on the Suramgama Sutra written in the seventeenth century. In the late Ming, this text was extremely popular among Confucian scholars because its sophisticated theory of mind echoed the growing interests in Wang Yangming’s Learning of the Mind. Based on my analysis of these commentaries written by the literati, I will point out the intellectual connections between the Suramgama Sutra and Chinese thoughts: the concern of knowledge in this sutra echoes a long-standing intellectual/philosophical issue in Chinese intellectual history, that is, the relationship between knowledge and action. I suggest that the Suramgama Sutra, which also concerns the issue of knowledge and practice, met Chinese intellectuals’ demand for a more sophisticated solution of this issue.

Keeping Milarepa in Mind: Tibetan Biography as Autobiographical Revelation
Andrew H. Quintman, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

If the eleventh-century Lord of Yogins Milarepa is commonly referred to as Tibet’s preeminent saint, credit is no doubt largely due to the biographical work of Tsangnyon Heruka (1452-1507), the so-called “Madman of Tsang.” Although written some four centuries after the yogin’s death, Tsangnyon’s Life of Milarepa quickly gained canonical status as the authoritative representation of the yogin’s activities. This paper will examine the sources of Tsangnyon’s biographical authority, probing the boundaries between biography and self-written lives by understanding Milarepa's Life as a work of autobiographical revelation. As both biographer and autobiographical subject, Tsangnyon maintains a position not only to shape the past in the present, but to do so from the position of ultimate authority. From this location literary genres blur, bios becomes autobios, and the life story, a hidden treasure waiting to be unearthed. And like a treasure, Tsangnyon’s story of Milarepa’s life surfaces as revelation.

    A18-10

Christian Systematic Theology Section

Theme: Economies of Hope: Confronting Globalization

Economics of Hope: Church Life in a Global Era
Timothy Harvie, University of Aberdeen

This paper explores the impact of eschatological thinking on the church's involvment in the economics of globalization. It will examine the impact of divine promise, and its creation of a 'between-space' as an eschatological sphere for ethical action. After outlining the ethical import of such an eschatological construction, the paper will compare the derivative effects such a conception of the church has on the moral involvement of Christians in the economic realm. Comparing and contrasting the monetary activities of varying Christian proposals for economic involvement in an era of globalization, this paper will conclude with a constructive proposal for Christian engagement in the economic sphere within the globalized framework of contemporary life. These pragmatic suggestions will aim to be firmly grounded within an eschatological milieu that allows for creative praxis which creates liberating equity among all humanity.

Consumerism, Personhood, and Christian Political Witness
Luke Bretherton, King's College, London

There is little engagement by either contemporary political theologies or systematic theology with the relationship between consumerism and Christian witness. What analysis there is tends to be wholly negative. However, the negative construal of the relationship fails to account for how the churches are a key catalyst for constructive engagement with consumerism. Examples include the promotion of ethical consumption and the fair trade movement, both of which utilize consumer mediated forms of association, communication and mobilization. This paper will give a critique of the relationship between consumerism, personhood and Christian witness via a theological evaluation of the involvement of churches in the fair trade movement. Drawing on a Trinitarian theology of personhood and recent debates in ecclesiology, the paper will assess whether consumer modes of political action are hospitable to or productive of the deepening of personal agency, the flourishing of human solidarity, and the good ordering of society.

Redeeming Catholicity for a Globalizing Age: The Sacramentality of the Church
Paul D. Murray, University of Durham

This paper will focus on the way, prior to any social teaching or action, the very being and life of the Church – discussed here under the category of catholicity – should be sacramental of a globalization for the good. The paper will move through three phases. First, the challenge posed to Christian social thought and action by the emergence of a global capitalist economy will be identified. Second, via brief reflection on the character of Christian hope, the authentically sacramental character of Christian activism will be identified and illustrated. Third and most substantially, attention will turn to exploring the ways in which a redeemed performance of the catholicity of the Church has the potential to disclose afresh to the world what it might mean to exist as a global communion, the health of which presupposes the health of all its parts. The argument is traced here in outline.

Why Barth Makes a Difference in the Globalization Debate
David Haddorff, Saint John's University

This paper draws especially on Karl Barth’s theology as a way to assess the current discussion about theology and globalization. This paper is divided into two sections: 1) globalization and theology; and 2) theology and the market economy. In each section, I develop a Barthian dialectical principle of relating theological and non-theological sources, particularly the social sciences, through relating and differentiating without either complete identifying or separating. This position is contrasted with Radical Orthodoxy, which unlike Barth, repeatedly loops back to the Christian community and not to the Word of God, which transcends the church. Unlike this unilateral position that privileges the ecclesial sphere against the secular world, Barth argues that the church stands neither ‘against’ the secular nor ‘for’ secularism, as the hegemonic power in the world. Instead, the church stands ‘with’ the world, which encourages a more positive evaluation of globalization, as a place too where God’s grace may be found.

    A18-11

Comparative Studies in Religion Section and Religion in South Asia Section

Theme: Powerful Objects: Materiality and Metonymy in Four Religious Communities

Most religious traditions feature a set of revered objects perceived as bearing sacred power. In South and Central Asia, ‘powerful objects’ include those central to everyday ritual life: sanctified liquids such as water, milk, honey, foodstuffs, ephemeral consumables such as smoke, ritually invested images and structures, historically significant objects, and so on. Objects can be revered for their ability to embody and manifest divinity; alternatively, other modes of representation de-emphasize divine presence. When viewed comparatively, the various “lives" of South and Central Asian powerful religious objects (in Richard Davis’ terms) raise questions about materiality, metonym, and identity. This interdisciplinary panel explores these themes through textual, biographical, ethnographic, and filmic examinations of four types of powerful objects: prasāda (divine exuberance/plenitude) in Purāņic and Epic literature; the Guru's weapons in post-colonial Punjab; lobān (ritual incense) at South Asian Muslim shrines; and sacrificial food used among Central Asian Buddhists and shamanists of Buryatia.

Form from Plenitude: Prasāda in Classical Sanskrit Literature
Andrea Pinkney, Columbia University

In contemporary Hindu practice, prasāda is often understood as material and edible, taking the form of sweetmeats, flowers or other such ephemeral items. However, in classical Sanskrit literature, prasāda is much more than just an object -- typically it is an outpouring of emotion or energy which always blesses its recipients; and less frequently is it identified as material. Presenting new research on prasāda, or ‘divine plenitude’ in Sanskrit literature, the foundational concept of prasāda is explored and understood as both material object and divine energy, or, as ‘affective’ force, which animates a wide range of transactions between humans, gods and other beings. Based on newly translated primary source material, this paper documents references to the ‘abstract’ and ‘material’ forms of prasāda in representative Epic and Purāņic literature and considers how analysis of the exchange of prasāda in these texts offers insight into the classical norms governing human-divine gift economies.

The Guru's Weapons
Anne Murphy, The New School

Sikh objects are powerful in multiple ways. Unlike such objects in many other religious traditions—paradigmatically, the Buddhist and Christian traditions—the embodiment of religious presence is not a central aspect of the power articulated through the Sikh object. Most importantly, these objects represent the Sikh past. In doing so, these objects also narrate the relationships that constitute the community, both with the Guru and his followers, and among these followers (or “Sikhs,” literally meaning the “students”) of the Guru. This paper examines the biography of a set of Sikh objects and investigates their “powers” in religious as well as political terms, in relation to their representation of Sikh past(s) and the relationships they express in the present. The overall goal of the paper is to hold the religious and political meanings for these objects in productive conversation, to understand the work of these objects in both realms.

Got Lobān? Effacement, Abundance, and the Cross-Tradition Appeal of Indian Islamic Healing Centers
Carla Bellamy, Columbia University

The powerful object next under consideration is a particularly Indian Muslim substance which figures prominently in the ritual life of dargāhs, or Muslim saint shrines: lobān or ritual ‘incense’ (an Arabic-derived Urdu term). Muslim saint shrines in northern India enjoy a general reputation of being centers of healing; however, the reasons for their appeal to members of other South Asian religious communities have, until now, been relatively unexplored. Based on extensive ethnographic research at a previously unstudied pilgrimage center, this paper situates the burning and consumption of lobān in relation to dargāh patients’ narratives of healing and recovery; and suggests that lobān’s cross-tradition appeal derives in part from its participation in several pan-South Asian cultural forms. Understanding lobān as a powerful, ritually invested object, this presentation offers insight into the cross-tradition appeal of Muslim Saint shrines through identifying the Islamic, South Asian, narrative, and non-narrative elements of lobān’s character.

Food for the Gods: The Matter of Sacrifice among the Shamans and Buddhists of Buryatia
Anya (Anna) Bernstein, New York University

Based on research with the Buryats of Central Asia, this paper-and-film presentation considers how people interact with sacrificial food to convey specific religious meanings, and demonstrates how food itself sustains and negotiates specific religious identities. Methodologically based within the framework of 'material religion,' food is understood not as a window onto a particular religious world but as a potent, edible object, which itself becomes meaningful within specific patterns of human-object relationships. In Buryatia, the moral and intellectual differences between the Buddhist and shamanist communities preclude the possibility of considering them complementary parts of one religious system – despite their many commonalities and high degree of mutual interpenetration. This presentation argues that the meaning of 'powerful food' in Buryat sacrifical ritual is contingent on how it is used and by whom, showing that two above communities – Buddhist and shamanist – endow the same foods with strikingly different meanings.

    A18-12

Ethics Section

Theme: Evangelical Initiatives/Women's Bodies

Globalizing "The Word": The Influence of Faith-based Organizations on US Anti-sex Trafficking Policy
Lucinda J. Peach, American University

The trafficking of human beings for prostitution and other forms of commercial sex work (hereafter referred to as CSW) has become a multi-billion dollar global industry in recent years. The United States, especially under the current Bush administration, has been a prominent player in the “war against sex trafficking.” As part of its efforts, it has promoted and financially supported the anti-trafficking activities and agendas of so-called “faith-based organizations” (FBOs), as well as adopted particular policies favorable to FBOs. After briefly summarizing the influence of FBOs on US anti-trafficking policy, this paper will address some of the morally problematic aspects of this relationship, and conclude with some recommendations for policy modifications better designed to protect women's human rights.

Desire and "Health": Making Bodily Change in Two Evangelical Ministries
Lynne Gerber, Graduate Theological Union

Ex-gay ministries and Christian weight loss groups are important contemporary examples of religious experiments in bodily discipline pursued in a moral context. Based on participant observation, interviews with ministry members and content analysis of organizational material this paper will examine the uses of 'health' in the justification of these programs. It will argue that the discourse of health emerges as a way to mediate between an individualistic ethical orientation that informs evangelical culture and the socially oriented moral concerns these ministries raise by addressing socially marginalized groups with disciplines of conformity to dominant norms. It will explore how health in these contexts comes to have new religious and moral force in ways that are both specific to evangelicalism and reflective of larger cultural concerns.

Lobbying for Abstinence: Gender, Race, and the Politics Surrounding the HPV Vaccine
Jenna Gray-Hildenbrand, University of California, Santa Barbara

Both Merck and GlaxoSmithKline plan to release vaccines this year that in clinical trials have proven 100% effective in combating four prominent strains of the human papilloma virus (HPV). These four strains are responsible for 80% of all cases of cervical cancer, which infects 10,000 U.S. women each year, killing 3,700. While many in the medical community are hailing this as a triumph and pushing for the mandatory inoculation of girls ages 10-14, conservative Christian abstinence groups criticize the plan as sending a message to young girls condoning promiscuity. This paper explores the sexual ethics of abstinence advocated by a particularly powerful Christian lobbying group, the Family Research Council, and how their sexual ethic, when applied to the public health policy surrounding the distribution of the HPV vaccine, reinforces negative gender and racial stereotypes.

    A18-13

History of Christianity Section

Theme: Author Meets Critics: Review of Lyndal Roper's Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (Yale University Press, 2004)

In this session panelists will review Lyndal Roper's book Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (2004).

    A18-14

North American Religions Section

Theme: The Washington, DC Mall: Living Civil Religion or Museum Artifact?

Religion on the Mall
Elizabeth McKeown, Georgetown University

The U.S. Congress has designated 2006 the Year of the Museum. This presentation will celebrate the occasion by identifying some of the resources offered by museums for the scholarly study of religion. Two museums on the National Mall in Washington–the National Museum of the American Indian and the United States Holocaust Museum–will provide data for a “local” venture into a much larger enterprise–the comparative assessment of “museums and American religion.”

Washington, DC: Sacred Capital on the Banks of the Potomac
Eric Mazur, Bucknell University

Analyses of American civil religion have tended to focus on rhetoric, paralleling Protestantism’s privileging of words and beliefs over actions. Spatial- and ritual-based analyses of American civil religion are more productive, overcoming an ideological blind spot related to the changing status of public Protestantism therein. Such a spatial- and ritual-based analysis of "official" Washington, D.C. (the federal government complex, as well as the museums, memorials, parks, and roads) reveals the foundations of a republic where the few are empowered to make decisions for the many. Coupled with an analysis of the federal government’s evolution from its dependence on Protestantism to its relative independent from it, this approach reveals the dynamic of an American civil religion that is more than just a reflection of its Protestant dominant culture.

    A18-15

Philosophy of Religion Section

Theme: Paul Ricoeur and the Philosophy of Religion I

Between Belonging and Estrangement: Paul Ricoeur and Jürgen Habermas on the Question of Religious Identity and Tradition in a Post-Secular World
Ronald Kuipers, Institute for Christian Studies

In Faith and Knowledge, Jürgen Habermas appeals directly to Judeo-Christian semantic resources as part of an attempt to assess the socio-political dangers inherent in newly developed reprogenetic technology. In order to understand the cultural dynamics at work in this appeal, this paper will place Habermas’ appropriation of religious themes in the context of Paul Ricoeur’s analysis of the dialectical interplay between traditional belonging and critical estrangement. While Habermas’ ongoing appreciation for the semantic potential present in religious culture and tradition tempers his persistent allergy to religious traditions (as insufficienly critical and communicative), he still resists a full recognition of the existence and operation of such a critical-dialectical moment within religious traditions themselves. Once we appreciate the critical capacities inherent in the ongoing donation and appropriation of religious traditions, however, the need for communicative rationality to mark an autonomous moment in the history of human discourse becomes anything but apparent.

Ricoeur, Levinas, and the Problem of Suffering
Jennifer L. Geddes, University of Virginia

This paper will reconsider the project Ricoeur proposed in The Symbolism of Evil, that is, how to revitalize philosophical thought about evil, in light of the problem of suffering--a move that Ricoeur himself suggested as one shaping his own later work. Moving from thinking about evil as sin to thinking of it in the context of suffering marks Oneself as Another, where Ricoeur takes on, among others, the task of articulating a phenomenology of suffering, akin to what Levinas does in Useless Suffering, though differing in important ways. These phenomenologies reframe the problem of evil for both Ricoeur and Levinas, suggesting ways that philosophical thought about evil might, indeed, move beyond its stalemates on the topic, particularly those involved in theodicy.

An Odyssey of Interpretation: Ricoeur's Latest Works
Dan Stiver, Hardin-Simmons University

Ricoeur's two latest works — Memory, History, Forgetting and The Course of Recognition — appear to be a return to his first love, namely, phenomology. These new works are also, however, closely related to his later hermeneutical emphasis. What I propose is not only to connect these works with Ricoeur's previous work, especially his hermeneutical and narrative arcs—but also to connect them with two other related threads that wind consistently through Ricoeur's thought. One is the recognition of a break or limit to cognition. The other is the turn to “attestation,” which allows one to make judgments in light of such ruptures. The first part will thus show how these latter works deepen the hermeneutics of his earlier works. The second part will bring out the theme of discordance. Lastly, I draw these themes together under the idea of an odyssey of interpretation.

From Verdict to Voice: Ricoeur's Reconstruction of Conscience
Diane M. Yeager, Georgetown University

In 2002, Routledge and SUNY issued collections of essays celebrating Ricoeur as a moral philosopher. Neither included an essay focused on the analysis of conscience with which Oneself as Another concludes. Addressing this lacuna, I will show that his phenomenological analysis (“mov[ing] against the current of moralizing interpretations”) is not only a distinctive contribution in itself but also allows us to better understand the philosophical and theological variations in the way others have interpreted and invoked “conscience.” Focusing then on Ricoeur’s substitution of credence/attestation in place of “self-founding knowledge” and his insistence on the intersubjective character of conscience itself, I will argue that recent efforts within the Roman Catholic and ELCA communions to associate conscientious dissent with rootless modern relativism exemplify the very dangers of moralizing conscience that philosophers have exposed and, even at their best, fail to match Ricoeur’s success in defending the association of injunction with attestation.

    A18-16

Women and Religion Section

Theme: Dorothee Sölle Retrospectives

“How Do We Live Whole Lives in the Midst of a Death Machine?”: Dorothee Sölle and the Empire of Full Spectrum Dominance
Ann Herpel, Union Theological Seminary, New York

In the era of full spectrum dominance, Dorothee Sölle’s answer to her query, “how do we live whole lives in the midst of a death machine?” becomes more ethically, theologically, and politically relevant and urgent. In this paper I will examine Sölle’s answer to that question, looking at her theological assumptions, her political activism in the peace movements in Europe, and the biblical and theological resources she used to pursue a life of “real faith” in a rich and despairing world. I will argue that Sölle offers us living in the American empire of full spectrum dominance a theology of resistance that chooses life in face of the death-dealing dominating powers.

"Bound into the Web of Life": Remembering Dorothee Sölle’s Mystical-Political Vision of God through the World
Dianne L. Oliver, University of Evansville

To read Dorothee Sölle’s theology is to recognize that for Sölle all theology is done in the shadow of Auschwitz, the event that forced her to question the traditional understandings of God that contributed to such a horrific event. The result for Sölle was a revisioning of God through the world. This vision begins with a radical critique of authoritarian religion that lifts up power-over and obedience as key ideals because such values created the environment where Nazism and Auschwitz could occur without enough opposition to stop them. This paper highlights the results of this critique, showing how Sölle embraced a mystical-political vision with its move away from an otherworldly transcendence. Rather than an authority external to the world controlling the world, Sölle offered a vision in which 'transcendence is radical immanence,' connecting us to God through our experiences in the world, through our politics.

Confronting, Consoling, Contemplating: Dorothee Sölle's Theology of Suffering
Denise Starkey, Loyola University, Chicago

In her classic 1975 work, Suffering, Dorothee Sölle delivered a prophetic critique of masochistic Christian theologies of suffering that privilege the suffering of Jesus as unique and that portray suffering as a sadistic form of Divine retribution. A significant resource in Sölle’s revisioning of suffering was the contemplative tradition of Christianity and other religions. Sölle’s theology, grounded as it is in the contemplative tradition, brings to the foreground the “sinned-against” who too often find their questions and their lived experience met with a deafening silence which does further violence. Sölle’s contribution to political and feminist theology offers a consoling demonstration of solidarity for women survivors of childhood violence. A luminous aspect of Sölle’s theology of suffering is a theological and ethical progression from muteness to lament to expression embodied as resistance which is committed to the “abolition of conditions” under which the senseless suffering of women and children endures.

Dorothee Sölle Retrospective: Significance of Theology of Suffering for Women’s Spirituality
Sumi Jeung, University of Toronto

The purpose of this presentation is to explore the significance of Sölle’s theology of suffering for the spirituality of women. Sölle sees only spirituality rooted in a mystical vision of suffering has the power to correct the detrimental effects of patriarchal theologies. We will begin by exploring the personal roots of Sölle’s theology within her personal biography, then, move to consider her criticisms of traditional theologies of suffering. From there, we will investigate her core theological account of suffering as a developmental movement: from alienation toward relationship, from absence of God toward presence of God, and from apathy toward solidarity in action. It is suggested that Sölle’s theology of suffering may elicit both a paradigm shift for spiritual theology and a profound experience of renewal for the spirituality of women.

Becoming a Drop in the Sea of God's Love: The Radical Christianity of Dorothee Sölle
Krishana Suckau, Boston University

Dorothee Sölle was a theologian, mystic, feminist, poet, and peace activist. In this paper I will focus on formative experiences in her theological development as well as highlight the major tenets of her theology. I will then examine her thoughts about death, primarily drawing on her unfinished book, Mystik des Todes. In conclusion, I will point to ways in which her theology has on-going significance.

    A18-17

Afro-American Religious History Group

Theme: Variegated Faces: Non-traditional Histories of Black Islam

Fashioning a Religion: Domestic Workers and the Lost Found Nation of Islam (1933-1942)
Malachi Crawford, University of Missouri, Columbia

How did women in the early Nation of Islam (1933-1942) experience their religion on an everyday basis? Until very recently, much of the literature on the meaning of religious experience in the Lost Found Nation of Islam (NOI) had focused almost exclusively on the often male experiences of pimps, hustlers, gamblers, and drug addicts. This study seeks to illuminate the religious experience of another group of NOI converts—female domestic workers—by looking at the propagation efforts of women in the NOI. Female converts to the Nation of Islam constructed a cultural apparatus centered on bake sales and Islamic dress to transmit core ideas and values of their religious community to African American society. Specifically, this study argues that prior to the well-established tradition of newspaper salesmen in the NOI, the uniforms of women in the NOI served as an essential means by which the NOI propagated its version of Islam.

Moorish Magic and Noble Drew Ali’s Temple of Hip Hop: Hip Hop Music and the Legacy of Black Nationalism in America
Paul Easterling, Rice Universtiy

What is the religious force that drives Hip Hop music? Some argue it is Islam, some argue for Christianity and some claim it is humanism; I argue that it is more. The religious traditions of the Moorish Science Temple, founded by Noble Drew Ali are a key element of the religious expression in Hip Hop music. Hip Hop lyrics are a method of conjuration used to speak to the spiritual needs of African people in America and to engage in spiritual warfare against European domination. These spiritual understandings come from the religious understandings and practices of the Moorish Science Temple. Hip Hop lyrics, like Noble Drew Ali's spiritual messages, are a powerful weapon as well as a spiritual healing agent in hip hop music, which conjures the spirit of Noble Drew Ali through lyrics that reflect the legacy of his teachings.

Death-Angels and Muslim Sons: The Question of White Five Percenters
Michael Muhammad Knight, Phelps, NY

The Nation of Gods and Earths (Five Percenters) is a New Religious Movement that began with a small cluster of exiles from the Nation of Islam in 1960s Harlem. The NGE retains an intellectual dependance on the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, most importantly the Supreme Wisdom Lessons which claim that the white race was created by an evil scientist named Yacub. Five Percenters follow the NOI doctrine that all black men are gods and all white men are devils. However, Allah, the founder of the NGE, taught NOI Lessons to a white youth that he named “Azreal,” and there have been scattered instances of white Five Percenters throughout the NGE’s 40-year history. Through the history of the Nation of Gods and Earths and the specific experiences of white Five Percenters, I will discuss how dynamic modes of authority have created flexibility in determining the role of whites through the Lessons.

    A18-18

Confucian Traditions Group

Theme: The Religious Status of Confucianism

The religious status of Confucianism has been controversial at least since the work of James Legge in the 19th century. The forerunners of the field of religious studies (e.g. Max Muller) included Confucianism in their concept of "world religions," but through most of the 20th century the predominant view was that Confucianism was "not really" a religion. Most North American scholars in Confucian studies today take it for granted that the religious dimensions of Confucianism are abundantly evident. Yet, despite the growing sophistication of non-Eurocentric theoretical understandings of religion since the late 20th century, there is still widespread disagreement on the issue in the field of religious studies at large, and even more so in other academic fields. This panel will examine the theoretical aspects of this problem and the religious status of Confucianism in premodern and contemporary China, Korea, and Japan.

Confucianism as Religion/ Religious Tradition/ Neither: Still Hazy after All These Years
Joseph Adler, Kenyon College

The religious status of Confucianism has been controversial arguably since the Chinese Rites Controversy of the 17th century, and certainly since the 19th century work of James Legge. Despite the growing sophistication of non-Eurocentric theoretical understandings of religion in the late 20th century, there is still widespread disagreement on this question. The numerous theoretical problems raised by the issue include the definitions of both 'Confucianism' and 'religion,' the distinction between 'institutional' and 'diffused' religion, problems introduced by the cross-cultural application of such concepts as transcendence and immanence, and other problems introduced by the Sino-Japanese translation of the Anglo-European words for 'religion' (zongjiao/shukyo). This paper will survey the history of this debate and will offer some concrete suggestions for its resolution.

Confucian Li and Family Spirituality: Reflections on the Contemporary Korean Tradition of Ancestral Rites
Edward Y. J. Chung, University of Prince Edward Island

In South Korea, Confucian rituals (ye; or li in Chinese) influence family values, moral education, and religious thinking. This paper presents the Korean family tradition of ancestral rites, especially its modern meaning and trends. My approach engages some practical experience and comparative perspectives after discussing the relevant textual sources of the topic. This tradition embodies Confucian li understood as a source of cosmic-moral truth, personal cultivation, and family spirituality; i.e., the secular and the sacred are believed to meet through ritual practice. Its vital religious nature reveals a distinctive heritage of Confucian ethics and spirituality, which should not be confused with the old shamanistic pattern of “ancestor worship.” Does this have any implications for our teaching of Confucianism as religion? What about the Korean phenomenon of Confucian-Christian assimilation or dialogue? These kinds of questions are indeed important for a better and deeper understanding of Confucian religiosity.

The Metaphysics of Ancestor Worship in Early-Modern Japan
John Tucker, East Carolina University

'Ancestor worship' is the Western term for various family-based forms of reverence offered to deceased family members, most typically the family’s male line. Studies of Japanese religion often explain ancestor worship in relation to Shintō or Buddhism. When discussed as a Confucian phenomena, it is typically linked to teachings of filial piety, respect for elder brothers, and the overall family-centered perspective characteristic of Confucianism. This paper, however, explores the metaphysical foundations of ancestor worship in an effort to clarify some of the more distinct yet often neglected Neo-Confucian nuances of that form of religious practice in early-modern Japan. Textually, the paper analyzes philosophical discussions of 'Ghosts and Spirits' (kishin) in writings by Hayashi Razan (1583-1657), Yamaga Sokō (1622-85), Itō Jinsai (1627-1705), Ogyū Sorai (1666-1728), and Arai Hakuseki (1657-1725) to reveal how various Confucians understood the metaphysical relationship between family members and their ancestors.

The Latest Development of the Controversy on Confucian Religiosity
Yong Chen, Vanderbilt University

The question of whether Confucianism is a religion is one of the most controversial issues in the scholarships of Confucianism and Sinology. As an integral part of the more general concern about the vitality of Chinese culture in modern times, it has carved a deep but irritating mark on the intellectual landscape of modern China. W. C. Smith has once claimed that it is a question the West has never been able to answer, and China never able to ask. Smith’s concern reveals the very challenge of applying the Western concept of religion to Confucianism that is intrinsically defiant of generalizations derived from Western experiences. This presentation introduces the latest development of the controversy in Chinese academic communities during the past several decades, and reflects on its significance to the understanding of Chinese tradition and modernity in post-Confucian times.

Is Confucianism a Religion in China? Intellectual Controversies and a Preliminary Ethnographic Study
Anna Xiao Dong Sun, Kenyon College

Is Confucianism a religion? This question has been debated for centuries by historians, philosophers, religious studies scholars, and social scientists, both in China and in the West. However, since the debates have mainly centered on historical and theoretical arguments, they become intellectual disagreements about the categories of religion, or even the very definition of religion. In this project, I first discuss two intellectual controversies (one taking place in the late 19th century, the other in the beginning of the 21st century) over the classification of Confucianism as a religion; I then focus on locating and understanding Confucian ritual practice in contemporary Chinese society based on my recent ethnographic work in China.

    A18-19

Feminist Theory and Religious Reflection Group

Theme: Beyond Binaries: New Feminist Perspectives on Christian Themes

Sexual Ethics beyond Sexual Difference
Wesley Barker, Emory University

Sexual ethics demands a discussion of bodies, and bodies cannot be addressed or, for that matter dressed, without the tools of signification. Christian sexual ethics must ask how the discursive limits of sex have unethically delimited bodies through a silencing of their pleasures. Highlighting this relationship between bodies and Christian discourse on sex, this paper reads the body of Christ as a textual body in order to deconstruct sexual difference and dislodge it from its generative role in sexual ethics—erupting into an ethics of bodies as sites of the endless play of erotic excess beyond the material-discursive divide.

The Hairball We Cannot Swallow: Religious Readings of "Feeling Dirty" in Victimization
Amy Carr, Western Illinois University

Although androcentric assumptions about the relative purity of men and the relative impurity of women abound in religious discourse, eliminating androcentric purity rhetoric will not in itself prevent feelings of impurity or defilement from arising in victims of rape or sexual abuse. The spiritual dynamics of victimization are persistent and intense enough to warrant our developing a more nuanced analysis of the rhetoric of purity and pollution in connection with religious concepts of sin and salvation—a way that challenges androcentric connotations of purity language, while articulating the theological and anthropological purchase of purity language with respect to experiences of sinning and of being “sinned against.” Mary Douglas’ anthropological study of purity and pollution distinctions, Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytic depiction of abjection, and Simone Weil’s meditations on affliction and liturgical purification all yield resources for clarifying distinctions among androcentric purity associations, pollution feelings amid victimization, and senses of stain in sinners.

Power Plays: Victimization, Innocence, and Agency in Christian Narratives of Redemption
Flora A. Keshgegian, Brown University

This paper will explore the ways in which traditional Christian narratives of redemption construct the relationship of victimization and innocence. It will argue that, in their insistence on the innocence of victims, these narratives complicate the dynamics of agency for the victimized and so undermine resources for transformation and empowerment. Although the paper will pursue the line of argumentation offered by feminist theologians who are critical of atonement theologies for the ways in which they valorize suffering and sacrifice and contribute to violence against women, it will also draw upon trauma theory, feminist theory and victim studies to probe deeper into the logic of atonement theologies, especially to reveal the ways in which connections are drawn between innocence, victimization and agency. The intent of this study is to reveal how the dynamics and logic of Christian theological ideas function and what practices and claims they make possible and/or preclude.

On the Altar: The Vagina Monologues as a Site for Ritualized Liberatory Narrative
Elizabeth Gish and Sarah Peck, Harvard University

This paper explores two lines of religious and theological thought related to Eve Ensler's play, The Vagina Monologues. We critically analyze the context and impact of three sold-out performances of The Vagina Monologues in the sanctuary and on altar of a divinity school chapel. What does it mean, and how did it impact those involved, to bring stories of orgasms, menstrual blood, systematic sexualized violence, and non-virginal birth to the altar through voices of women themselves? The second part of the paper situates the annual, worldwide, and widespread performances of the Monologues in the context of Catherine Bell’s work on ritual as a strategy for the negotiation of power. We suggest that this ritualized performing of the Monologues has developed in response to the need for a feminist intervention into the dominant kyriarchal narratives about women, their bodies, and their sexuality.

    A18-20

Japanese Religions Group

Theme: Japanese Religiosity from Tokugawa to the Present

This session focuses on the wide-ranging expressions of Japanese religiosity from the seventeenth century to the present. Although Japanese culture is often portrayed as homogenous, a closer examination invariably reveals extraordinary diversity in religious practices particularly within different social and institutional settings. The papers in this session will explore religious expressions such as Buddhist mortification rites, healing rites, and manga, while also touching on internal debates concerning magic, superstition, and the very definition of religion itself.

Mortification Practices in the Japanese Ōbaku School
James Baskind, Yale University

With some notable exceptions, mortification practices never substantially took root in Japanese Buddhism. In the mid-seventeenth century, however, a group of Chinese monks arrived in Japan and established the basis of what was to become the Ōbaku school. These monks brought with them contemporaneous Ming Buddhist models that included such mortification practices as: burning off a finger as an offering to the Buddha, copying out sutras in blood, the practice of absolute confinement for a period of three years, and in the most extreme case, self-immolation by fire. For a period these practices were part of the landscape of Ōbaku Zen, although they faded out as the flow of Chinese masters came to a halt, suggesting that such practices were perhaps incompatible with Japanese religious sensibilities.

A Japanese Nativist Healing Debate: Magic vs. Medicine
Wilburn Hansen, Stanford University

Hirata Atsutane’s medical text Shizu no iwaya written in 1810 showed his medical theory was highly dependent on Japanese mythology. He held the conviction that healing depended on faith in the Japanese kami. Ten years later in his Senkyo ibun, Atsutane played the recording ethnographer role with a mysterious young boy called Tengu Boy Torakichi as his supernatural informant from the Other World. Among the many fantastic tales and fascinating facts about the Other World revealed by Torakichi are serious and detailed instructions for healing a number of troubling human ailments. Most importantly, a great many of his cures are reliant upon Chinese herbal medical practices. Even though Atsutane considered Torakichi’s healing techniques to be inferior in quality, his own attitudes toward healing were evolving toward a Daoist understanding of diseases and their cures.

The Revival of Nikko Shugendo
Gaynor Sekimori, University of Tokyo

Shugendo has twice disappeared from Nikko, and twice been revived. Each time the revival has been hampered by loss of records, and so new traditions have emerged or been created, and absorbed into its identity. Early Meiji religious policy ensured that the traditional institutional and economic basis was no longer in place when the second revival happened in 1995. Moreover, questions of validity have occurred, which were not previously an issue, and this is an issue which applies to all contemporary Shugendo groups. Justification has been stated largely in ecological terms: Shugendo has a special relationship with nature that makes it a fitting practice for a world beset by environmental problems. This paper is based on a two-year study of the revived Nikko Shugendo and utilises themes of reidentification/ re-labelling, absorption of non-traditional elements, and recreation of purpose.

Manga as Living Visual Narratives in Kōfuku no Kagaku
Mark Wheeler MacWilliams, St. Lawrence University

This paper explores how Ōkawa Ryūhō’s Kōfuku no Kagaku, one of the more prominent Japanese new religions, uses manga to express its spiritual vision as a “world religion.” Like other Japanese new religious movements, Kōfuku no Kagaku has its own publishing house which produces numerous comic books designed to explain key doctrines and teachings of the group. This paper examines some of these texts (e.g. Manga de aru “Kōfuku no Kagaku,” Komikku enzeru, etc) to reveal how, through story telling and the graphic imagery of manga, they articulates a powerful new mythological vision that seeks to be universal and global. What new “textures of meaning” can be found here, and what makes these visual narratives different from traditional forms of mythology? How are these tales emblematic of some of the religious trends of new religious movements cross-culturally?

    A18-21

Korean Religions Group

Theme: Aesthetics and Social Context in Korean Religions Today

In modern globalized South Korea, visual rather than text culture has emerged as a primary means for the communication of meaning, identity, and value. No less than the text culture that it challenges, visual culture can be paradoxical and dangerous. It can reify and reduce meaning, identity, and value to the static immediacy of the image and its context-laden form or it can liberate meaning, identity, and value from the tyranny of local history, tradition, and social function by juxtaposing new images of deliberate ambiguity into social discourse. How religions in South Korea are affected by and address the challenges of modern visual culture is the focus of this panel.

Iconoclasm, Cultural Space, and Aesthetics: From Fear to Celebration, Focusing on Contemporary Cases in Korea

Iconoclasm, Cultural Space, and Aesthetics: From Fear to Celebration, Focusing on Contemporary Cases in Korea
Jung Myung Won Raymond, Graduate Theological Union

My paper, then, has a dual aim: to shed light on the cause of iconoclasm as related to its context in the history of Korean Protestant Christianity and to explore reconciliation from the perspective of aesthetics. In an era of visual culture, iconoclasm is a locus in which religious and cultural geography is embodied. Iconoclasm is not an isolated phenomenon, but rather a relational phenomenon in which the dynamic multiplicity of socio-cultural and religious dimensions play an ongoing role. It has become a sizzling socio-cultural issue in contemporary Korean society. In exploring the recent patterns of iconoclasm in the context of Korea, this paper will be limited to a consideration of the visual aspects of this issue, from the physical violence of iconoclasm as fear to visual aesthetic dialogue as celebration. Also, I will limit myself to outlining cases in contemporary Korea and Korean Protestant Christianity.

Buddhism, Orientalism, and Zen Ethnography in Korean Cinema
Hyangsoon Yi, University of Georgia

This paper concerns a new subgenre of Buddhist films in Korean cinema which I call “Zen ethnography.” Represented by Chu Kyǒng-jung’s A Little Monk (2003) and Kim Ki-dǔk’s Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring (2003), films of this category present a “slice” of Korean Buddhist monasticism in an exquisite visual language. While their focus on beautiful cinematography and time-honored monastic customs enrich the cinematic texts, these films tend to erase the historical dimension of the local religious tradition for a global appeal. Using Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring as a prime example, I will examine various critical issues raised by the “secondary Orientalism” of these films.

Minjung Theology Revisited: Christian Religion in the Context of Socio-cultural Changes in South Korea
Volker Kuester, Kampen Theological University

In the 1970s South Koreas minjung movement spoke up for the observance of human rights, social justice and democratization, and regarding the division of the country for national self-determination and re-unification. In the minjung, the oppressed people, the activists had discovered the subjects of Korean history. Subsequently, a hermeneutical struggle on Korean history and culture was waged between the dissidents and the military and administrative elite. With the democratization process and the rise of globalization in the 1990s the South Korean society underwent deep changes. The paper will re/construct these developments by bringing into dialogue works of leading minjung artists like Hong Song-Dam, Lee Chul-Soo and Kim Bong-Chun with the contributions of Christian Minjung theologians. It will not only demonstrate the artists view on the role of Korean religions but also put forward the implicit challenges for the theologians.

What Do Unbelievers Believe?
Michael Ralston, Fort Meade, MD

Most analyses of data that tracks changes in religious belief in Korea over the last twenty years focuses on Protestants, Catholics, or Buddhists and the changes between or within these groups. Examining the characteristics of a fourth group, unbelievers, will shed light on an aspect of the religious landscape that is usually ignored in studies of religion in Korea. Specifically, examining the changes and interaction of unbelievers with Protestants, Catholics, and Buddhists and comparing their respective motivations and characterizations of religion will give us a better understanding of the role of religion in contemporary Korean society.

    A18-22

New Religious Movements Group

Theme: Theorizing New Religions: Looking Backward, Looking Forward

The academic study of new religious movements is at a crucial juncture in its development. The significant work that has been done by the first generation of new religions scholars laid an impressive foundation on which the next generation may build. Drawing on a variety of theoretical perspectives, this session will highlight the shifts that have (and are) taking place within the field.

Discourses of Difference: Examining the Unity School of Christianity as a New Religious Movement
Jeremy Rapport, Indiana University, Bloomington

This paper uses a case study of the religious group known as the Unity School of Christianity in order to analyze two recent typologies of New Religious Movements presented by J. Gordon Melton and Eileen Barker in their respective articles in the July, 2004 issue of Nova Religio. Using important moments in the development of Unity as examples, the paper analyzes and compares the major elements of the two typologies in order to identify the explanatory power and utility of each typology when it is used to examine a particular religious movement. The paper also seeks to make clear what aspects of Unity each typology emphasizes or deemphasizes. Thus the paper also demonstrates how each typology might work to clarify or to mask certain aspects of a specific religious movement. The paper argues that neither typology alone is adequate to explain a particular religious movement.

Resistance to Charismatic Authority
David Bromley and Rachel Bobbitt, Virginia Commonwealth University

Max Weber identified three types of authority: traditional authority, rational-legal authority, and charismatic authority. Charismatic authority refers to certain quality of individual personalities by virtue of which individuals are set apart from ordinary people and treated as endowed with extraordinary or supernatural qualities. Various qualities typically associated with charisma indicate that charismatic authority might be quite resistant to challenge; others suggest that resistance is possible or likely. However, there has been no systematic investigation of the nature, source, and consequences of resistance to charismatic authority. Based on an examination of case studies of contemporary new religious movements, this paper identifies the most likely sources, characteristics, and consequences of three major sources of resistance: inner circle coup, bureaucratic insurgency, and grassroots resistance.

The Problem of Ideal Typologies for the Study of Liminal Religious Groups
Marie W. Dallam, Temple University

This paper examines a problem raised by the use of ideal typologies in the study of NRMs: the academic consequences of taxonomies that divide religions into sociological groupings, such as “churches” “cults,” and “storefronts.” I will examine this issue theoretically by sketching out the state of the field and the nature of the problem, including discussion of related concepts that may be useful for evaluating social change within religions. I will then use the particular example of the United House of Prayer for All People to demonstrate the effects of ideal typologies. This religious group has spent the majority of its existence in an academic interstice somewhere between hard and fast categories. I will explore the consequences of this interstitial existence on scholarship about the church, past and present, as well as its effect on the church’s self-perception, in order to elucidate the larger problem within Religious Studies.

New Religion Studies — Whither and Why?
Lorne Dawson, University of Waterloo

The contemporary study of new religions is reaching a cross-roads. It is facing some serious challenges as a transition is made beyond the first wave of significant scholars who shaped the field. Interest in the questions that galvanized their attention has waned, yet significant gaps remain in our knowledge. This papers schematically summarizes the significant advances in our understanding of key aspects of the study of new religious movements (e.g., who joins them, how and why?), while demonstrating the need to establish a more systematic agenda of empirical and theoretical tasks for the next generation of scholars. At this juncture, meaningful development of the field depends on the effective consolidation of knowledge and the more precise specification of research tasks.

    A18-23

Nineteenth-Century Theology Group

Theme: Contributions of Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Major Concerns of the Nineteenth Century

Coleridge's Dynamic Construction of Consciousness as the Promotion of a Philosophical Position and a Moral Disposition
Liberty Stewart, Emory University

The theological and philosophical writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge often made consciousness a central theme. Coleridge’s musings on the faculties of reason and understanding explored, in particular, the dynamic potential of human consciousness. By focusing on the productivity issuing from the dynamic synthesis of and tension between the faculties of reason, faith, and will, Coleridge bridged the divide that debates between faith-centered and reason-centered thinkers of his time had enhanced. Coleridge argued that human flourishing issues not from the stagnant use one faculty, but from the activity between faculties. This paper argues that Coleridge’s portrayals of the multivalent interaction of human mental faculties became a means for him to stress the dynamism of consciousness both as a subject and a prescriptive object of his writing. That is, Coleridge viewed his meditations on consciousness not as mere philosophical ramblings, but as practical motivational tools for the spiritual formation of his readers.

Defending Spirit: Symbol and History in Coleridge’s Theological Hermeneutics
Joel Harter, University of Chicago

This paper will engage Coleridge’s symbol within the context of his theory of history and his theological idealism. Symbol is often approached as an aesthetic or literary concept, but Coleridge’s most famous definition of symbol occurs in the context of a discussion of history and its interpretation. Coleridge formulates symbol in direct response to the Lockean materialism of modern historiography and political economy. Coleridge defends the moral and spiritual significance of history. He argues that we need to read modern history the way we read biblical history — as symbolic of deeper meaning — and modern attempts to de-mythologize scripture, history, or nature diminish our ethical and spiritual nature as human beings. His idealism finally defends spirit and redefines reason to include faith and imagination. The importance of history and hermeneutics distinguishes Coleridge’s idealism — and his symbol — from that of Kant and Schelling.

Coleridge, Christology, and the Language of Redemption
Jeffrey W. Barbeau, Oral Roberts University

One of Coleridge’s most important contributions to nineteenth-century theology was his critical study of the Bible. Among some of his contemporaries, however, Coleridge’s unique combination of literary criticism, speculative metaphysics, and German biblical criticism proved problematic at best, especially with respect to his treatment of Christology. As Coleridge explained in the Biographia Literaria, one of his earliest religious difficulties came in the attempt to reconcile personality with infinity: though his “head” was with Spinoza, it was the biblical wisdom of Paul and John that ruled his “heart.” In this paper, I suggest that an examination of Coleridge’s Christology in his notebook commentaries on the Gospel of John and the Epistles of Paul provides an important means of conceptualizing his understanding of Christian redemption.

An English Church for a British Nation: Coleridge’s Ideas of Common Law, Customary Right, and Cultural Memory
Pamela Edwards, Syracuse University

The paper will consider Coleridge’s mature writings on the constitution and the common law as providing an institutional structure for the advancement British identity. It will set Coleridge’s historicist jurisprudence within the framework of his conception of the English Church. The Church, in Coleridge’s account, remained an essentially English vessel containing a fluid and increasingly hybrid British identity: if you will, new British Wine in old English bottles. I will argue that Coleridge’s constitutional writings on Church and State were profoundly historicist and idealist and yet, anchored in active institutions and events, rooted in an empirical understanding of history and progress.

    A18-24

Religion and Disability Studies Group

Theme: Deaf Culture and Religion

This session spotlights papers that focus on Deaf churches and Deaf culture, particularly those that highlight the significance of the Washington, DC area.

Sacred Signs: Religion among America's Founding Deaf Community
Meredith Filiatreault, Gallaudet University

From its inception, the American Deaf community has identified closely with churches, and missionaries have strongly shaped its outlook and strategies for uplifting individuals. Between 1817 and 1917 religious people played a central and varied role in deaf cultural history. They did so through establishing deaf education, deaf churches, and deaf social networks. Religious people and a missionary spirit literally provided the resources and means by which a cultural deaf community came into existence in America.

A Journey to the Promised Land: Examining Quasi-Religious Metaphors in Deaf Cultures in Relation to Gallaudet University
Kirk VanGilder, Boston University

This paper examines the unique social location of Gallaudet University as the only four year liberal arts University in the world specifically designed to meet the needs of Deaf and hard of hearing students. Historically, Gallaudet has been held in high reverence as a ‘promised land’ of hope and education at the center of the Deaf world. This reverence takes on a quasi-religious tone at times that echoes a similar mytho-historical understanding of the origins and journey of Deaf communities in America. Paddy Ladd has proposed the possibility that this sort of understanding may constitute a “Deaf spirituality” that transcends the particularities of Deaf communities worldwide. This paper seeks to examine that possibility from a theological vantage point to determine its commensurability with Christian theological narrative as a potential area for Deaf theological development.

Christianity and Deaf Culture: Philosophical and Social Issues — A Consideration of the Apparent Conflict between Christianity and Deaf Culture
Elizabeth Parish, Baylor University

There is a prevailing perspective within Deaf studies regarding Christianity and Deaf Culture that they are ideologically in conflict. Little to no research has been done attempting to analyze this idea of a contradiction between Deaf culture and Christianity. This presentation will discuss my thesis, which has both a research and ethnographic component. I will present, using American Sign Language, justification for the research and explanation of its importance, the key arguments that comprise this apparent contradiction, and an investigation of several concepts that shed light on these arguments. This investigation includes a word-level analysis of ‘deaf’ in the Bible, the writings of St. Augustine and their relevance to the topic, the character of Jesus and his interactions with oppressed people groups of his time, an explanation of the ethnographic portion of the study and what these interviews yielded and contributed to the paper, and recommendations for further research.

    A18-25

Religion in Latin America and the Caribbean Group

Theme: Africa in Latin America and the Caribbean

Africa has a long standing presence in what we typically refer to as Latin America--the very name of which plays a role in how non-Latin groups, languages, and cultures are perceived in the region. This panel explores different expressions of the spirituality and religion of Afro-descendent populations in Latin America and the Caribbean. The panelists explore Christian revivalism and the "marvelous realism" of Vodou. They also seek to understand uses and misuses of African spirituality in colonial contexts and the role of the African presence in the formation of national identities. The contexts explored include Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Peru and the United States.

Understanding Haitian Vodou through Marvelous Realism: Avoiding Postcolonial Eurocentrism
Shelley Wiley, Morningside College

In September 1956, at the first Congress of Negro Writers and Artists, Haitian intellectual Jacques Stephen Alexis presented a paper entitled “On the Marvelous Realism of the Haitians.” His use of Marvelous Realism was based on Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier’s 1943 description of Haiti as a place where one encounters the marvelous in the real; Alexis theorizes Marvelous Realism as a critique of the relationship between oppressors and the oppressed and as a source of strength in which Haitians can draw on their American, African, and European heritage. Drawing on Alexis’ work, and others such as Caribbean scholars Michael Dash and Shalini Puri who have developed it, this paper argues that Marvelous Realism can be an explanatory paradigm for understanding Haitian Vodou, and that using it allows scholars to avoid Colonial and Christianized readings of the Vodou tradition. The worldview, rituals, and history of Haitian Vodou will provide examples.

Race, Religion, and Identity: The Afro-Cuban Contribution
Michelle A. Gonzalez, University of Miami

This paper examines the intersection of Latin American, Black, and Latino/a culture and religiosity through the study of Afro-Cuban religion. Cuban/Cuban-American culture is characterized by an Afro-Cuban component, in its history and religiosity. My presentation brings forth the challenges that Afro-Cuban identity and religiosity pose to contemporary contextual theology and Christian communities, especially regarding the paradigms of Black, Latin American, and Latino/a constructions of race and ethnicity in religious and theological studies. One cannot understand what it means to be Cuban, regardless of one’s race, without addressing the Afro-Cuban. The contemporary era is one where the Afro-Cuban has become so engrained in the broader culture that it is part of the dominant Cuban culture. However, Cubans and Cuban-Americans have an ambiguous relationship with their Afro-Cuban identity, ranging from glorification to vilification. A study of Afro-Cuban religiosity reveals the intersection of race, religion, and identity-formation.

Misunderstanding African Healing Practices in the Dominican Infirmary: A New Look at St. Martin de Porres
Alice Wood, Bethune-Cookman College

Bernardo Medina’s Vida de Fray Martin (1663) is the only seventeenth century life of Martin de Porres, a mulatto Creole who became a Dominican tertiary in colonial Lima. It includes details omitted from later biographies and these details point to Martin’s conscious use of West African rituals and healing practices. The combination of African ritual elements with Christian symbols and prayers not only demonstrates religious hybridity within convent walls but also contributes to an ongoing misinterpretation of these African elements. The St. Martin held up to North American blacks coming to Washington D.C. in 1866 was no longer a healer but only an obedient, humble, and self-effacing black man holding a broom.

Religious Transition in the Periphery: The Case of Revivalism in Fort Charles, a Rural Community in Jamaica
Ennis B. Edmonds, Kenyon College

Revivalism, a folk religious tradition in Jamaica, is currently undergoing a transition in which its African elements are being eliminated, and in which its character is becoming more Pentecostal. The changes taking place in two Revival congregations in Fort Charles, a remote community in rural Jamaica, illustrate this transition. My research identifies at least four factors contributing to this transition: media exposure to a type religiosity that proves to be attractive, especially to their younger members; pressures for change brought by the institutional affiliation of one of the congregations with the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church; educational/class mobility of some younger members, leading to a desire to leave behind those elements of Revivalism considered backward or primitive; and an attempt to repudiate the questionable legacy of a former leader. Further research on a wide cross-section of Revival congregations will be necessary to detemine the breath and depth of the current transition.

    A18-26

Religions, Medicines, and Healing Group

Theme: Healing Movement: Techniques, Philosophies, and Implications for Healing and Religion

Avoiding and Inviting Madness in Hindu Traditions
Marcy Braverman-Goldstein, University of Judaism

This paper will first explore the concept of madness (unmåda) in the Indian Āyurvedic medical treatises (ca. 3rd-7th centuries C.E.), where it is an undesirable condition. Next, the paper will look at the later nondual Śaiva yoga traditions of Kashmir (ca. 10th-11th centuries C.E.), wherein the state of intoxicated devotion (bhaktimada) became a goal of practice (sådhana). Thereafter, the paper will explore various physical practices used to achieve the desired religious experience. In the 10th century, meditation involving breath control was used as a means to achieve healing. In the 20th-21st centuries, Śaiva devotees who date their lineage back to the 10th century Kashmiri traditions, have incorporated singing and chanting into their meditation practice as additional ways of seeking the intoxicated devotion of their gurus.

Adjusting Body and Spirit: The Science, Art, and Philosophy of Chiropractic Manipulations
Candy Gunther Brown, Saint Louis University

This paper analyzes chiropractics’ philosophical framework for how physical movements of the spine produce illness or healing. I argue that the religious assumptions that inform chiropractic philosophy are essential to understanding healing practices that most interpreters have framed in terms of mechanical techniques and physiological effects. Chiropractics’ “discoverer,” Daniel David Palmer (1845-1913), embraced a vitalistic understanding of the cosmos that presumes the existence of a force Palmer termed Innate Intelligence thought to govern the human body through the nervous system. Palmer intended chiropractic adjustments to remove subluxations of vertebrae that alter nerve tension, thereby restoring harmony between the individual and Innate. Drawing upon the writings of chiropractors and historians, clinical studies of chiropractics’ effectiveness, and religious critiques of chiropractics, this paper suggests that chiropractic philosophy is inextricable from its science and art of healing movements, making chiropractics one of the most widely practiced physical religions of healing.

Spiritual Healing through Physical Practice, Physical Healing through Spiritual Practice: Native American Canoe Traditions and Community Health
Dennis Kelley, Iowa State University

In Indian Country, many cultural practices carry with them the assumption of both balance production and health maintenance, at times as epiphenomenal to their overt meaning, and contemporary Native communities have often turned to these traditions in the overall process of healing the people. This paper will articulate a meaningful analysis of the practice issues surrounding the American Indian religious revitalization phenomenon using an example from my research with the maritime traditions of the Chumash Indians of central California and the Makah of Northwest Washington State, and argue for the understanding of the return to cultural traditions in the contemporary Native American context as a functioning paradigm for the analysis of healing through spiritual identity construction and maintenance generally. This mode of theorizing can provide insight into what I believe forms the basis of modern religious behavior: ritual and its continuing centrality in the realm of religio-cultural practice.

Taiji in America: From Healing Technique to Religious Practice and Back Again
Elijah Siegler, College of Charleston

Taiji is a body practice originating in China that is growing in popularity in the U.S. It is said to have Daoist origins and to result in health and vitality. This paper argues that, in the U.S., taiji’s image as a Daoist practice originates from a particular moment in the history of the counterculture: the birth of the human potential movement. Then, this paper will analyze the relationship between taiji, healing, and religion to American practitioners. In China, Taiji’s origins do not lie in Daoism but in the 18th century Chinese military. In the U.S. taiji became associated with Daoism after it began to be taught at Esalen, the center associated with the human potential movement. Today, Taiji is taught in nursing homes and community centers by teachers uncomfortable speaking about religion at all. But Daoism continues to make implicit promises about the healing power of taiji.

Falun Gong: Exercises for Perfect Health and Enlightenment
John T. Adams, University of California, Santa Barbara

My paper will examine the “technologies of the self” found in the new Chinese “religious” movement Falun Gong that aim at individual transformation as taught by the group’s founder, Li Hongzhi. Through a process of “cultivation practice” that incorporates the regular performance of five physical qigong-esque exercises, Li claims that practitioners will not only be cured of all illness but will, more significantly, transform their “human flesh-bodies” into an immortal “Buddha-body.” My paper will consider the ways in which Li claims for his Falun Gong an ancient heritage that includes teachings and methods of practice derived from Chinese Buddhism, Daoism and qigong movements. Moreover, I will also examine how Li attempts to present his Falun Gong as a superior form of transformational practice to those with which he links his “cultivation practice.”

    A18-27

Roman Catholic Studies Group

Theme: Catholicism and Sex

Is Abortion the New Hubris? Recent Catholic Anthropology, Gender, and Public Policy
Nancy Dallavalle, Fairfield University

While acknowledging some interconnection among ethical issues such as abortion, capital punishment, poverty and euthanasia, recent statements by Roman Catholic bishops have privileged the opposition to abortion -- the 'right to life' -- as a foundational commitment grounding other ethical claims. At the same time, numerous statements by Pope John Paul II gave new theological and doctrinal emphasis to 1) the notion that humanity (men and women) before God is best understood as female, as the spouse of Christ the bridegroom; and 2) that the deepest story about being female is, as with the Marian fiat, a story about maternity. This paper will ask about the emerging emphasis on abortion as the 'foundational sin,' exploring the extent to which John Paul II's theological innovations re-shaped (and 'gendered') a variety of theological concepts and contributed a powerful but problematic subtext to the current public re-consideration of abortion policy in the U.S.

Intrinsically Homosexual: The Vatican’s New Instruction on Gays in the Priesthood in the Context of a Living Tradition
Gerard Jacobitz, St. Joseph's University, Philadelphia

The author takes the recent Vatican instruction on gays in the seminary as an invitation for input from gay Catholics, and to that end proposes six areas most in need of further discussion: reception and interpretation of the instruction; problems with “intrinsically disordered acts” and “objectively disordered desire” as coherent terms in the magisterium’s wider teaching on homosexuality; natural law versus interpersonal criteria for sexual ethics; inauthenticity and self-deception as obstacles to the instruction’s implementation; increasingly widespread cultural and clinical acceptance of the evils of silence and the closet; and evidence for a development of doctrine in the area of sexuality and love culminating in Benedict XVI’s Deus Caritas Est.

Celluloid Sex: Filmic Contributions to a Theological Discourse on Sexuality
Stefanie Knauss, Karl-Franzens University

Recently, a number of films have explored the theme of sexuality in an explicitness never before seen outside of porn cinemas. Yet, I suggest in my analysis of the films Romance, Intimacy and 9 Songs that there is more to the films than a pornographic depiction of sexuality: far from being 'immoral' or degrading, all three of them are reflections on the need for human relationships, the part that sexuality plays in them, and the importance of an integration of all dimensions of the human person in a relationship. In a dialogue between these films and Catholic teaching and theology, the filmic language can help to understand and put into words what sexuality means for human beings, thus renewing theological thinking about it and assisting in the development of a theological language of sexuality beyond the traditional discourses of power and restriction.

Grief and Sexual Symbolism in Early Twentieth Century French Catholic Thought
Brenna Moore, Harvard University

Using the works of Raïssa Maritain as a test case, this paper explores how devotions to the Virgin Mary, saints and mystics were revitalized in highly sexualized and emotive terms among French Catholic intellectuals in the years surrounding World War I. Raïssa Martian describes that this renaissance catholique looked to an erotic, affective Catholic past in order to imagine a new present in the face of the grief and tragedies of the early 20th century. Analysis of the gendered and sexualized dimensions of this ‘Catholic renewal’ points to aspects of this movement often overlooked, and ultimately, I argue that it cannot be simply dismissed as a chiefly masculine desire to reconcile itself with alterity, but is connected to a tradition of writings by both men and women who retrieve from a mystical golden age in emotive, erotic terms as an impetus for theological and philosophical creativity.

    A18-28

Science, Technology, and Religion Group

Theme: Stem Cells: The Scientific Frontier and the Ethical Debate

The theological and ethical debate over research on human embryonic stem cells (hES cells) follows the frontier of a rapidly developing science. In this session, we explore the ways that theological and philosophical understandings of human dignity and wellbeing are challenged by and challenge the science and practice of stem cell research. This session will begin with an overview of the history, the science, and the competing religious positions in the stem cell debate, led by Mr. Bennet and Drs. Lebacqz and Hewlett. This will be followed by a panel addressing the various theological positions , which will include a theological and ethical analysis from Roman Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, and Jewish perspectives. Ted Peters, Karen Lebacqz, and Gaymon Bennett are co-authoring a new book summarizing the stem cell debate tentatively titled, Immortal Lines: Theologians Say “Yes” to Stem Cells.

    A18-29

Biblical/Contextual Ethics Consultation

Theme: Scriptural/Ethical Reflections on the Use of Political Power

Revealing a New World: Power According to Biblical Apocalyptic
Ted Grimsrud, Eastern Mennonite University

In face of problems of global poverty and other crises, Christian theology is challenged to re-examine its understandings of power. Present political values reflect assumptions that power is best used to benefit the already powerful - a dynamic that likely will continue to exacerbate these large problems. A fruitful, though heretofore little utilized, theological resource for articulating an alternative approach to power may be found in biblical apocalyptic. In contrast to two recent construals of biblical apocalyptic, the 'future-prophetic' view of pop-theology and the 'failed-expectation' view of critical biblical scholarship, a careful examination of biblical writings such as the Book of Revelation may actually reveal a this-worldly transformative understanding of apocalyptic. This transformation is best understood more in terms of the formation and sustenance of counter-cultural communities that embody the nonviolent power of the Lamb than the catastrophic mega-violence usually associated with apocalyptic.

The Arrest of Jesus and the Use of the Sword: Critiques of Power Used By and Against Authorities
Betsy Perabo, Western Illinois University

Ethical analyses of the arrest of Jesus have traditionally highlighted Jesus’ statement in Matthew that “all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” Yet the four gospel accounts of the arrest present a far more complex portrait of the relationship between Jesus, his followers, and the authorities than this statement might suggest. In these accounts, Jesus raises a number of other issues pertaining to political power. He critiques the way in which the authorities themselves use their power; he talks about God's capacity to use power against the authorities; and he explains the importance of allowing the authorities to use their power so that prophecy can be fulfilled. This paper will examine these accounts, as well as the contexts in which they were written, in order to bring to light the complexity and diversity of early Christian views of power.

Blast with Both Barrels: Dualism and Essentialism in the Use of Scriptural Warrants for Political Ends
Tam Parker, University of the South

One reason for the vociferous debate around scriptural use in the poltical realm is what Freud rightly called religion's 'cultural currency.' This paper addresses how holy texts are used as assets in the formation and enacting of religious and political identities, and within intra-religious discourses regarding religiously-motivated or condoned violence. The poltical cash-value of appealing to scriptural warrants for human doings finds much of its buying power in essentialist readings of texts; in appealing to a core, a canon within a canon, the tradition is reduced to a pungent yet easily digestable formula that can be extracted and applied. In addition to hermeneutical strategies, this paper addresses issues of textual authority and the seemingly unadvoidable recourse to dualistic thought and interpretation as a tactical resource in the political realm. Analysis focuses on issues of torture, kidnapping, assassination and the non/state sanctioned uses of violence in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Ban(herem), Genocide, and Tribalism: A Historical and Socio-Cultural Investigation of Amalek in the Old Testament
Pong Im, Graduate Theological Union

Amalek is the archetypal enemy of Israel, ultimately becoming the symbol of anti-Semitism as the “longest hatred.” In Jewish tradition, Amalek became the typus of the irreconcilable enemy of the Israelites, to be wiped out from the world. All the great persecutors of the Jewish people across the centuries are regarded as descendants of Amalek, including Antiochus, Titus, Hitler, and recently Sadam Hussein. The question is, why are the Amalekites singled out when so many nations attacked and oppressed Israel? It is surprising that there is no divine command to eradicate any nation except Amalek, regarding as irreconcilable evil. However, the logic that the other is wrong or evil could be used for legitimating of any hostile action against others. Tribal conflicts caused by social-cultural differences were common phenomenon in the ancient period so that they cannot be the same as the genocide hostility of the modern concept of the anti-Semitism.

    A18-30

Contemporary Islam Consultation

Theme: Islamist Discourses and Issues

Abdullah Azzam on Sura 9: From Tafsir to Takfir to Tirade
Rosalind Gwynne, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Abdullah Azzam was bin Ladin's teacher in Saudi Arabia and collaborator in Pakistan supporting the Afghan jihad; he was killed by unknown assassins in Peshawar in 1989. With two degrees from al-Azhar, Azzam was both a fighter and a scholar. Azzam's exegesis of Sura 9, among the most militant in the Qur'an, comes from a series of transcribed lectures, of which this paper examines three elements: (1) his knowledge of classical tafsir (exegesis), both philological and legal; (2) his lack of hesitation in calling other Muslims infidels (takfir) and thus legitimate targets for Islamists; (3) his long and colorful tirades against everyone from Qadhdhafi and Sadat to Pope John Paul II.

Does Islam Value or Reject Innovation? Qaradāwī’s “Modern” Interpretation of Bid‘ah
Raquel Ukeles, Fairfield University

This paper juxtaposes two radically different Muslim perspectives on the concept of bid‘ah in the shadow of a 1983 Qatar court case. Bid‘ah, translated either as innovation or as deviation from the Prophet’s normative practice, has become symbolic of the ills of Muslim society in contemporary Salafī writings. Husayn Ahmad Amīn, a noted Muslim liberal thinker, wrote an article criticizing the rejection of bid‘ah as a pre-Islamic principle and asserting that the Prophet himself was a great innovator. Amīn’s radical reinterpretation of bid‘ah led to the entire journal being banned and so infuriated Yūsuf Qaradāwī, the leading Sunnī jurist in Qatar, that he devoted a lecture to refuting this approach. By analyzing Qaradāwī’s own treatment of bid‘ah in light of Amīn’s challenge, I aim to show that Qaradāwī reinterprets the sources both to retain an Islamic rejection of religious innovations and simultaneously to assert that Islam is innovative and progressive.

Good Hejab, Bad Hejab: Khomeini and Women’s Imperfect Obedience in Iran
Elizabeth Bucar, University of Chicago

Drawing on fieldwork and a series of essays published in Zanan magazine, I argue that the legal obligation of Hejab in Iran created new possibilities for the construction of gender by women. I focus on two distinct veiling practices. First, through performing “Bad Hejab,” women have brought western conceptions of beauty and sexuality into traditional practices of religious dress. They have thereby shifted both the parameters of local femininity and the criteria sufficient to fulfill the particular gendered moral duties of modesty and political obedience. Second, with “Good Hejab,” women have materially marked themselves as religiously pious, allowing them to participate in new ways in the political debate about women’s proper roles in the Islamic Republic. I argue that the practice of Hejab in contemporary Iran both enacts an imperfect obedience to the local gender norms and simultaneously acts to shift those norms.

Hanifi Traditionalism: An Alternative to Salafism in Chechnya
Mark J. Sedgwick, American University, Cairo

Hanifism or “Hanifi Traditionalism” was developed by Khodj-Ahmed Nukhaev, a Chechen resistance leader and intellectual, as a radical alternative to Salafism. It contends that the proper Islamic society should be based on the Constitution of Medina, and that the state–in any form–is bid’a. A truly Islamic society must instead be tribal. The paper examines the diverse origins of Hanifism, which range from Nuhkaev’s own experiences of Chechen society and politics to the work of a French Muslim philosopher and a Polish Muslim theologian from Oxford. It then argues that Hanifism shows how surprising alternatives to Salafism and Wahhabism may be developed, how globalization can impact the development of Islamic thought in unexpected ways, and how politics can interact with religious doctrine.

The Role of Islamist Rhetoric in the Perpetuation of Violence against Muslims: The Case of Hassan al-Turabi and Genocide in Sudan
Jacquelene Brinton, University of Virginia

The Islamist transformation of traditional religious concepts into terms of modern political functioning plays a major role in their perpetuation of violence. To understand this role it is crucial to examine how traditional religious concepts have been transformed in the modern era, and then to grasp how they are used currently in their particular ideological setting. This will illustrate how religious ideology has come to be used as a tool for violence and destruction in the present context. This comes from the reification of Islam, conceiving of it as a unity under which is formed a derived concept of what it means to belong to this notion, and out of which comes something akin to the invention of “imagined communities” or “identities”. It is this switch, from a diverse interpretation to a unified identity that ultimately allows violence to be perpetuated by Islamists like Hassan al-Turabi against Muslims in Sudan.

    A18-31

Religion, Media, and Culture Consultation

Theme: Wrestling with Method: Case Studies in Religion, Media, and Culture

The study of religion and media is best described as an interdisciplinary endeavor—pursued by historians, ethnographers, religion scholars and communication scholars. With religion and media as the focus of their inquiry, these papers approach their materials from different methodological angles: history, cultural studies, rhetorical analysis, and qualitative reception research. Each focuses on a different medium—from print culture to documentary film—and each illuminates a different aspect of the relationships between religion, media and culture. The respondents will focus both on the contents of the papers, and on the authors' methodological and theoretical choices.

A New Mediation of an Old Art: Documentary Film as Memento Mori
Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter, Catholic University of America

Memento mori (L. 'remember that you must die') pictures are images that instruct, sometimes vex, and ultimately move viewers toward a new course of action in the face of mortality. That new course involves a conversion, religious or otherwise, toward an alternative way of life. While previously the concerns of memento mori were taken up primarily in painting, today they are employed in other media. I take instances from film--the genre of documentary film in particular. Drawing upon the work of Bill Nichols, Allan Casebier, and Vivian Sobchack, I suggest that documentary film is a new form of memento mori picturing designed to offer a transformative experience for the viewer-as-mortal.

Media and Religion in the Making of Identities of Masculinity, Fatherhood, and Vocation
Curtis Coats, University of Colorado, Boulder

This paper will present an ongoing investigation into the ways in which men negotiate mediated public scripts and symbols about manhood into constructions of masculine identity. It will evaluate the interplay among religious ideals, broader socio-cultural ideals and material circumstances that play a fundamental role in identity construction. Specifically, this paper will focus on so-called “Red-State” men, long thought to adhere to the essentialist masculine constructions offered by a range of “masculinist” and “headship” discourses, e.g. Promise Keepers or Robert Bly’s mytho-poetic approach. The authors will explore how these normative constructions intertwine with other mediated resources and material circumstances in the construction of the masculine Self for these men. By examining data from in-depth interviews, the authors will offer insight into how masculinities are created by men, paying particular attention to the various complementary and competing resources used in these creations.

Poster Art and the Promotion of Religious Reading in America, 1921-1948: Constructing a Visual Piety of the Printed Word
Matthew Hedstrom, Valparaiso University

This paper explores the role of images in the efforts to promote religious reading in the 1920s and 1940s. The posters used to promote the Religious Book Week campaigns of the period constitute the primary visual “texts” of religious middlebrow culture, which arose in these years. I contend that these images helped define the proper relationship of reader to text and the place of reading in religious practice, and therefore became a constitutive element of the meaning made in the act of reading. The shift in the visual rhetoric of these posters from the 1920s to the 1940s was part of a larger, concurrent cultural and economic transition from the producer ethic of “character” to the consumer ethic of “personality.” The kinds and ways of reading promoted by liberal religious leaders in this period shaped American middle-class spirituality and sense of self in later decades.

“I Know There Is Wrestling in Heaven”: Eddie Guerrero, Wrestling Fans, and the Transformation of Mourning
Lynn S. Neal, Appalachian State University

In the world of professional wrestling, where the boundaries between the possible and impossible are constantly tested, the death of wrestler Eddie Guerrero presents one more way for the WWE and its fans to interrogate this relationship. In this paper, I analyze how a fan memorial site and two WWE tribute shows narrate the grief of Guerrero’s fans and co-workers. Placing these narratives within the context of a continuing WWE storyline about Guerrero, I argue, reveals how WWE writers have transformed the mourning of this wrestling superstar into a larger media-driven melodrama. As wrestlers, fans, and writers battle to define the meaning of Guerrero’s death and life, we can better understand the back and forth negotiations that occur between entertainment fans, media technology, and capitalist industry.

    A18-32

Tour of “African Voices” Exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History

Sponsored by the Arts, Literature, and Religion Section, African Religions Group, and Anthropology of Religion Group

The African Voices exhibit examines the diversity, dynamism, and global influence of Africa’s peoples and cultures over time in the realms of family, work, community, and the natural environment. The exhibit includes indigenous art, textiles, pottery, and examples of oral literature, songs, and prayers. Anthropologist and curator Michael Mason will give an introduction to the exhibit, highlighting its religious features. For further information, contact Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton: (chh3a@virginia.edu or http://www.mnh.si.edu/africanvoices/.

    A18-33

National Museum of the American Indian Tour

Sponsored by the Native Traditions in the Americas Group

Opened to great fanfare in the fall of 2004, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian is the most recent addition to the Washington Mall, and as such will provide a novel experience for many AAR attendees. The handsomely-designed museum displays objects, works of fine art, and performance pieces that tell of the histories, cultures, arts, and religions of more than 500 Native nations; but what is remarkable is how Native communities have asserted cultural sovereignty and artistic control of the NMAI’s representation. In this latter regard, the museum is a milestone in the history of representation, and as such, of particular intellectual interest to scholars generally. Gabrielle Tayac, a Native sociologist who has served as a NMAI curator will act as the tour guide.

    A18-34

Plenary Address

Theme: Karen Armstrong -- Religion after September 11

A former Roman Catholic nun and instructor at London’s prestigious Leo Baeck College for the Training of Rabbis, Karen Armstrong is the author of the international bestseller The History of God and participated in Bill Moyer’s PBS series on religion. She is also the author of The Gospel According to Woman; Muhammad; The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; and Islam: A Short History. In her new book, The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, Armstrong returns to the ninth century BCE to examine the roots of four major spiritual traditions of the world: Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Despite some differences, there was a remarkable consensus in these religions’ call for an abandonment of selfishness and a spirituality of compassion. Armstrong urges us to consider how these spiritualities challenge the way we are religious today.

    A18-35

Special Topics Forum

Theme: ATLA Career Alternatives Luncheon for Doctoral Students in Religion and Theology

Sponsored by the Graduate Student Committee and American Theological Library Association

Doctoral students in religion and theology often find creative and rewarding alternatives to being a professor. If you are a doctoral student, please RSVP online at www.aarweb.org/annualmeet/2006/RSVP/ATLA by noon on Wednesday, November 15 to attend this informative session about career alternatives in religion and theology.

    A18-51

Special Topics Forum

Theme: Reporting on Religion from the Nation's Capital

Sponsored by the Public Understanding of Religion Committee

Washington, DC is a unique setting for reporting because of its complex politics and the presence of so many newsworthy people and events. This session will explore the behind-the-scenes mechanics and politics of reporting in the nation’s capital. A panel of scholars and reporters will discuss the various ways in which stories are chosen, what kinds of issues and problems are involved with researching their stories, how long it takes to work on particular kinds of stories, and the ins and outs of the editing process.

    A18-52

Academic Teaching and the Study of Religion Section and Ritual Studies Group

Theme: Teaching Ritual: What We Learn

This panel draws on contributors to the forthcoming volume, Teaching Ritual, in the Teaching Religion Series published by Oxford/AAR and edited by Susan Henking. Panelists will focus on experiences they have had teaching ritual and how these experiences have refocused their teaching style and material. Their stories are idiosyncratic and very worth telling. Not only is it unusual to approach religion through ritual, but we have found our way to this approach through many routes. The panel is composed of experienced scholars pushing the boundaries of the classroom and running all the time on the doubts and mistakes that we usually keep to ourselves. In unique voices, these panelists, like their colleagues filling out the book, provide a good introduction to the field of ritual studies while airing the convictions, successes, and real-life messes that come with reorienting the classroom presentation of religion.

    A18-53

Arts, Literature, and Religion Section and Religion in South Asia Section

Theme: Popular Devotional Art in Modern India

From the early forms of visual reproduction in India such as color lithography through to the Internet, Hindus have rapidly employed new technologies to tell stories of the Hindu deities and to make them visually, physically present. In the process they have brought changes. Mass reproduction allows mass access, without mediation by religious specialists. As Lawrence Babb put it in his introduction to Media and the Transformation of Religion in South Asia, "new media have increased the capacity of religious symbols to penetrate social barriers and to bypass social bottlenecks that have inhibited their propagation in the past." This panel will continue that volume's inquiries into the history and ongoing developments of South Asian religion and modern communication media, focusing on visual arts and religious devotion. Our papers will look at Parsi theater and early cinematic mythologicals, Amar Chitra Katha comics, chromolithography, and interactive Hindu devotional imagery on the Internet.

"Mythologicals" and Devotion: Betab's Mahabharata in the Parsi Theatre
Kathryn Hansen, University of Texas

This paper analyzes the contribution of dharmik or “mythological” plays in the Parsi theatre to the development of the inter-ocular field of late 19th and early 20th c. India. New equations between visuality, religious authority, and political consciousness are plotted with reference to an influential stage version of the Mahabharata, first performed in 1913. Looking at the play’s lengthy textual and performance history, I argue that Betab embedded within the conventional narrative certain legends and theology from nirguna bhakti traditions then current among low-caste and Dalit groups. In so doing, he converted Draupadi and Krishna into agents of radical social change, creating cleavages within the theatrical public even as he established the popularity of the new genre.

Radiating a Spiritual Force: Indian Comic Books as Devotional Art
Karline McLain, Bucknell University

Amar Chitra Katha (Immortal Picture Stories) is India’s leading comic book series, featuring hundreds of mythological titles about the Hindu gods. In studies of modern Indian devotional art, comic books have been largely neglected. And yet, since its inception in 1967, this comic book series has been one of the primary means by which millions of Hindu children (within India and the diaspora) have learned the sacred stories of Hinduism. For many, reading these comics is a devotional act; in the words of one fan, these comics 'radiate a spiritual force.' Some producers, as well, have undertaken the creation of these comics with a devotional attitude. Drawing upon my interviews with comic book producers and consumers, I will discuss the sacral nature that many perceive in these comics. I will conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of the sacrality of these comics for the academic study of Hinduism.

Representing Namdev in Punjabi Poster Art
Susan Prill, Hamilton College

This paper examines portrayals of the Maharashtrian bhakti saint Namdev in poster art found at two Punjabi shrines: one at Ghuman, which draws mainly Sikh devotees, and one in Bassi Pathana, which has a predominantly Hindu base. The two communities make competing claims about Namdev’s life story and personality. Posters published at Ghuman tend to show Namdev as an older bearded figure and often resemble portraits of Guru Nanak. Bassi Pathana, however, uses portraits of Namdev as a younger, moustached, short haired Hindu widely available in Maharashtra. The Ghuman shrine asserts that it is the location of Namdev’s samadhi, while the Bassi Pathana temple states that Namdev is buried in Pandharpur, Maharashtra. The portrayals of Namdev available from Ghuman reaffirm specifically Punjabi and Sikh statements about his life story and teachings which are not found in either the literature or the art of the Hindu Namdev temple at Bassi Pathana.

Temple in a Frame
Richard H. Davis, Bard College

Throughout the history of the genre of popular chromolithographs known as 'framing pictures' or 'God posters,' these two-dimensional images have regularly figured as recipients of devotion. And throughout the genre's history, artists have found ways to accommodate this devotional use. They have developed visual strategies to free the gods from narrative contexts and assimilate them more to enshrined icons, like a temple image encased in a frame. In this talk I will look briefly at some of the formal results of this ongoing artistic response to devotional usage. I will begin with some of the early and influential experiments by Ravi Varma and his successors, notably the Nathadvara poster artists, as well as later South Indian poster artists like Silpi, Kondiah Raju, and Subbiah. Among the strategies I will illustrate are frontality, eye-centricity, inclusion of puja paraphernalia within the image, representations of existing enshrined images, and depictions of puja.

Digital Deities, Online Puja, and Virtual Pilgrimage: An Ongian Reading
Natalie Marsh, Ohio State University

Web and internet technologies are transforming Hindu religious practice and identity. A devotee can now access a virtual shrine to conduct puja before an image of almost any Hindu deity—clicking-and-dragging flowers to place on the deity image, and, in like gesture, circling an animated set of incense sticks around the deity, lighting ritual lamps, ringing virtual bells, and so on. In a valuable essay, Stephen D. O’Leary considers online religion a significant development in the history of religion, drawing on the seminal work of Walter J. Ong, who proposed an “evolutionary theory of culture that focuses attention on the modes of consciousness and forms of communality enabled and promoted by communication technologies and practices, from oral speech to written discourse to printing, radio, television, and computer-mediated communication.” Following O’Leary’s work, I intend to explore the ways in which web-based puja practices may support Ong’s far-reaching theory.

    A18-54

Ethics Section and Childhood Studies and Religion Consultation

Theme: Children's Rights and Responsibilities: Interfaith Perspectives

This session features four papers that draw particular attention to religious responses to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, freedom of religion and children, and roles and responsibilities of children within families and communities, with a response by distinguished legal scholar and human rights activist Robert F. Drinan, S.J.

Should the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child Be Ratified and Why?
Don S. Browning, University of Chicago

Why is the United States, along with Somalia, one of two countries in the world that has not ratified this 1989 United Nations Convention? There are reasons - some cultural, some religious, some political, and even some that may be constitutional. But do they hold? This paper contends that if the Convention is interpreted in light of earlier human rights documents, especially the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it should be ratified. It further argues that such an interpretation is justified.

Children's Rights and the Common Good in Catholic Social Teaching
Mary M. Doyle Roche, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA

This paper will explore the issue of children’s rights and responsibilities from the perspective of the common good in Catholic social teaching. As full, interdependent members of the many communities of which they are a part, children claim the fruits of our common life together and are called to ever increasing participation in that life. The language of children’s rights provides a way to critically assess the concrete well-being of children. Though Catholic teaching has made a more robust commitment to the rights of the family, children’s flourishing demands both protection and participation which can only be guaranteed through the cooperation of the many levels of society. The common good’s insistence on distributive justice and participation, guided by the principle of subsidiarity, can provide a solid foundation for a commitment to children’s rights that will be tested in the context of children’s participation in economic life.

Muslim Children: Problematics and Prospects in Light of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
Zayn Kassam, Pomona College

There are a range of issues facing Muslim children in the world today, including militarization of male children and rape as a weapon of war, increased incidence of HIV/AIDS, female genital cutting, child marriage, and child sexual and labor trafficking. What kinds of Islamic ethical responses could be made in such instances, and how do they support or impede the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?

Human Rights in Light of Children: A Christian Childist Perspective
John Wall, Rutgers University

This paper joins conversations in childhood studies about 'children's rights' and argues from a Christian ethical point of view that such rights need neither be rejected nor wholly accepted but rather reinterpreted in what is termed a 'childist' way. That is, in analogy to movements like feminism and womanism, a Christian childism takes the perspective of children in all their agency and diversity as helping to shape in new ways Christian ethical methods and norms as such. It is argued that the Christian moral tradition contains several precedents for such an approach, but also that a fully Christian childism will interpret human rights in a new way as dispruptions of assumed moral horizons and calls to love and hope as forms of assymetrical, self-creative moral responsibility.

    A18-55

Study of Islam Section

Theme: Patterns of Religious Authority and Reform among African Muslims

This panel seeks to correct recurrent misconceptions about Islam in Africa by highlighting how African Muslims have defined and practiced their religion, and continue to do so, in a permanent dialogue with religious traditions in the wider Islamic world, and in a continuous interaction with their own social contexts. Rather than reproducing the picture of a “vulgarized” version of Islam, as much scholarship has done throughout the colonial and early postcolonial period, the contributions present case studies from four different regions of sub-Saharan Africa (Ghana/Burkina Faso, Northern Nigeria, Somalia and Kenya) that are more nuanced. While the inquiry into patterns of religious authority gives us the opportunity to approach questions of leadership and religious legitimacy from a comparative perspective, the focus on religious reform allows us to draw a more accurate picture of the processes, discourses, and interconnections that have shaped Muslim communities in Africa both past and present.

Debating the Equality of Souls: Social Status, Religious Authority, and Sufi Hagiography in Italian Colonial Somalia
Scott Reese, Northern Arizona University

Using hagiographies, religious poetry, theological texts and oral traditions this paper will examine the role of religious authority in debates over social inequity within Somali society of the early 20th century. Taking as its starting place the debates over kafa’a or “equality of status” found in Somali mystical literature, it will explore social status as an issue that became increasingly important as both Italian colonialism and reformist religious discourses began to have an increasingly important impact on the local social landscape. More importantly it will examine how religious leaders both influenced and even defined such issues through religious texts. This paper, in short is an exploration of religious works as living texts that are as much about the immediate worlds of the living as the deceased saints they seek to memorialize.

Between Tradition and Reform: The Hadhrami Model of Islamic Learning and Religious Authority in Contemporary Kenya
Ruediger Seesemann, Northwestern University

For centuries, Muslims from the Hadhramawt (southern Yemen) have played a leading role in the spread of Islam in many parts of the Indian Ocean world. Previous studies have drawn a contradictory picture of the Hadhrami tradition in the East African context. While Hadhrami scholars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries have often been portrayed as religious reformers, the more recent representatives of Hadhrami scholarship appear as the champions of “popular Islam,” whose “traditional” beliefs and practices are challenged by a new brand of Islamic reformism that propagates Salafi and Wahhabi ideas. This paper examines the dialectics of tradition and reform as reflected in the recent development of Hadhrami-run institutions in Kenya. It shows how contemporary scholars within the Hadhrami network draw on new intellectual sources and methods in order to respond to modern challenges reassert their authority and counter the increasing influence of reformist groups.

Western Educated Muslim Elites and the Development of Ahl al-Sunna Reform Movements in Ghana and Burkina Faso, 1960-1990
Ousman Kobo, Gettysburg College

This paper highlights the contributions of Western educated Muslims to the spread of Ahl al-Sunna/Wahhabi movements in Ghana and Burkina Faso in order to tease out the effects of colonial education on the movements’ development. An examination of the role these elites played in the diffusion of Ahl al-Sunna/Wahhabi ideas allows us to shift our analytical focus from merchant and Arabic elites to other Muslims whose perceptions of religious purity as well as their socio-religious outlook were shaped by their experiences in colonial and post-colonial secular institutions. For these Western educated Muslims, Ahl al-Sunna/Wahhabi doctrine provided the framework within which they could address problems of social injustice and inequality fostered by the dominant elites in terms of Islamic “orthodoxy.” By examining a group of actors that has been almost completely neglected in previous studies, the paper attempts to further our understanding of Islamic reform movements in the West African context.

Some Sociological Aspects of Dan Fodio's Nineteenth-Century Reforms
Zakyi Ibrahim, University of Winnipeg

In 1804, Shehu Usman Dan Fodio, a Muslim scholar from what is today Northern Nigeria, mounted an attack against Hausa chiefs, and together with his companions, established an Islamic state in the region. They introduced religious reforms and effected changes in the social sphere. Specifically, this study is a sociological analysis of Dan Fodio's opinions on marriage, women's movement, and their education. I argue that although Dan Fodio's ideas on marriage reflect traditional orthodoxy when it comes to polygamy and loyalty, his rejection of the competition for the hands of women, forcing young women into marriages, and the inequality among co-wives is revolutionary and pragmatic. I also argue that Dan Fodio's writings and calls for educating one's own daughters and wives are original and penetrating. The study concludes by highlighting Dan Fodio's new image as a pragmatic and social advocate, even if he may also have been strict.

Popular Revival as Political Reform: The Northern Nigerian Ideal of Islam in a Corrupt Society
Shobana Shankar, Lafayette College

This paper argues that, contrary to the image of Muslims passively following clerics who espouse religious politics as opposed to secular paths, religious models of reform in Nigerian society are dynamic and have found inspiration in many bodies of thought and practice. The paper traces the idea of reform from the nineteenth century, when jihads led to the creation of the Sokoto Caliphate to the present-day, to demonstrate the importance of religious figures as leaders emerging from outside politics to spark social reform. From Muslim clerics to Christian missionaries, their migratory and ascetic qualities are seen to stand in stark contrast to centralized power. Using written and oral sources, this paper shows that Nigerian Muslims have defined reform and corruption in constant conversation with a variety of communities and traditions. This very dynamism has inspired debates amongst Muslims over the power of religious personnel, texts, practices, and history.

    A18-56

Theology and Religious Reflection Section

Theme: Empire and the Other

Empire Meets Eros: A Queer (De)Construction
Thomas Bohache, Episcopal Divinity School

Empire facilitates the colonization of bodies, while Eros involves the empowerment of bodies. This paper will argue that the U.S. Empire manifests itself not only in its (mis)treatment of nations and peoples outside the U.S. and racial and ethnic minorities within the U.S., but also in its “colonization” of queer persons through a process of what this presenter calls “heterocolonialism,” a systematic fashioning of society, culture, and religion on the basis of heteronormativity and presumed heterosexuality. The presentation will examine how gay men have expressed themselves erotically and discuss recent efforts of queer theorists and theologians to avoid a full-scale “sex panic” through greater concentration on sexual ethics rather than emphasis of specific sexual behaviors. The presentation concludes by discussing how gay men might formulate a “postcolonial” sexual theology of spiritual eroticism that does not exalt conformity at the expense of authentic erotic feeling.

Empire(s), Religious Fundamentalism, and Religious Construction of Gender
Namsoon Kang, Texas Christian University

Generally speaking, colonialism/imperialism is about power and ruling, and thereby about domination and subjugation. The empire-mentality, which is firmly grounded on the “ethics of absolute power and domination,” is often accompanied with the religious fundamentalism. The surge of religious fundamentalism, since the 1970s and especially after the 9/11, in culturally distinct areas of the globe has raised concern and interest among scholars and citizens. Religions of the world that have witnessed the rise of religious fundamentalism are diverse. While permeating all aspects of social life and organizations, fundamentalist movements have paid more attention to politics and family. In the paper, I would like to explore the nature of empire-mentality; and how it has constructed gender and mobilized women as wives and mothers to maintain its hegemony, which has also often used religions as justification of the multiple colonizations in a form of religious fundamentalism.

Kraemer vs. Kraemer: Empire and the Construction of Religious “Others” in the Dutch Theological Tradition
Jan Pranger, Concordia College, Moorhead

This paper makes a contribution to the development of a postcolonial theology for Europe and elsewhere by critically exploring the construction of religious “others” in the Reformed theological tradition within the context of Dutch colonialism. It focuses especially on the work of Hendrik Kraemer, whose role and contribution is contextualized within the Dutch colonial relationship with Indonesia. Kraemer’s timely project was to uncouple Christian faith and the West amidst the anti-colonial nationalisms and the looming decolonization in the first half of the 19th century, but ironically ended up reaffirming Orientalist views of the East’s dependency upon colonial Western forms of Christianity. The paper distinguishes a theological, a comparative religious, and a sociological dimension in Kraemer’s representation of religious “others,” and links each of these dimensions to specific Orientalist concerns and colonial experiences.

Foucault and Empire: A Poststructuralist Model for Doing Feminist Theology in a Postcolonial Age
Margaret D. Kamitsuka, Oberlin College

Western feminist theologians are increasingly rejecting the authority of the Nicene-Chalcedonian tradition, opting for doing theology accountable instead to the experience of women in their particular communities. Antagonism to the hegemony of creedal orthodoxy is a theme in postcolonial feminist writings as well because it has been a weapon for legitimizing Western missionary colonization. This paper explores two sets of questions: 1) What theoretical resources are available for Western feminist theologians to continue to engage the creedal tradition in ways that support women’s agency and empowerment? I attempt to demonstrate how aspects of Michel Foucault’s poststructuralist views on power provide helpful resources. 2) What are the possibilities as well as the limitations of this western-oriented poststructuralist proposal for postcolonial feminist (and other) theologians, and would such a proposal be, in effect, a further encroachment of empire?

    A18-57

Women and Religion Section

Theme: Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Women in Dialogue

With an unfinished agenda, the ancient stories of Hagar and Sarah reverberate in contemporary discussions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These stories challenge the grand narrative of Abraham as the founding and unifying father of the three religions; they stir up issues of ethnicity, class, and gender; they confront the treatment of "the other" by the ruling group; they raise questions about the exiled and the disposable; and they upset established rubrics of power and difference. As avowed children of Hagar and Sarah and as scholars committed to the relevance of these figures for academic, social, and political thought and action, the members of the panel will wrestle with the stories as they impinge upon interfaith explorations. Their wrestling will revolve around the newly published book entitled Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children and includes essays by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim women writing from feminist and womanist perspectives.

    A18-58

Asian North American Religion, Culture, and Society Group

Theme: Asian/Asian American Women Negotiating Power and Authority

Religion beneath Mother Tongues: Religious Practice and the Act of Writing in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee
Min-Ah Cho, Emory University

Since the 1990’s the work of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982), a Korean American performance artist, filmmaker, and poet, has drawn attention from a number of Asian-American feminist writers. While these writers mostly discuss and emphasize Cha’s concerns with female agency and cultural identity, they largely ignore the influence of Christianity, which immensely affected both her thoughts and writings. The purpose of this paper is first to supplement the feminist conversation by examining this Christian influence; and secondly, to discuss the implications of the act of writing as a transformative tool that discloses the cultural displacement of Asian-American believers. Exploring the ideas of “writing” and “translating” in her book Dictee, this paper traces the way Cha weaves the culture-gender disjunction of the immigrant journey into the everydayness of religious practice.

Progressive Politics, Conservative Practices: Re-thinking Gender in Asian American Church
Karen Yonemoto, University of Southern California

Contrary to the assumption that evangelical churches reinforce conservative social politics, a growing number of Asian American churches in Los Angeles are promoting progressive politics of race and gender. However, despite their progressive rhetoric, case studies of Asian American churches suggest that they in fact observe conservative gender practices that keep women in positions of subordination and marginalized spaces. This paper will address the tension between the progressive rhetoric asserted by church leaders and the conservative realities experienced by church congregants. Based on discourse analysis of sermons, participant observations, interviews and archival research, the paper suggests that the use of progressive language merely masks conservative church practices thereby protecting male privilege and power. It also discusses the ways that lay women and men create subversive spaces to define and re-define new politics of gender and power, and ultimately re-shape church culture through the embodiment of new gendered and racial selves.

Gender as an Analytical Tool of "Sin and Redemption": Women, Religious Fundamentalism, and Homosexuality in the Asian Pacific American Community
K. Christine Pae, Union Theological Seminary, New York

Through the lens of gender, this paper analyzes the religious rhetoric, 'sin and redemption' in relation to the power structure of Christian fundamentalisms in the APA community. Christian fundamentalism uses gendered expression to reinforce its religious significance and power among its followers. The most powerful Christian rhetoric of sin and redemption defines who has power (domination) to redeem sinners (submission) as well as who is in and who is out. This rhetoric hides discrimination against women by directly attacking homosexuality. Many APA women oppose homosexuality without critically examining the connection between oppression of women and that of sexual minorities. Furthermore, the fundamentalist rhetoric supports the current U.S. policy while distancing people from the political arena. Christian fundamentalism simplifies ethical criteria for multiple-layered individual and social issues with the rhetoric of sin and redemption. Christian fundamentalism appeals to many APAs because of their physical, cultural, and emotional isolation from the larger society.

    A18-59

Augustine and Augustinianisms Group

Theme: Augustine and Biography/Augustine and the Holy Spirit

In the Company of Augustine: The Postmodern Self and the Unauthorized Life of a Saint
Felix B. Asiedu, Middlebury College

The paper uses J. J. O’Donnell’s recent biography of Augustine as a point of departure for a number of reflections on the nature of biography and its relationship to the writing of history, and what is entailed in writing the “unauthorized life” of a saint. The paper begins with a number of recent interpretations of Augustine that define themselves as postmodern. It then moves to O’Donnell’s specific contributions to the subject in three different works: his much earlier book in the Twayne Series on Augustine, the 3-volume Commentary on the Confessions, and finally the new biography. The third part of the argument deals with a couple of Augustine’s contemporaries and the kinds of biography they would have written if they had had the opportunity to do so. This third part allows us to re-engage O’Donnell’s new biography methodologically and critically.

A Critique of O’Donnell’s Augustine (2005) and Lancel’s Saint Augustine (2002)
Jane E. Merdinger, Greenbelt, MD

This paper will critique James J. O’Donnell’s new book, Augustine: A New Biography (HarperCollins, 2005). I shall examine several themes in the volume and comment on O’Donnell’s methodology. Though the principal focus will be on O’Donnell’s book, I shall contrast it occasionally with Serge Lancel’s Saint Augustine (Eng. Trans., SCM Press, 2002). Peter Brown’s revised edition of his biography of Augustine (2000) will figure only incidentally here. From my remarks, it will become clear that Lancel and Brown present a more accurate and balanced portrait of the bishop of Hippo. Primarily a literary study of Augustine, O’Donnell’s book concentrates chiefly on the Confessions until finally expanding into a more scholarly survey of Augustine’s life. I shall demonstrate that scholars and general readers alike will deem O’Donnell’s work disappointing, while specialists will find Lancel’s superb historical and archaeological account of Augustine and the African Church richly rewarding.

The Unction of Christ with the Holy Spirit as a Difficulty for Augustine's Pneumatology
Dennis W. Jowers, Faith Seminary

Scriptural statements to the effect that Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit seem to conflict, as Augustine himself recognizes, with Augustine's belief that the order of the divine missions uniformly corresponds to the order of the intra-divine processions. In our paper, we intend, first, to analyze the various responses Augustine proffers to this difficulty throughout his corpus; second, to argue for the inadequacy of each of these responses; and, third, to show that, in spite of Augustine's failure explicitly to resolve this difficulty, his understanding of the Holy Spirit as the mutual love of the Father and the Son supplies a viable means of reconciling his views on the relation between temporal missions and eternal processions with the scriptural accounts of Christ's unction with the Holy Spirit.

Augustine's Pneumatological Theology of Grace
Aage Rydstrom-Poulsen, University of Greenland

While Augustine is defining grace as forgiveness of sins christologically, he is explaining the realization of the process of salvation pneumatologically. In his teaching about the process of salvation, Augustine explains that faith and righteousness are divine gifts, and in his interpretation of Romans 5:5 he maintains that love even is the presence of the Holy Spirit in the human person. By this, Augustine provides the basis of a theory of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit which becomes very successful in the Western Augustinianism until the end of the Twelfth Century.

    A18-61

Bonhoeffer: Theology and Social Analysis Group

Theme: Bonhoeffer Ethics: A New Edition

The new translation and edition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, volume 6, Fortress Press, 2005) has sparked renewed scholarly interest in this fascinating fragmentary work. This session's papers will address questions spanning some of the range of the Ethics itself: from theological/conceptual questions of conscience and responsibility, or the distinction between ultimate and penultimate concerns, to particular ethical questions such as conscientious objection, euthanasia, and political dialogue. The papers draw connections between Bonhoeffer's writing and questions of, e.g., 20th century South African reconciliation and 21st century U.S. health care, while simultaneously pointing out questions or resources yet untapped among these ethical fragments.

Bonhoeffer’s Conscience Clauses: Ethics and the Ethics of Refusal
Nancy Berlinger, The Hastings Center

This paper will engage the newly translated Ethics to explore Bonhoeffer’s relevance to contemporary debates over conscientious objection by health care providers and consumers. After an overview of conscientious objection in health care, with attention to “conscience clause” legislation and ethical questions, the paper will discuss Bonhoeffer’s extended treatment of “conscience” in “History and the Good [2]” with reference to contemporary cases. It will examine the new translation’s extensive commentary on Bonhoeffer’s own actions and remarks concerning conscience-based resistance to conscription, and discuss the relevance of the conscription analogy to conscience-based refusal in other contexts. It will conclude with observations on the responsible use of Bonhoeffer’s highly contextual writings on the issues that, in our own political and religio-cultural context, are fueling conscience-clause legislation and related activism, and offer proposals for using Bonhoeffer’s “conscience” material as resources for a theologically-grounded understanding of the ethics of refusal in our own culture.

“Nobody Can Altogether Escape Responsibility” – Bonhoeffer’s Call for a Responsible Life in His Ethics
Christine Schliesser, Fuller Theological Seminary and Tuebingen University

“This life, lived in answer to the life of Jesus Christ [...], we call ‘responsibility’” (Ethics 254). For Bonhoeffer, responsibility is nothing less than the claim to one’s entire life. Throughout Bonhoeffer’s life, his understanding of responsibility played a pivotal role not only for his theology and ethics but also for his personal life. For Bonhoeffer, “nobody can altogether escape responsibility” (Ethics 258). Throughout his Ethics he thus calls his readers – us – to a life lived in responsibility. In my presentation I will first briefly sketch Bonhoeffer’s understanding of responsibility. This will be followed by a short outline in how far each of the different constituents of responsibility has played a role in Bonhoeffer’s decision to join the political resistance. Lastly, I will seek to draw the consequences for us of Bonhoeffer’s call for a responsible life by examining how Bonhoeffer’s understanding of responsibility can be applied today.

Promoting a Genuine Dialogue between Religion and Politics: Bonhoeffer's Ethical Distinction between the "Ultimate and the Penultimate Things"
Ralf Wuestenberg, Freie Universität, Berlin

By way of exploring Bonhoeffer's contribution to the dialogue between religion and politics the presentation will focus on the essence of Bonhoeffer's ethical insights in the manuscript 'the ultimate and the penultimate things' and its applicability to current political issues such as the political changeover in South Africa. Where are the connections between ultimate things, such as eschatological reconciliation or justification by grace alone, and penultimate things, such as the political will to organise forums like Truth Commissions in order to make reconciliation possible? How do we get at the connections between political and eschatological reconciliation with the help of Bonhoeffer's ethics? What can we learn from this example of “dialogue” between religion and politics for conflict-resolving strategies?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Critique of Nazi "Euthanasia" as Reflected in His Ethics, Two Letters, and a Sermon
LeRoy Walters, Georgetown University

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote his discussion of 'euthanasia' in January of 1941 while he was living at a Benedictine abbey, Ettal, near Munich. His critique of 'euthanasia' had an immediate relevance, for the Nazi program of killing adult inmates of asylums -- the T4 program -- had been initiated a year earlier. This centralized program had been preceded in late 1939 by the emptying of multiple asylums in Pomerania and western Poland and the killing of their inmates through shooting or the use of poison gas. This presentation will explore the context for Bonhoeffer's 'euthanasia' discussion in Ethics, analyze his arguments, and seek to demonstrate that his moral critique of 'euthanasia' was totally consistent with his thinking since at least 1933. I will also suggest that Bonhoeffer was aware of the memorandum on 'euthanasia' that Paul Braune, after consultation with Bonhoeffer's brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi, had submitted to Hitler in July 1940.

    A18-62

Buddhist Critical-Constructive Reflection Group

Theme: Buddhist Critical-Constructive Reflection: Theoretical Concerns and Practical Applications

Academic Buddhist Studies as a Resource for Buddhist Communities: Problematics and Possibilities
John J. Makransky, Boston College

The goals of academic Buddhist studies are not the same as those of Buddhist practice communities, and this tends to keep each at a distance from the other. Academic Buddhist studies critically analyzes the historical, cultural and social conditions behind Buddhist formulations and institutions. Buddhists must learn to appropriate such critical findings if they are successfully to find their place in the modern world and to speak authoritatively and knowledgably within it. Yet most traditional monasteries and dharma centers remain largely uninformed by such findings. Can Buddhist studies scholars serve both the interests of the modern academy and the interests of Buddhist communities in their need to find new ways to meet modernity? This talk explores some of the problematics and possibilities of relating academic study of Buddhism to Buddhist practice and service to Buddhist traditions.

Vexing Weber: Critical Buddhist Scholarship as a Vocation
James Mark Shields, Bucknell University

Is it possible to pursue the academic study of Buddhism in deep relation to, or even as Buddhist practice—practice here meaning not simply individual meditation but ethical and political activity based on Buddhist precepts? What are the contours or limits, if any, to such ‘engaged’, ‘faith-based’ or ‘prophetic’ scholarship? In this paper I will clarify the strengths and weaknesses of the hermeneutical strategies employed by Critical Buddhism (hihan bukkyō)—in particular the issue of objectivity—with respect to the goal of establishing a form of Buddhist scholarly praxis. To this end, the methodology of Critical Buddhism will be compared and contrasted to hermeneutical and methodological issues raised in recent Western debates on scholarship in religion. A thorough investigation of criticalism in terms of scholarship and religion itself can benefit not only modern Zen and Buddhist scholarship, it may also contribute to 'constructive studies' in religion more generally.

An Engaged Buddhist Response to John Rawls' The Law of Peoples
Sallie B. King, James Madison University

InThe Law of Peoples, John Rawls constructs a set of basic principles and norms for international law. Importantly, Rawls claims that his Law of Peoples could be accepted by a “decent” society that does not embrace Western liberal political theory. Thus Rawls implicitly invites consideration of his Law of Peoples from the perspective of other cultures. In this paper I take up this invitation from the perspective of Engaged Buddhism, the socially and politically activist form of Buddhism that developed largely in the 20th century. While Engaged Buddhists would take a generally positive view of Rawls’ Law, we find that contrary to his claim, Rawls’Law is not entirely free of the bias caused by commitment to a particular metaphysical view. Buddhist emphases upon interdependence and human development do yield a somewhat different framework for conceiving international relations.

Toward a Pure Land Buddhist Conception of Truth: Shinran’s Jinen Honi in Comparison with Heidegger’s Essence of Truth
Dennis Hirota, Ryukoku University

Japanese Pure Land Buddhist tradition has commonly been grasped in the West within a framework "explicit or implicit" of traditional Christian assumptions and perspectives. Among scholars of religious studies, Jodo Shinshu in particular has been widely characterized as primarily a “simple doctrine of salvation through faith.” The displacement, in some currents of twentieth century philosophical thought, of the subject-object dualism as the central paradigm of knowledge and philosophical issues may provide tools for an alternative approach to clarifying the nature of entrusting oneself to Amida's Vow (shinjin) and the significance of the act of saying Amida’s Name (nembutsu). I will focus on Heidegger’s conception of truth in his pivotal essay “On the Essence of Truth” as possessing distinct resonances with basic concepts and structures of Shinran’s thought and thus affording means for articulating a broader and more illuminating approach to the Shin Buddhist heritage and the nature of faith in Mahayana tradition.

    A18-63

Comparative Religious Ethics Group

Theme: Authority, Justice, and Compassion in Comparative Perspective

Beyond Bully Pulpits: The Persuasiveness of Clerical Authority
Elizabeth Bucar, University of Chicago

I explore the practical justifications of authority within two traditions, Roman Catholicism and Shi`a Islam, through the writings of two important clerical leaders in the twentieth century: John Paul II and Ayatollah Khomeini. I argue that John Paul and Khomeini share a view of authority as a dynamic interplay between leader and laity. They differ, however, on the extent to which they qualify their own authority, the role of the common believers in authorizing clerical authority, and the possibility of dissent to authority. Authority is thereby in both cases a second order operation that relies on each leader’s persuasive ability to tie his teachings to the prior assumptions of his particular community.

The Fatwa and the Epistle: Genres of Consultation and Advice-Giving in Christianity and Islam
Betsy Perabo, Western Illinois University

This paper will consider the similarities between Islamic and Christian approaches to genres of consultation and advice-giving on moral matters. One means of formal response in Islam is the fatwa, a legal judgment issued by a mufti in response to a specific question; a somewhat similar genre in Christianity is the epistle or letter. After reviewing the origins of both traditions, I will consider the continuing influences of these genres.

Comparing Senses of Justice: Kongzi, Rawls, and the Nature of Comparative Ethics
Erin Cline, University of Oregon

This paper addresses the question of why we should do comparative ethics by examining the idea of a “sense of justice” in the work of John Rawls and in the Confucian Analects. I begin by discussing the account of a sense of justice in Analects, focusing on the way in which this capacity fits into the larger program of self-cultivation that is advocated in the text. I then turn to Rawls’s account of a sense of justice, focusing specifically on the moral psychology that supports his conception of justice. Next, I compare the way in which both accounts present a three-fold program of moral development, beginning with the family, extending to the community and then to society as whole. Finally, I discuss the way in which this comparative study deepens our understanding of both Rawls’s work and the Analects, and serves as an example of what comparative ethics can accomplish.

The Role of External Goods in Benevolence and Compassion: Applying Śāntideva's Thought to the Work of Martha Nussbaum
Amod Lele, Harvard University

This presentation applies the views of the classical Indian Mahāyāna Buddhist thinker Śāntideva to those of the contemporary ethicist Martha Nussbaum on external goods, compassion and benefitting others through gifts. It shows that Śāntideva asks similar questions to Nussbaum's but provides answers that differ from both Nussbaum and her Roman Stoic interlocutors. Śāntideva, unlike Nussbaum and Marcus Aurelius, claims that a gift’s main benefit to the recipient does not come from the gift given, but from the goodwill that the act of giving produces toward the giver. He also puts forth a view of compassion that does not depend on valuing external goods, a view opposed by both Nussbaum and Seneca.

    A18-64

Critical Theory and Discourses on Religion Group

Theme: Religion through the Senses

This session presents historical research that interrogates the place of the senses in religion. A number of streams of thought (e.g., anthropology/sociology of the senses, histoire des mentalités, critiques of textuality) have argued that paying attention to all the senses provides us with a broader range of source materials, fuller descriptions and novel perspectives of our subjects, and new methodological and theoretical challenges. The three cases in this session (touch in 11th-century Hinduism, the senses in fourteenth-century Tibetan Buddhism, and smell in early Christianity) move beyond issues of visuality/orality to explore some of the substantive, methodological, and theoretical issues that arise when the senses are emphasized in the analysis of historical materials.

Embraced by Being: Abhinavagupta's Recovery of the Sense of Touch
Kerry Martin Skora, Hiram College

In this paper, I employ a “hermeneutics of touch,” emulating a similar mode of interpretation practiced by the Kashmiri Hindu Tantric sage Abhinavagupta (c. 975-1025 C.E.) in his tantric discourse. I move away from a hermeneutics centered on vision and cognition to one based on the sense of touch, underlining Abhinavagupta's liberation of bodily-felt sense in the process of recollecting Being. My argument proceeds in three phases, focusing on (1) tactile sensitivity, where I discuss the primacy of the sense of touch in Hindu traditions prior to Abhinavagupta; (2) tactile oppression, where I discuss the oppressive strategies enforced on tactility by the Brahmanical orthodox culture of light and purity in which Abhinavagupta was embedded and which he resisted, and (3) tactile liberation, where I discuss Abhinavagupta’s understanding of the path of liberation as one recovering the primordial sense of touch, as the body becomes re-embraced by Being.

Soteriology of the Senses in Tibetan Buddhism
Holly Gayley, Harvard University

By the fourteenth century, a distinctive soteriology of the senses was emerging in Tibetan Buddhism whereby certain texts, relics, images, and sacred substances—as well as objects consecrated according to particular rituals—were ascribed the power to liberate through direct contact with the senses. Related to a category of revealed texts and objects, called terma or 'treasures' (gter ma) said to be discovered in the Tibetan and Himalayan landscape, this phenomenon developed into the rubric of the 'six liberations' (grol ba drug), namely liberation upon seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, wearing and recollecting. The six liberations raise important questions about materiality as a conduit for transcendent aims and also about the range of expedient means to liberation offered through tantric ritual as it developed in Tibet. Precisely what type of liberation is promised and how it is understood to be achieved through sensory contact will be the topic of this paper.

Why the Smells Matter: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination
Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Brown University

This paper explores theoretical implications of research into smell in ancient Christianity. This focus corrects two sorts of biases in the recent scholarly literature: a tendency to define "body" as "sexual body" (where primary sources focus more on sensory experience and the physicality of religious practices); and a focus on visuality and aurality/orality in relation to textuality (which neglects the prominence of olfactory practices and imagery in the primary sources). Beyond broadening our consideration of a larger sensory situation, considering smell requires us to reconfigure a number of familiar views of ancient Christianity. Ancient Christians did more than use smells: they used olfactory experience as a primary mode of religious epistemology, making claims about divine being and nature, human nature and existence, and human-divine interaction and order. Examining smell as a category of religious experience highlights crucial aspects of religion that we have not adequately taken into account.

    A18-65

Ecclesiological Investigations Group

Theme: The Nature and Mission of the Church: Ecclesial Reality and Ecumenical Horizons for the Twenty-First Century

A panel where speakers attempt to discern the significance of the 2006 document from the World Council of Churches document, offering doctrinal, theological and hermeneutical perspectives upon its formation and content and to attempt to discern its potential ecumenical ramifications. After an introduction from Fr. K. M. George, who took part in the WCC meetings to discuss this document at Porte Alegre this year, the following speakers will engage with the document as well as also addressing futures for ecumenical dialogue and the development of an ecumenical ecclesiology in general.

The Nature and Mission of the Church Communion: God, Creation, and Church
Paul Collins, University of Chichester

This offers a critique of koinonia in The Nature and Mission of the Church and proposes further clarification. It asks how the designation of Church as koinonia is constructed; and what is the correlation of meaning of koinonia in relation to the Godhead, creation, redemption and Church. Despite apparent ambiguity I suggest that there is a congruity of meaning to be found in the text, and there is an iterative use being made of the notion of koinonia. The first stage in the process of clarifying the use of koinonia would be in relation to the Holy Trinity. I appeal to Zizioulas’ understanding of the Godhead as ‘an event of communion’ (Being as Communion) which I argue situates the discussion in the realm, which Caputo calls ‘Radical Hermeneutics’, and of deconstruction of ‘community’ made by Derrida. Church as ‘communion’ relates to enabling participation in divine life for humanity/cosmos.

How to Express the Link between the Church and the Holy Trinity in a Common Ecumenical Discourse? An Analysis of Recent Ecumenical Documents on the Nature of the Church
Peter De Mey, Catholic University of Leuven

I will discuss three accounts on the nature of the Church which are the result of recent ecumenical dialogues: the Reformed-Catholic document Towards a Common Understanding of the Church (1990), the Lutheran-Catholic document Church and Justification (1993) and the ongoing dialogue on The Nature and Mission of the Church (1998, 2006) which is taking place within Faith & Order. What the three documents have in common is that one has tried to develop a common discourse on the nature of the Church which has successfully integrated images which hitherto were used in either the Protestant or the Catholic reflection on the Church. Thus, in the ecumenical dialogue there is a remarkably broad reception of notions of the Church like ‘creation of the Word’ and ‘sacrament of God’s grace’. When will the participating churches learn to use images that have been developed in other Christian churches in their own ecclesiology?

Called to be the One Church? The Unity Statements of the WCC and Their Reception in the Document "The Nature and Mission of the Church"
Risto Saarinen, University of Helsinki

The Porto Alegre assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC, February 2006) received an important unity statement, titled Called to be the One Church. It can be regarded as the fourth unity statement in a series begun in New Delhi 1961 and continued in Nairobi 1975 and Canberra 1991. The Porto Alegre unity statement is accompanied with a study document: The Nature and Mission of the Church (NMC). In this paper, NMC will be analyzed with the help of earlier unity statements and some other important WCC texts. The aim of the paper is twofold: it will introduce the NMC in the context of longer history, but it will also make some critical questions and comments regarding its theological weight and ecumenical usefulness.

Pentecostal Perspectives on The Nature and Mission of the Church
Wolfgang Vondey, Regent University

The WCC document, The Nature and Mission of the Church, is the first major ecumenical consensus statement with consistent contributions from the Pentecostal community. Pentecostal ecumenical commitment is characterized by a maturing ecumenical ecclesiology. Convergence is found largely on the basis of an ecclesiology that portrays the Church as koinonia or trinitarian communion, although the basis for this concept is perceived less as an abstract and speculative concept than an experiential, doxological reality. The potential ramifications of the WCC document are seen as strongest in the area of ecclesiology proper and weakest in the actualization of Christian unity in the culturally, ethnically and linguistically diverse churches of global Christianity. Pentecostals suggest that there exists a plurality of ecclesial self-understandings and nuances that are theologically complementary and desirable since they are often born from and determined by a community’s experience and praxis of faith rather than a division of doctrine.

Is There a Future for the Catholic-Protestant Ecclesiological Dialogue? The Non-reception and a Challenge for Ecumenical Dialogue
Korinna Zamfir, Babes-Bolyai University

The analysis of the Catholic-Protestant dialogue concerning ecclesiology reveals a very differentiated understanding of the old controversial questions. However, notwithstanding countless ecumenical documents, during the last decades the confessional borders were re-enforced. The results of the dialogue have found hardly any reception. The non-reception questions the very logic of the discussions and the future of the ecumenical dialogue. The issue of the non-reception is related to the level of the official Church statements, of the theologians not involved in dialogue, of the local churches, and of the forums of the ecumenical dialogue. The existing convergence should have led Churches to take steps towards some degree of mutual recognition. Yet they receded from a decisive step towards fellowship by reason of fear of losing identity, independence or prerogatives. The psychological and church-policy factors are major obstacles in the way to church fellowship. Non-reception has to be addressed by a clear strategy.

Are Councils and Synods Decision Making? A Roman Catholic Conundrum in Ecumenical Perspective
Bradford E. Hinze, Fordham University

The Roman Catholic conundrum is this: do consultative-only practices of parish pastoral councils, diocesan pastoral councils and diocesan synods, and synods of bishops, as stipulated by the 1983 code of canon law, fulfill the advances of the Second Vatican Council for shared responsiblity in the church, or should these bodies with their leaders be allowed to exercise collective decision-making authority? How do the World Council of Churches documents Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry and The Nature and Mission of the Church illuminate these issues and contribute to the further development of Catholic ecclesiology?

    A18-66

Indigenous Religious Traditions Group

Theme: Indigenous Religion and Modernity

The panel examines the encounters between indigenous religions’ world views and practice and modernity. It will examine the assumptions that not only have indigenous religions domesticated many world religions, especially Islam and Christianity, but their encounters with Western modernity have also produced various forms of new religious traditions. Presenters will examine specific case studies of indigenous religions’ responses to modernity, drawing theoretical and conceptual analysis from the various case studies. The session will advance our knowledge of the state of indigenous religions and their relationship to local and global processes and modernization projects in several parts of the world.

“I Hope We Can Civilize Them before They Hurt Themselves”: Assessing the Legacy of Vine Deloria, Jr.
Michael Zogry, University of Kansas, Lawrence

Vine Deloria, Jr.’s scholarship continues to be relevant in terms of recently debated issues in religious studies. Additionally, his clever use of humor to disarm and inform, as evidenced in print and in person, is germane both methodologically and pedagogically. The first section of this paper will engage Deloria’s scholarship in the contemporary discussion regarding the concept of secrecy. It will argue that a useful distinction can be made between secrecy and privacy, particularly with regard to interpretation of specific First Nations’ strategies of interaction with non-community members, historically and at present. The second section of the paper will consider his possible methodological influences upon scholars and their students, with illustrations culled from ethnographic fieldwork as well as the satirical essay that provided the title for this paper. From these vantage points it is clear that Deloria’s scholarship and methodology are and will continue to be pertinent.

Ancient Traditions, Modern Constructions: Innovation, Continuity, and Spirituality on the Pow Wow Trail
Dennis Kelley, University of Missouri, Columbia

We are, as scholars of American Indian religious culture, prone to discount the “religious” nature of the pow wow phenomenon. However, in contemporary Indian Country, the majority of people who identify as “Indian” fall into the “urban” category: away from traditional lands and communities, in cities and towns wherein the opportunities to live one’s identity as Native can be restricted, and even more so for American Indian religious practice and activity. This paper will explore a possible theoretical model for discussing the religious nature of urban Indians, using aspects of the contemporary pow wow as exemplary, and suggest ways in which the discourse on Native American religious practices can inform the larger discussion of religion in general by implying a comparative direction between urban Indians and other religious actors in American secular society.

Old Photos, New Connections: Mirroring Western and African Religion
Inez van der Spek, Dominican Centre for Theology and Society, Nijmegen

In this paper childhood snapshots from a Nigerian friend, the novels of British-Nigerian authors Ben Okri and Helen Oyeyemi, and the Dutch wax tableaux of Yinka Shonibare are involved to reflect on religion in the age of postcolonialism and globalization. In Nigeria both Islam and Christianity have many believers. Many of them have a pluralistic approach to religion, freely mixing traditional religious and ritual elements with Christian and Islamic beliefs. This is not to suggest that religious hybridity in an African country would offer a model for a Western secularized country. And yet, it is worthwhile wondering how interest in Africa's religiosity can be more than just exotism. It is suggested that it may function as a mirror, reflecting questions on the meaning of hybridity and humor (jokes, parody, mockery) in religion, so painfully absent in traditional Christian religions.

    A18-67

Kierkegaard, Religion, and Culture Group

Theme: Kierkegaard and the Spiritual Life

Is Hope Located in Future Possibility or in Dying to the Self? Towards a Kierkegaardian Conception of Spiritual Therapy
Paul Carron, Baylor University

Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death can be useful in pastoral counseling and spiritual formation. However, some of the ways in which it has been used are problematic. It is not primarily a book of typologies of the self or a psychological roadmap for becoming a self, nor is it suggesting that we find our hope in future possibilities. Rather it is a guide to becoming a true self, which means to die to the self and to the world. If this notion is taken seriously in pastoral counseling, then we must pursue methods of spiritual therapy that will help us towards this end. Fortunately, Kierkegaard gives us several suggestions in his Christian Discourses of how we might die to the self. Two of these suggestions are explored as ways to implement this aspect of The Sickness Unto Death in pastoral counseling and spiritual therapy.

The Beatitude of Defeat: Anfechtung, Humility, and Prayer in Four Upbuilding Discourses (1844)
Joseph Ballan, Syracuse University

Rarely do treatments of Kierkegaard’s “upbuilding discourses” take into account the textual units in which they were originally published. This paper offers an interpretation of Four Upbuilding Discourses (1844) as a coherent whole, explicating the thought that traverses the individual discourses: a thought of Christian humility as something passionate and audacious, not passive and quietistic. The paper sets these discourses within the context of 17th-century Lutheran spiritualities and edifying literatures, particularly those of Johann Arndt and Jakob Böhme. Attention is given to revisions and developments of Martin Luther’s concept of Anfechtung in these writers and in Kierkegaard. Jean-Louis Chrétien’s recent phenomenological work, as well as his interpretation of Kierkegaard, is used to develop themes of struggling with God and the beatitude and fecundity of being wounded in this struggle. The paper concludes by relating the theorization of humility in Four Upbuilding Discourses to pertinent concepts in Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works.

Education's Pious Fraud: Kierkegaard's Pedagogy
Stephen N. Dunning, University of Pennsylvania

Much scholarly attention has been paid to the element of deception in Kierkegaard's works, but little to his theory of the necessary deception involved in all education. This paper will argue that what Kierkegaard calls 'education's pious fraud' provides a key to understanding a wide range of phenomena. After a brief analysis of the theory as Kierkegaard presents it, I will explore its implications for: (1) Kierkegaard's use of 'indirect communication' in the pseudonymous authorship; (2) the nature of religious education; and (3) the classroom techniques that we use in teaching about religion in secular institutions (using as examples our putative neutrality on the value of religion(s) and also one way we may deceive by departing from neutrality when teaching about Islam). The primary text for this exercise is in Works of Love (1847), using the Hongs' 1962 translation (p. 236, corresponding to p. 252 in their 1995 translation).

    A18-68

Men's Studies in Religion Group

Theme: Issues in Men's Studies in Religion

This session will address issues of the interaction of masculinity and religion in the areas of media, politics, and pop culture.

Theology for Non Elite Males
Greg Ellis, Moravian Theological Seminary

Non elite men find themselves in an apparent power paradox. By most definitions of power, men are more powerful than women, but are less likely to meet their fundamental needs of life, health, safety and shelter. Men need to articulate a theology of exercising power over others while recognizing this power comes at a high cost to us. Feminist theological methods, especially those of Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, provide an excellent starting point for articulating this theology. Fiorenza’s fourfold hermeneutical framework modified to address non elite male interpretation of biblical texts to liberate them from an elitist theological interpretation. This modified framework is then applied to the Samson saga and the story of Joseph, the man who helped raise Jesus to see how non elites can exercise what power they have in a theologically appropriate manner to benefit their community instead of themselves.

Men As Peacemakers: Courage and the Practice of Nonviolence
Ellen M. Ross, Swarthmore College

The myth of redemptive violence pervades North American public life. This paper explores the narratives of Quaker men who refused to engage in public acts of violence during the 17th -20th c. in North America. It analyzes the history of men for whom confidence in the power of love to transform the heart of the self and the enemy was believed to far outweigh the effects of force or violence in changing the world. Historical and contemporary Quakers like George Fox, Jacob Ritter, John Woolman, and Bayard Rustin have walked a road of personal and social transformation as prophets committed to peace and non-violence. The narrative of the transforming power of love that emerges in their stories offers a visionary alternative to the monomyth of redemptive violence that increasingly defines masculinity in our culture.

Ungraceful God: Masculinity and the Images of God in Popular Culture in Brazil
Andre Musskopf, Sao Leopoldo, Brazil

This paper proposes to analyze the masculine images of God in popular Brazilian songs using gender, gay and lesbian, and queer studies, making explicit the relationship between those images and the cultural understandings of masculinity. It will also present a summary of the current stage of the studies relating masculinity and religion in Brazil, proposing other ways of relating those issues.

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Mysticism Group

Theme: Mystical Asceticism and Extreme Experience

“The Body Gains Its Share": The Asceticism of Mechthild of Magdeburg
Michelle Voss Roberts, Rhodes College

Through an analysis of Mechthild of Magdeburg’s The Flowing Light of the Godhead, this paper discerns Mechthild's views on the role of asceticism in the processes of divinization. Mechthild does not portray the body as needing punishment, but rather seeks its purification through an ascesis of desire. I suggest that Mechthild develops a single set of physico-spiritual senses - the sort of 'sensorium' that Bernard McGinn finds in other medieval mystical authors. For her, ascetical practices purify the whole person: body, soul, and senses. The paper specifically examines the “three kinds of sorrow” in V.1 alongside their function in the whole of the work.

Shiva's Pain Protocol in Basava's Vacana Poetry
Lise Vail, Montclair State University

This paper explores the complex nuances of pain in the poetry of Basava, a 12th-century poet-saint from Karnataka, India. He claims that Lord Shiva’s sport involves using pain to test us, to purify, punish bad behavior (karma), and thus prod us onto the right path. “[He] plays tricks with you until your bones stick out (#210). Only an imperturbable Shiva’s hero—a ‘Vira-shaiva’—deserves liberation, since Shiva's path is grueling, and pain guaranteed: “Bhakti cuts through like a saw, coming and going, and bites like a snake” (#212). Basava even begs God to protect his virtue by cursing, humiliation, or making him crippled and sightless (#s 253, 58). Is Shiva a cruel trickster? What pains does the poet actually experience? Basava’s penal-system lexicon—noses cut off, being scalded, the rack—leaves readers wondering if he perhaps experienced prison. Detractors were infuriated when he renounced the Vaishnava Brahmin sacrificer’s lifestyle to lead the Virashaiva movement.

Astonishing Pain: Mystical Suffering in Christina Mirabilis
Charlotte Radler, Loyola Marymount University

This paper focuses on Christina the Astonishing’s apostolate, as depicted in a hagiography by the Dominican Thomas of Cantimpré. I integrate three facets of her suffering—suffering as imitation of Christ, suffering as enactment of purgatory on earth, and substitionary suffering that redeems those in purgatory. I argue that these three features of suffering are deeply interrelated in that they constitute important mechanisms within Christina’s public ministry. I also investigate the public and communal dimensions of meaning to her extraordinary pain. In confronting the agony of Christina’s body, the reader encounters a multi-lateral and multi-layered inner- and inter-textuality. A complex hermeneutical pyramid emerges: within the text, the community struggles to make sense of Christina’s violent self-affliction; Thomas of Cantimpré constructs and interprets her anguish in his Vita; and the contemporary reader strives to make intelligible the interconnected web of factors that determine the roles and relationship between body, pain, and gender.

Pain and Pleasure: Body Modification and Spiritual Experience
Megan Summers, University of Georgia

Using Reverend Jason Cusick’s rubric for experiencing voluntary physical pain I will argue that body modification in general and tattooing specifically is an appropriate venue for harnessing the power of this experience of pain for spiritual growth. I will show how getting a tattoo applies to all of his categories including pain as rite of passage and pain as means of transcendence. I will support the argument with both cognitive theory and scholarly research from Mary Douglas and Kevin Shilbrack. Tattooing, viewed with this lens, is a modern mystical experience, one that is growing in popularity and accessibility.

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Pragmatism and Empiricism in American Religious Thought Group

Theme: Methodological and Theoretical Issues

Eight Is Not Enough: A Pragmatic Response to Daniel Pals' Theories
Alva Anderson, Wofford College

With its clarity, organization, and balanced and thorough handling of its material, Daniel Pals’ Seven Theories of Religion emerged in the past ten years as a leading text for introducing major methods in the study of religion. Due to the book’s success, Pals has released an expanded second edition, his Eight Theories of Religion, in which he adds Weber to his list of key theorists whose impact make their work too crucial to ignore. This paper will make the case that in order for Pals to succeed in presenting a complete picture of the “classical” methods in the field, he needs to include a ninth theory in his work, namely the pragmatic approach of William James. The essay will proceed first by articulating the precise nature of James’ pragmatic “theory” of religion, and then by presenting its contributions to the ongoing conversation regarding approaches to the study of religion.

Religious Experience after the Phenomenology of Religion: The Semantics of Religious Experience Reports
Stephen Bush, Princeton University

Religious experience has been one of the principal objects of investigation in the study of religion since the discipline’s inception. Today, however, the category of experience is contested as never before, with calls from some quarters to eliminate it from religious studies altogether. This is no doubt related to the fact that many have rejected the methodology of the formerly prominent phenomenology of religion approach, and they see religious experience, which stood at the center of the phenomenology project, as guilty by association. In an influential essay, Robert H. Sharf argues that since experiences are absolutely private, and since only that which is public has semantic content, reports of religious experiences are devoid of meaning. However, the semantic theories of Wilfrid Sellars and Robert Brandom show that the meanings of the terms used in experience reports are accessible to scholars even if the referents of the terms are not.

Re-reading Foucault on Power: Fraser, Brandom, and Rorty on the Politics of Self-creation
Jason Springs, Princeton University

This paper intervenes in a recent debate among pragmatist thinkers about the capacity of “social practice” explanations of agency and freedom to critique and resist systemic forms of power. By reading Michel Foucault’s later account of power as a productive feature of social practices against Robert Brandom’s account of “expressive freedom,” I highlight the weaknesses of their respective projects, and then explore the possibility of modifying each project by the other’s best insights.

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Signifying (on) Scriptures Group

Theme: Scriptures and Race, Roundtable Discussion 1

Setting the Agenda: Vincent L. Wimbush, Claremont Graduate University

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Theology and Continental Philosophy Group

Theme: New Directions in Theology and Continental Philosophy

A Certeauvian Analysis of African American Religion
Torin Alexander, Rice University

This paper employs a Certeauvian analysis of African American religion. In so doing, I argue that Certeau’s theory of practice, particularly with respect to the concepts of space and tactics, reveal the oppositional nature of African American religion and religious experience. By oppositional, I mean that which resistances, circumvents, evades, or opposes oppressive dimensions of power, particular in relation to the construction of society. Further, I assert that Certeau’s writings have great explanatory power for those attempting to understand the centrality of religious belief in general, and “Christian” belief in particular within the African American community.

Belief and Practice in Talal Asad’s “De-privatization” of Religion
Christopher C. Brittain, Atlantic School of Theology

This paper critically examines the “genealogy” of religion and secularism as developed by Talal Asad. It explores Asad’s critique of various attempts to establish an essence of “religion,” and his emphasis on the role of practices and tradition-guided reasoning in the study of religion, as opposed to a focus on belief. Of particular concern will be his interest in challenging the secularization thesis and the privatization of religious practice in modern society. The argument will proceed through a close internal-critique of Asad’s argument, with some reference to the work of José Casanova, William Connelly, and Jeffrey Stout. The examination of Asad’s theory of religion, along with his presentation of the religious (Islamic) subject, will focus on his suggestion that one aspect of the secularization thesis – the principle of structural differentiation – “no longer holds.”

Jean-Luc Nancy and the Lineage of Spinoza
Matthew Hagele, Florida State University

In this essay, I reconstruct Jean-Luc Nancy’s account of freedom and argue that it can be located in the lineage of Benedict de Spinoza. That this is the case is not a radical claim. Indeed, Nancy himself hints at the “proximity” between his thought and that of Spinoza. However, the nature of this proximity is left rather vague in Nancy’s work as the author simply recognizes the need for further study. Therefore, this essay, while acknowledging the innovation of Nancy’s overall project in The Experience of Freedom, focuses its attention on the brief, undeveloped textual appropriations of Spinoza—specifically those dealing with Spinoza’s conception of God as verb, and his argument for the harmonious coexistence of Infinite Necessity and human freedom—as suggesting that the latter represents a prior movement in a particular narrative of thought that culminates in Nancy’s work on freedom.

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Wesleyan Studies Group

Theme: Challenges to the Church

Fanatical Women: The Struggle toward Public Ministry in the Early Free Methodist Church
Douglas Cullum, Roberts Wesleyan College

Nineteenth-century Free Methodist women were the victims of conflicting messages. On the one hand, numerous religious and cultural factors provided fertile ground in support of women’s involvement in the early Free Methodist Church. On the other hand, the young denomination’s biblical and ecclesiastical conservatism made it hesitant to move toward the full enfranchisement of women in ministry. This inner tension in the early Free Methodist Church is displayed in this paper through two primary foci. First, the experiences of two Free Methodist women offer insight into the struggles encountered by those who felt called to enter into areas of ministry traditionally held by men. Then, early Free Methodist diversity of opinion on the matter of women in ministry is illustrated by probing personal interchanges between persons who serve as representatives of the much broader ideological and theological ferment that troubled the young denomination throughout its founding era.

A Conference in Cultural Captivity: White Mississippi Methodists and the 1963 "Born of Conviction" Statement
Joseph T. Reiff, Emory and Henry College

The 1963 “Born of Conviction” statement published in the Mississippi Methodist Advocate aggravated an existing tension between Methodists of the white Mississippi Conference and the national Methodist Church. The statement, signed by 28 ministers, sought to fill a vacuum: Conference leaders had made no public response to the Ole Miss riot or to insistence on rigid maintenance of segregation, thus implying the Church’s collusion in Mississippi’s “Closed Society.” The statement called for freedom of the pulpit and quoted the Discipline’s claim that Jesus’ teachings prohibited racial discrimination. The intensely negative response from most of the Conference and the lack of support from Conference clergy leaders resulted from the Conference’s cultural captivity, which prevented many from seeing the tensions between the “Southern way of life” and the “expressed witness” of the national Methodist Church. The paper is based on three years' research, including oral history interviews with signers of the statement.

“We, the People...”: The US Cultural Commitments of the United Methodist Social Principles as a Challenge to Global Connection
Darryl Stephens, Emory University

The connectional challenge offered by recent liberal/conservative debates about social issues in The United Methodist Church have drawn attention away from another significant challenge to unity in the connection: U.S.-centrism. This paper proceeds by identifying some of the U.S. cultural commitments in the Social Principles, discussing some of the challenges to global connection posed by these commitments, and examining ways in which European and African conferences have responded to these challenges. This study contributes to the UMC’s self-understanding as a church and to addressing ecclesiological challenges confronted by a global connection dedicated to social witness and action. The paper concludes with a constructive proposal, suggesting that unanimity of opinion on social issues is not a prerequisite for maintaining connectional unity.

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Contemporary Pagan Studies Consultation

Theme: Pagan Communities: Innovations, Internal Negotiations, and Growth

Alchemical Rhythm: Sacred Dynamic Fire and the Politics of Drumming
Jason Winslade, DePaul University

Although drumming has long been associated with countercultural events and contemporary Pagan festivals, thriving communities of drummers and dancers have emerged as a formidable presence at these events. Alchemical rhythm refers to the adaptation of classic magical principles to activities centered around a sacred fire circle. Drumming practitioners, many of whom eschew conventional categories of Paganism, work their particular alchemical magic nightly at festivals, where they continually negotiate between individual intentions and communal values. This paper primarily explores drumming as a performative practice that both challenges traditional notions of ritual and liturgy and encompasses conflicts experienced by the broader Pagan community. Particularly, these practitioners confront issues surrounding leadership and egalitarianism, ethical behavior and etiquette, and individual and community identity. Through interviews and participant observation, I examine the roles that drumming and sacred fire work play in contemporary Paganism and whether their influence offers possibilities for social and political change.

The Fourfold Goddess and the Undying God: Anatomies of Minnesotan Bootstrap Witchcraft Traditions
Murph Pizza, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

“Paganistan” – the Minnesota Twin Cities NeoPagan community – emerged from being “Pagan flyover country” in the 1970s to become a flourishing community with a regionally unique, innovative, and evolving alliance of traditions. Self-started by impatient Midwestern occultists mining books, rather than awaiting transmission from a lineage holder, the process of Paganistan creating itself included cultivating an environment where critical engagement, creativity, and innovation are commonplace and accepted within the community. This project examines the Fourfold/Twyern Witchcraft traditions to demonstrate how religious innovations are negotiated within the community, and how their creation has contributed to the religious and cultural character of Paganistan.

Children of Converts: Generational Retention in the Neo-Pagan New Religious Movement
Laura Wildman-Hanlon, Cherry Hill Seminary

When a new religion develops, its growth is not only reliant upon attracting and converting new adherents but also retaining them as well as the succeeding generations. Many scholars have noted that the retention of its second and third generations is a vital marker to the success of a New Religious Movement, but there is currently little research. The Pagan Census, which gathered data in the early 1990s, found that '41.3 percent of all participants stated that they have children.' (Berger et al.nd 2003). Has the socialization directed to the children within the Neo-Pagan movement been successful in helping them develop strong enough ties to their community to cause the new generations to want to remain active within it after they have grown to adulthood? This presentation is of a qualitative exploration, using a small sampling to provide a broad overview of generational retention in the Neo-Pagan New Religious Movement.

The Pagan Explosion
James Roger Lewis, University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point

An important though neglected source of information bearing on the question of numbers of adherents to alternative religions is national census data. In 2001, the censuses of Canada, New Zealand, and Australia collected information on religious self-identification. There was also a religion survey conducted in the United States in the same year. Comparing the numbers of self-identified Pagans in 2001 with earlier years reveals a startling pattern of explosive growth in all four of these countries. This paper proposes to survey this census and survey data for the light it sheds on increasing participation rates in Paganism. The latter part of the presentation will also discuss two of the factors fueling this rapid expansion, the internet and the recent phenomenon of adolescent ('Teen Witch') Paganism.

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Coptic Christianity Consultation

Theme: Coptic Monasticism through the Ages

A new consultation on Coptic Christianity extends a warm invitation for paper proposals on the subject of Coptic monasticism. Submission on the early, medieval, and modern periods are encouraged, with special attention given to monastic literature, theology, material culture, and the role male and female monks have played in society. The field of Coptic studies intersects with a variety of academic areas, and the organizers want to cultivate interdisciplinary contributions by both graduate students and established scholars.

"A Man Holy and Perfect": The Holy Man as Didaskalos (Teacher) and Mathetes (Disciple and Pupil) in the Life of Paisios/Bishoy, Attributed to John Kolobos
Tim Vivian, California State University, Bakersfield

Most study of the holy man/person in Late Antiquity focuses on the saint as patron, thaumaturge, mediator and teacher, and intercessor. While all of these roles occur in the Life of Paisios/Bishoy attributed to John Kolobos, there is one further role: that of didaskalos (teacher) and mathetes (disciple and pupil). In the hagiographical Life of Paisios, Paisios serves as both teacher and pupil, thus modeling both roles for his monastic audience. In this paper I will look at both what Paisios teaches and what he learns. What does this monastic pedagogy tell us about early monastic hagiography? What did monastic authors and readers hope to learn from such edifying tales as that of Paisios? This paper plans to address such issues and place the Life within the larger context of Egyptian monasticism in Late Antiquity.

Encounters with Monks: Coptic Monastic Hospitality Networks
Chrysi Kotsifou, American University, Cairo

This paper demonstrates and illustrates the existence and workings of the Egyptian monastic hospitality network. Monastic rules stipulated that travellers who were in need should be received and taken care of in monasteries. Egyptian monasteries had the resources and the manpower to provide for travellers and especially for pilgrims who came to them for help and guidance. As soon as pilgrims entered Egypt, they were helped in their journeys by monks and clerics. Monasteries were mainly founded by the Nile and in close proximity to each other, thus enabling the execution of often uneventful itineraries. On the practical level, the Church and monasteries provided pilgrims with food and accommodation and the means of transportation required to reach their destination. At certain times, educated monks were required to work as guides and interpreters for their visitors. These guides and interpreters also carried the necessary letters of reference for the pilgrims.

"The Soul Is Like a Ship": Sailing Imagery in Early Egyptian Monastic Literature
Bernadette McNary-Zak, Rhodes College

Early Egyptian monastic spirituality was inextricably tied to its environmental and topographical contexts. As a result, its literature is replete with examples of the ways in which ammas and abbas incorporated water imagery into their sayings and teachings. This paper looks at the relationship between context and text by examining sailing analogies attributed to three monks of the fourth and fifth centuries: Paul of Tamma, Amma Syncletica, and Abba Ammonas. It argues that these analogies contributed to a discourse about spiritual progress in the monastic life by providing a practical and metaphorical way to explain the reception and cultivation of extraordinary spiritual gifts.

Then Am I Not Obliged: Shenoute of Atripe Writes to a Women's Monastery to Persuade and Discipline
Janet A. Timbie, Catholic University of America

Shenoute of Atripe (d. 465) communicated with the women's community in the White Monastery Federation in a work known as Then Am I Not Obliged. After first reviewing its place in the entire Shenoutean corpus, then its treatment (very brief) in previous scholarship, I will examine the evidence provided by the text for 1) the type of control exerted by Shenoute over the women's group and 2) the means by which women attempted to maintain a degree of independence. Due to the dramatic style of Shenoute, the letter offers an unusual view of one episode of gender conflict in an Egyptian ascetic community. The text both illustrates and enlivens modern theory of gender and status in Late Antiquity.

Beyond Their Gender: Coptic Female Monasticism in the Twentieth Century
Lois Farag, Luther Seminary

The purpose of this paper is to document the history of Coptic female monasticism in the twentieth century.This paper will investigate female monastic renewal in the Coptic Church. This renewal began with the beginning of the twentieth century and accelerated during the second half of the same century. The paper will follow this historical development, and the main figures that launched and shaped this renewal. The paper will discuss some aspects of this renewal such as the changed face of monastic recruits, their work, intellectual activity, and the establishment of new priories. The spiritual renewal within the monasteries extended beyond the confines of the monastic walls and is shaping Coptic women spirituality, whether married or single. The modern female Coptic monastics are continuing the conversation that began with the early church “ammas” and are extending it to the twenty-first century.

Patriarchs Kyrillos VI and Shenouda III: Architects of Contemporary Coptic Monasticism
Nelly Van Doorn-Harder, Valparaiso University

At the onset of the twenty-first century, Coptic monasticism is more vibrant and active than ever. Monks and nuns have restored and re-inhabited ancient monasteries where the core symbols of Coptic Christianity are being preserved, re-invented and formed. Monks work inside and outside the monasteries, serving the Coptic community in places as far away as in Australia and the U.S.A. Nuns are developing and performing new vocations for women that not that long ago were unheard off in the Coptic Church. This presentation will provide an analysis of the methods and strategies used by Patriarch Kyrillos VI (1959—1971) and the current patriarch, Shenouda III (1971 - ) to initiate, develop and continue the revival of the Coptic Orthodox monastic movement.

    A18-77

Cultural History of the Study of Religion Consultation and Queer Theory and LGBT Studies in Religion Consultation

Theme: Body Parts: Sexed Bodies, Secular Bodies

Following Foucault, many scholars have taken for granted that the process of secularization occasioned the birth of the modern sexual subject. As clinics and courtrooms emerged over the long nineteenth century as privileged sites from which to identify and name deviance, social scientific ways of knowing came to eclipse older theological forms. So the story goes. This eclipse has never been total, however. Nor were these processes of uneven secularization an exclusively nineteenth-century affair. This interdisciplinary roundtable discussion explores the conjoined histories—and futures—of secularism, sexuality, and embodied subjectivity. We proceed “piecemeal,” with each panelist focusing on an individual body part as a way not only to disaggregate what Foucault called the “artificial unity” held together by “sex,” but also to disrupt the fantasy of a universal body that coheres across time and space. Panelists discuss: “foot,” “breast,” “fat,” “hymen,” “penis,” “DNA,” "conscience," and “throat.”

    A18-78

Religion, Public Policy, and Political Change Consultation

Theme: The Politics of Religion and Public Policy

Progressive Religion in the Public Sphere: A Critical Case Study about Health Care Access in Massachusetts
Ann B. McClenahan, Harvard University

In recent decades, sociologists and political scientists in the United States have focused on the activities and commitments of the Religious Right as it built significant footholds in local, regional, and national politics. Less examined have been the attempts by progressive religious organizations to engage in legislative and electoral politics. This paper presents a case study and critical analysis of one such engagement: the campaign by the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization to leverage a statewide ballot initiative into a significant expansion of health care access in Massachusetts. The case offers insight into the strategies and tactics employed in both legislative and electoral politics.

Not Slaves to Men: The Success of Faith-based Politics in Human Trafficking Activism
Yvonne Zimmerman, University of Denver

This paper examines how the creation of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives has transformed federal initiatives to combat human trafficking as codified in The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (H.R. 3244) into a special mandate for faith-based organizations, and showcases how this transformation has been accomplished. Since the establishment of the ‘Faith-Based Initiative’ office, it has become the Bush administration’s preferred rhetorical frame to position human trafficking as a problem with religious dimensions. This rhetoric, moreover, has been backed with money. Current trends indicate that rather than being awarded to organizations with prior experience in the issues pertaining to human trafficking, a disproportionate chunk of federal monies are awarded to organizations who make ‘faith’ the basis of their anti-trafficking efforts.

Interfaith Open Communities: Faith-based Affordable Housing Advocacy in Metropolitan Chicago
Joe Pettit, Morgan State University

This paper presents a political analysis of Interfaith Open Communities (IOC), an affordable housing education and advocacy program in metropolitan Chicago. The program, now in its sixth year, is co-sponsored by Protestants for the Common Good, the Archdiocese of Chicago, the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, and the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago. The paper will first consider the religious rational presented by the co-sponsors for pursuing education and advocacy related to affordable housing. The largest section of the paper will consider both the successes and failures of the effort, with a focus on identifying important lessons learned. The final section of the paper will present IOC as a new model for faith-based advocacy, one that departs significantly from the model of community based organizing in the tradition of Saul Alinsky.

    A18-79

Rethinking the Field Consultation

Theme: Part I: The Future of "Religion and Ecology" and "Ecotheology"; Part II: The Role of Liberal Theology in the Discipline

In considering "ecotheology" and "religion and ecology," some question the value in the creation of a new field, arguing that scholars should focus more on "greening" extant fields of study. Furthermore, there seems to be a growing gap between the methodology of "religion and ecology" and "ecotheology." Finally, as pioneering theologians begin to retire, their positions are not being filled with scholars in either area. Given these challenges, this panel will focus on the future of "religion and ecology" and "ecotheology" as fields of inquiry within the study of religion.

Panel: Part II: The Role of Liberal Theology in the Discipline

Liberal theology has been chastised for its refusal to embrace traditional doctrine, its reliance on experiential inquiry, and its supposed tendency towards relativism. A battle for authenticity and recognition continues, and this panel will address the concerns of those considering work in the field.

    A18-100

Special Topics Forum

Theme: Representing Religion in Public: What Can Your Department Do and Why It Should

Sponsored by the Academic Relations Committee and the Religion in the Schools Task Force.

Department chairs and members of religious studies and theology departments get requests from various non-scholarly publics to address their questions about religion and theology. Some of those publics include religious communities, educational communities (high schools, etc.), health care communities and professionals, community associations, and even local media. Representing scholarship on religion to such publics is a worthwhile effort and can strengthen the department and the institution while it enhances these publics’ understanding of religion. The difficulty is that many departments are not sure of what to do and how to go about it. A distinguished group of panelists, all of whom have extensive experience in representing scholarship on religion to various publics, will share ideas and facilitate dialogue on how best to meet this pressing need.

    A18-101

Special Topics Forum

Theme: Student Liaison Group Decennial Celebration

Sponsored by the Graduate Student Committee and Student Liaison Group

In the 1970s, the Board of Directors created the position of Student Director, a voting member of the Board. In 1996, the Student Liaison Group was established, directly linking the AAR with the doctoral programs of individual institutions in religion. In 2006, the Board established the Graduate Student Committee as a Standing Committee. These measures formalizing student members’ roles in the Academy recognize the need for prominent student voices and the benefit of an institutional memory in serving the graduate students who comprise 30 percent of all AAR members and who are our hope for the Academy’s future. This session explores the history of AAR student involvement and its continuing progress. It will be followed immediately by a reception celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the Student Liaison Group and the newly established Graduate Student Committee. Former Student Directors and past and current Student Liaisons are especially encouraged to attend.

    A18-102

Special Topics Forum

Theme: The Other Within: The Study of Religion and Diversifying Our Knowledge Production

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

Through four presentations and a respondent, this forum provides opportunities to discuss theoretical and methodological innovations drawn from the work of racial, ethnic, and minority scholars, involving both critique (deconstruction) of current methods of knowledge formation and construction of alternate approaches.

A reception hosted by the Status of Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession Committee directly follows.

    A18-103

Arts, Literature, and Religion Section

Theme: The Practice of Art and the Study of Religion

Does the practice of art have a role to play in the study of religion? If so, what? This session offers a solo dance performance followed by a panel in which four scholars who study and/or practice art as integral to their scholarship will draw on their own experience to address questions such as the following: does the process of studying religious phenomena require that we engage in disciplinary practices that educate our senses differently than acts of scholarly reading and writing? Are there forms of experience and knowledge that can only be accessed through training in (a particular) art? Can the practice of art provide new perspectives not only on material and bodily dimensions of religious life, but on intellectual and philosophical dimensions as well? This panel will invite participation in setting an agenda for this line of inquiry.

    A18-104

Buddhism Section and Religions, Social Conflict, and Peace Group

Theme: Buddhism and Violence

The majority of recent works on religion and violence have focused on Abrahamic traditions. There has been a neglect of the role of violence in Buddhism. Buddhist Studies itself has contributed to this neglect of examining Buddhism's 'darker side.' This panel explores various dimensions of Buddhism and violence, such as Buddhist rhetoric, Buddhist monasticism and violence, and Buddhist war. This exploration will provide the tools to assess whether there is a 'Buddhist violence' and, if so, what that entails. Furthermore, by focusing on the worldliness of Buddhism, this panel hopes to problematize the Orientalist view that has often accompanied Buddhist Studies in its western history.

Making Merit through Warfare: The Bodhisattva-gocara-upāyavişaya-vikurvāņa-nirdeśa Sūtra
Stephen Jenkins, Humboldt State University

Buddhist Kings had sophisticated, practical, and prominent scriptural resources to support their use of deadly force in warfare and harsh punitive violence in maintaining social order. This sutra shows practical concern for military defense, control of vassals, and maintenance of social order. It advocates a combination of harshness and benevolence, juxtaposing warnings against excessive compassion with the prohibition of the destruction of infrastructure and the natural environment. Assuring the king that no moral fault is entailed for killing if he maintains proper intentions, strives to avoid conflict, and limits modes of waging war averts the Kşatriya’s classic fear of karmic retribution. Further, the cause of the violence is identified as the force of the victim's own karma. Under these conditions, the king actually strongly increases his merit through warfare.

The Rhetoric of War in Tibet: Towards a Buddhist Just War Theory
Derek Maher, East Carolina University

While the earliest Buddhist traditions placed great emphasis on teachings advocating non-violence (ahimsa), Buddhism eventually came to accommodate various aggressive ideologies, including martial arts, the samurai ethic, and warfare in general. My paper will explore the rhetoric that has been used in Tibet to justify warfare. I will argue that various parties in early seventeenth century Tibet worked to articulate criteria of just war theory within a Buddhist context. I will focus on biographies and histories that discuss the 1642 war in Tibet. I will investigate Geluk and complementary Kagyu accounts of these events. Through these inquiries I hope to discover general patterns that will reveal what counted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as suitable justifications for armed conflict. My primary focus will be jus ad bellum, that dimension of just war theory that relates to just causes, legitimate authority, and last resort for warfare.

Buddhism and Violence in Mongolia During the Theocratic Period
Vesna Acimovic Wallace, University of California, Santa Barbara

This paper discusses the brutal penal system that was introduced in Mongolia during the autonomous, theocratic period (1911-1921) under the auspices of the Eighth Jebtsundamba Khutugtu, the religious and secular leader of the state. It examines the forms of corporeal punishments of Buddhist ecclesiastics and laypeople in light of the socio-political and economic conditions in Mongolia of that period. It also brings into discussion the consequences of the harsh penal system in terms of the social and political events and changes in the country and their affect on the state of Buddhist establishments in Mongolia.

Onward Buddhist Soldiers: Sermons to Soldiers in the Sri Lankan Army
Daniel Kent, University of Virginia

This paper investigates Buddhist sermons (bana) to Sri Lankan military personnel as performative speech. Drawing upon transcripts of ba?a and formal interviews with monks, I show that the main purpose of these sermons is not to convey Buddhist doctrinal pronouncements on war, but rather to preach 'according to the occasion' in order to illicit particular emotional or mental states (hita) in the audience. By taking the thoughts and feelings of monks and lay people into consideration, this analysis of the structure of Buddhist sermons complicates the conceptual tension between Buddhism and war.

Buddhism and Violence in Thailand: The Objectification of the Sacred
Michael Jerryson, University of California, Santa Barbara

This proposed paper will analyze the relationship between Buddhist symbolism and violence in Southern Thailand. Since January 2004, Southern Thai monks (bhikkhus) have been living under martial law and constant physical danger. As the primary holder and disseminator of the dhamma, the bhikkhus serve a dual function of being both subject and object within their religion. While they are agents of change and sustainability, Buddhist adherents also objectify them as a symbol of the religion’s sustainability and, through this, posit the bhikkhus as symbols of their religious tradition. Through symbolizing the teaching of Buddhism, attacks on the bhikkhus represent an attack on the sacred. It is here that we find that importance between religion and violence falls not on textual evidence, but rather on performance and representation.

    A18-105

Comparative Studies in Religion Section and Comparative Religious Ethics Group and Comparative Theology Group

Theme: The State of Comparative Enterprise in the Study of Religions

This panel brings together three comparative program units of the AAR for fruitful conversations across boundaries on the nature of comparative work as qualified by “religions,” “theology,” and “ethics,” and to discuss the “state” and status of comparison and “the comparative study of religion” in the academy. The panelists who are co-chairs or representatives of these program units will highlight the distinctiveness of their respective units and possible modes and models of future collaboration between these three units of the AAR. Given the growing number of “comparative” units in the AAR, the proposed panel is timely and necessary.

    A18-106

History of Christianity Section and Death, Dying, and Beyond Consultation

Theme: The Christian Afterlife

The Rose That Grew through the Crack in the Wall: Images of Death and Afterlife in Twentieth-Century Mainline Protestantism
Lucy Bregman, Temple University

This paper examines images for death and afterlife found in early to mid-twentieth century anthologies of Protestant funeral sermons. Death as nonviolent natural transition was the primary imagery for Protestant Christian preaching about death. Sermons addressed those present as 'future dead,' intensely concerned about their own souls, God and afterlife. Images of Heaven as home, of sea voyages and natural growth stress peace and hope. The underlying idea was that 'natural immortality' receives proof and confirmation from Christian revelation. Poetry bolstered these themes, making doctrine emotionally vivid. These images, now frequently attacked as 'denial' and 'non-biblical' or even 'New Age' faded by the 1950s and vanish from Protestant sermons after the 1970s.

The Reformation of Hell: Pierre Viret's Polemic against Catholic Theology of the Afterlife
Michael Bruening, Concordia University, Irvine

The Calvinist reformer Pierre Viret devoted several of his early works to criticizing Catholic funeral practices and visions of the afterlife. He was influenced, first, by his debates with the former Sorbonne doctor, Pierre Caroli, over the efficacy of prayers for the dead and, second, by the continuation of Catholic familial funeral practices among the people of the Pays de Vaud, who had Protestantism thrust upon them from above by the city of Bern. Because of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, the Reformed faith required a complete redrawing of the traditional map of the afterlife, and Viret does so, arguing that most of the Catholic church's doctrine and practice stemmed its false teaching about justification combined with its adoption of Greek and Roman pagan funerary practice and visions of the afterlife.

Bernard of Clairvaux on the Christian Afterlife: A Medieval Curiosity or Cause of War?
James G. Kroemer, Marquette University

The twelfth century Cistercian, Bernard of Clairvaux, offered a fascinating theory concerning the Christian afterlife that reflected both his monastic ideals of community and his spiritual desire for union with God. Bernard taught that the souls of the sanctified Christians did not enter the full glory of heaven upon death, but were consigned to wait together patiently for the Last Day. It was only when the soul was reunited with the body at the general resurrection of the dead that one could finally experience the joy of union with God. Bernard's theory on the Christian afterlife, which was rejected by the Church in the fourteenth century, is more than a medieval curiosity. The paper argues that Bernard's position was the impetus for his involvement in the Second Crusade, demonstrating that one's position on the afterlife may serve as justification for war.

Nefarious Necromancy: Christian Critiques of Nineteenth-Century American Spiritualism
Roddy Knowles, Boston University

This paper depicts and assesses the critiques of American Spiritualism put forth by both Protestants and Catholics during the half century following the 1848 “rappings” in Hydesville, New York. A consideration of anti-Spiritualist rhetoric reveals that many Christian thinkers addressed the reality of communication with the deceased by putting forth their own speculations about the post-mortem fate of the body and soul. By looking at the variety of stances taken on the bodily resurrection at judgment alongside the nature and existence of the miraculous, this paper charts not only the dynamic between Christianity and Spiritualism, but also among Christian thinkers, in an attempt to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the contested terrain of the afterlife in nineteenth-century America.

Christ’s Descent to the Dead in the Early Latin Church: The Eternal Fate of Those Who Died before Christ
Joshua Papsdorf, Fordham University

Much like the epistle of I Peter on which it is based, the doctrine of Christ’s descent to the dead, or the “Harrowing of Hell,” has had a tumultuous reception and been the subject of numerous controversies. This paper outlines the history of the doctrine as it developed in the Latin West from the second to sixth centuries. The fluctuations in the doctrine’s estimation are shown to be intimately connected to major changes in early Latin soteriology. The move from a mythological conception of salvation to a juridical or metaphysical model resulted in the gradual neglect and practical obsolescence of the doctrine. This position is illustrated and supported by citations from a range of early Latin works, with a particular emphasis on the works of Philastrius of Brescia, Rufinus of Aquileia, and Augustine.

Joseph Smith's Conquest of Death: Sacerdotal Genealogy and the Chain of Being
Samuel Brown, Harvard University

Nineteenth-century America witnessed substantial changes in death practice and culture. Joseph Smith's solutions to the problems of death and heaven, which arose in that period, have proved both complex and durable. Adapting, perhaps unconsciously, the Neoplatonic Chain of Being, Smith defeated death by creating a hierarchical genealogy of the afterlife that is not comprehended by the theocentric vs. domestic dialectic of his peers. Nor is it captured by simple genealogical immortality. Appropriating and recapitulating the translation of Elijah and Enoch, Smith created a reflex of heaven through temple rites of anointing, sealing, endowment, and adoption, which allowed his followers to conquer death as their fabled prophets had done. By defining heaven as an ecclesiastically framed family tree, Smith established heaven on earth, permanently vouchsafing his followers' immortality. Smith's system also domesticated human history into “dispensations” that reestablished genealogical continuity and provided Smith's followers immediate access to Adam and Eden.

    A18-107

North American Religions Section

Theme: Migration, Missionaries, and the Manifestation of Catholicism: Transnational Religions in the United States

Saving an Unsalvageable City: Catholic Missionaries in Antebellum New Orleans
Michael Pasquier, Florida State University

The reputation of New Orleans as the “Great Southern Babylon” and the “Sodom of the South” stands alongside its reputation as a Roman Catholic island within a Protestant region. This doubly exceptional caricature of the Crescent City as both irreligious and Catholic carries with it a long history of people attempting to save what they considered to be an unsalvageable city. During the antebellum period, Catholic missionaries equated the state of Catholicism in New Orleans with the apparently immoral nature of its inhabitants. A study of Catholic missionaries in New Orleans demonstrates the anxieties of those who wished to transform a place that appeared beyond transformation. It also brings to mind the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the apparent tension between rebuilding a city as it was—strange, morally questionable, and creole—or as it should be—mainstream, morally upright, and American.

What Would Jesus Do in India? How American Missionaries between the World Wars Re-fashioned Jesus Abroad
Gretchen Boger, Princeton University

American foreign missionaries in the 1920s and ’30s engaged in a public debate re-evaluating the purpose and methods of missions. World War I had left them self-conscious about proclaiming the superiority of Christianity, sensitive to observations that it had failed to prevent devastating total war in the West. Their best bet, they thought, was to strip Christianity of non-essential accretions and present Jesus alone as the heart of the faith. That choice was in keeping with a history of American attempts to extract a purified Jesus from Christian dogma. But the missionaries had the benefit of East Asian perspectives unavailable to previous generations. Their encounters with non-Christian interpreters of Jesus affected the missionaries’ own understanding of the figure they revered. Their hybrid portrayal made its way back to America in their letters and articles and eventually complicated Protestant images of Jesus in a period that scholars have considered Christologically unsophisticated.

Más Allá de Azusa: The Early Construction of Transnational Pentecostalism
Daniel Ramirez, Duke University

This study traces the evolution of Pentecostalism in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands through the first decades of growth after the Azusa Street Revival. It supplements recent studies of early Latino Pentecostalism by 1) focusing on heterodox (non-trinitarian) actors and movements; 2) tracing transborder or transnational circuits; and 3) highlighting cultural elements of the history. The period exemplifies many patterns of migration and mobility—of people and symbolic goods—patterns that prefigure later instances of the intersection between migration and religious culture. The life histories and robust agency of repatriated evangelists and their religious progeny in the face of macro events (the Depression and consequent Repatriation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the 1930s and the Bracero guestworker program of the 1940s through 60s) open up a long-ignored window through which to study comparatively and in an earlier time period the contemporary phenomenon noted by scholars of transnational religions.

Social Capital as a Reason for Transnational Growth of Pentecostalism: How Colombian Migrants in South Florida Build Social Capital in an Unlikely Context
Kathryn Moles, Florida International University

This paper presents research on the rapid expansion of transnational Pentecostalism indigenous to Latin America as it relates to social capital, using branches of La Iglesia de Dios de Jesucristo International in South Florida as a qualitative case study. Data analyzed from five different data collection instruments, supported the hypothesis that Colombians who join the church would show an increase in social capital. If a group with low levels of positive social capital in a state with some of the lowest levels in the nation, can generate significantly higher levels of social capital in the milieu of the Pentecostal church, then this supports its significance as a factor in the spread of Pentecostalism. This has hitherto not been studied in-depth, and compliments other identified growth factors. The results also provide evidence for religion and spirituality as productive producers of positive social capital even in an unlikely context.

    A18-108

Religion and the Social Sciences Section

Theme: Ethnographic Approaches to the Study of Religion

To Be Spiritual Is to Stop: Inner Lives in an Economy of Uprooting
Brian Palmer, Uppsala University

This paper examines spiritual sensibilities under conditions of individualization and economic uprooting. Drawing on in-depth interviews with residents of a Swedish town, I ask: What styles of inner life are fostered when the reassurance of a welfare state diminishes and individuals are left to seek socioeconomic security on their own? I find that my hosts cherish “individualized observances” sequestered in space and time from the pressures imposed by other people. In an era of neoliberal individualization, to be spiritual is to stop.

Paging God? Constructions of Religion and Spirituality amongst Staff in Hospital Intensive Care Units
Wendy Cadge, Harvard University

This paper brings “lived religion” approaches to bear on questions about religion, health and healing in the contemporary United States. Specifically, I examine how religion and spirituality are present and constructed in an infant and adult medical intensive care unit at a large secular hospital in the United States. As settings of birth and death, these units present ideal contexts through which to examine ethnographically how patients, their families, and health care providers construct and draw on religious and spiritual themes in making sense of suffering, illness, and the ethical decisions often made in difficult medical situations. I analyze the multiple religions and spiritualities present in these units, visibly and invisibly, and address the theoretical and practical issues in studying religion ethnographically outside of explicitly religious organizations.

The Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Kyrgyzstan: How Learning Influences Practice, or Accounting for the Difference between Hizb ut-Tahrir and Ancestral Worshipers
David Montgomery, Boston University

Drawing upon ethnographic field research and survey data on religious and cultural practices in Kyrgyzstan, this paper describes the implications of how learning influences practice. Utilizing an anthropology of knowledge framework which implies that all forms of knowledge contain a body of information that is socially organized and presented through a medium appropriate to the audience, I argue that what accounts for differences between orthopraxic Muslims and those who are more syncretic in their religious practice is the environment in which they come to understand their religious obligations - the habitat of the everyday and the potentiality of practice.

    A18-109

Theology and Religious Reflection Section

Theme: The Cross and Empire

Christian Theology, Psychoanalysis, and Subalternity: Rethinking Kenosis, Conversion, and Agency
Peter Jones, Southern Methodist University

This paper explores constructively a particular intersection between theology, psychoanalysis, and subaltern studies. Theologically, the focus is on conversion and agency, with a particular interest in kenosis as a graciously enabled human act. Regarding psychoanalysis, the focus is on the major Lacanian concepts concerning identity formation and human interaction. Regarding subaltern studies, the focus is on the agency of cultural discourse itself. After concisely describing the relevant concepts involved and their intersecting and informative relations across the boundaries of their parent fields it is possible to reflect on some of the theologically constructive implications. This reveals a fuller picture of the emergence and development of the human person as a subject-agent within language and socio-cultural discourses characterized by imbalances of power. Theologically, this has implications for how we think about the Incarnation, conversion, agency, and the struggle for some measure of freedom, justice, and peace prior to the eschaton.

The Nicean Christ: Imperial Hegemony and Christian Dissent
Rita Nakashima Brock, Faith Voices for the Common Good

Standard art histories read post-Constantinian images of the enthroned Christ in terms of the hegemonic iconography of the emperor. We contend that these images convey tension with the hegemony of empire rather than the co-optation of Christianity by empire, a tension also found in the Nicean christology, which subordinates the emperor’s divinity to that of the eternally begotten son. This paper will explore this theological tension between the empire and Christ in relation to the current conservative, apocalyptic political rhetoric that elevates Nation above law and that misreads Christian skepticism about empire. The Nicean solution critiques empire and creates a fructile tension between state protection and coercive government. Early ideas of paradise offer a mediating zone of creative interaction, where questions of empire and Christ are in constant struggle and where the ancient concept of the divinity of humanity, theosis, both undermines imperial hegemony and patriarchal structures of gender.

Confessing in the Land of the Hunchback God: Suffering, Hope, and Forgiveness in Northern Uganda
Todd D. Whitmore, University of Notre Dame

For twenty years, the conflict between the Lord's Resistance Army and the Ugandan military has caused enormous suffering in northern Uganda. The LRA has abducted over 20,000 youths and carried out systematic programs of rape, mutilation, and massacre. The military has also committed abuses. I draw from my ethnographic fieldwork in Uganda to assess the two main strategies for the Acholi to give religious articulation to their suffering and their hope for reconciliation. Many of their sons and daughters, brother and sisters have returned home from the LRA, but not until after having committed atrocities against their own people, villages, and families. Reconciliation is a concrete requirement of ongoing life. Okot p'Bitek has called for a recovery of traditional religion. George Piwang-Jalobo points to the witness of Acholi martyr Janani Luwum against Amin's regime to argue for a re-inculturated Christianity. I use ethnographic methods to assess the two strategies.

Going Native: An Interstitial and Intercultural Wisdom Christology
Laura Taylor, Vanderbilt University

While the motives for Columbus’ 1492 voyage are often described in terms of the quest for a shorter sea route, his journey was funded by Ferdinand and Isabella as part of an anti-Islamic crusade that would forever divide the world between the West and the rest. This metaphorical division is particularly evident in the early colonial discourse in which Christian identity is constructed in opposition to its savage “other” and the evangelization of the New World is thought to be predestined in the name of the Empire. Locating my work at the intersection of feminist Christology and cultural, critical race, and postcolonial studies, I explore the way in which the colonial Christ has uncritically offered a monocultural approach to religious discourse. Then, drawing on Elsa Tamez’s work with indigenous religions and lived examples of hybrid Christologies, I lay the preliminary groundwork for the theological re-visioning of an intercultural Wisdom Christology.

The Cross against Empire: Toward a Counterhegemonic Theology of the Cross
Matthew MacKellar, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

Contemporary social and theological analysis reveals the violence operative in the hegemonic and colonizing relations between the privileged and the marginalized within and between societies. Often, the cross serves as a legitimating symbol of the triumphalism of the powerful in the colonization process or as a panacea to the suppressed guilt of oppressors. This paper argues that, in light of the epistemic rupture arising from the perspective of the “poor,” the oppressor—instead of delighting in or glorifying the sufferings of Jesus upon the cross—ought to react in horror to Jesus’ cruciform torture and connect it to the suffering of other people, seeing it as a confrontation of those complicit in the ongoing crucifixion of the poor. The proper “spirituality of the cross” is thus the situating of oneself in given historical situations so as to side with those who are being crucified by the forces of oppression and injustice.

    A18-110

African Religions Group

Theme: African Indigenous Religions in the Twenty-First Century

"Osa Eleiye" (The Witches’ Verse!): Yoruba Orature, the Babalawo, and Female Power
Bolaji Bateye, Obafemi Awolowo University

Yoruba Orature and its diviner, the babalawo, literally ‘father of secrets’ are significant factors in Yoruba religion. The 'feminine mystique' is an ambivalent phenomenon in Yoruba religious traditions. It is essential to most sacrificial rites as the power that sanctions most of the rituals. Nevertheless women unlike the babalawo are barred from active participation in many Yoruba cults. How can we resolve this incongruity? What are those ritual powers Yoruba women are believed to posses? Why does a menstruating woman believed to be capable of neutralizing the potency of powerful herbal preparations? What is that alluring and yet repelling power that characterized African womanhood? This paper addresses the foregoing questions. It also brings to the fore the Ifa verse, ‘Osa Eleiye’ that speaks of the institution of the ‘witches’ or ‘iya mi’ (literally the mothers). It reveals the association of this verse in the empowerment of women.

African Indigenous Religions and Pentecostalism: A Study of Ijo Orunmila Adulawo in Lagos
Danoye Oguntola Laguda, Lagos State University

Ijo Orumila Adulawo is Pentecostal religious group that is based on the traditional religion of the Yoruba people. It is a theistic group that holds Olodumare (God) in supreme esteem while demonstrating a belief in other divinities, especially Orunmila. This paper seeks to examine the liturgies and doctrines of the group with the aim of identifying the shift from a traditional belief to a neo-Pentecostal group. Preliminary study has shown that the group’s re –organization is a product of the Pentecostal trends that now permeate the practice of religions on the African continent. Therefore the tenets, doctrines and liturgies of African Indigenous religions are still intact and fundamental to its adherents. The paper seeks to raise questions on the methodologies adopted by the group's pursuance of Pentecostalism as a replacement for traditionalism.

Mafuta Pole Dini Ya Africa: A Resurgence of African Religion
Samuel K. Elolia, Emmanuel School of Religion

Mafuta pole Dini ya Roho ya Africa represents the revival of African Religion. It was founded in West Pokot, Kenya by Lukas P'kech who was a follower of the outlawed Dini ya Msambwa. The British Colonial police at Koloa killed P'kech in 1950 along with 40 of his followers. The remaining of the followers went underground until its recent resurgence in East and West Pokot Districts. Unlike the earlier group, which did not worship in structured buildings, the newer group seems to operate like a church. As in the past it claims to reactivate the African Religions of the ancestors in an appealing way in order to compete with other contemporary religions that are thriving in modern Kenya. My field research will attempt to identify its characteristics with regard to beliefs, practices, and distinctions from Christianity.

Beyond Totem and Taboo: Indigenous African Religions and the Quest for a Global Ethic: The Gikuyu Case
Teresia Mbari Hinga, Santa Clara University

Focusing on the Gikuyu belief and ethical systems, I will explore selected ethical themes including inter alia: The quest for peace, good governance, ecological and economic justice. I intend to offer a preliminary analysis of Gikuyu perspectives and possible contribution to selected dimensions of the global ethical quest. This exploration will be a contribution however preliminary to the emerging discourse on the Global Ethic as a theoretical (though admittedly contested) academic enterprise. The paper will be a contribution, however Lilliputian to the nascent efforts to reconstruct and reclaim indigenous African knowledge, values and cultural resources, and to bring these to bear in Africa’s struggles towards healing of her multiple wounds. Such a reclamation of indigenous value systems, many increasingly recognize, is also a vital contribution to the world struggling towards a humane future in a shrinking and an increasingly intimate “global village.”

    A18-111

Bible, Theology, and Postmodernity Group

Theme: John D. Caputo's The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (Indiana University Press, 2006)

A panel discussion of John Caputo's new book The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event.

    A18-112

Bioethics and Religion Group

Theme: Bioethics, Religion, and Public Policy: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives

Paul Braune Resists the National Socialists' "Euthanasia" Program: July 1940
LeRoy Walters, Georgetown University

In July 1940 Paul Braune, Protestant pastor and administrator of several institutions for the mentally disabled, compiled an eleven-page memorandum summarizing what he knew of the Nazi 'euthanasia' program. He then sent his memorandum directly to Hitler's Chancellery. This presentation will summarize what we now know about the so-called T4 program -- a centralized effort to kill institutionalized mentally-handicapped people, especially people who were incapable of working. I will use Braune's own regional outline -- Württemberg, Saxony, Brandenburg, and Pomerania -- as a framework and will analyze the extent to which Braune's factual information was correct or incorrect. In conclusion, I will seek to evaluate Braune's approach to protesting what clearly constituted a crime against humanity. Was quiet diplomacy sufficient, or should Braune have gone public with his protest? When private and public protests fail to slow or stop serious injustice, what kinds of additional actions should be contemplated?

Is Medical Experimentation on Prisoners Ethical?
Christopher Rodkey, Drew University

Is medical experimentation on prisoners ethical? This essay will address the history and ethics of this complex issue. In doing so, I will pose Cornel West’s influential argument, which frames this issue between the ideas of bribery and coercion, against Mary Daly’s meta-ethical theory. Arguing for Daly’s position, I will conclude that prisoner experimentation can only be genuinely conceived as an expression of genocide.

Catholic Health Care Mission, Community Benefit, and the Public Good
David Craig, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis

This paper presents my research from a qualitative interview project on religious health care nonprofits and the public good. Currently in the United States, we lack the moral vision and political will to manage the economics of health care fairly and efficiently. There are also increasing calls from some politicians for religious nonprofits to take the lead in serving the underserved and inspiring the care required in other people. This paper explores, first, the ways that Catholic health care organizations can help redefine health care as a public good and, second, these organizations' current practices in meeting the “community benefit” standard that regulates their tax-exempt status. I argue that appeals to justice in some organizational mission statements signal a changing conception of health care and the common good. This change can contribute new moral arguments and best practices for broader reform initiatives involving these organizations and the government.

Christian Bioethics and Public Policy: A Comparison of Engelhardt, Hauerwas, and McCormick on the Issues of Euthanasia and Universal Health Care
Andrew William Getz, Duquesne University

“What is the proper role of Christian ethics in the bioethics of a religiously pluralistic society?” Within contemporary American society (with its increasing insistence on an overwhelmingly strict separation between church and state), there are many questions regarding how this integration of religiously informed ethical judgments and public policy is to be realized. What must be examined is how one’s understanding of the role of faith in reaching bioethical judgments impacts one’s understanding of how those faith in-formed ethical judgments function in a political society of diverse faith commitments. This paper will examine the treatment of euthanasia and universal health care by three Christian ethicists H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., Stanley Hauerwas, and Richard A. McCormick. This will be done so as to illustrate how their different understandings of the role of Christian faith in bioethics impact the way that they understand those Christian bioethics functioning in the socio-political moral discourse.

    A18-113

Christian Spirituality Group

Theme: Spiritual Formation for Social Commitment

"The Bells of Nagasaki Still Echo in My Ears": Exploring the Christian Social Spirituality in the Writings and Edited Works of Takashi Nagai
Joseph W. Caldwell, Fuller Seminary

In the opening chapter of "We of Nagasaki", Takashi Nagai, a survivor of the atomic bomb drop on Nagasaki, asks the question: “What would the world be like in an atomic war of extended duration?” He answers his question not with a physical account of death and dying but with a nod toward the destruction of the soul. With the collapse of the Soviet threat and the seeming amnesia society has developed about the possibilities of nuclear war, Nagai as a topic may seem somewhat dated. But Nagai’s accounts, actions and his own spiritualization of his circumstances reach beyond mere political consideration about nuclear proliferation. Nagai contextually develops a program of social action that draws directly from his own lay Catholic spirituality and that transcends his own historical situation. This presentation will examine Nagai's contribution to an understanding of survival spirituality.

Nonviolence as a Christian Spiritual Path: Factors That Shape and Sustain Nonviolent Commitment
Janet W. Parachin, Phillips Theological Seminary

When considering that some Christians have chosen nonviolence as their way of life and spiritual path, certain questions arise: What factors shape one’s decision to choose nonviolence as a way of life? In light of the lack of widespread support for nonviolent perspective, what factors help one maintain this perspective once it has been chosen? Those persons and institutions who provide spiritual formation for social commitment may also ask, what educational models and methods may be useful in fostering commitment to nonviolence? These questions are explored using a narrative methodology to engage the perspectives and practices of three groups of nonviolent social activists—black civil rights activists of the 1960s, Roman Catholic peace activists of the twentieth century, and nonviolent social activists in a local community in the early twenty-first century.

The Tortured Body: A Liturgy of the Eucharist
Rebecca Gordon, Graduate Theological Union

How ought Christians in this country who follow sacramental traditions respond to our nation's use of torture in a post-9/11 world? This essay is a meditation on the Eucharist, arranged in the order of that great liturgy itself. In it I make the claim that, as William Cavanaugh suggests in "Torture and Eucharist", the church’s practice of Eucharist cannot rightly be separated from the state’s practice of torture. In Eucharist we regularly remember and retell the story of One who was tortured to death for political reasons. Throughout this meditation I argue that the practice of torture is precisely the anti-Eucharist, the unmaking of individual human bodies and thereby of social bodies. In Eucharist, we seek by feeding individual bodies to re-member and remake that community we call the Body of Christ. Many Christians will therefore find their -- deeply practical -- response to torture in the practice of Eucharist.

Transfiguration Spirituality: Encountering God's Presence in the Margins
John Nelson, Bethel Seminary

The relationship between beauty and social justice has often been tenuous within Christian spirituality. While beauty’s evocative and excessive characteristics may draw us toward God, they may also result in idolatry, elitism, and oppression. Through creative first person accounts, this paper seeks to demonstrate that the “mystical” and “prophetic” streams of Christian spirituality are united in an encounter with God’s presence in the margins. These encounters are both iconoclastic, shattering our images of humanity and God, and iconic, mediating the divine presence. I propose this “transfiguration spirituality” does not result in idolatry, oppression, or escape, but rather calls us to perceive and participate within the Spirit of God’s redemptive, beautifying, and reconciling action in the margins—the place where a desire for beauty and concern for social justice are joined.

    A18-114

Gay Men's Issues in Religion Group

Theme: Mystical Erotica: Gay Living as Spiritual/Religious Practice

Towards a Latin American Gay Liberation Theology
Mário Ribas, University of Cape Town

Although the Brazilian population is often stereotyped as sensual, the normal attitude towards sex and sexuality is really shame and guilt. In spite of the apparent sexual liberty of the semi-naked bodies on the beaches and Carnival, the rules prescribed by the hetero-patriarchal paradigms about the body and sensuality prevail. During colonisation, the European heterosexual structure was prescribed and imposed, and later reinforced through the military dictatorship. Liberation Theology that questioned those realities of oppression did not necessarily go far enough to include in the quest for liberation those who were out of the heteronormative system. The purpose of this paper is to explore shame and guilty and liberation, experienced by those who subvert that order, particularly Brazilian gay men. This is intended to be a reflection towards a gay Latin American liberation theology, drawing theology from the gay male reality of economical oppression and social alienation.

Gay/Queer Men as Virtuosi of the Holy Art of Bricolage and as Tricksters of the Sacred
Peter Savastano, Seton Hall University

Organized around the concept of the “bricoleur” and based on ethnographic research, this paper postulates that: 1) by virtue of their exclusion from most of the world’s religious traditions, gay/queer men find themselves in a kind of spiritual “Diaspora”; 2) gay/queer men have been forced by circumstance to forge a diverse array of spiritual practices, re-interpret or invent alternative sacred myths, produce their own mystical writings, and form diverse intentional spiritual communities; 3) in becoming masters of bricolage, gay/queer men unwittingly function in the role of the trickster for each other and for the wider heteronormative culture in which they are embedded; 4) for many gay/queer men the role of sex is sacramental and consciousness altering/expanding, as is often reflected in their mystical writings, spiritual journals and memoirs; 5) sex is one of the central axis around which their spiritual practices and sacred narratives are organized.

Intimations of Mystical Consciousness in Alternative Poetry
John E. Allard, Providence College

This paper explores gay poetry as a source for a study of mystical consciousness among gay men. The work of Whitman, Rimbaud, and selected contemporary gay poets will be examined in light of Ricoeur's theory of metaphor and genre, and of R. C. Zaehner's typology of mystical experience.

Walt Whitman's Mystical Camraderie
Juan A. Herrero Brasas, California State University, Northridge

The original meaning of Whitman's poetry was religious and mystical. During his lifetime, Whitman was seen as a messiah and a mystic. In fact, a Church of Whitman came into existence after the poet's death which lasted for several decades. Whitman's religious and mystical enterprise was rooted in the poet's experience as a gay man. Far from being a forerunner of the modern gay liberation movement, he tried to prevent the emergence of a separate, stigmatized minority.

    A18-115

Hinduism Group

Theme: Invoking the Veda in the Worship of Siva and Visnu

The most dramatic change in the Brahmanical tradition was from the Vedic fire-based ritual system to one centered on pūjā-type offerings presented before an image. Corresponding to this change was a shift in orientation from the Vedic deities to worship of Vişņu and Śiva (and their divine retinues). This shift was reflected in the formation of a variety of religious systems that to various degrees extended, redirected, and superseded elements of the Vedic tradition. This panel examines early Smārta ritual, which presents itself as continuous with the Veda, as well as two contrasting Āgamic traditions, the Vaikhanasa, which seeks Vedic authority for its Āgamic doctrines and practices, and the Saiva Siddhanta, which generally does not, but in which certain conceptual and ritual structures were carried over from Vedism, or have been maintained alongside the Āgamic system. These illustrate some of the rhetorical strategies available to new religious movements in India.

Image and Temple in the Late Vedic Ritual Codes
Timothy Lubin, Washington and Lee University

It is well known that rites of image-worship and temple-based pūjā service eventually supplanted the Vedic fire-cult as the standard mode of Brahmanical ritualism. These rites are described at length in the epics, in the Purāņas, and later in the Āgamas and Tantras. However, it is rare that such practices are introduced directly into the Vedic ritual codes (Sūtras). This paper will review the stages by which this introduction took place, beginning with the assimilation of such offerings to the old model of the bali and the Traiyambaka offering to Rudra. Attention will then turn to the rubrication of image- pūjā in Baudhāyanagŗhyaśeşasūtra, focusing on the formulation of a common ritual format, the choice of mantras deemed to be appropriate for each deity, and the nature of the connection with similar prescriptions in the Purāņas.

The Veda in the Āgama
Ute Huesken, University of Heidelberg

The paper gives an example of the appropriation of “the Veda” in Āgama texts. The case study deals with the Vaikhānasa tradition, based on the explanations and interpretations of the 15th-century (?) Vaikhānasa scholar Srīnivāsa Dīkşita in his text Daśavidhahetunirūpaņa. In his text Srīnivāsa Dīkşita refers to the Vaikhānasasmaŗtāsūtra, to a -- now lost -- Vaikhānasagrhyapaŗiśişţasūtra, and to other sutra traditions such as the Baudhāyanagŗhyasūtra. It is demonstrated how he establishes a direct connection of the Vedic Vaikhānasa-śākhā and the South Indian Vaikhānasas as distinct tradition of Vişņuite temple priests.

Śaiva Siddhānta and the Vedic Tradition
Ginette Ishimatsu, University of Denver

This paper investigates the complex relationship between Śaiva Siddhānta and Vedic ritual traditions. Śaiva Siddhānta, a school of Siva worship persisting in Tamilnadu, is based in part on the Sanskrit Āgamas. While denying the ultimacy of the Vedas, these medieval texts are clearly indebted to them in certain ways. For instance, Vedic models are obvious in Āgamic practices such as initiation (dīksā), fire rituals (agnikārya), and balidāna. Moreover, in contemporary practice, temple priests (gurukkals) may supplement Āgamic worship with Vedic mantras or recite Āgamic mantras “in a Vedic style.” The relationship between the two systems cannot be separated from the relationship between the Āgamic gurukkals and the smārta brahmans, who follow Vedic authority. While the gurukkals see themselves as the smārtas’ equals, the latter do not recognize them as authentic brahmans. The inferior status of the gurukkals may partly account for the “Vedicization” of temple pūjā.

    A18-116

Islamic Mysticism Group

Theme: Raising the Discourse to Another Level: Diverse Appropriations and Adaptations of Muhammad's Night Journey and Ascension

This panel examines the discourse on Muhammad's night journey (isra') and ascension (mi'raj) as articulated outside of mainstream Jama'i-Sunni Islamic spheres. Each of the four papers illustrates diverse ways that particular Shi'i and/or Jewish scholars appropriate and adapt the themes of Muhammad's heavenly journey in order to advance their intellectual projects and to promote the interests of their communities. The four papers offer new and critical approaches to the study of Islamic ascension literature, tracing the broad development of key ideas in this literature while simultaneously grounding the analysis in terms of specific texts, practices, and locations.

Prophetic Ascent and Initiatory Ascent in Qadi al-Nu'man's Asas al-Ta'wil
Elizabeth R. Alexandrin, University of Manitoba

Qadi al-Nu'man's 10th-century Fatimid Ismaili work, Asas al-Ta'wil, forms an early example of the medieval Islamic employment of the Prophet Muhammad's ascent as a model for individual mystical, or more specifically, initiatory experience. This paper will underscore the importance of the Asas al-Ta'wil for the history of Islamic mysticism. In addition, the Asas al-Ta'wil is a work that reflects the methods of 10th-century Fatimid Ismaili Qur'anic interpretation and the centrality of the 'stories of the prophets' (qisas al-anbiya') to medieval Ismaili thought. The Fatimid Ismaili tradition of the 'allegorical interpretation' (ta'wil) of the Qur'anic passages concerning prophetic ascent merit further elaboration in what follows in this paper. Significantly, and as this paper aims to show, particular intellectual trends within medieval Ismaili thought focused on the concept of prophetic ascent in order to distinguish between the prophet's superior revelatory experiences and the individual's initiatory experience.

Early Imami Shi'i Narratives and the Construction of the Story of Muhammad's Ascension
Frederick S. Colby, Miami University of Ohio

This paper examines the use of the narrative of Muhammad's ascent by proto-Imami scholars from Qumm at the turn of the tenth century CE. By comparing key tropes in these Imami texts to similar tropes in Jama'i-Sunni texts of the same period, the paper illustrates how the ascension discourse provides a site for Muslim sectarian polemics. The paper considers the thesis that these Imami ascension narratives, drawn primarily from 'Ali Qummi's Tafsir and Saffar Qummi's Basa'ir al-Darajat, were also in dialogue with Jewish narratives. This paper suggests that the ascension discourse as defined by early Imami scholars played a foundational role in helping to shape how numerous Muslims subsequently tell the tale of Muhammad's night journey and ascension.

Heavenly Journey as Contested Symbol: Echoes of the Mi'raj in Medieval Hebrew Literature
Aaron W. Hughes, University of Calgary

This presentation will focus on the mi'raj as a site of socio-rhetorical self-definition in medieval al-Andalus. Rather than examine the actual contents of the mi'raj, my interest is in its adoption and adaptation by Jewish intellectuals for various ideological reasons. The mi'raj, in other words, was a contested symbol, one that Muslims could use to demonstrate the superiority of Muhammad's prophetic career and thus Islam; but also one that non-Muslims could use to subvert such claims. In using the motif of a heavenly journey, Jewish thinkers attempted to appropriate the mi'raj by showing how it originated not in the Qur'an, but in the Bible and early rabbinic literature. In so doing, they sought to imply that the trope of the mi'raj was not Muslim or Arabic, but Jewish and Hebrew. This ideological struggle of the ownership of the mi'raj is thus intimately connected to both cultural poetics and religio-cultural nationalism.

"When Muhammad Went on the Mi'raj He Saw a Lion on the Road": The Mi'raj in the Alevi-Bektashi Tradition
Vernon James Schubel, Kenyon College

'It is reported that when Muhammad went on the mi'raj he saw a lion on the road.' This is beginning of the Alevi-Bektashi text, Buyruk. The accompanying narrative describes how the Prophet meets Imam Ali in the form of a lion and places his ring in his mouth. On returning to earth he joins the circle of the Forty (kirklar) who reveal that when one is cut, they all bleed. The story establishes the origin of the primary Alevi ritual, the ayn-i cem, and provides a symbolic blueprint for their batini world view which affirms the essential unity of the Prophet, the Imams and the pirs. Based on fieldwork among the Alevi community this paper will examine several versions of this narrative, exploring their connection with Alevi theology and ritual practice.

    A18-117

Japanese Religions Group

Theme: Japanese Religion and Politics

Internal and international politics are the foci for exploring various dynamics of Japanese religious experience, expression, and influence. The power wielded in defining and enacting religious activity and ritual is examined in a number of contexts and from multiple perspectives in the modern period. As Japanese interact with those from other cultures, fundamental questions about human religiosity and power--especially how and who defines it--are raised. Meiji politicians, Colonial Koreans, Okinawan anti-base protestors, current governmental leaders, and media reporters all enter the conversation.

Taming Demons: The Anti-superstition Campaign and the Invention of Religion in Meiji Japan
Jason Josephson, Stanford University and École Française d'Extrême-Orient

In the pre-Meiji period there was no indigenous word that referred to something as broad as “religion,” nor was there a systematic way to distinguish between “religions” as members of some larger generic category. There were, however, well-recognized terms for “evil cult” and “dangerous teachings;” and it was these categories that shaped early Meiji government policy toward Christianity, popular sects, and to some degree Buddhism. By looking at law codes, textbooks, and governmentally distributed pamphlets, this paper examines the government’s attempt to restrict these “evil cults” and purge “dangerous” and “backward” ideas. It is from among these banned beliefs that the legal category “religion” (shūkyō) emerged as a paradoxical group of beliefs distinguished from “superstition” (meishin) explicitly by being designated as a matter of personal choice. Ultimately, this process of differentiation led to the invention of “religion” in Japan with far reaching consequences.

Beyond Resistance or Collaboration: The Strategic Merger of the Korean Wŏnjong and Japanese Sōtōshū in Colonial Korea
Hwansoo Kim, Harvard University

Japanese and Korean scholarship on Korean colonial Buddhism has been confined to binary interpretations. The two Buddhisms are cast in terms of imperialism versus anti-imperialism, or of collaboration versus nationalism, with few alternative identities. Yet, primary sources reveal that colonial Buddhism in Korea is greatly complex. One case, the attempt to merge the Japanese Sōtōshū with the Korean Wǒnjong in 1910, evinces the complex triangle of Korean Buddhists, Japanese Buddhist missionaries, and colonial authorities. This case shows that Korean Buddhist monks cannot be classified as simply anti- or pro-Japanese, nor can their responses to occupation be characterized only in terms of resistance or collaboration. The case also reveals that Japanese Buddhist missionaries did not follow state ideology blindly: they protested, collaborated, and compromised with the colonial government. In reevaluating this period, we see that the interaction between the two Buddhisms consciously and unconsciously reinforced both shared and contested cultural identities.

Relationship of Religion to the Okinawan Anti-base Protest Movement
William W. Hunt, Nashville, TN

American military bases occupy a substantial portion of the island of Okinawa. Okinawa has a history distinct from that of the remainder of Japan. It has developed a distinctive indigenous religion and a fervent pacifism. For a quarter of a century, Okinawans have vigorously opposed the presence of military bases on their island. Largely from personal interviews, this paper examines the religious beliefs of two of the protest leaders, Itokazu Keiko and Takazato Suzuyo and determines that religion plays an important role in their political activism. This paper concludes that religion is a principal ingredient in the Okinawan anti-base protests.

“Yasukuni Problem” Re-considered: The Tasks for Religious Studies
Yuki Shimada, Princeton Theological Seminary

Since Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi started annual visits to Yasukuni Shrine, debate over the "Yasukuni Problem” has become fierce once again. It has provoked protests by peoples and governments of neighboring Asian countries and aroused heated pros and cons of the visits among politicians and populace in Japan. The protests stem from conflicts of consensus around three problems: the understanding of history, the impact for diplomacy, and the relationship between the state and “religion.” Although all three overlap, this paper focuses on the last problem, examining a brief overview of discourses of advocates for Yasukuni visits/worship, the inherent problems of understanding “religion” in relation to the public sphere, and the ramifications of Japan's supreme court ruling defining the “authentically” accepted public view of “religion.” Finally, the paper suggests what academic tasks await scholars of religious studies in confronting the “Yasukuni Problem.”

Discourses of the Re-appearing: The Re-enactment and Aftermath of the Rite of Nuno-hashi Kanjô-e at Mt. Tateyama
Irit Averbuch, Tel-Aviv University

This paper focuses on an intriguing case of a recent revival, after 130 years, of an old Buddhist ritual for a prefectural “culture festival” (bunkasai): The rite of Nuno-hashi kanjô-e (“Consecration Rite of the Cloth Bridge”), performed at the foot of Mt. Tateyama (Toyama prefecture) on September 29, 1996, and on September 18, 2005. The rite was originally aimed to provide women, who were banned from climbing Mt. Tateyama, with a means for salvation and a promise of rebirth in Amida’s Western Paradise. Though conducted today in a secular context of “cultural festival” or “ibento”, the rite had stirred deep religious experiences in most of it participants, on the one hand, and raised a variety of local-political problems on the other. The paper discusses this variety of interconnected and complex issues of the manipulation of religious rituals for economic and political gains in today’s Japan, and their ramifications.

    A18-118

Lesbian-Feminist Issues and Religion Group

Theme: The Challenge of Lesbian Voice/Presence to Religious Traditions

I. B. Horner and the Writing of Women Under Primitive Buddhism (1930)
Grace G. Burford, Prescott College

This paper tells the story of how a young, British, Cambridge-educated woman named Isaline B. Horner came (in the 1920s) to write western scholarship's first--and for several decades its only--book on women in Buddhism. A key player in this story, Caroline Rhys Davids (feminist activist and wife of Thomas Rhys Davids, founder of the Pali Text Society), suggested the topic of women in Buddhism to Horner after Horner returned to Cambridge from a two-year stay in South Asia. This is a story of the early decades of women's higher education, the terrible impact of the Great War, British colonialism in South Asia, the beginnings of western scholarship on Buddhism, and the launch of Horner's long life of studious interpretation of Buddhist texts and--simultaneously, in the private, personal background--the beginnings of Horner's relationship with another Cambridge scholar, Elsie Butler, that would last until Butler's death in 1959.

Abnormal Women and the "Third Sex" in the Pali Buddhist Canon
Carol S. Anderson, Kalamazoo College

One of the central issues in South Asian religions scholarship is the variety of terms found in early Indian texts that refer to sexually non-normative individuals, both female and male. The Vinayapitaka of the Pali Canon contains an interesting list of terms that monks should not use when referring to women, and in this list is a term that has been translated as 'women without balls,' or a 'female' human who enjoys some type of intercourse with members of the same sex (the actual term is 'itthipandaka'). Following this term throughout the Pali Canon as well as the array of contemporary scholarship displays a remarkable lack of attention to women, in general, and a parallel lack of attention to the kinds of sexually deviant individuals considered possible in the early centuries of first millennium South Asian religious worlds.

Sor Juana: Academic Freedom, the Necessity for Fiction, and the Resurrection of Queer Lineage
Marie Cartier, Claremont Graduate University

This paper explores the primary sources of Sor Juana and how they have been historically decided not by the poetry itself, but by the secondary sources’ interpretations. The secondary sources impact upon the original primary sources has remained fixed until scholars skilled in both academia and art employed art to impact upon not necessarily the primary work, but also on the secondary sources interpretations of the primary sources. In other words, I will explore the radical notion that what Sor Juana wrote is what Sor Juana meant.

Sisterhood or Polarity?: Controversies over the “Guardian Priestess” Path in Dianic Witchcraft
Kerry Noonan, University of California, Los Angeles and California State University, Northridge

Since the early 1970s, separatist Dianic Witchcraft has emphasized the totality of women’s experiences, the power of women working together in ritual, and rejected other modern Witchcraft traditions’ insistence on heterosexual gender polarity in divinity and among practitioners for effective ritual. “Sisters doin’ it on their own” has been the watchword for this radical feminist spiritual tradition. Recently, movement leaders Ruth Barrett and Falcon River have developed a new ritual role called “guardian priestess.” This has generated much controversy, as they have been denounced by founder Z Budapest, who claims they have introduced polarity and a butch/femme model into Dianic Witchcraft, whereas they maintain women working together in magical partnership is at the heart of the tradition. In this paper, I situate Barrett’s and River’s concept of “guardians” in Neopaganism, feminist spirituality, and contemporary Lesbian culture, as well as examining the evolving situation in light of schisms in other religions.

    A18-119

Native Traditions in the Americas Group

Theme: Law, Religion, and Native American Traditions

This session examines a range of contested intersections of U.S. law, Native American traditions, and the category of "religion." Papers examine the protection of "sacred" lands, repatriation of "sacred" objects and cultural patrimony, free exercise in prisons, and contested understandings of marriage.

Territory, Wilderness, Property, and Reservation: Land and Religion in Native American Supreme Court Cases
Kathleen M. Sands, University of Massachusetts, Boston

This paper describes the links between land and religion in the Marshall cases of 1823-32 and the Free Exercise cases of 1986-1990. The Marshall cases placed First Nations simultaneously under the constitution as “domestic dependent nations” and outside the constitution as non-citizens, hence not entitled to Free Exercise or other constitutional rights. The Free Exercise cases are explicated in relation to three metaphors: 1) private property (2) the garden, wilderness, and wall and (3) the reservation. While the first two metaphors explain the failure of the religion clauses for both native and non-native Americans, the metaphor of reservation is more promising. For Native religions it suggests legislative remedies related to treaties; for Native and non-Native citizens, it returns attention to reserved rights.

Sweatlodge Practices in Prison: Another Clash of Cultures
Emily Brault, Oregon City, Oregon

I propose to draw out some of the tensions between Native American ceremonies and the rehabilitative and constitutive ideals of American prisons. These tensions began historically when the governments of European settlers imprisoned Native people for practicing their traditions. They are evidenced again in the necessity of legislative acts that try and protect Native American religious freedom and practice both within and outside of prison. And they continue today as Native people in prison try to negotiate traditional practices and spaces within institutions generated and fostered by different values, beliefs, and perceptions of reality. My goal here is to raise some broad and general issues that offer entrance into more specific conversations at a later date.

Ho`oponopono: Traditional Dispute Resolution in a Repatriation Conflict
Greg Johnson, University of Colorado, Boulder

Fraught with implications concerning the constitutionality of repatriation law, the status of Native Hawaiians under federal Indian law, and problems inherent to weighing competing religious claims, the Kawaihae dispute is currently pushing the envelope of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), generating myriad and conflicting opinions in courts, the media, and on the street as to the meaning of Hawaiian tradition in the present. This dispute is provocative for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it pits fifteen Native Hawaiian organizations against one another on religious grounds. Recognizing that existing repatriation laws are ill equipped to address such predicaments, a federal judge has directed the Hawaiian groups to engage in traditional dispute resolution, which they began in January of 2006. This paper explores traditional Native Hawaiian dispute resolution practices—ho`oponopono—as engaged in this dispute.

NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) and the Return of the Repressed
Jace Weaver, University of Georgia

This paper looks at recent developments in public perceptions about the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. It focuses on the relation of repatriation to Native land claims and persistence upon the land. In particular, deliberate misinformation campaigns, designed to play upon fears about Native cultures and religious traditions, will be examined.

    A18-120

Religion and Disability Studies Group and Biblical Scholarship and Disabilities Consultation

Theme: Writing for Publication in Religion, Bible, and Disability Studies

While “publish-or-perish” can impact scholars at almost any institution today, writing and publishing are also the means by which we communicate and dialogue within the academy across space and time. No scholar committed to the concerns of faith and disability can afford to ignore the demands of publishing any longer. This session is devoted to how to write and publish in the field of religion, Bible, and disability studies. The panel will include publishers, series, journal, and book editors, and authors who work within these fields of study. Topics to be addressed include: an overview of publishing in the field, what to expect in the publishing process, what areas of inquiry are open, how to turn a dissertation into journal articles and/or a book, book proposal writing, editing a volume of essays, finding the right publisher, dealing with the peer review process, and related topics.

    A18-121

Religion and Popular Culture Group

Theme: Religion, Text, and Sex: Contemporary Religious Sex Manuals

In this session the panelists take up the “problem” of human sexuality and the solutions various religious groups have offered for managing it, from multiple disciplinary perspectives. The tension between prescription and practice unites the papers thematically. Each panelist highlights the efforts of religious authorities to define appropriate sexual behavior by contrasting it to “immoral” or “unnatural” behavior. These papers additionally describe a particular fascination with--or anxiety about--how individuals plot a course between spiritual instruction and erotic enjoyment. Through sexuality, religion becomes embodied, both within the physical, sexual bodies of practitioners, and in the body’s symbolic representation of morality and sin. The human body can mediate religious faith, but it can also exemplify transgression and excess. Together, these papers offer sociological, theological, and historical interpretations of the ways in which various religious groups have engaged these tensions between religious beliefs and sexual practices.

Making Total Women: Sexual Bodies and Sexual Identity in Evangelical Marital Advice Guides, 1963-1980
Rebecca L. Davis, Yale University

“Making Total Women” examines how evangelical marital and sexual advice manuals of the 1960s and 1970s fit within the long-standing debate among social and cultural historians about the discrepancies between prescriptive literature and social behavior. This paper will examine how Marabel Morgan’s The Total Woman (1973), and other books like it, employ self-conscious camp and parody in ways that destabilize distinctions between what was recommended and what was “real.” These books make contradictory demands upon their readers to express sincere faith while imitating an idealized feminine domesticity. They represent the wife’s body as a bridge over this divide. As a symbol of heterosexual marriage and reproduction, the wife’s body functions in these books as normalizing force of gender stability. The books suggest that women can use their bodies as both literal and figurative intermediaries between the secular world and their sacralized home.

'Born Again Is a Sexual Term": Demons, STDs, and God's Healing Sperm
Amy DeRogatis, Michigan State University

This paper discusses sex manuals written for a small but growing group of Protestant evangelicals who believe that demons are transmitted through sinful sexual unions. Unlike other evangelical marriage manuals published in the past fifty years, these texts are concerned with the spiritual side of sexuality and the specific dangers that accompany illicit sex; specifically, the partners could end up as fragmented spiritual beings and expose themselves to demonic infestation. This is the true meaning of S.T.D.s: sexually transmitted demons. Similarly, the definition of “born again” differs from typical evangelical literature. “Born Again,” the authors explain, “is a sexual term.” To receive God’s cleansing spirit, the petitioner must become like a female and open themselves up to God’s healing sperm. This paper examines sex manuals written in the theological context of contemporary charismatic deliverance literature that presents the sexual body as an arena for the battle between demons and God.

How Should a Nice Jewish Orthodox Israeli Couple Do It?
Evyatar Marienberg, Tel Aviv University

This paper examines several Jewish-Orthodox marital manuals published in Israel in the last twenty years (1985-2005), all of which include significant discussions on sexual relations. Often written for a specific audience (men, women, couples, ultra-orthodox, modern-orthodox, sephardim, ashkenazim, etc), these manuals present a wide view of the way sex is prescribed in today’s Israeli Jewish Orthodox world. In his paper, “How Should a Nice Jewish Orthodox Israeli Couple Do It?”, Marienberg will concentrate on a few recent marital guides which became best sellers (and common wedding or engagement gifts). Among other questions, he will try to understand what made these specific works so popular, and what changed in the style and content of these manuals over the last two decades.

Catholics Do It Infallibly
Cristina L. H. Traina, Northwestern University

This paper traces transitions in 20th-century American Roman Catholic marriage and sexuality manuals to the Catholic embrace of psychology as an authoritative moral truth. In the late 19th and early 20th century the body—unstable and vulnerable to impurity— was primarily described as a liability to the soul, by mid-century the challenge became developmental integration of a good body’s natural impulses and tendencies, channeling and training them into acceptable, chaste forms. In the late 20th century sex was so highly celebrated in both official and popular accounts that sex was seen not just as a helpful metaphor for divine-human love but in some cases as the quintessential human experience of it. Throughout this transition period, manuals emphasize—and caution—that only marital sex open to pregnancy is truly and fully holy, exciting, and passionate. In these manuals the “methods” that make sex more fulfilling are not sexual techniques but spiritual and relational ones.

    A18-122

Religion, Film, and Visual Culture Group

Theme: Horror, Heroes, and the Supernatural in Film

"Do I Look Like Someone Who Cares What God Thinks?": Rethinking the Relationship between Religion and Cinema Horror
Douglas E. Cowan, University of Waterloo

While it is often dismissed by cultural critics for its emphasis on violence, poor production values, and fairly predictable plot lines, B-grade horror cinema reflects in substantial ways the religious discourses of late modern society. Most particularly, in what appears at first as an action-driven absence or inversion of religious sensibilities, many of these films actually instantiate very traditional religious discourses and themes, and instantiate culturally specific 'fear factors' on which filmmakers depend for the success of their stories. Taking the religious elements in horror cinema seriously, and locating them within the analytic domain of 'sociophobics,' this paper examines horror films from the perspective that what we fear, how we express those fears, and how those fears are ultimately resolved are socially and culturally conditioned. In terms of cinema horror, the salient question is: Why is religion so often used to tell a scary story?

American Identity in Recent Marvel Comics Superhero Films
Anthony Mills, Fuller Seminary

The mythology of the superhero in American culture has always been tied to American identity itself. It has evolved almost in tandem with American history, and superheroes themselves have been either personifications of or foils for the American values and desires contemporaneous with them. At the same time, changes in American culture have brought with them changes in how superheroes are conceived. There is currently a gradual evolution of the American superhero mythology from traditional to postmodern. The differences can be articulated according to five key areas, including relation to others, sexuality, psychology, moral decision, and the nature of evil. In the medium of graphic novels, this turn originated with Marvel Comics and Stan Lee. Filmic adaptations of Marvel heroes are numerous and more are in development. I want to discuss how these films exhibit the postmodern hero mythology, and what impact this has or should have on American identity.

Channeling, Trance, and Religion in What the Bleep Do We Know!?
Emily Merriman, Boston University

What the Bleep Do We Know!? combines interviews and animations with a plotline of individual spiritual transformation. Intermingling scientific theories with Neoplatonic and New Age commonplaces, it makes a number of claims about the nature of reality, propounding both an ambivalent neo-Gnostic view about the necessity of divine knowledge and a vision of mystical unity. It seeks to induce in its viewers a trance-like state in which critical discernment is suspended. The film's condemnation of Christianity is expressed in theological terms, personal terms, mystical terms, and also conveyed in subtle ways by the cinematography, which actually draws power from the images and ethos of Catholicism. Engineered for maximum rhetorical effect, the film's motley patchwork of science, addiction recovery, narrative and New Age ideas, has a specific message, based on the teachings of Ramtha, a channeled teacher and warrior.

George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead: Consumerism and the Specter of Undeath
Kim Paffenroth, Iona College

Like Dante's Inferno, George Romero’s classic horror film Dawn of the Dead is ghastly, funny, shocking, but also humane and humanizing. Both works unmask human beings for the selfish, greedy, self-destructive creatures that they are, but thereby, these works seek to shock us out of our sins, especially out of our violence and materialism. As Fran and Peter flee the mall at the end of the movie, we rejoice just as we do at the end of the Inferno when Dante climbs up out of hell. It is, at the very least, a sobering and realistic ending, one that demands that its viewers reject the earth-bound, hell-bound kingdom of the mall, in which life has been utterly and eternally eclipsed by the dawn of the dead, and instead strive for a higher Kingdom, in whatever secular or religious terms one conceives of it.

Heaven Can Wait: The Emergence of American Purgatory
Diana Walsh-Pasulka, University of North Carolina, Wilmington

Several American popular films and television series feature the representation of a middle state of the afterlife, characterized as existing between heaven and hell. This state is regularly referenced as purgatory, although the designation is not technically correct. This proposal situates the emergence of this American version of purgatory within an historical context. By comparing late nineteenth century American appropriations of the Catholic dogma with contemporary examples in popular culture, I will reveal a unique version of the middle state between heaven and hell, where deceased spirits enjoy a proverbial second chance as well as the opportunity to attend to unfinished business with those they have left behind. The precedent for this version of purgatory is to be found in transformations of the popular practice of prayer for dead, associated with the Catholic dogma, but which in reality exceeded the bounds of its doctrinal definitions.

    A18-124

Tillich: Issues in Theology, Religion, and Culture Group

Theme: Postmodernism and Tillich

Although Paul Tillich has sometimes been taken to be an archetypal modern figure, this session shows otherwise. Three papers explore an array of resonances between Tillichian ideas and themes prominent in Jean-Luc Marion, Julia Kristeva, Emmanuel Levinas, Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek (and in the interpretation of St. Paul advanced by several of these thinkers) while the session's leadoff paper hazards the argument that, from 1919 forward, Tillich assumed, announced, and inhabited a cultural-historical situation beyond the modern, and that Tillich's own theology was a correlation of the message of one concrete religion with just such a situation.

Paul Tillich: Prophet and Partial Practitioner of the Postmodern
Robison B. James, University of Richmond and Baptist Theological Seminary, Richmond

Although Tillich is sometimes considered a representative modern, I argue that in 1919 he announced, defined, and thereafter partly inhabited a cultural-historical situation that some now call “postmodern,” and that Tillich’s entire theological project was “half-Nietzschean” in the sense implied when he says his approach is “oriented towards Nietzsche’s conception of the ‘creative’ on the soil of Hegel’s ‘objective-historical spirit’.” Thus, rather than promoting a totalizing discourse, Tillich is emphatic that from out of each concrete cultural-historical standpoint normative disciplines will be elaborated (cf. his doctrine of theological and philosophical circles), including a normative theory of religion or theology (thus far Tillich’s non-Nietzschean side), and that the alternative “right or wrong” does not apply to the contrasting results, except for persons existentially participating in the standpoint (here Tillich’s Nietzschean side). I conclude that, when less cautious postmoderns concede more than Tillich to “the Nietzschean,” they are self-trivializing if not self-refuting.

Gift as Icon and Gestalt in Tillich and Jean-Luc Marion
William F. Stevens, University of Edinburgh

The notion of "gift" described as "saturated phenomenon" in the parlance of Jean-Luc Marion, has analogical parallels with Paul Tillich's Gestalt of grace. Are these notions of gift pure unconditionality or are they enmeshed in the malaise of the "impossibility of justice" as posited by Derrida? This essay seeks to compare Tillich's notion of Gestalt as that "which embraces itself and the protest against itself" as a proper criterion to evaluate the iconic character of the gift. The question then is this: Can the concept of gift stand as the form of the Unconditional, as pure icon, or is the ideological freight of value and exchange too much for this Gestalt to bear? This essay will assert that Tillich's theonomic principle in conjunction will Marion's iconic gift is still valid for the current debate.

The Aporia of Law, Justice, and Gift/Grace: Dimensions of Forgiveness in Paul, Derrida, and Tillich
Jonathan Rothchild, Loyola Marymount University

This paper addresses the interrelationship between law, justice, and grace/gift within three interlocutors: the Apostle Paul, Jacques Derrida, and Paul Tillich. Each thinker understands the relationship between law, justice, and grace as an aporia. My thesis, first, holds that any properly conceived ethics must address the relationship between law, justice, and gift/grace in order to circumvent a radical relativism and an empty absolutism. Second, my thesis contends that the aporia between these three is resolved—not eliminated, but rather transformed—through the practice of forgiveness which acknowledges law, enjoins justice, and focuses on the particular other through love. There are three primary sections of the paper: 1) a conversation between Paul and Derrida on the relationship between law, justice, and gift; 2) an analysis of Tillich’s reflections on that same relationship; and 3) a constructive and critical analysis of Tillich’s contributions to Pauline and Derridean informed ethics, with particular emphasis on forgiveness.

“Dark Depths of Madness!”: Tillichian Anxiety Meets Kristevan Abjection
Sigridur Gudmarsdottir, Drew University

Tillich’s concept of “the ground and abyss of being,” disrupts the theistic God-concept and affirms the complexity and balance of the individual self. This important concept of the Tillichian systematics have been identified by Ann Belford Ulanov as closely linked to femininity and the maternal. The paper reads Tillich´s imagery of the abyss through Kristeva´s poststructuralist lens of the material maternal. Does the abyss of God become too abysmal if it is linked to the physical eros of the maternal? How does Kristeva´s theories of maternal abjection and anguish affect Tillich’s distinction between ontological anxiety and pathological anxiety? The paper argues that Kristeva´s theories of maternal anguish can be used for “shaking the foundations” of the Tillichian distinctions between pathological and ontological anxiety. It reveals some of the sexed traits of the maddening depth which Tillich called the ground and abyss of being.

    A18-125

Western Esotericism Group

Theme: Western Esotericism

The Western Esotericism group seeks to reflect and further stimulate the current process (reflected in the recent creation of new chairs and teaching programs, international associations, journals, monograph series, and reference works) of professionalization and scholarly recognition of Western esotericism as a new area of research in the study of religion. For more information on the field, see notably the websites of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE: www.esswe.org), the Association for the Study of Esotericism (ASE: www.esoteric.msu.edu) and the center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam (GHF: www.amsterdamhermetica.com).

Northern Humanists, Heretics, and Cabbala: Responses in Northern Art, Theology, and the Witch Hunt to the Theurgical Study and Ritual Practice of Jewish Mysticism in the Sixteenth Century
Yvonne Owens, University College, London

Northern humanists, including Reuchlin and Agrippa, studied Cabbala, applying it to their theurgical aspirations of spiritual, intellectual and moral elevation. But anti-Semitic and misogynistic streams within both Neo-Platonism and Scholasticism firmly associated both Jewishness and feminine physiology with the heresy of witchcraft. The images of Cabbalistic vessels and women as witches became fused in artistic and literary tropes and iconography, visible in the works of Durer, Hans Baldung, and Altdorfer, their conflation evident in the popular belief that Jewish men menstruated. This image of physiological, feminine 'pollution' was intricately connected with the idea of the 'contamination' of heresy, and both Reuchlin and Agrippa were constrained to publicly defend their theories and approaches. Reuchlin continued to defend Jewish scholarship and Cabbala, and Agrippa continued to defend the inherent moral worth of women, even while their reputations, their fortunes and their works suffered the irreversible derelictions of moral taint and infamy.

Types of Greek Numerology
Joel Kalvesmaki, Dumbarton Oaks

Around the second century CE a new method of prognostication emerged in the Greek-speaking world. Names and terms were converted to their numerical values (via psephic calculations, better known as gematria) and then analyzed to predict the future. There are scores of Greek manuscripts that attest to the variety of techniques and the popularity of numerological prognostication throughout the Byzantine and modern-Greek eras. The few numerological techniques that have been published are not well known. I present here six major types of Greek numerology, as well as a few of the many variations. I also suggest ways in which ancient and medieval readers might have used these texts.

Early Homeopathy and the Medical Establishment in Germany
Roelie van Kreijl, University of Amsterdam

The topic of the paper is the early debate (1810-1840) between homeopathy and the medical establishment in what is now Germany. It discusses the question why homeopathy did not succeed in its efforts to get its doctrines accepted as part of the standard academic medical curriculum. I order to answer this question the paper will focus on the social and discursive processes that constitute the polemic, using discourse analysis and insights from the sociology of science. The paper will argue that, although this is a matter of opposition between a medical doctrine based on occult causalities against one based on instrumental causalities, it is power and not substantive argumentation, that is of decisive influence in establishing and protecting bodies of knowledge.

Yoga as a Corrective to Misguided Rationalism: Science in the Esoteric Thought of Gustav Meyrink
Amanda Boyd, Sam Houston State University

The self-proclaimed esotericist and early twentieth-century German author Gustav Meyrink devoted much of his fiction and philosophical treatises to the role of yoga in a rapidly industrializing world. A life-long practitioner of yoga, Meyrink felt that this occultist praxis helped one perceive and counteract the division of the self into the spiritual and the corporeal. On the basis of several of his short stories and essays, this paper shows that Meyrink wished to draw attention to the dangers of a world preoccupied with a scientific rationalism that emphasized the material to the detriment of the spiritual. If yoga could make the individual whole, Meyrink’s writings show that he believed that a reoriented science aimed at holistic restoration could have a similar affect on a societal level. For Meyrink, yoga initiates are critical facilitators in the recognition of rationalism’s divisional tendencies and the reversal thereof.

Gnosis of the Flesh II: "Prophetic Exegesis" and Temporal Alchemy in J.J. Hurtak’s Pistis Sophia
Carol Matthews, US Naval Academy

This paper is an examination of the theoretical, experiential, and methodological processes by which Dr. J.J. Hurtak recasts the ancient Gnostic text, Pistis Sophia, into a modern, esoteric “ultraterrestrial” manual for spiritual ascension. My analysis will commence with a brief historical outline of the progression of Hurtak’s thought and method over the 30 years since his original revelation as published in The Book of Knowledge. Concomitantly, I will use Hurtak’s commentary on the Pistis Sophia to demonstrate his syncretic use of many antecedent sources. I will conclude with the issues attendant on any occultist who attempts to update an ancient text for contemporary usage and with a description of a historical-critical method providing contextual analysis to the revelatory production of modern and post-modern text-prophets, operating in UFO contact, occult, New Age, and theosophical frameworks.

    A18-126

Zen Buddhism Seminar

Theme: Zen in the Contemporary World

This panel examines the status of Zen Buddhism and Zen Buddhist scholarship in the last 30 years. In particular, the papers to be presented in this session will focus on two topics, namely, new methodological trends in Zen Studies and the transformation American forms of Zen Buddhism underwent with regard to ritual, ideology, and institutional structure in the past thirty years. Thus, the papers will contribute to a critical understanding of Zen theory and practice today.

The Zen Master in America: Dressing the Donkey with Bells and Scarves
Stuart Lachs, New York, New York

Zen’s self-definition was largely formulated in early China. It imputed superhuman qualities to the Zen master/roshi and is the foundation for both today’s Zen master in America and for his students. We will examine how these imputed qualities, constructed in early China, appear in the modern American context by looking at five modern Zen masters and their students during the last thirty–five years in America. With modern means of reporting, journaling, notating, and testifying, we have access to more detail, not just hagiography, about these Zen masters. Suddenly, we begin to see real people, acting in real life with all their foibles. Nonetheless, these masters are still considered, both institutionally and by their disciples, to have attained the idealized roles proscribed for them. This distortion, an unconscious collusion between the institution, the master and the students, results in a system that impacts good faith, authority, relationships and self-understanding.

Transforming the Menacing Fetus: Abortion and Other Pregnancy Loss Rituals in American Zen Centers
Jeff Wilson, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

In Japan, mizuko kuyō; is a rite of apology to the angry spirits of aborted fetuses. It involves the intercession of savior bodhisattvas to liberate the ghosts and deliver them to the Pure Land. This widespread practice is often depicted by scholars and critics as anti-modern and misogynistic. But as the practice has arrived in America over the past three decades, it has been largely reformulated by new Zen practitioners. In part the adaptations made in the ritual by convert Zen Buddhists reflect an underlying liberal American religious ethos linked to Protestant frames of religious practice, feminism, left-wing politics, and modern psychology that informs many of the practices carried out by these new Zen communities. At the same time, however, American mizuko kuyō; reveals a trend towards greater ritualization, engagement with savior figures, and re-valuation of emotional needs within a rather subdued and controlled upper middle class religious culture.

New Trends in Dōgen Studies in Japan
Kiyozumi Ishii, Komazawa University

The modern study of Zen Master Dôgen (1200-53), called Sôtô Shûgaku or Sôtô Theology, began with the adoption of modern academic methods, with the publication of foundational works by Eto Sokuô (1888-1958) and Kurebayashi Kôdô (1893-1987) in 1944 and 1970, respectively. The subsequent generation of scholars assumed that Dôgen’s ideas and historical identity should be defined on the basis of the historical development of Chinese Chan/Zen thought. Based on the contributions of Kagamishima Genryû (1912-2001), and later with modifications by Ishii Shûdô (b. 1943), the analysis of Dôgen’s style of the citation of Chinese works soon became the mainstream of Sôtô school studies. The approach to Chinese Chan studies pioneered by Iriya Yoshitaka (1910–1998) and Yanagida Seizan (b. 1922) has also led to important innovations in Sôtô Theology, as have the responses to Critical Buddhism (hihan Bukkyô) and the attention to works by Dôgen other than his Shôbôgenzô.

The Current State of Chán Studies in Japan
John R. McRae, Tokyo, Japan

The Japanese study of Chinese Chán Buddhism has undergone a generational succession, with the emergence of a new group of scholars now in the prime of their careers. The foundation of contemporary Chán studies was established by Iriya Yoshitaka (1910–98) and Yanagida Seizan (b. 1922), who collaborated closely for almost four decades, but now the baton has been passed to a younger generation including Ibuki Atsushi (Tōyō University), Ishii Kōsei (Komazawa), Ishii Shūdō; (Komazawa), Kinugawa Kenji (Hanazono University), and Ogawa Takashi (Komazawa University). The issues to be covered in this presentation include the emphasis on reading Chinese text as Chinese (and not merely as transposed, often artificially, into Japanese grammar); recent in-print debates on the scholarly interpretation of Chán texts; attitudes toward Chán studies in China and elsewhere; interpretive work on early, classical, and Sòng-dynasty Chán; and the attitudes of Japanese scholars to their own field.

    A18-127

Animals and Religion Consultation

Theme: Intertwining Animals: The Real, the Sacred, the Immanent, the Symbolic

This session investigates "real" animals (the ivory billed woodpecker, African elephants) and "symbolic" animals in the sacred cosmology of the Akan peoples of West Africa. It also provides a glimpse into the recently released The Communion of Subjects - a global look at animals and religion. Animals play myriad complex roles in religion, and at times it is almost impossible to separate the real animal from the symbolic animal, if that is possible at all. Animal imagery in Akan ritual cannot be disconnected from the real animals represented, just as the rediscovery of an animal thought to be extinct brought about a "religious" response. The papers address different religious and cultural settings as well as different perspectives on humans and animals.

Golden Proverbs: Animals and Ethical Cosmology of the Akan Peoples of West Africa
M. Christian Green, Harvard University

Over the last few years, a remarkable exhibition has been making its way around art museums in the United States. The exhibition is titled West African Gold: Akan Regalia from the Glassell Collection. Inhabiting Ghana and the Ivory Coast, the Akan peoples associate gold with wealth, power, and prestige. One of the most striking features of the golden regalia in this exhibition is the prominence of animal imagery. Because Akan cultures convey ancestral wisdom verbally, the motifs in their works, such as the backward-looking sankofa bird that is one of the centerpieces of the collection, often allude to proverbs. These proverbs suggest a rich repository of wisdom that can be seen to underlie Akan social, political, and economic ethics, as well as a relationship to the animal world based on fondness and the communication of a wisdom at once earthly and divine.

Lost and Found: The Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Extinction, and Immanence
Jennifer Rycenga, San Jose State University

The rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Arkansas in April 2005, provides an excellent case-study of nature-based immanence in contemporary American spirituality. This talk will analyze salient examples of reactions to the rediscovery, from birdwatchers, biologists and conservation experts, focusing on interrelations between human beings and the woodpecker. The ethical and experiential parameters of animals' immanence will be discussed in relation to radical feminist philosopher Mary Daly's invocation of the lost-and-found dimensions of extinction in her most recent book, Amazon Grace (2005). Daly suggests that our encounters with 'extinct' animals demonstrate the existence of a biophilic world despite the daily onslaught of openly necrophilic worldviews dismissive of any significance given to animals. Finding the Ivory-billed Woodpecker created a moment in which the coexistence of immanent faith and imminent despair took material form, and the survival of one animal became a beacon of hope for many.

Sacred Whispers in the World: Animal Presence
Lee Bailey, Ithaca College

The cultivation of ecological spirituality calls us to broaden our range of experiences to include many natural phenomena, such as the worlds of animals. Seeing our selves in nature rather than above it means opening ourselves to the presence of animals, as in their perceptual worlds (smell, sounds), and communications, as in non-verbal languages (body languages). The problem of anthropomorphizing animal worlds is important, since it is inevitable and ubuquitous, but introduces dangers to be avoided. The problem of dominion is rooted in religious and instinctual patterns, and must be re-thought on the continuum between deep ecology egalitarianism and some kind of hierarchy. The issue of theodicy is also important, since humans in the dominion paradigm so fiercely attempts to control nature to avoid our suffering, but thus causes immense suffering for other species. Video and audio clips will illustrate points.

The Ideal of A Communion of Subjects: A Challenge to Classical Liberalism
Gary Steiner, Bucknell University

The volume A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics examines the task of affirming the place of humanity within the larger cosmic scheme of things. But the ideal of cosmic holism seems to stand in an irreducible contradition with the ideal of the autonomous individual that is the cornerstone of classical liberal political theory. If Heidegger is right that we cannot simply adopt a non-Western standpoint in the endeavor to find our lost place in the cosmos, but must instead find a path of thinking from our current self-understanding to a sense of belonging to the cosmos, then the seeming contradiction between cosmic holism and liberal individualism must be confronted. Hegel’s conception of the individual as the mediating term between selfish desire and abstract personhood holds the key to sublating this contradiction.

    A18-128

Daoist Studies Consultation

Theme: The Baby or the Bath Water: Reconstructing the Contexts of the Laozi and Applying Its Ideas to the Postmodern World

Religious Origin of the Terms Dao and De and Their Signification in the Laozi
Jia Jinhua, Harvard University

This paper applies a synthetic methodology of etymological, religious, and philosophical studies to explore the original meaning of the terms dao and de, two primary concepts in Chinese intellectual history. Many early texts identify Dao with the Great One/Spirit of the Pole Star/High God. This identification is now supported by the newly unearthed text, “The Great One Gives Birth to Water.” Through an etymological analysis of the characters dao and de and supported by received and discovered texts and materials, I further verify that Dao indeed originally represents the spirit of the Pole Star/High God and the movement of Heaven, and De originally symbolizes the action of impartiality or the virtue and power able to act justly. In terms of this new interpretation, I further discuss the signification of dao and de in the Laozi to uncover the mystic aspect of the text.

Are There Ritual Formulas in the Daodejing?
Ronnie Littlejohn, Belmont University

In this paper, I argue that the sources of the oral logia of the Daodejing were lineages of daoshi who were masters in the techniques of the dao. I uncover the identity and work of these daoshi in Qin and pre-Han China. They were dedicated themselves to astrology, magic, medicine, divination and geomancy, as well as to achieving longevity and ecstatic wandering. They were close to what later became known as the School of Yin-Yang and the Five Phases. The Zhuangzi, Neiye, Huainanzi and Daodejing represent different types of visible and tangible traces of these lineages. I argue that the Daodejing's structure and materials are such that the it shows many affinities with what we know about such works containing wisdom and ritual lyric and formula. I conclude the paper by offering a commentary on a number of Daodejing logia supporting my reading of the text.

The One Gave Birth to the Two: Martin Buber's Dialogical Transformation of the Daodejing
Jonathan Herman, Georgia State University

Although the identification of Daoism as a 'mystical' tradition is deeply ingrained in both scholarly and popular circles, the debates raging in the contemporary academic study of mysticism have scarcely made a dent in the Sinological discourse. In particular, the conversation on crosscultural appropriation of mystical resources, those contextually ambiguous or multi-faceted historical instances, is embryonic. The subject of this paper is one such morsel of largely forgotten religious history, Martin Buber's unpublished commentary on the Daodejing. This manuscript, produced more than a decade after Buber's German volume on Zhuangzi but barely a year after the publication of I and Thou, represents a pivotal stage in Buber's intellectual development and in the Western consciousness of Chinese philosophy. This paper examines how this document problematizes several key issues in the study of mysticism, including the role of context, the primacy of experience, and tensions between otherworldly and intrawordly forms of mysticism.

Confronting the Problem of Conceptual (Mis)Appropriation: The Daoism Example
Amy Weigand, Temple University

Daoism is a privileged site for the construction of 'alternative' perspectives on human relations with the natural environment. This paper deploys the methodology of close reading of texts proposing features of a 'Daoist environmental ethic' to explore the following questions: 1) What reasons do the authors offer to justify turning to Daoism for insight into ameliorating Western environmental degradation?; 2) What assumptions are operative in the attempt to frame a “Daoist” ecological consciousness in contrast to “Western” models of domination and plunder?; and 3) What are the conditions prevailing in the discursive fields of the academic study of Daoism and of environmental theory that require or reward the presentation of an ecological ethic in line with Daoist values? The final section offers reasons for continued engagement of Western thinkers with Daoist traditions, but with critical awareness of the desires, needs, and assumptions that often precipitate and condition such engagements.

    A18-129

Religion and Colonialism Consultation

Theme: Colonialisms of Modernization

Religion and Colonialism: Religion as a Primary Category of Analysis
Caleb Elfenbein, University of California, Santa Barbara

Many scholars in our field recognize that the discipline’s organizing concept is tied to the expansion of European power. Armed with data from the field, and at times operating at the frontiers of conquest, European scholars began to theorize more generally about the category of “religion,” which in turn effected how European societies conceptualized their own traditions and the place of those traditions in the production of knowledge and in ordering human life. The nascent category of religion also had a profound place in nineteenth century colonialisms, guiding policies to reconfigure traditions as a means of modernizing subject populations more generally, often with unintended effects. The Religion and Colonialism Consultation seeks to investigate these effects by analyzing how different actors and institutions delimit, construct and deploy the authority of "religion" in colonial and postcolonial contexts.

Martyrdom through "Parang Sabil": A Response to Colonialism in the Philippines
Vivienne S.M. Angeles, La Salle University

During the colonial periods (1521-1898; 1898-1946), policies like the imposition of Christianity by Spanish authorities and the head tax by American administrators generated opposition and prompted a number of Muslims in southern Philippines to launch individual attacks against Spanish and American military forces. Believing that this was a last recourse and a form of struggle in the path of God (jihad fi sabillalah), the 'sabil' went through religious rituals with the assistance of the imam as part of his preparations for immediate entry to paradise upon death. This paper argues that martyrdom through 'parang sabil' was a form of resistance to the Spanish and American colonial administrations in the Philippines. This practice, which was legitimized by appeal to religious teachings, raised issues on interpretation of scripture and tradition and at the same time contributed to Muslim-Christian tensions in colonial and post-colonial Philippines.

“The Christian Character of the North-West Provinces”: Roman Transliteration and the Linguistic Reformation of Colonial India
Robert A. Yelle, University of Illinois

In response to the theme of “colonialisms of modernization,” my paper investigates the religious dimensions of nineteenth-century British colonial proposals for the adoption of the Roman alphabet and of European typographic conventions in the printing of South Asian languages. Like some other colonial projects for linguistic reform, Roman transliteration reflected the idea of a perfect language, in which one word stood for one thing, and one letter for one sound. A careful perusal of these proposals, and of their relation to earlier, seventeenth-century proposals for a universal language or written character, shows that these were more than simply utilitarian reforms to facilitate literacy and commerce. The ideal of an univocal language, and of an universal standard of printing, represented nothing less than the assertion of Christian monotheism against Hindu polytheism.

Civil Subjectivity and the Perfect Brahmachari: Cultivating Modernity in the Arya Samaj
Cassie Adcock, University of Chicago

Discussions of the place of religion in the modernizing project of the colonial state in India have focused largely on an “identitarian politics” directed to the constitution of new identities and the demarcation of new communities. The shuddhi conversion campaign initiated by the Arya Samaj in U.P. in the 1920s has been described in these terms as a project to unify and consolidate the Hindu community and to increase its numerical strength. Side by side with this “identitarian politics” of community, I argue, there is a strand of discourse within the Arya Samaj which articulates a “moral politics” directed to securing the subjectivities on which modern forms of government could be based. In the moral politics of shuddhi, conversion was represented as a means to universalize Vedic practices of somatic self-cultivation – brahmacharya (celibacy) and diet – deemed necessary for the formation of rational, moral, and therefore politically responsible subjects.

    A18-130

Religion in Europe Consultation

Theme: The Christian and Muslim Crossroads of European Identity: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

The controversy surrounding the Danish Jylland-Posten’s cartoons of Mohammed is the entry-point for this session’s exploration of the religious dimensions of European identity. In approaching this subject, participants will address a variety of related questions. In light of the gradual secularization of European identity, are the caricatures an instance of religious hatred or merely one of insensitive “humanism?” Do the varieties of Muslim experience in Southeastern Europe (majority status in Albania, co-existence with Christians in Bosnia, secularization under communism, nationalization and transnationalization in the postcommunist era) offer new models for interpreting European identity? Does the caricature crisis confirm the “clash of civilizations” thesis, or does it speak more to the challenges of European integration? Finally, what may Christian responses to the caricature crisis tell us about the evolving understandings of the role of Christianity in shaping European identity?

Christianity, Islam, and European Identity: From the Mozarabic Chronicle of 754 to the Jylland Posten Cartoons of 2005
Gustavo Benavides, Villanova University

Four decades after the Muslim invasion of Spain, the term “European” was employed in the Mozarabic Chronicle of 754 to refer to the soldiers who defeated the “Arabs” in 732. What is significant in terms of a “European” identity is the fact that the Chronicle was written in territories that had been under Muslim domination for less than half a century. What the Chronicle shows is that “Europe” and “European” are to be understood in the context of a system of oppositions: “Christian” vs. “Muslim,” “European” vs. “Arab.” Twelve centuries later, the publication of twelve cartoons by a Danish newspaper has led to a renewed debate about the meaning of the term “Europe” and “European.” These developments require us to rethink the debates concerning modernity/secularization as well as to consider whether they may lead to a post-Christian Europe or, rather, to the resurgence of a religiously-based understanding of European identity.

Muslim Identities in Southeast Europe between Nationalism and Transnationalism
Ina Merdjanova, Sofia University

The collapse of communism and the consequent armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia led to the radical redefinition and reshaping of the relations between the Muslim communities and the post-communist nation-states in the region, on the one hand, and to Islamic transnational identifications and commitments, on the other. This paper will seek to analyze the various ways in which renewed Muslim identities have shaped social and political attitudes and have expressed themselves in the public sphere, particularly with regard to the post-communist processes of nationalization and transnationalization. A particular attention will be paid to the recent further complication of these developments by attempts at rendering the Balkan brand of Islam as “the genuine European Islam.”

What to Be or Not to Be: Islam, Satire, and Identity in the European Union
Martyn A. Oliver, Boston University

This paper will explore how religion—particularly Christianity and Islam—contribute to evolving notions of identity, reshaping concepts of nationalism, religious affiliation, and secular identity in terms of the development of the European Union and its effects on individuals. I will argue that conflicts such as the Danish cartoon controversy are indicative of Europe’s collective difficulty in reconciling these competing elements. While the EU functions as a political entity, it has not provided the tools for creating a new collective European identity. Rather than a clash of civilizations, the new tension for the so-called West will be conflicts of internal self-definition.

    A18-131

Yoga in Theory and Practice Consultation

Theme: Construction and Transcendence in Modern Yoga

This panel will examine the emerging body of scholarship that addresses the multifaceted process behind the emergence of yoga as a profoundly influential cultural and religious force in the 20th and 21st centuries. Of particular interest are the processes whereby yoga became a pan-Indian and transnational phenomenon of significance on a number of different levels, including as a spirituality, a physical culture, and a mode of physical therapy. The secondary goal of the panel will be to explore the dialectical tension between yoga as a “constructed” entity versus the more “essentialist” conception of yoga as a methodology that transcends cultural, temporal, and spatial boundaries while retaining a core meaning and purpose. This will lead to further questions regarding the “authenticity” of modern yoga, the limits of the cultural analysis of claims to transcendence, and the potential implications of participant-observation methods in understanding this phenomenon.

    A18-132

Friends of the Academy Reception

Individuals whose generosity allows us to continue many of our special programs are invited to a reception hosted by the AAR Board of Directors.

    A18-133

AAR Racial and Ethnic Minority Members' Reception

The Status of Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession Committee invites interested persons to a reception celebrating the contributions of racial and ethnic minority scholars in the Academy.

    A18-134

Plenary Address

Theme: Presidential Plenary and Awards Ceremony--Diana Eck: Prospects for Pluralism: Voice and Vision in the Study of Religion

Diana Eck is interested in the challenges of religious pluralism in a multi-religious society. Her work on India includes the book Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India; she is currently working on a book entitled India: Myth on Earth. Since 1991, she has headed the Pluralism Project which includes a network of some 60 affiliates exploring the religious dimensions of America’s new immigration. Her book A New Religious America investigates the growth of Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim communities in the US and the issues of religious pluralism in American civil society. In 1998, Eck received the National Humanities Medal from President Clinton and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Her plenary will address how national and local debates over religious difference and cultural identity have opened an area of critical study for scholars. What is pluralism from a civic perspective? A theological perspective? How does pluralism take shape “on the ground” in countless local contexts and connections?

    A18-136

Arts Series/Films: Crash

Sponsored by the Religion, Film, and Visual Culture Group

In a voice over during the opening credits of Paul Haggis’ Oscar-winning film Crash, Don Cheadle tells his partner, “In LA nobody touches you. We are always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.” In the film, a number of characters collide over two days in Los Angeles. Hence, through collision comes our invitation to feel, to care, and to think about race and responsibility in the twenty-first century.

Directed by Paul Haggis, 2004, 113 minutes, R rated (color, USA)

    A18-137

Arts Series/Films: Guelwaar

Sponsored by the African Religions Group

The funeral of an outspoken Senegalese political activist and subsequent disappearance of his corpse provides the backdrop for Sembène’s incisive feature. This bold film tackles the conflict between Muslims and Christians, dependence on foreign aid, and the elusive nature of independence itself.

Directed by Ousmane Sembìne, 1992, 115 minutes, unrated (color, France and Senegal, subtitled)

    A18-138

Women's Reception

Sponsored by the Status of Women in the Profession Committee and the Women's Caucus.

The Women's Caucus invites all friends to join us in honoring those women who have been presidents of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature.

    A18-140

AAR and Pluralism Project Celebration in Honor of Diana Eck

Sponsored by AAR and the Pluralism Project

The AAR and the Pluralism Project are hosting this celebration of Diana Eck, 2006 AAR president. We welcome affiliates, advisors, friends, and colleagues to join us for light refreshments, networking, conversation, and informal updates on research projects. Your RSVP to staff@pluralism.org is appreciated.

    A18-135

AAR Members' Reception

AAR members are invited to join one another at the AAR Members’ Reception for jazz music and collegiality. Don’t forget the free drink ticket mailed with your name badge!

    A18-139

Student Members' Reception

AAR and SBL student members are invited to drop by for conversation with fellow students. Snacks will be provided. Don’t forget your free drink ticket!

    A19-2

AAR New Members' Continental Breakfast

New (first-time) AAR members in 2006 are cordially invited to a continental breakfast with members of the Board of Directors.

    A19-3

Religion and Disabilities Task Force Meeting

The Religion and Disability Task Force wraps up its work with this final meeting. We would like to invite any interested members to attend and participate in defining a vision for the future of disability in the AAR, religious studies, and the academy.

    A19-6

Special Topics Forum

Theme: Christian Theology's Engagement with Religious Pluralism: Biblical Texts and Themes

Sponsored by the Program Committee

In this forum, scholars of religion and theology discuss the challenges religious pluralism poses to Christian theological thinking with a specific focus on difficult biblical texts and themes. How have traditional biblical ideas such as the dualisms between light and darkness, the divine and the demonic, heaven and hell, and the exclusive claims regarding Jesus Christ shaped Christian thinking about religions? How are Christians in the twenty-first century wrestling with these biblical texts and motifs in their efforts to articulate a theology of religions today?

    A19-7

Special Topics Forum

Theme: Women Speaking to Religion and Leadership: Honoring the Work of Mercy Oduyoye

Sponsored by the Status of Women in the Profession Committee

All are invited to this special panel sponsored by the Womanist Approaches to Religion and Society Group and AAR’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession honoring the work of Mercy Amba Oduyoye. Oduyoye is a native of Ghana and is a founder of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians. Oduyoye was contributor to Inheriting Our Mothers’ Gardens: Feminist Theology in Third World Perspective and serves her church as a Methodist lay woman. Her books include: Hearing and Knowing; The Will to Arise: Daughters of Anowa; and Introducing African Women’s Theology. Panelists in this session include Mercy Oduyoye, Katie Cannon, Musa Dube, Sarojini Nadar, and Letty Russell.

    A19-8

Special Topics Forum

Theme: Teaching the Introductory Course in Theology and Religion

Sponsored by the Teaching and Learning Committee

Barbara Walvoord, the principal investigator, and some of the participants will report on and discuss the results of a study of 70 highly effective teachers of introductory courses in theology and religion. Discussion will focus on how faculty members define their discipline (e.g. “theology” or “religious studies”) and establish and communicate their goals for student learning and development and how the goals articulated by faculty compare with students’ expressions of their own goals in taking introductory courses.

    A19-9

Arts, Literature, and Religion Section

Theme: Blake and Religious Vision

The Revolutionary Vision of William Blake
Thomas Altizer, Mt. Pocono, PA

This paper is an attempt to state clearly and briefly the imaginative revolution of William Blake, to identity it in terms of its ultimate heterodoxy and apocalypticism, but to call forth it actual theological power, which can most concretely occur by way of exploring Blake's vision of Satan. Blake's is our most revolutionary vision of Satan, but here Satan is only finally called forth by way of 'The Self-Annihilation of God' a self-annihilation that is absolute apocalypse or Jerusalem.

A Final Vision: Blake's Dante Illustrations
Andrea J. Dickens, United Theological Seminary

I propose a reading of William Blake’s Dante Illustrations (1824-1827) with attention to three themes in his theology: the nature of God as love, forgiveness as the basis of a Christian religion of love, and the human as an image of the God she worships. This work is of interest for Blake’s theology and a provocative work to study because Dante was an object of Blake’s derision at various points; in these illustrations, Blake blends in his own theology while illustrating the Italian’s visionary masterpiece. Although Blake’s theology usually is explicated through his writings, especially through the Illuminated Books, with little attention to his engravings, I believe that it is possible to find further evidence of it here, and that these traces form an important commentary on the poem of Dante as well as give us a sense of Blake’s religions beliefs at the end of his life.

"I Walk Weeping in Pangs of a Mother's Torment for Her Children": Women's Laments in the Poetry and Prophecies of William Blake
Steven P. Hopkins, Swarthmore College

This paper focuses on female laments in the poetry of William Blake, and how they relate, in their elaborate, structured, deeply contextual verbal performances, to a long history of women’s ritual lament traditions in various parts of the world. A close look at Blake’s female lamenters gives us a most compelling lens into what might be termed, with some nuance, Blake’s “proto-feminism.” Blake’s lamenting women loudly question injustice of a fallen world; they witness the ruins of experience, but also to “apocalyptic reversal." But when the laments are finished and the weeping women seem to suddenly evaporate, we are confronted with Blake’s deep ambivalence toward women and sexual difference, his sense of gender division as mirroring a “fallen” world. But true to the depth and power of this poetry, female laments in Blake speak the truth to power, even in texts that otherwise display ambivalence toward the female “other.”

“I Mean Great Poets”: William Blake and Geoffrey Hill
Emily Merriman, Boston University

Often acclaimed the most important contemporary British religious poet, Geoffrey Hill has been influenced by William Blake throughout his long career. Through the prism of a recent poem, “On Reading Blake: Prophet Against Empire” (2005), this paper explores the nature of Hill's insights into Blake's methods and meanings and demonstrates what those insights reveal about Hill's own vision of the poetic enterprise. It argues that Hill--studying, interpreting, and relating to Blake as a significant influence--identifies how writing forcefully, even angrily, against the dominant ideologies of an age can have challenging, sometimes damaging, consequences for both the poet and his poetry. Hill's interpretation of Blake, in this poem and elsewhere, reveals how a poet with a prophet's understanding of the inextricable relations of the artistic, the religious and the political undertakes the task of writing only at great risk, because of the forces he must “contradict” both within and outside himself.

    A19-10

Buddhism Section

Theme: New Perspectives on Buddhist Hagiography in East Asia

This panel offers novel approaches to the study of hagiographic literature in East Asian Buddhism. While past scholarship has either read hagiography as a record of historical lives or has interpreted it as mythical biography, these papers approach hagiographic literature in the contexts of its production. Instead of reading through the texts to a supposed historical reality, these papers look closely at the literary form of the texts themselves as well as the historical and discursive contexts in which they were produced and received. Leaving aside the question of the historicity of the figures depicted in these texts, the papers in this panel trace the representations of Buddhist figures across cultures, genres, traditions and discourses.

Indian Patriarchs in a Chinese Looking Glass: The Earliest Hagiographies of Nāgārjuna and Aśvaghoşa
Stuart Young, Princeton University

The fifth- and sixth-century Chinese hagiographies of Nāgārjuna and Aśvaghoşa have long been used by modern scholars to reconstruct the careers of these great Buddhist patriarchs in ancient India. This project reflects the time-honored Buddhological methodology of viewing ancient Indian history through the unacknowledged lens of medieval Chinese literature. By contrast, this paper analyzes the earliest hagiographies of Nāgārjuna and Aśvaghoşa as they were understood by their medieval Chinese architects. By looking at these works in the contexts of their creation rather than through them to an imagined original reality, we can learn a great deal about the concerns underlying their formation. The Chinese hagiographies of the ancient Indian patriarchs were formulated and understood differently than were the hagiographical collections written by, for and about Chinese “saints.” My paper examines this unique form of Chinese hagiography that consciously spanned the spatiotemporal and cultural chasms separating ancient India from medieval China.

The Immortalization of Bodhidharma: The Chan Patriarch in Buddhist Sources and Beyond
Joshua Capitanio, University of Pennsylvania

The sixth-century monk Bodhidharma rose from relative obscurity during his own lifetime to become one of the most emblematic and larger-than-life figures of Chinese Buddhism. This paper traces the development of Bodhidharma’s hagiography in Buddhist sources, from the earliest stories of his arrival in China to late Tang sources describing his apparent death and resurrection in a manner similar to Daoist “corpse-deliverance” (shijie). Following is an examination of the impact of this portrayal of Bodhidharma outside of Buddhist circles as revealed in a number of late Tang and Song texts, currently preserved in the Daoist canon, linking him with certain practices aimed at the achievement of physical immortality.

Reading with Form and Genre, Contesting Paradigms and Memory: Kakunyo’s Godenshō
Chris Callahan, Harvard University

This paper focuses on a text known in the Shin Buddhist community as the Godenshō (Notes on Transmission), which is narrative account of Shinran written by his great-grandson Kakunyo. In contrast to earlier approaches that have either read the text as a flawed historical document or a “sacred biography,” I propose to return the text to the moment of its production and read the text in light of the genre concerns and expectations of the time. Paying close attention to the literary form and structure of the Godenshō, I demonstrate how the text draws on and contests earlier paradigms from both the Buddhist tradition and court literature. Lastly, I expose the text’s ideological functioning by examining its rhetorical strategies and read it as a site of contested memory by summoning the narratives and voices that it excludes.

From Realm to Realm: Nichizō, the Genre-Crossing Holy Man
Heather Blair, Harvard University

Nichizō, dubbed both a holy man and an immortal, is famous for having traveled through mountain caves to visit Tuşita Heaven and the iron mountains of hell. When he returned to life in this world, he brought instructions from bodhisattvas and gods, as well as news of deceased sovereigns, officials, and clerics. Even as his persona exceeded sectarian identities, stories of his exploits overflowed standard biographical media into paintings, musical treatises, poetry, and encyclopedia. This paper emphasizes the intertextual qualities of hagiographical production, and argues that Nichizō’s cross-genre trail, as integral to his stories as his journeys through other realms, can guide us into new approaches to hagiography.

    A19-11

History of Christianity Section

Theme: Piety, Practice, Performance: Action and Embodiment in American Christianity

This panel was inspired by a collaborative research initiative on the history of American Christian practice funded by the Lilly Endowment. Participants will reflect upon the utility of the term “practice” alongside two related terms (“piety” and “performance”) for the study of North American Christianity in general, as well as for the examination of particular subjects in the history of American Protestantism. Following Kathryn Lofton’s theoretical overview of these three terms within religious studies, Anthea Butler, Heather Curtis and Tisa Wenger will assess the value of each term for their respective research projects on sanctification in the Church of God in Christ, divine healing among late-nineteenth-century evangelicals, and liberal Protestant experiments with liturgical dance in the 1920s. Ann Taves will conclude the conversation with an appraisal of the advantages and limitations of approaching the study of American religion through the rubrics of piety, practice, and performance.

    A19-12

Philosophy of Religion Section

Theme: Philosophy and Method in the Study of Religion

Philosophy of Religion and the Analytic/Continental Divide
Myron A. Penner, Trinity Western University

Perhaps in no area of philosophy are the differences between analytic and continental approaches to philosophy in greater contrast than in philosophy of religion. This may be because philosophy of religion is one of the few clearly identifiable sub-areas in which both analytics and continentals do work. My view is that this phenomenon provides a great opportunity for meaningful dialogue across schools. More specifically, I attempt to show that in virtue of their commitment to analytic philosophy, analytics should heed their continental counterparts, at least in some respects. Similarly, I argue that in virtue of their commitment to continental emphases, continental philosophers should heed their analytic counterparts, at least in some respects. I demonstrate this by analyzing two case studies: (a) the use of Bayesian reasoning in analytic philosophy of religion, and (b) the Heideggerian critique of onto-theology.

Paul Ricoeur's Reconciliation of Explanation with Interpretation
Robert A. Segal, University of Aberdeen

Paul Ricoeur sought to reconcile opposing philosophical camps. One dispute that occupied him was the opposition between explanation and interpretation, or that between causes and meanings, or that between a scientific and a hermeneutical approach to culture, including religion. I want to present the main positions on the dispute that have been taken by others. I then want to show how Ricoeur’s attempt to reconcile the approaches fails because Ricoeur actually redefines explanation as other than an account of human behavior. What he really offers is a merely interpretive approach to culture.

What Lies beyond the Failure of “Religion”? Philosophy of Religion and Methodological Reflections on the History of Religious Studies
Ludger Viefhues, Yale University

With the help of pragmatic realism this paper evaluates the methodological debate on “religion” from the perspective of the philosophy of religion. I will argue constructively, that philosophy of religion is epistemologically required to take into account the historical and theoretical context of the concept of “religion.” Critically, this paper claims that a nuanced account of the parochial origins and lasting global implications of the concept of “religion” does not lead to abandoning the concept. Rather, “religion” can serve as an analytic concept detailing complex intercultural interactions of power and language in describing and shaping our world.

Exposures and Acknowledgements: Rethinking the Philosophy of Religion
Tyler T. Roberts, Grinnell College

In the past decade or so, a number of philosophers, psychoanalysts, and political thinkers have challenged and refigured the boundaries between religious and secular discourse. Doing so, they have produced a series of “hybrid discourses” that reflect on and enact what I describe as an “exposure” of secular, humanistic thinking to religious thought and practice. Focusing on Eric Sannter and Stanley Cavell, I argue that the concept of exposure helps us to reshape our understanding of the contributions philosophical thought makes to the study of religion. First, I analyze the way Santner opens psychoanalysis and philosophy to theological conceptions of the “grace-event.” Second, I employ Stanley Cavell’s concept of “acknowledgment” to analyze the relation between the “religious” and the “secular” in Santner’s discourse. I argue that “acknowledgment” offers a richer and more exacting basic orientation to religious phenomena than either “naturalism” or “methodological atheism.”

    A19-13

Religion and the Social Sciences Section

Theme: Narrating the Local: Methodological Reflections on Ethnographies of Religious Practice

This panel brings together a collection of ethnographers studying a range of religious practices in a variety of geographic locations. The goal of the panel is to give presenters an opportunity to collectively reflect on the methods and theories they have used to narrate the local. Taking a particular field study as its own example, each paper will address the ethnographic relationship between the field and the archive, sometimes in tension, sometimes in harmony. Presenters will discuss how they write history into their descriptions of the present and in turn how they use their observations in the field to shed light on the past.

(Paper) Trails: An Expanded Theory of Archive in Ethnographic Practice
Jill DeTemple, Southern Methodist University

While many anthropologists utilize archives as sources of historical context, and some have interrogated the colonialist impulses or privileging that this practice seems to extend, very few have questioned the ontological status of the archive itself. What constitutes an archive, and how do the ways we define archives reflect the way we connect the present with the past, especially in the case of illiterate or semi-literate populations? This paper argues that effective ethnographic practice requires a willingness to identify, interact with and reproduce local archives, many of which may not be in paper form. Drawing on more than a decade of fieldwork, the paper demonstrates that for one community in central Ecuador, history and its relationship to present day religion and development cannot be examined exclusively in paper trails left in churches and houses of government, but must also be understood in the more concrete context of local roads.

Who Could Marry at a Time Like This?: Debating the Mehndi Ki Majlis in Hyderabad, India
Karen G. Ruffle, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Networks of trade, scholarship, and pilgrimage have traditionally connected Muslims transregionally, yet these very networks draw into dramatic relief the significance of the local in defining Shi‘i religious practices and worldviews. The Shi‘a community in the South Indian city Hyderabad has strongly resisted campaigns launched by the religious elite of Iran and Iraq to homogenize Muharram ritual-devotional practices. I examine the contested nature of the mehndi ceremony of Qasem, who was married and martyred at the battle of Karbala in 680 CE. The mehndi ceremony (majlis) is steadfastly observed on 7 Muharram by Hyderabadi Shi‘as in defiance of pressures from the ‘ulema in Iran and Iraq to eliminate practices deemed to be inauthentic and un-Islamic. Drawing upon archival and ethnographic data, I argue that the participation in the mehndi ki majlis narrates a worldview connecting Hyderabad’s Shi‘as to Karbala through the ecology, aesthetics and values of the local Deccani culture.

Santería and the "Branding" of Cuba: Effects upon Local Afro-Cuban Religious Practices
Jalane D. Schmidt, University of Florida, Gainesville

The Afro-Cuban religion of Regla de Ocha (aka, “Santería”) is deemed a privileged marker of Cuba’s African past for the religion’s practitioners, their detractors, the tourism industry, and researchers. But researchers should interrogate how archival sources, authoritative texts, and other media about “African diaspora religions” can homogenize and reify a regional account, which then circulates and influences researchers’ (and our funders’ and publishers’) expectations of what is deemed a research-worthy topic, what we should seek in the field, and how to “represent” our investigation ethnographically. My field research over eight years’ time in eastern Cuba has revealed that some seemingly long-standing “traditions” of certain Afro-Cuban religions appear to be local religious practitioners’ contemporary responses to and adaptations of earlier ethnographic accounts of Santería, the influence of which has been amplified by the increased recent attention of Cuban government-affiliated folklore institutes, the tourism industry, the mass media, and researchers’ inquiries.

Layering the Local: Lived History and the Ritual Production of Place in a Nuevo New South Town
Chad Seales, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

In this paper, I describe how the arrival of a public Catholic ritual, Good Friday processions, from Mexico to Siler City, North Carolina in the 1990s, elicited a specific ritual response from long-time white Protestant residents, the renewal of Fourth of July parades the year following the first public procession. I argue that Latina/o Catholics and white Protestants in Siler City have ritually produced competing conceptions of place; these ritual productions enact “lived histories,” fractured memories and narratives that extend beyond the local, spanning time and space; and the multiple layers of history, ritual, and place that coexist in a specific geographic location demand a cross-disciplinary research approach that continually moves between the field and the archive. Reflecting on three years of archival research and fieldwork in Siler City, I synthesize specific ethnographic and historical methods and propose that scholars of the particular should continually “layer the local.”

    A19-14

Religion in South Asia Section

Theme: Literary Characters across Early South Asian Narrative Traditions

Our panel will examine various important literary characters that appear in early South Asian narratives. By focusing on particular characters in their literary contexts, we aim to shed new light upon early South Asian texts in a way that crosses traditional boundaries between religious traditions. Although in some ways related to recent studies on hagiography, we have chosen literary characters because we are focusing on figures who are developed through their appearances in a number of short or fragmented narrative scenes and whose full or more detailed life-story is never really told (or if it is, not until much later). As we will demonstrate, literary characters embody or flesh out particular teachings of the texts, anchoring abstract claims in the reality of particular individuals. Rather than explain away miraculous or supernatural details in the stories, the papers on this panel treat literary characters as integrated artistic constructions.

Who Was Shaunaka? A Literary Assessment
Laurie Louise Patton, Emory University

This paper will take up the question, ”Who is Shaunaka, both as a proponent of a method of Vedic interpretation, as well as a mythological sage?” First, I will examine the references to Shaunaka in the Vedic literature, and characterize the distinction of his approach. Shaunaka's emphasis on the role of the deity, and the giving of names (namadheya) in ritual activities is distinct from other sages, such as Katyayana. Second, I will argue that the later legends that treat the progenitor of this school, the sage Shunaka, as well as his descendant, Saunaka, focus in some way on the power of the deity within ritual action. In his penchant for theological commentary (especially through etymological means), Shaunaka stands for a theological literary style, even in the later texts in which he appears as a mythological figure.

Ambattha and Shvetaketu: Literary Connections between the Upanishads and Early Buddhist Narratives
Brian Black, London University

The focus of this paper will be on similarities between the Upanishadic stories that feature Shvetaketu and the Ambattha Sutta. I will suggest that they are in fact different presentations of the same story. Both Shvetaketu and Ambattha are depicted as brahmin students who are young and arrogant as they approach the domain of a non-brahmin. In the case of Shvetaketu, he is rude in his encounter with the king; whereas Ambattha is disrespectful to the Buddha. In both cases the young brahmin leaves the non-brahmin after being defeated in debate, without having learned from him an important teaching. Finally, both brahmins are replaced by their teachers, who in contrast are more refined and humble. As I will suggest, these shared literary features shed new light on the relationship between the Brahmanical and Buddhist narrative traditions.

Reading the Buddha as a Compassionate Trickster in Early Buddhist Narrative Traditions
Sara L. McClintock, Emory University

Who is the Buddha of the early Buddhist narrative traditions? Phrased as such, this question requires not an historical but a literary response. In this paper, I read the Buddha as a compassionate trickster who, as an instantiation of nirvana, operates outside the usual boundaries of space, time, and social conventions. As a figure who has “done what needs to be done,” the Buddha does not change, yet he interacts with beings in such a way that they are foundationally transformed. Frequently, this transformation is effected through the Buddha’s verbal trickiness, shape-shifting, conjuring, ironic humor, and general bending of social, moral, temporal, and spatial norms. Through a close reading of episodes in which the Buddha uses such tricks, this paper will show how the Buddha may be read as compassionate trickster who catches people up short, surprising or even shocking them into a realization of the true nature of reality.

Krishna and Jarasandha/Shishupala in the Hindu and Jain Traditions
Jonathan Geen, McMaster University

Primarily relying upon depictions of Krishna in Hemacandra’s Shvetambara Jain Trishashtishalakapurushacharitra and the (Hindu) Mahabharata, this investigation examines Krishna as a literary character, contrasting his portrayals in the Hindu and Jain narrative traditions. Focusing upon the slayings of Jarasandha and Shishupala, I argue that in the Hindu tradition Krishna’s strong association with, and subordination to, the heroic Pandavas in the Mahabharata contributed to the rather unheroic depictions of Krishna’s post-Vraj adult life. In the Jain tradition, however, his loose association with, and predominance over, the Pandavas made possible a more glorious and heroic adult career. That Jarasandha was killed by Krishna in the Jain accounts, but by the Pandava Bhima in the Mahabharata, may reflect the strong influence of a Pandava-centric Hindu tradition on the evolution of Krishna mythology.

Creating a Rshi: The Later Literary Life of Yajnavalkya
Steven Lindquist, Concordia University, Montreal

The figure of Yajnavalkya from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (ch. 3-4) is well known in the Hindu tradition and in scholarship. What is less known, however, is that Yajnavalkya’s literary life does not end with the Brihadaranyaka story. This paper analyzes the stories about Yajnavalkya found in the historically later Mahabharata and various Puranas, utilizing his earlier portrayals as a backdrop in understanding how this figure develops across time and across literary genres. Specifically, this paper is concerned with how this figure develops into an ancient rshi who is said to be the founder of the White Yajurvedic tradition, a teacher of yoga, and iconic of Vedic India. I argue that by analyzing these recompositions of the figure of Yajnavalkya, we can see how different literary traditions understood this figure while in the midst of recasting him for their own social, political, and theological ends.

    A19-15

Study of Islam Section

Theme: “Islamic Fundamentalism”: Homogeny Identified or Diversity Homogenized?

Scholarly and journalistic interest in fundamentalism has not abated, and the model has continued to evolve. Innumerable books published since 1995 adopt or update it in explicating contemporary trends in diverse traditions. The pertinence of the proposed session is twofold. First, the subject is highly relevant to our understanding of modern Islam – the model’s influence is beyond question. We submit that any meaningful discussion of Islamic modernity entails some form of engagement with the idea of religious fundamentalism, and taking a stance on which Islamic trends and movements, if any, may meaningfully be labeled “fundamentalist.” Secondly, notwithstanding the model’s near ubiquity, its utility remains an open question and has certainly not been established definitively.

Fundamentalism and Modern Shiism
Lynda Clarke, Concordia University, Montreal

Can the term 'fundamentalist' be appropriately used to characterise modern Shiite movements? The paper argues that Shiism does not conform to many of the features of fundamentalism as defined in the Fundamentalism Project. Shiite movements may be regarded (with some regional variation) as culturally fundamentalist, since they posit religion as the basis for identity and seek to shore up that identity against the outside world. There is also some evidence of political fundamentalism. Shiism is not, however, fundamentalist in theology, law, or hermeneutics. In addition, many Shiites do not see themselves as conservative or fundamentalist; they view themselves, in fact, as the progressive wing of Islam. Recognition that a religion may behave 'fundamentally' in some spheres and not others avoids totalisation, while still allowing us to draw on a most useful concept and body of literature.

Hassan al-Hudaybi and the Muslim Brotherhood: Can Islamic Fundamentalism Eschew the Islamic State?
David L. Johnston, Yale University

Beginning with an examination of the writings of the Muslim Brotherhood’s second General Guide, Hasan al-Hudaibi (from 1951 to 1973), this paper questions the general assumption that Islamic “fundamentalism,” or Islamism, is necessarily a “political Islam” that seeks to overthrow existing political entities in order to install an “Islamic state.” Hudaibi personally denounced any violent means to promote the Brotherhood’s cause and in his writings defined the Islamic state as a state in which the moral injunctions of the sacred texts are promoted—a program on which in Egypt Muslims and Christians can easily agree. The paper concludes that the key difference between Islamic activists who seek to overthrow existing structures and those who only seek a moral revitalization of society is to be found in their theological approach—both their hermeneutic and the classical authorities they consult.

Contesting Fundamentalism: The Case of Islamic Education
Florian Pohl, Emory University

The term “fundamentalism” has attained widespread popularity for the comparative study of religious revival. The presentation addresses the difficulties of this term for the sober analysis of contemporary religious phenomena, specifically when applied to Islam. The stereotyping of Islamic education as “fundamentalist” furnishes a case study. Drawing on examples of Islamic education from different geographical contexts, the presentation evaluates the limitations and dangers of “fundamentalism” as a comparative category. Exposing the conceptual shortcomings of this term for the analysis of Islamic education contains the potential for opening up a new and more imaginative discourse on the nature and role of religion in contemporary societies by looking beyond categories such as “fundamentalism” to explore the various ways in which religion’s role in contemporary educational, social, political, and civil life as a whole is conceived.

The Category “Islamic Fundamentalism”: Good for Polemics, Bad for Scholarship?
David Harrington Watt, Temple University

In this paper, I will advance eight distinct arguments concerning the category 'Islamic fundamentalism.' These arguments are based a careful reading of texts concerning 'fundamentalism' that were published in England and the United States in the years between July 1, 1920 and the present. It seems quite likely, then the category 'Islamic fundamentalism' is so flexible, so vague, and so polemical, that it is no longer of much use to scholars. It is nothing more than a dead metaphor.

Rethinking the “Fundamentals” of Fundamentalism: Dualism, Literalism, Golden Age-ism
Simon Wood, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

This paper examines the prevailing model of religious fundamentalism, which dates from the 1970s, finds paradigmatic expression in the Fundamentalism Project (1991-95), and is adopted in innumerable recent books on modern Islam. The paper suggests that the thought of prominent “fundamentalist” thinkers frequently fails to conform to the model, and critiques various efforts to uphold the model in spite of such incongruities. It also suggests that the model imposes a monolith on diversity, and that therefore a variety of terms might be more useful than the homogenizing “fundamentalist.”

    A19-16

Study of Judaism Section

Theme: Medieval, Modern, and Contemporary Kabbalah

In These Empty Fools One May Find Bells of Gold: Wise Fools and Revelation in Spanish Kabbalah
Yechiel Shalom Goldberg, California State University, Long Beach

Proceeding from the premise that thirteenth century Spanish Kabbalah is, at least in part, a medieval extension of the biblical wisdom tradition, this paper will explore the identity of the kabbalist as a wise fool in two kabbalistic sources, the writings of Azriel of Gerona and the Zohar. Azriel’s portrayal of the psychological conditions for acquiring wisdom and the process by which a person becomes wise will be analyzed. The relationship between this portrayal of the personality of the wise person and the Zohar’s dramatic portrayal of the relationship between hidden wise people and fools will be examined. These portrayals of the kabbalist as wise fool will be compared to contemporary Christian models of the wise fool as well as models found in the philosophical tradition. This comparison will shed light on this form of Jewish esotericism by illuminating the personality of the person who possesses and transmits wisdom.

The Popularization of Kabbalah in the Early Modern Period and Today: The Case of Women
Chava Weissler, Lehigh University

This paper compares the popularization of Kabbalah in the early modern period and today. In both eras, difficult Hebrew and Aramaic Kabbalistic texts and concepts were adapted and simplified in vernacular materials: Yiddish in the 17th and 18th centuries, and English in the 20th and 21st. Further, in both periods, women, normally excluded from mystical study, became involved in the process of vernacularization, de-canonization, and reshaping of these materials. Rather than asking whether vernacular texts and practices are “valid” Kabbalah by the standards of elite texts, this paper asks what the term “Kabbalah” signifies to the readers of this literature. Further, it interrogates the impact of women’s participation in the mystical tradition for those inside and outside of kabbalistic renewal movements: for some, women’s participation automatically brands a movement as “heretical,” while others see a renewal of Judaism via the incorporation of the feminine.

New Age and Old Judaism in Kabbalah Centre Teachings
Jody Myers, California State University, Northridge

I will examine the selective use of New Age religious concepts in the Kabbalah Centre movement. I am going to focus on three that can be attributed to the founder, Philip Berg: the identity of the present as the Age of Aquarius, his use of New Age 'science,' and his version of universal wisdom. My research is based on an examination of Kabbalah Centre literary sources and participant-observer experience. Berg’s strategic use of New Age concepts, I maintain, is designed to attract different cohorts of spiritual seekers into an acceptance of what is actually a particularistic and conservative ideology. Simultaneously, Berg pioneers a radical new definition of Jewishness. While the Kabbalah Centre’s concept of “Israelite” involves the rejection of an ethnic understanding of Jewishness in favor of universalism, it does not mean the end of hierarchy within the community or within humanity; it simply draws new boundaries.

Spheres of Influence: The Portrayal and Functions of Kabbalistic Cosmogony, Cosmology, and Magic in Contemporary Speculative Fiction and Sequential Art
Andrea Lobel, McGill University

Jewish mystical and supernatural themes have long been an integral part of mainstream Jewish literature. Given their emphases on futuristic or fantastic worlds, the genres of speculative fiction and the medium of sequential art (or, Bande Dessinée) have also come to incorporate Jewish mysticism, including Kabbalah. In this presentation, I discuss several representative fictional works, including Dante’s Equation, by Jane Jensen, The Red Magician, by Lisa Goldstein, The Tribe, by Bari Wood, Joann Sfar’s The Rabbi’s Cat, Tauf Aleph, by Phyllis Gottlieb, and Promethea, by Alan Moore. My contention is that, within these post-Holocaust stories, there is a progressive move away from an association of Jewishness with victimization and otherness, or outsider status, toward the birth of the image of the Jew as a powerful kabbalist trained in mystical self-defense, and finally, toward the emergence of a positive, balanced representation of Jewishness and its power, as symbolized by kabbalistic imagery.

    A19-17

African Religions Group and Religions, Medicines, and Healing Group

Theme: African Religions, Healing, and HIV/AIDS

This session will address challenges facing African communities in relation to rethinking traditional religious values and practices in relation to HIV/AIDS, and to health delivery systems in relation to traditional practitioners and African Indigenous Religions. Gendered dimensions will be explored through the case illustration of female spiritual healers.

Conflict in Religio-Cultural Values and Practices in African and Western Communities in the Age of the HIV/AIDS Pandemic
Tapiwa Mucherera, Asbury Theological Seminary

In this paper, I argue that there is need for the African community to re-assess some of the borrowed western ethical values and practices being enforced today, as well as re-assess some of the African traditional values and practices in the face of HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Healing and the East African Patient: Promises and Challenges of Religious Faith-Medical Treatment Collaboration
Jame Schaefer, Marquette University

Interest in the effects on patients when their religious faith is factored into the treatment process has grown recently in medical and nursing schools throughout the United States. Researchers have investigated various aspects of the religious faith-medical treatment relationship, identifying positive and negative religious coping strategies that patients have used, encouraging the development of religion-medicine courses in health care training programs, and discerning appropriate types of spiritual or religious histories to take when patients need prolonged care or face terminal diseases. This presentation will provide an overview of research on the medical treatment-religious faith and spirituality relationship in relation to East Africans patients, their religious approaches to healing, health care providers, and caregivers. I will address challenges to bringing about collaboration, and outline a research agenda in which scholars of religions practiced in East Africa can engage, to facilitate positive religious coping during the treatment process and facing terminal illnesses.

Women of the Spirit: Prophetesses and Healing in Contemporary Harare
Anna Chitando, Zimbabwe Open University

As Zimbabwe's healing delivery system began to struggle in the mid 1990s, there was a notable increase in faith healing. This paper explores the importance of female spiritual healers in Harare. It uses gender analysis to capture their contribution to healing. The paper argues that prophetesses appear to be more sensitive to feminine issues. The paper also pursues the question of how the economic situation has expanded the healing sphere. Prophetesses bless passports, foreign currency dealers and cross-border traders. It concludes with an analysis of the meaning of health in a context characterised by hyper inflation and uncertainty.

An Ancient Faith Meets a Contemporary Challenge: African Indigenous Religions and HIV and AIDS
Ezra Chitando, University of Zimbabwe

The religions of Africa should play a key role in addressing HIV and AIDS. While the efforts of the churches have been documented, African Indigenous Religions (AIRs) have only received blame and condemnation. African Christian theologians, Western donors and other actors often accuse AIRs of promoting harmful cultural practices that aid the spread of HIV. This study seeks to offer a more balanced perspective by highlighting positive aspects of AIRs in the wake of HIV and AIDS. The first section provides an overview of the "religion and AIDS" discourse. The section outlines critiques of AIRs in the era of HIV and AIDS. The third section describes positive ideas and practices that are relevant to the struggle against HIV and AIDS. A concluding section brings the study to a close.

    A19-18

Anthropology of Religion Group and Ritual Studies Group

Theme: That Can't Be Religion—They're Having Fun! Sex, Laughter, Leisure, and Games in Religious Practice

Liminal Transgressions at the New Year's Festival in Zanzibar
Magnus Echtler, University of Bayreuth

Obscene songs are a new form of liminal transgression within the New Year’s festival in Makunduchi, Zanzibar. The women and men who sing these songs are criticized for their inventions, but they continue to enjoy the creative freedom provided by the liminal context of the festival. The singing of obscene songs is both conservative and innovative. It reproduces the structural division of the town into opposing moieties. But it also introduced a new theme: gender relations. This innovation is responsible for the success of the festival on the regional level. The songs form part of the ongoing reconstruction of Zanzibar national identity in the discursive tensions between urban and rural, modern and traditional, reformist and local Islam.

Playing at Syncretism: New Rituals in a Brazilian Catholic Women’s Group
Steven Engler, Mount Royal College and Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo

Drawing on recent fieldwork, this paper describes the rituals of a women's prayer group in Brazil. At two levels, the play/non-play boundary helps maintain the social space of this 'Catholic' group that practices 'a little of everything.' (1) The diocese accepts this syncretistic lay group as Catholic because its unorthodox elements are seen as playing at religion: false doctrine and infantile spirituality, but good practice. (2) Moments of laughter and fun diffuse potential tensions arising from the group's diversity. I define syncretism in terms of meaning making and intelligibility, where social/religious boundaries offer leverage for relations of power (Benavides). In this context, Droogers argues that the 'as-if' of play allows religious actors to combine disparate domains of meaning. I extend this by arguing that negotiations over the play/non-play distinction itself are fundamental to the 'like but unlike' of syncretism, and in religion’s work at boundaries more generally (Tweed).

Being “Saved” — Being Children: Symbolic Prescriptions and Ritual Proscriptions of Pleasure and Play in a Storefront Pentecostal Church
Deidre H. Crumbley, North Carolina State University

There are many forms of Pentecostalism, but they share a central belief in indwelling spirit, manifested through speaking in tongues and in a life of piety and perfection. Boundaries between the sacred and profane are associated with prescribed and proscribed behavior codes with which not only adults but also their offspring are expected to comply. This paper explores both the “shall nots” and the “shalls” that circumscribe and validate leisure time, especially as they apply to children. This paper first explores how notions of “indwelling spirit” and of “being chosen” sacralize leisure and play; then it examines ways sacred spaces serves as arenas of pleasurable performance and embodied joy. The case study is a female-founded storefront “sanctified” church in Philadelphia where most members had immigrated as part of the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North between World War I and II.

Ritualizing Religious Reward: The Dark Side of Play
Nikki Bado-Fralick, Iowa State University

Although the manufacture of religious games and toys is a burgeoning industry, with sales doubling yearly and new titles and lines being added all the time, the significance of religious games and toys has been little studied. This is a peculiar oversight, considering the number and types of issues that are potentially raised: among them the uneasy intersections of fun and family entertainment with competition and commercialism, and the oversimplification and reduction of complex religious beliefs and embodied practices to easily memorized scriptural sound bytes and ritualized, but restricted, forms of play. The authors of this paper attempt to address this oversight by exploring aspects of the “dark side of play”—what happens when religious reward is ritualized through competitive play—by using works by Grimes, Myerhoff, Turner, and Schechner to explore the connections between aspects of ritual, play, and performance.

Ritualizing Religious Reward: The Dark Side of Play
Rebecca Sachs Norris, Merrimack College

co-presenter with Nikki Bado-Fralick

    A19-19

Bible in Racial, Ethnic, and Indigenous Communities Group

Theme: Biblical Scholarship and/as Public Criticism

We believe that the meeting of the AAR in Washington, DC offers an important opportunity to reflect on the issue of biblical criticism and/as public criticism. How has biblical interpretation influenced public policy affecting racial, ethnic minority and indigenous communities? How have racial, ethnic minority and indigenous biblical scholars functioned as public intellectuals? How has biblical criticism become a form of public discourse impacting our communities? These and many other questions will be addressed in 10 minutes position statements by each of the panel’s presenters.

    A19-20

Buddhist Philosophy Group

Theme: Re-Thinking Reason, Re-Viewing Buddhist Views

For Buddhist philosophers, what is "reason," and how do they employ it? And once reason is in place, what view of reality does it lead Buddhist thinkers to defend? Finally, how do we distinguish those view such that Buddhist thinkers fall into one "school" or another? This session addresses these closely allied questions, ranging from foundational figures in India to great adepts in Tibet.

On What Do We Rely When We Rely on Reasoning?
Richard Nance, Ann Arbor, MI

In Buddhist texts authored in Indian and Tibetan traditions of scholasticism, one is regularly directed to check one's understanding against 'scripture and reasoning.' To date, however, comparatively little attention has been given to the usage of the latter term of this pair (Skt. yukti, Tib. rigs pa) in Indian Buddhist texts. Building on the work of Scherrer-Schaub, Kapstein and others, this paper discusses divergent glosses of the term yukti as found in texts such as the the Vyākhyāyukti, the Tattvasamgraha(pañjikā), the Samdhinirmocana, the Yogācārabhūmi, and the Abhidharmasamuccaya(bhāşya). By highlighting continuities and discontinuities in these accounts, I hope to stimulate reflection on the ways in which our assumptions regarding reasoning--and, by extension, what is to count as 'Buddhist philosophy'--are represented in, and perhaps contested by, thematizations offered within the tradition.

A Rose by Any Other Name? Doxographical Classification in Indian Texts

of the "Later Period" of Indian Buddhism
David Vincent Fiordalis, University of Michigan

This paper examines doxographical categories in some Indian and Indian Buddhist texts of the "later period" and compares them with categories found in early Tibetan texts. Paying particular attention to the basic fourfold classification of Buddhist philosophical schools into Vaibhāşika, Sautrāntika, Madhyamaka and Yogācāra, it seeks to address the question of whether or not Indian and Tibetan sources of this period constitute a common tradition of interpretation and draw upon a common vocabulary. Arguing that there are some significant commonalities among them, it proceeds to raise some questions about using these doxographical categories for understanding the development of Indian Buddhism and what it might mean to talk in terms of Buddhist "schools of thought."

Slicing the Pie Alternatively: Śakya mchog ldan on Divisions of the Mahayānā Tenet Systems
Yaroslav Komarovski, University of Virginia

Śākya mchog ldan argues that the views of Yogācarā Madhyamaka and Nihsvabhavavāda Madhyamaka are different, and this is why he accepts them as subdivisions of Madhyamaka. Nevertheless, that distinction is not drawn at the level of an Arya's experience in meditation on the ultimate; instead, the distinction pertains to the way one sees the world after arising out of meditation. Indeed, for Śākya mchog ldan, the Yogācarā and Nihsvabhavavāda Aryas realize the same view during meditation. Therefore, the fundamental difference between the two is indeed very subtle: it lies not in the experience of the meditative equipoise, but in the way that experience is described after the arya leaves that meditative state. By using this tool — stating difference on the level of conceptual description and oneness on the level of direct realization — Śākya mchog ldan claims that the views of the different systems are both different and compatible.

Heterodox Doxography? The Philosophical Stance of Kun Mkhyen kLong Chen Rab ’Byams Pa
Albion Butters, Columbia University

This paper will explore the largely unrecognized scholastic contributions of one of Tibet’s greatest thinkers, kLong chen rab ’byams pa (1308-1363), through the lens of his doxographic overview of Buddhist tenet-systems (the Precious Treasury of Spiritual Systems, or Grub mtha’ mdzod). Specific focus on the third chapter of this work will expose particularities involved with kLong chen pa’s interpretation of Buddhism’s two-reality theory in relation to the Svātantrika and Prāsangika schools of Madhyamaka philosophy, such as his assertion that ultimate truth withstands analysis. It will also investigate kLong chen pa’s move to identify the Third Turning of the Wheel as definitive while simultaneously presenting the view of Prāsangika-Madhyamaka as the apotheosis of the various dialectical vehicles.

    A19-21

Chinese Religions Group

Theme: Violence and the Body in Late Imperial China

This panel explores a spectrum of body practices through the lens of self-inflicted violence as a constitutive element in late imperial Chinese religions. It posits that violent body practices perpetuate the forceful discourses of filiality, piety, loyalty, and sanctity, but also give expression to various civilizing and demonizing processes that are fundamental to mainstream culture. These practices are patterned in a way that is analogous to the patterning of the social body. Each presenter theorizes the implications of these practices for a broader understanding and deeper appreciation of the role of violence in Chinese history.

Letters from an Immortal: Religion, Gender, and Body Practices in Sixteenth-Century China
Ann Waltner, University of Minnesota

This paper focuses on the practices of fasting and seclusion of Tanyangzi, a woman who was a religious teacher, visionary, and saint in sixteenth-century Suzhou. It attends specifically to issues of gender and bodily religious practice. It also contrasts attitudes toward gender and bodily practices in two different kinds of material about Tanyangzi. One is a set of published sources (a biography and letters by her disciples) on Tanyangzi. The other is a series of unpublished letters which purport to be by Tanyangzi herself together with a frontispiece painting of Tanyangzi by You Qiu, now held in the Palace Museum in Beijing. The paper will conclude with some general observations about fasting and seclusion as religious practice.

Piety, Passion, and Blood Writing in the Late Ming
Jimmy Yu, Princeton University

This paper contextualizes blood writing (xieshu), the practice of copying or writing texts with one’s own blood, in the mainstream culture of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century China. Examining the privately published anthologies and Buddhist canonical works on blood memorials and blood scriptures by scholar-officials and Buddhist clerics, the author argues that blood writing was a practice that synthesized and transcended the distinction between the material and the symbolic. Blood writing cannot be reduced to either an ascetic act or an externalization of some internal ideal. On the one hand, it was a concrete practice that involved the physical maiming of one’s body. On the other hand, it also conveyed some of the implications of mainstream Confucian values, such as piety, filiality, and loyalty, albeit in extreme form. Blood writing was both shaped by late imperial cultural values and it contributed to the shaping of such values.

Violated Bodies: How Guanyin Became a Domesticated Demon
Mark Meulenbeld, Princeton University

This paper provides an alternative view of Guanyin's Chinese 'domestication,' which typically argues that the originally Buddhist, male deity became Confucianized and feminized. The author argues instead that the historical changes in Guanyin's portrayal can also be understood as an apotheosis resembling the containment and canonization of threatening demonic gods (ligui). The argument offers a structural interpretation of Princess Miaoshan's practice of self-maiming, her premature death, and her ambiguous status as an orphan soul (guhun). The paper sheds light on other issues as well, including the mechanisms for dealing with unnatural, violent deaths and the process of deification, how tales of self-sacrifice were produced, and the significance of self-inflicted violence and the violation of the physical boundaries of the body.

    A19-22

Comparative Theology Group

Theme: The Body, Its Meanings, and New Light on the Problems and Possibilities of Comparative Theology

Comparative Theology can be explored with attention to method; see our sessions on the Comparative Religious Ideas Project, and with the Comparative Study of Religion Section and Comparative Ethics on the nature and finality of comparative projects. But comparative theology necessarily flourishes in specifics, experimental analyses, and conversations bringing specific bodies of learning together in conversation. This session boldly brings together four diverse kinds of reflection on materiality and body: 1. the body of Krsna as avatara compared with the incarnation of Christ; 2. Maximos the Confessor and Tibetan reformer Tsong kha pa regarding divine embodiment; 3. the temporal durability and materiality of Jesus as Son of God and of the holy Qur’an as actualizing the transcendent in a sacred specific “textual body;" 4. metaphors of fluidity and the body in Mechthild of Magdeburg and Lalla of Kashmir, for both of whom all reality participates in a cosmic flow.

Krsna and Christ: A Comparative Study Concerning the Body-Soul-Divine Relation in the Manusi Tanu (Human Form) of Bhagavadgita 9.11
Steven Tsoukalas, Centre College

This paper compares the doctrines of the body-divine relation in the person of Krsnavatara (Krsna in his avatara state) in the thought of Sankara and Ramanuja with the incarnation of Christ as represented by traditional christological formulations. Comparison is also made between Sankara and Ramanuja. The study also draws out comparative theological and soteriological implications. The paper first examines the ontologies of Sankara and Ramanuja so that, second, an accurate comparison of body-divine relation in avatara and incarnation might be accomplished. A result of this paper is a demonstration that some popularly-held similarities between avatara and incarnation are at best superficial, and that therefore careful consideration of ontologies provides the necessary foundation from which to launch comparison of the body-divine relation in the persons of Krsna and Christ.

The Cosmic Christ and the Dharmakāya: Embodied Manifestations of the Cosmic Order in Maximos the Confessor and Tsong Kha Pa
Thomas Cattoi, Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley

The purpose of this paper is to lay the foundations for a comparative theology of divine embodiment, using insights from the Greek Father Maximos the Confessor and the Tibetan thinker and monastic reformer Tsong

kha pa. Despite their radically different cultural and theological backgrounds, these two authors developed a surprisingly similar theology of divine embodiment, if this term is used to indicate the Christian mystery of the incarnation as well as the Mahāyāna doctrine of the Buddha bodies. In the course of this paper, I will discuss a number of excerpts from Maximos’ Ambigua and Tsong kha pa’s Lam rin chen mo, highlighting the points of contact and the differences between two approaches. I will conclude offering a few constructive considerations as to the shape of a possible contextual Christology, which would articulate the Christian teaching of the incarnation using resources from Tibetan philosophy and culture.

Recitation of the Qur’an and the Incarnation of Christ: Possibilities for Global Society
Peter deVries, University of Pittsburgh

Societies based on human institutions are inherently inequitable. The manifestation of transcendence offers the possibility for an egalitarian global society. But these manifestations are inherently temporal, unable to provide a stable foundation for a non-subordinating society. However, Islam and Christianity each claim events that are temporally durable. The incarnation of Christ is the primary event of manifestation for Christians. The eventfulness of the incarnation continues if the incarnational body has not been destroyed and continues to present itself, in any of several possible ways. For Muslims, the Qur’an actualizes the transcendent in a text. Recitation of the Qur’an allows the event of revelation to continue if we accept a theory of unified reading. Both the incarnation of Christ and the recitation of the Qur’an offer the possibility of a continuing actualization of the transcendent, although each presents difficulties.

Flowing and Crossing: The Fluid Theologies of Mechthild and Lalla
Michelle Voss Roberts, Rhodes College

Metaphors of fluidity are pervasive in the theologies of Mechthild of Magdeburg and Lalla of Kashmir. This paper highlights the various ways in which body can flow with and into the divine. For both thinkers, the universe and individuals proceed from a cosmic or divine flow and return to it by means of practices that participate in that flow. Their water metaphors diverge when the individual soul returns to the divine: Mechthild retains images of water, while Lalla converts to those of breath. This shift of imagery, I suggest, marks a difference of theological position on suffering as obstacle or means of participation in the divine flow.

    A19-23

Hinduism Group

Theme: Engaged/ Progressive/ Liberation Hinduism and Hindus

This panel aims to see how our understanding of Hinduism might shift, in terms of both contemporary and historical movements, if we intentionally adopt the interpretive lens of social justice. This project is explicit that the ways we shape our initial questions shape subsequent findings, and that such research can shape the understandings of Hinduism by Hindus and others. We borrow our model from three areas: (1) liberation theology (in all its forms); (2) engaged Buddhism; and (3) the Progressive Muslims project. The papers in this panel address movements, institutions, and people working from a more or less explicitly Hindu perspective on issues of social justice. Our hope is that this panel can help initiate a new direction in scholarship on Hinduism, and religions in and of South Asia more generally.

Progressive Hindus and the California Textbook Controversy
Vijaya Nagarajan, University of San Francisco

This paper explores the current controversy on the Hindu textbook issue in California. First, it reviews the current representation of Hinduism in California textbooks and the political repercussions of the Education Commission in California responding to certain Hindu community groups. What were the changes that some Hindu groups in America were demanding? What were these changes based on? On what kinds of histories and knowledges are the members of the Hindu community basing their suggestions for changes? What are the range of groups and associations who “represent” Hinduism in the United States and India? This paper also has some ethnographic fieldwork within Hindu communities in the west coast, especially in Northern California, where the issue of the Hindu textbook is particularly charged and contested. This paper explores and outlines what may be necessary for a “progressive” Hinduism to emerge in California, especially at the rhetorical level.

Hinduism as Spiritual Humanism: The Pluralistic Vision of the Ramakrishna Mission
Jeffery D. Long, Elizabethtown College

This paper explores the vision for Hinduism implicit in the religious pluralism of the Ramakrishna Mission. The main emphasis of this paper is upon the Ramakrishna tradition’s potential to act as a counterweight to Hindutva through its teaching of religious pluralism, a teaching traceable to Ramakrishna’s teaching that all religions are paths to the same goal. This is a doctrine that has rarely been articulated in a systematic or philosophically consistent manner and has evoked much criticism both from the Hindu right and from non-Hindus. The central aim of this paper is to suggest ways in which the Ramakrishna tradition’s pluralism can be re-articulated in such a way as to avoid the kind of criticism to which it has been subject and enable the tradition to more fully realize its progressive alternative vision for Hinduism.

Devotion, Sadhana, and Social Action
Ramdas Lamb, University of Hawaii, Manoa

The interaction of religious beliefs and social engagement has long been a part of the Hindu tradition, although seldom perceived or discussed in the West. Part of the reason is our use of Western academic and religious paradigms, based on the Abrahamic traditions, to understand religious social involvement. These attitudes cloud our ability to perceive the prevalence of social action in Hinduism, especially in the devotional schools. Although such activism has often been a part of a larger fundamentalist push at proselytization and conversion, other forces promoting social activism within these traditions have included a questioning and critique the orthodoxy of the traditions themselves, and this reality ameliorates the overall way in which they are perceived. My paper discusses how the role of social engagement in Hinduism both as it has played out in the past as well as examples of it in contemporary times in India and the West.

Marxism and Feminism Meet Hindu Ritual: Liberation Theology Revisited and Revisioned
Corinne Dempsey, University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point

The Rush temple in upstate New York does not run soup kitchens or outreach programs for the poor and disenfranchised. Quite the opposite, its offerings to the goddess are most often expensive and ostentatious; its excessive showiness makes some visitors uncomfortable. Yet, as this paper argues, the Sri Lankan guru/priest who leads the temple has created a hotbed for social justice -- both in theory and practice. This proclivity for equal rights becomes most apparent when practitioners--regardless of gender, caste, and ethnic backgrounds--regularly and publicly perform elaborate pujas and homam rituals at the temple. This paper discusses theories and rationales behind these practices, many of which are informed by remnants of the guru's early affinity for Marxism (that, as he understands it, was exchanged for religious conviction in his early twenties) and by the Shaiva-Shakta tantric tradition to which he belongs.

    A19-24

Law, Religion, and Culture Group and Biblical Law Section

Theme: Law and Cultural Narratives

Alfred the Great and the Law of Exodus: The Afterlife of Biblical Law in Early Medieval England
F. Rachel Magdalene, Augustana College

This paper will explore the afterlife of the laws of Exodus in early medieval English law. In particular, it will study the intersection of the Decalogue and Covenant Code with the law code of Alfred the Great who ruled the southern Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex from about 871 C.E. to 899 C.E. Alfred used prior Anglo-Saxon law codes, the Decalogue, and the certain provisions of the Covenant Code to write what is considered by many to be the first law code of England. This paper will compare and contrast the legal provisions of the Decalogue and the Covenant Code with Alfred’s legal provisions and then offer an analysis of Alfred’s interpretations of these important biblical texts. The methods used will be drawn from biblical narrative criticism, biblical cultural criticism, and legal history.

Members Only: The Crushed, Cut, and Tolerated in Deuteronomy 23:1-8
Jione Havea, Southern Methodist University

This paper focuses on Deut 23:1–8, a text that determines who can join YHWH’s assembly according to the state of his testicles, penis, parentage, and racial background, and reads it alongside cultural narratives involving eunuchs (e.g., the book of Esther, following Randall Bailey’s reading), bastards (a term, according to Driver, referring to both offspring born out of wedlock and offspring of an incestuous [or prohibited] union as in the stories of the Ammonites and Moabites), and outcasts who may be tolerated (e.g., the stories of people in the so-called mission field who are now being embraced). From a postcolonial perspective, the contention is that, in the Pacific Island context, people who were once rejected are now embraced, as the Edomites and Egyptians are tolerated in Deut 23:7–18, but they are troubled by what may be waiting beyond the initial moments of their being tolerated.

Biblical Law, American Law: A Typology of Tactics for the “Restoration” of Conservative Christian Normativity in the United States
Ipsita Chatterjea, Vanderbilt University

Within conservative Christianity in the United States today, the understanding of the rightful relationship between civic and criminal law and biblical normativity manifests itself in a variety of ways. This paper will examine contemporary rhetoric regarding the relationship between biblical law and “American law” (American criminal, civil, and constitutional law). The following questions will be asked: how are biblical and American law spoken of in relation to one another; and what are the strategies and legal tactics utilized and how do they vary in response to events? The underlying thesis is that, while there is a great heterogeneity of positions within conservative Christianity on the relationship between biblical law and American law, one objective remains the same, that is, a restoration (that presumes loss) of something akin to Christian biblical normativity as law.

The Biblical Defense of Slavery
Paul Finkelman, Albany Law School

This paper will explore the use of biblical law to defend slavery in the antebellum American South. At a time when a literal reading of the Bible was prevalent in Protestant denominations, debates concerning the issue of slavery raised crucial questions about the relevance of the Bible and biblical law to the circumstances of the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. In addition, questions were raised about the relationship between theology and biblical interpretation and the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament. This paper will trace the manner in which slavery was defended as biblically-based and the theological and cultural tensions that resulted.

    A19-25

Lesbian-Feminist Issues and Religion Group

Theme: Survival and Liberation: Religious Lesbian Womanists/Feminists Challenge Faith Communities

I, Too, Sing Songs of Freedom
Dorinda G. Henry, National Center for Human Rights Education

This paper gives voice to the hopes and fears for the Black Church and its same-and-both-gender-loving members. There is (1) hope of reconnecting as a community of faith, a community of distinct sociopolitical and historical suffering-and-rejection and oppression; (2) hope of healing, growth and reconciliation; and (3) hope for personal, cultural and theological emancipation for both the Black Church and its same-and-both-gender-loving members. This paper attempts to “break bread” with the Black Church, so that we may, together, care for and mend our personal and spiritual wounds as well as our wounded Church, that it might once again be that institution of liberation from all forms of oppression. The three sections of the argument are: (1) Slavery and Oppression, (2) Pride and Prejudice, and (3) Reconciliation, Transformation and Emancipation. The scholars whose works inform these arguments include Paul Tillich, James Cone, Jon Sobrino, Cornel West, Deitrich Bonhoeffer, and Harold Fowler.

Living Fully into Who We Are Called to Be, or, Why Our Silence(s) Still Do Not Protect Us
Frances E. Wood, Emory University

Within African American women’s history the late 19th – early 20th century ‘culture of dissemblance’ played a critical role in Black women’s survival. One of the aspects that characterized such an approach was the promulgation of an implicitly monolithic representation of respectability that foreclosed examination and discussion of the significant differences among the lives of Black women. This paper examines a residue of dissemblance in the lives of twenty-first century African American women, placing monolithic constructions in contestation with the significant differences that inhere intra-communally. These similarities and differences will be examined within the framework of the intersectionality, and the implications that silences surrounding difference have for the survival and liberation of Black women in the U. S.

    A19-26

New Religious Movements Group

Theme: Coming of Age: Adaptation and Change in New Religions

New religions are, almost by definition, adaptive organizations, however well or poorly that works out in the history and development of particular groups. This session will consider the question of adaptation from a number of different perspectives: generational, diasporic, legal, and philosophical.

Youth Then and Now: A Comparison between Converts to NRMs in the 1970s and Their Now-Adult Children, Socialised in the Movement
Eileen Vartan Barker, London School of Economics

Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, and taking the Unification Church as a primary (though not exclusive) example, this paper compares the youth who converted in the 1970s with their children who were brought up in their movement, some of whom have now left, some of whom are now committed missionaries, and some of whom vacillate between the movement and the ‘outside.’ Issues addressed include the difference it makes whether one is converting into or out of an NRM, and the changes in methods that NRMs have adopted between, initially, attracting youth into their movement and, subsequently, keeping them in it.

“I Conjure You Up by The Powers Of India. Appear Before My Eyes!": Constructing Images of India and Producing Hindu Spiritual Power in Popular Ghanaian Religious Discourse
Albert K. Wuaku, Florida International University

This paper demonstrates the agency of Ghanaian people in appropriating Hinduism. I show how popular Ghanaian interpretations of three genres of narratives inform the meanings attached to Hindu symbols that flow into Ghana as part of a global circulation, and produce a wonder-working religious power image of India and Hinduism. This image of India and Hinduism is inspiring a wave of indigenous Ghanaian Hinduism. The paper contributes to the discourse on African agency in the appropriation of the emerging global culture. Far from being passive victims to the dislocations of globalization Ghanaians exercise their agency in selectively and creatively appropriating globally circulating symbols, [in this case Hinduism] and investing these with indigenous meanings of power, in order to regain control over their lives.

The 1951 Fraudulent Mediums Act: Rediscovering Key Events in Pagan Historiography
Helen Cornish, Goldsmiths College, University of London

In 2001 Pagans in Britain gathered to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Fraudulent Mediums Act; this Act had repealed the 1736 Witchcraft Act and removed the concept of witchcraft from the British Statutes. For many Witches and Wiccans, 1951 was identified as a historical marker for state recognition of Witchcraft and regularly referred to the 1951 Act as the ‘legalisation of witchcraft’. Others were wary of mythologizing the impact of legislation that had Spiritualist concerns at its heart, but appreciated the value of a symbolic community event that raised the profile of British Paganism for political and ideological purposes. The ways this key event was commemorated illustrates how events are selectively reshaped in order to establish shared histories for new communities. This paper examines these crucial issues in the context of Pagan historiographies, and considers broader concerns regarding the public profile and recognition of Paganism in Britain in 2001.

Alexander Dugin’s Apocalyptic Traditionalism
Mark J. Sedgwick, American University, Cairo

Alexander Dugin, a former Soviet dissident, is now the leading Russian exponent of Traditionalism, a religious philosophy established by René Guénon. The paper sketches Dugin’s activities–which include a religio-philosophical academy, a youth movement, and followers undergoing paramilitary training–and then explores the relationship between them and the religious aspects of Dugin’s traditionalism. Three elements are identified as being particularly important. One is the understanding of modernity in terms of the kali yuga, the Hindu final age. Another is the existential commitment to political action for the sake of its spiritual value that Dugin derives from Guénon, Nietzsche, and Evola. Finally comes Dugin’s conviction that apocalyptic conflict between the United States and the Eurasian world (centered on Russia) is inevitable and even desirable. This gives a certain edge to his political activities, and helps match his views with those of his admirers in the Kremlin, where anti-Americanism is increasingly acute.

    A19-27

Platonism and Neoplatonism Group

Theme: Hierarchy in Neoplatonism

The Social Context of Jewish Middle-platonic Discourse about Hierarchy
Naomi Janowitz, University of California, Davis

Philo’s concept of his audience included notions of hierarchy; some of his readers were worthy of his deep insights and some not. E.R. Goodenough argued that some of Philo’s comments were meant to be restricted to Jews, though Philo does not state this directly. This model implies that Jews represent a higher level in the human hierarchy than non-Jews. While Goodenough’s argument has not been widely accepted, the fact remains that Philo makes elitist claims that presuppose both a human and divine hierarchy. It should be possible to re-examine Philo’s writings and develop a new conceptualization of Philo’s unique way of correlating the hierarchy of knowledge with the more general human, and even divine hierarchy. This will give us important information about the interconnection between philosophical claims to special elitist traditions and how they are and are not evidence of the world of social competition.

Sacred Races: Iamblichus and Porphyry on Ethnic Hierarchy
Philippa Townsend, Princeton University

In De Mysteriis, Iamblichus assumes the persona of Abamon, an Egyptian priest, as he responds to the inquiries of his former teacher, Porphyry. In this paper, I suggest that Iamblichus's identification with Abamon goes beyond the traditional Greek veneration of "barbarian wisdom." In his text, Iamblichus actually inverts the established hierarchy of Greek over barbarian, by challenging Porphyry's assumption of the universality of Hellenic culture and asserting instead the universal value of particular ethnic traditions. This is not to deny Iamblichus's dependence on Greek philosophy, but rather to make a claim about his self-conscious stance towards Hellenism. This paper, then, places the philosophers' differences with respect to the role of the "sacred races" within the context of both their philosophical and cultural perspectives.

The Interpretation of Neoplatonic Hierarchy by Renaissance and Baroque Artists
Naoko Frances Hioki, Graduate Theological Union

The subject of this presentation is the interpretation of hierarchy in western art. It tries to show that the artists did not always present the hierarchy as "elitist," but often they presented it as an "inclusive" vision of a unified cosmos. There are especially interesting examples of "inclusive" hierarchy from Renaissance and Baroque art, where the heavenly and the earthly are united as one dynamic whole. Among them, the presentation will focus on Cathedra Petri (completed in 1666) by Bernini in St. Peter's, Rome and will demonstrate that this artwork represents the unfolding of hierarchy in the form on concentric circles. Bernini was familiar with the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius and through his famous "glory of angels" in Cathedra Petri, he visualized the imparting of the Godhead, the overflowing of love into the cosmos and the return of all beings to the divine unity in glory.

Running and Returning: Habad Hasidism on Bodily Divestment and the Subsequent Implementation of Divinity in the Lower World
Israel M. Sandman, University of Chicago

In HaBaD (alt. “Chabad”) Hasidism, divine absoluteness and unity are cognized, contemplated, and internalized. This entails a dialectical process in which the individuated self, the body, and matter are first negated and transcended, because they obscure their divine source, and then transformed and redeemed as means of implementing the divine source even in the lower world. This transformation is a daily process, beginning with an incremental “running,” i.e. step-by-step divestment from the individuated self, body, and matter, towards the higher, divine world of unity. This takes place by means of mystical contemplation during the daily prayer rites prescribed by Jewish law. At the apex of the “running” comes a self-transformational mystical union. With the transformative power of union, the “return” to the lower world of individuated selves, bodies, and matter can begin, all entities can be redeemed as expressions

    A19-28

Practical Theology Group

Theme: Reviewing Educating Clergy: Teaching Practices and Pastoral Imagination, Charles R. Foster, Lisa E. Dahill, Lawrence A. Golemon, and Barbara Wang Tolentino (Jossey-Bass, 2005)

Educating Clergy is the first book in a series of comparative studies by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching that examines how members of different professions are educated. "It has never been more evident," asserts William Sullivan of Carnegie, "that public as well as private life in America is powerfully shaped by traditions of faith commitments and religious observance. This study was born out of the conviction that the organized clergy plays a central, though unofficial, role in many aspects of national life." Based on extensive literary and field research in Roman Catholic, mainline and evangelical Protestant, and Reform and Conservative Jewish seminaries, Educating Clergy explores the influence of historic traditions and academic settings in contemporary classroom and communal pedagogies. The book describes elements in classroom pedagogies that distinctively integrate the cognitive, practical, and normative apprenticeships to be found in all forms of professional education.

    A19-29

Religion and Ecology Group

Theme: Religion from the Ground Up: Religious Reflections on Place

Eternal Foundations or Contested Grounds? The (Ab)Use of Nature and God in Political Discourse Surrounding the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Whitney Bauman, Graduate Theological Union

‘God’ and ‘Nature’ can serve as “god tricks” in political discourse (Haraway). They can serve as epistemological foundations beyond which questions cannot be asked. They set up confrontational methods for approaching ethical issues and knowledge debates. I argue that neither foundationalism nor relativism is helpful in political discourse surrounding environmental issues because these approaches avoid their eco-context. In this way, ethical commands or epistemological claims can be asserted regardless of the specific context of a given situation. In order to give this methodology for dialogue some texture, I analyze the debates surrounding the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Politicians and activists on all sides of the issue make foundational claims based on ‘God’ or ‘Nature’. Through looking at these ways in which foundational values clash yet never gain traction in any context, I also offer a constructive method whereby a many-sided argument can take place on this contested territory.

Rural Redemption: The Family Farm as Sacred Place in the American Catholic Agrarian Tradition
Tovis Page, Harvard University

In their introduction to American Sacred Space (1995), David Chidester and Edward Linenthal write that “sacred space anchors a worldview in the world,” but that it “anchors more than merely myth or emotion. It anchors relations of meaning and power that are at stake in the formation of a larger social reality” (17). Presenting ‘the family farm’ as a kind of ‘sacred place’ in American Catholic agrarianism, I will show how it anchors the worldview of Catholic agrarianism in the world. This worldview has assumptions about appropriate human social relations (particularly in regard to sex and gender) as well as human relations to the divine and to the natural world. On both real and ideal levels, the sacred place of ‘the family farm’ in the American Catholic agrarian tradition entails multiple norms and practices through which social, ecological, and religious worlds are variously constructed, challenged, and maintained.

Sacred Place and Spiritual Journey in Ursula Le Guin's Fiction
David L. Barnhill, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh

In many of her science fiction novels, Ursula Le Guin has presented different worlds with a rich sensitivity to the relationship between culture and nature and to political questions of equality, gender, community, and freedom. This paper analyzes the notions of place and journey in three of her novels: The Dispossessed (1974), The Eye of the Hero (1978), and Always Coming Home (1985). Throughout these novels, the notions of place and journey are developed in subtle ways that transcend conventional notions of one’s familiar home and a pilgrimage to a sacred site. In addition, the novels exhibit an increasing significance of ecofeminist spirituality and bioregional sensitivity. The books also are what scholars call critical utopias, in which an ideal society is presented as a compelling critique of conventional society but at the same time is flawed and fluid.

Practicing Place: Comparative Reflections on Urban Intersections of Spirituality, Identity, and Nature
Barbara A.B. Patterson, Emory University

A two year old charter school, serving fifty percent local and fifty percent refugee and immigrant children establishes a community garden as their pedagogical and spiritual commitment. A large research university in the same city develops a foot-path system through its woodlands to encourage learning and sense of belonging and spirituality related to campus and beyond. Local food growers and providers in this same area envision a local food system focused on increased availabillity and awareness of the ethical and spiritual dimensions of eco-justice. Though dramatically diverse, these three communities share an urban ecological system and in each case, thriving involves performances of place. Through preliminary ethnographic fieldwork, this paper examinates how concepts of urban place become performed spiritual and ethical practices. It explores why and how these communities turn to nature as site for such practices, including their power for making meaning of identity and community and supporting agency for change.

    A19-30

Religion, Film, and Visual Culture Group

Theme: Identity, Ritual, and the Sacred in Film

Sacred DNA: Religion and Genetics in Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca
Ronald Green and Aine Donovan, Dartmouth College

Gattaca, Andrew Niccol’s 1997 film depicting life in a genetic dystopia, is widely used in courses dealing with ethics or genetics to raise fundamental questions about the uses of genetic information. Less obvious to the naïve viewer, and to scholars who have written on the film, are its pervasive religious themes. In this paper, against a background of the work of Mary Douglas and others, we develop the many symbolic and structural elements of the film that have religious significance and we consider why it is important to understand the ways in which genetics lends itself to an alliance with religious ideas.

Teaching Crash
Emily Askew, Carroll College

Opening Paul Haggis’ masterpiece Crash, Don Cheadle reflects, “In L.A. nobody touches you...are always behind cement and glass. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just to feel something.” Through collision comes our invitation to feel, care and think about race and responsibility in the twenty-first century. Cheadle’s claim speaks to the state of insulation with which my beginning religious studies students approach studying religion. It speaks to what it takes to get beyond the cement and glass of emotional and intellectually lethargy (animosity) toward other religions/other ways of thinking about religion. Because Crash works so well to destabilize assumptions, it as the first conversation my religious studies students have with ideas of truth, morality and certainty. The film has led to a pedagogy I term “Crash teaching.” In this presentation I explain both ways in which I “teach Crash.”

The Spectator, Gender Performance, and Gnosis in Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Christine Kraemer, Boston University

The Hedwig film presents a transgender character in full gender-malleable glory: as a little boy, an androgynous young man, a transsexual woman, an over-the-top drag queen, and lastly as a gender-ambiguous – but, it is implied – finally authentic self. Using Judith Halberstam’s concept of the “transgender look” and Judith Butler’s notion of drag, this paper will consider how Hedwig confronts the spectator with the reality and universality of gender performance. Special attention will be given to the film’s utopian vision of total gender transcendence, which uses both the Gospel of Philip’s retelling of the Garden of Eden narrative and the “Origin of Love” story from Plato’s Symposium to suggest a solution to those human beings who feel doomed to search the earth for their “other halves.”

Visual Imageries of Ritual Possession and Colonial Mockery: Les Maîtres Fous and the Problem of Reflexive Mimesis in the Filmic Representation of the Hauka Movement
Jens Kreinath, University of Heidelberg

Les Maîtres Fous is a documentary film that is produced by the prominent French anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch in 1956 on the possession ritual of the Hauka movement, which was practiced by Songhay migrants from Niger in Accra, Ghana, during the time of French colonialism. The aim of this paper is to address methodological questions about the visual representation of ritual possession practices through filmic narratives and to interpret them in light of the problem of the reflexive mimesis as derived from this film and its technique. By way of using the concept of the ‘indexes of agency’ as introduced by Alfred Gell, the attempt will be made to analyze the visual imageries of ritual possession and colonial mockery as presented in Les Maîtres Fous and to explore the semiotic implications that these imaginaries can have for the perception and conception of the Hauka movement.

What Hath Vienna to Do with Jerusalem? The Value of Psychoanalytic Film Theory for Religion and Film Scholarship
Kent Brintnall, Emory University

Two recent studies of methodology in religion and film – John Lyden’s Film as Religion and Clive Marsh’s Cinema and Sentiment – reject theoretical approaches informed by psychoanalytic theory and spectatorship studies in favor of ethnographic approaches. This paper will use Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ as a case study for demonstrating the value – perhaps even the necessity – of psychoanalytically informed spectatorship theory to the discipline of religion and film. The paper will, hopefully, provide an opportunity for a conversation about the usefulness of particular methodologies in religion and film scholarship.

    A19-31

Religion, Politics, and the State Group

Theme: Progressive Politics and Religion: Has the Left “Gotten It”?

Although progressive movements have historically relied on deep moral and religious roots, exit polls in the last presidential election showed a linear positive correlation between frequency of religious attendance and support for Republican President George Bush, a finding the media dubbed “the God gap.” Recently progressives have become so awkward on religion that journalist Amy Sullivan could write in 2004 that “religion is the third rail of Democratic Party politics.” Many progressive organizations, however, have quietly committed signficant resources and staff to strengthening the interface between progressive politics and religion. This panel will highlight this work, showcasing major initiatives among leading advocacy groups. The timing of this panel—two years after the 2004 elections and immediately after the mid-term 2006 elections—also provides an especially fruitful opportunity for evaluating the successes and ongoing challenges of these efforts and for providing a forum for dialogue between activists and academics.

    A19-32

Schleiermacher Group

Theme: Ecclesiology, Pneumatology, Trinity: The Third in a Four-Year Reinvestigation of Schleiermacher's The Christian Faith

The Schleiermacher Group continues its four-year reexamination of the Glaubenslehre with a focus this year on the second half of part II (propositions 113-172). Next year we turn to the contested Introduction.

Reconsidering Schleiermacher’s Protestant-Catholic Antithesis and Its Significance for His Ecclesiology
Laura Thelander, Princeton Theological Seminary

This paper examines Schleiermacher’s antithesis contrasting Protestantism and Catholicism and how it informs his ecclesiology. Countering those interpreters who suggest that Schleiermacher’s ecclesiology contradicted this antithesis by placing such theological weight upon the church for the ongoing mediation of redemption, this paper seeks to present a more nuanced interpretation. By analyzing key Christocentric and pneumatological elements that constitute his ecclesiology, Schleiermacher’s robust ecclesiology emerges without undercutting Christ’s exclusive dignity as the Redeemer. A concluding comparison with Tillich’s ecclesiological dialectic of the Protestant principle and Catholic substance suggests possible ways of interpreting Schleiermacher’s ecclesiology in light of this antithesis.

Schleiermacher on Holy Spirit and the (Disappointing) Church: A Contemplative Reading
Cathie Kelsey, Iliff School of Theology

Schleiermacher's claim that the Holy Spirit is the common spirit of the Christian church is difficult to reconcile with the actual human history of the church as well as with our individual experiences of congregations in the 21st Century. Yet this claim is the organizing principle for his pneumatology. Using the contemporary classic Will and Spirit: A Contemplative Psychology in its analysis of part two of Schleiermacher's Christian Faith, this paper argues that Schleiermacher's knowledge of the Spirit's presence in the community of faith is grounded in a form of contemplative awareness that is not provable but is demonstrated in living and is received as a gift that may be integrated into individual and shared life. The conclusion suggests why such a contemplative grounding of doctrine is useful for our own time.

Schleiermacher’s Trinity: Redemption as Divine Presence
Paul DeHart, Vanderbilt University

This presentation will show how the idea of God’s union with human nature is the mediating conceptuality needed to understand Schleiermacher’s claim that the essence of the doctrine of the Trinity coincides with the essence of his characteristic understanding of redemption. First his notion of the only possible way to understand “divine presence in a creature” will be sketched. Then this notion will be used to clarify the basic moves of his discussion of the trinity: its soteriological orientation, its modalist critique of the “ecclesiastical doctrine”, and its stern refusal of any speculative grounding for that traditional doctrine’s reconstruction.

From Divine Love to Economic Trinity in Friedrich Luecke's Interpretation of Schleiermacher's Theology
Gregory Walter, St. Olaf College

Contemporary Trinitarian theological speculation can be illuminated by the tradition of interpretation of Schleiermacher's doctrines of divine love and the Trinity. In exchanges with speculative theologians, Friedrich Luecke argued that divine love can satisfy the demand that God is as God reveals without introducing Trinitarian self-distinction into God's very being. His proposal raised questions of pantheism among other students of Schleiermacher but his rejection of the speculative employment of the concepts of divine love or personhood was shared by his critics. Luecke's use of Schleiermacher's theology will be assessed as well as the significance of both theologian's work for contemporary concerns about the relationship between the immanent life of God and God's economic activity will be proposed.

    A19-33

Scriptural Reasoning Group

Theme: Land, Messianism, and the Other

Scriptural reasoning is a valuable tool in addressing contemporary points of theo-political significance. Currently, there are few issues more outstanding in importance than that of the relation between religion, land and the relation to others. This panel hosts representatives of Islam, Judaism and Christianity in the effort to excavate a conversation around the topic from out of the sources of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Qu'ran and the New Testament. Emphasis will be on prior paper exchanges and close textual study within the session.

    A19-34

Tillich: Issues in Theology, Religion, and Culture Group

Theme: Encountering the Divine in a Pluralistic World

Negotiating the Nature of Mystical Experience, Guided by Tillich and James
David H. Nikkel, University of North Carolina, Pembroke

The nature of mystical experience has been hotly debated. Essentialists divide into two camps: 1) unmediated identity beyond any subject-object structure 2) a mystical object maintaining some distinctness at the point of contact. Paul Tillich’s mystical a priori has affinities with the former, while William James’ model of religious experience coheres only with the latter. Constructivists oppose the essentialists. Other scholars attempt a tertium quid between essentialism and constructivism, but fail to address what is mediated. After noting some ironies of the constructivist position, this paper argues that the human body perforce mediates mystical experience, which consists of a distinctive sense of bodily harmony conjoined with openness to the potentialities of an integrated environment, involving distinctive neurological processes. While Tillich and James’ Romantic assumption of a direct connection with the divine cannot be sustained, they may stimulate us to imagine more bodily connections to the divine for a postmodern age.

Breakthrough of the Unconditional: Tillich's Concept of Revelation as an Answer to the Crisis of Historicism
Christian Danz, University of Vienna

Since the 1920s the concept of revelation has stood in the center of Paul Tillich’s theology. This paper investigates the structure of this concept and its constitutent elements, both with respect to a systematic perspective and to the way Tillich worked it out. I explain and defend the thesis that revelation, as Tillich understands it, is the contingent event in which spirit grasps itself in its inner reflectivity, and in its historical nature – this in relation to determinate contents of knowledge. Thus revelation is spirit’s becoming transparent to itself in the dimension having to do with knowing. In revelation thus understood two things are constituted at once, history and the consciousness of history. Tillich grounds theology in a theology of revelation that understands faith to be the “becoming reflective” of the consciousness of history. He intends this to be an original answer to the “crisis of historicism” (Ernst Troeltsch).

The "Jewish Dimension" of Tillich's Thought
Bryan Wagoner, Harvard University

This presentation will explore some of the lesser known aspects and influences of Tillich’s personal relationships with Jews and Judaism, primarily during his final years in Germany, in the 1920s and 30s. It will also argue for, and seek to articulate the contours of a distinctively Jewish dimension of Tillich’s philosophy and theology in this period. In particular, it will explore the transformation Tillich experienced vis-à-vis Judaism following the First World War with respect to the Messianic, utopic and prophetic dimensions of Judaism and their influence on Tillich's theology. This will entail accounting for his interactions and relationships with two Jewish members of the Kairos Circle, Heimann and Löwe, and his professional and personal interactions with members of the Frankfurt School, themselves all (secular) Jews.

Tillich and Bakhtin: Dialectical or Dialogical Comparative Theology?
C. Peter Slater, University of Toronto

Both Tillich and Bakhtin stressed concrete encounters with others as our touchstone of reality. From within the theological circle, Tillich’s system was more overtly christocentric. His dialectical/correlationl method led to a somewhat synthesizing approach to other religions that may be construed as inclusivist. By contrast, Bakhtin’s dialogical philosophy of language and Orthodox background led him to a perspectival pluralism that gave more ontological weight to the otherness of others. This paper concludes that comparative theology, as currently understood, would benefit more from Bakhtin’s dialogism than Tillich’s dialectics, while developing a position on other religions in tune with the spirit of Tillich’s theology of culture.

    A19-35

Open and Relational Theologies Consultation

Theme: What God Does, Might, or Cannot Know about the Future

Open and relational theologies are distinguished by their claim that God does not foreordain or foreknow all things that will occur in the future. The future is genuinely open. This belief affects how one might think about eschatology, prayer, ecological responsibility, etc. Given particular beliefs about God’s power, nature, and relation to time, however, perhaps God may know some things about the future. And given beliefs about God’s promises, purposes, and love, perhaps God knows other things about the future. In this session, we hear papers that use resources from scriptures, theological traditions, science, and philosophy to explore what God does, might, or cannot know about the future.

The Hope of God versus the Knowledge of God
Karen Winslow, Azusa Pacific University

Using passages from each division of the Hebrew Bible, I demonstrate that they represent a world view that assumes God does not know the future, but hopes for certain outcomes. Gen 22, Exod 32-34, 1 Samuel 15.10-34, 1 Kings 21.20-29, and Jeremiah 18.1-12 and 26.1-6, 12-13 are characteristic of this predominant scriptural perspective. These texts show that, as determined as God was to produce outcome X under contingency A, God did not know X would occur, because the future was dependent upon human response to God’s command and/or prophetic warning. Divine freedom is exhibited not only in the passages in which God altered the judgment that he had planned, but also in prophetic oracles by which God explains that he will indeed alter any plans in response to human obedience or disobedience. Scripture represents the hope of God in the people of God rather than God’s knowledge of the future.

Surprising God: Prayer, Partnership, and the Divine Adventure
Bruce G. Epperly, Lancaster Theological Seminary

Do our prayers make a difference to God? Do they add anything to the universe and to God’s experience of the universe that is new and creative? Do they play any role in the well-being of others and God’s responsiveness that might not have occurred apart from our prayers? Can be God be faithful, in life and death, if God neither foreknows nor foreordains what is to occur in the next second or century? Questions such as these emerge the moment we begin to challenge classical understandings of divine knowledge and power.

An Adventurous Sovereignty: Risk Taking and the Infinite Intelligence of God
Gregory A. Boyd, St. Paul, Minnesota

The biblical narrative presents a paradoxical picture of God as sovereign and adventuresome. Unfortunately, classical theology emphasized the former but minimized the latter. If we think through the logic of omniscience and the infinite intelligence of God, we arrive at a model that holds God’s sovereignty and adventuresome nature together, and this has positive consequence for theology and Christian living.

"I Know Who Holds the Future" but Not the Future
John E. Culp, Azusa Pacific University

The criticism that a God who does not know the future is a limited God involves both a historical/theological/linguistic issue and a practical/existential issue. Christian theology has accepted logical limitations on God. Logical limitations require metaphysical grounds. Metaphysically it is not possible to know what does not exist as though it existed. This principle does not limit God’s power but describes who God is and how God acts. Metaphysical principles describe the ontological conditions that make possible logical limitations. Understanding God as not knowing the future responds to the existential/practical need for security. The person seeking security finds security in the reliable nature of God rather than in some knowledge that describes what will happen. Basing faith upon God’s nature and actions acknowledges the crucial role of God in the world without attempting to determine what God’s role will be in the future.

    A19-36

Tantric Studies Consultation

Theme: New Approaches to Tantric Studies: Cognitive Science and Contemporary Metaphor Theory

Less Than Meets the Eye: What Cognitive Science Adds to Tantric Studies
Kelly Bulkeley, Graduate Theological Union

Cognitive science has been applied to a large and growing number of religious phenomena. It has not, however, taken any particular interest in the multiplicity of practices encompassed by tantric studies. In a way, this is an old story: A prominent method in religious studies neglects and/or misconstrues the various spiritual techniques known collectively as tantra. Trying to turn that old story in a new direciton, I will argue the following. First, the phenomena of tantra represent the conceptual limit of the cognitive science of religion in its current mainstream form. Second, a critically revised cognitive science may still provide resources for the study of tantra, particularly regarding vision, gender, and sexuality. Third, research on sleep and dreaming holds special promise for bridging efforts between tantric studies and cognitive science. Such efforts lead to a view of dreaming as a natural, cognitively grounded, spiritually liberating opportunity to cultivate tantric experience.

Blended Worlds and Emergent Beings: Metaphors, Cognitive Science, and the Study of Tantra
Glen Alexander Hayes, Bloomfield College

In this paper I will discuss recent developments in the cognitive sciences and linguistics and apply some of these new approaches to Tantric Studies. I will show how the methods developed by George Lakoff, Mark Johnson and others can help us in understanding the cosmophysiology and sadhanas expressed in major 17th-century Vaişņava Sahajiyā texts attributed to Mukunda-deva, such as the Amŗtaratnāvali and the Amŗtarasāvali. In this paper I will extend the methodology using more recent developments in the field of metaphor studies and cognitive linguistics, and I will also consider a wider range of Tantric texts, including additional Sahajiyā texts like the Ānanda-bhairava of Prema-dāsa, and selected tantric texts from the Śaiva and Śākta traditions. Methodologically, I will also draw upon the recent (2002) work by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner on “conceptual blending,” The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities.

The Way Abhinavagupta Thinks: Bodily Metaphors, the Vitality of Language, and the Poetics of Intertwining
Kerry Martin Skora, Hiram College

I think with the Kashmiri Hindu Tantric sage Abhinavagupta (c. 975-1025 C.E.) and contemporary theorists of body, metaphor, and imagination, in order to unveil some of the “hidden complexities” of Abhinavagupta’s creative body-mind network. I show that Abhinavagupta’s use of bodily metaphors reveal the nondual intertwining of Body and Consciousness; that his blending of verbal and bodily domains suggest that the Supreme Word is experienced as embodied Other; and that both poetic discourse and tantric ritual are efficacious and transformative, revealing new realities and new ways of being-in-the-world. My work is inspired by both conceptual blending theory (Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner), and radical empiricism and anthropology of the body and senses (Michael Jackson, Thomas Csordas, and David Howes). I conclude that Abhinavagupta’s creative metaphors and blends reveal that the imagination is grounded in the body, which finds itself in dialogical relationship to other bodies, other consciousnesses, and other worlds.

Fluids, Metaphor, and Self-realization: Reading Tantra through the Lens of Rasa
Sthaneshwar Timalsina, San Diego State University

This paper explores current Western metaphor theories applied to interpret otherwise obscure Tantric texts and traditions in light of classical Indian metaphor and rasa theories. Application of ‘conceptual blending’ provides a new framework to read complex Tantric texts with merged traditional metaphors in a shifting cultural paradigm. Examination of metaphor and rasa reveal that the classical strategy subordinates the concept of metaphor while elevating the doctrine of dhvani. This theory comes into crisis, however, when ‘rasa’ itself becomes a metaphor. Tantric texts on ritual and philosophy apply rasa as a source language to explain the esoteric experience, considered to be inexplicable in ordinary language. This analysis strives to complement the application of contemporary Western theories as applied to Tantric literature, examining parallel classical Indian thought.

Blood for the Goddess: Impurity, Kingship, and Power in Assamese Tantra
Hugh Urban, Ohio State University, Columbus

This paper examines the mythology and worship of the Mother Goddess Kamakhya, focusing specifically on the central role of blood as both a dominant metaphor and a physical substance. Using texts like the Kalika Purana, Yogini Tantra, and Kaulajnananirnaya, I look primarily at the worship of Kamakhya in pre-colonial Assam, from roughly the 10th to the 18th centuries. Blood, I suggest, is both the symbolic and literal embodiment of the Kamakhya's power (sakti), which circulates in a kind of capillary network between the Goddess, her priests, her tantrik devotees, and, up until the colonial period, the kings who patronized her worship. Power flows from the Goddess, who menstruates for three days each year, through the blood of animal victims offered to her in sacrifice, through the bodily fluids consumed in Tantric ritual, to the king who patronizes her sacrifices and conquers enemy kings in the 'sacrifice of battle.'

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Wildcard Session

Theme: Critical Reflections on Cornel West's Democracy Matters

In the sequel to his groundbreaking work Race Matters, Cornel West makes a bold and critical analysis of the state of democracy in our times. The panel brings together philosopher of religion and religious ethicist Jeffrey Stout, political theorist Romand Coles, and the scholar of Islam, gender, and race Amina Wadud to discuss West's text and his call for a renewed commitment to projects of radical democracy.

    A19-43

Study of Islam Section

Theme: Comprehending the Qur'ān: Critical Issues Raised by the Publication of E. J. Brill's Encyclopaedia of the Qur'ān

Completed this year, Brill's Encyclopaedia of the Qur'ān (EQ) is the first comprehensive reference work on the Qur'ān to appear in a Western language. As the general editor, Jane McAuliffe "deliberately embraced a plurality of method and perspective within the pages of the EQ, conscious of the fact that not all scholars, whether non-Muslim or Muslim, agree with this approach." The impact of the EQ therefore extends well beyond the boundaries of Qur'ānic Studies. Through this diversity of approach, and through lengthy articles on such subjects as "Art and Architecture," "Exegesis" and "Literature," the EQ challenges the ways we study sacred texts. Panel members will review the history of the project and address the difficulties of incorporating such a variety of perspectives. The respondent will broaden the discussion to deal with issues common to all who study and teach religious texts.

    A19-37

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Tour

Sponsored by the Religion, Holocaust, and Genocide Group and the Center for Holocaust Studies

The museum’s permanent exhibition The Holocaust includes over 900 artifacts, 70 video monitors, and four theaters with historic film footage and eyewitness testimonies. The museum also features temporary exhibitions highlighting the history of the Holocaust. Tour attendees will receive timed tickets for the 11:00 am entry to the permanent exhibition. Victoria Barnett, Director of Church Relations for the Center of Holocaust Studies, will offer a brief introduction to the museum and then attendees will be allowed to visit the permanent exhibition at their own pace. Please allow at least two hours for the visit.

Visitors may also use the library and archives. The library is open to the public daily from 10 am to 5 pm. No appointment is necessary. The archives are open weekdays from 10 am to 5 pm. Arrangements can be made in advance for archival materials to be set aside for weekend use; contact archives@ushmm.org or 1-202-488-6113.

    A19-40

Special Topics Forum

Theme: Wabash Student-Teacher Luncheon

Sponsored by the Graduate Student Committee and the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning

The Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning and AAR Graduate Student Committee cordially invite AAR and SBL doctoral student members to this lunch gathering with experienced faculty mentors to share conversation about teaching. This luncheon is aimed at doctoral students nearing the end of their studies who have some experience in teaching. It is an opportunity to meet with mentor-teachers to discuss teaching experiences. If you are a student member with some experience in teaching and have not attended this luncheon in the past, please RSVP online at www.aarweb.org/annualmeet/2006/RSVP/Wabash/ by noon on Wednesday, November 15 to attend. Do not RSVP unless you are planning to attend, as space is limited to the first 75 doctoral students who register.

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Religion and Cities Consultation Planning Session

This session is devoted to the development of a new AAR Religions and Cities Consultation. The consultation will structure and foster a conversation between research on cities and research on religious organizations, practices, and beliefs. What difference do urban contexts make in the formation of religious thought and practice? What difference do religious organizations make in the formation and transformation of cities? The committee proposing the consultation seeks the ideas and participation of AAR members in all disciplines who have a scholarly interest in these questions and in related methodologies (religious research) and pedagogies (seminary and collegiate education).

    A19-50

Special Topics Forum

Theme: The Marty Forum: Andrew M. Greeley

Sponsored by the Public Understanding of Religion Committee

The recipient of the 2006 Martin Marty Award for contributions to the public understanding of religion is best-selling author, priest, journalist, and sociologist Andrew M. Greeley. Greeley is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona and a Research Associate at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago. Greeley is the author of two autobiographies, more than 50 best-selling novels, over 100 works of non-fiction, including most recently The Making of the Pope 2005 (2005), The Catholic Revolution: New Wine, Old Wineskins, and the Second Vatican Council (2004), and Priests: A Calling in Crisis (2004).

The Marty Forum provides an informal setting in which Greeley will talk about his work with Robert A. Orsi, Charles Warren Professor of the History of Religion in America at Harvard University, and will engage in discussion with the audience.

    A19-51

Wildcard Session

Theme: A Korean Shamanic Ritual for Healing the Comfort Women

In order to fully present the significance of A Korean Shamanic Ritual for Healing the Comfort Women, by the Association for Preservation of Hwanghado Shamanic Ritual of South Korea, and to deeply engage with spiritual activism for social justice and spiritual liberation, and to explore the healing power further that lies in the vast realm of shamanism, the presenters have formed a panel. Our panel offers a unique opportunity for those who are interested in the healing power of shamanic rituals for individual and for communal healing as well. Our panel presentation is made up of five parts, including actual ritual.

    A19-52

Wildcard Session

Theme: Publishing with a Denominational (Church-Owned) Press: Possibilities and Realities

Nearly every sub-discipline of theological inquiry shares interests with a denomination (church-owned) press, yet many academic authors do not take advantage of this extensive network. This session will explore the possibilities and realities of publishing for these church-owned publishers. A panel of veteran editors and marketing specialists share the trade secrets that will make authors reconsider their choice of other academic and popular options. Some denominational publishers, for example, can distribute content to hundreds of thousands of readers. This session will explain what type of royalties one can expect; the boundaries (or freedom) of mission-based publishing, marketing strategies, international trade, the editorial process, and many other things that authors need to know about the great potential of denominational publishers.

    A19-53

Wildcard Session

Theme: Three Western Perspectives on the Re-valuation of Sacred Space: Wyoming, Kansas, and Colorado

These papers study contemporary Western re-imaginings of sacred relationships between humans and their bio-regions. The first contrasts the land art of indigenous people from Wyoming to the pie-charts of the current energy boom, arguing that American souls, as described by W. E. B. Du Bois, can be critically discussed through such contrasts. The second paper studies the ecological philosophy of the Land Institute of Kansas and brings Pure Land Buddhism to bear as a related philosophy, arguing that the goals of diverse and sustainable grasslands suggest land as numinous space, linking agricultural and spiritual topography. The final paper studies a pastoral letter from a group of Catholic bishops to their bioregion and the work of the Colorado Food and Agriculture Policy Council to illustrate an alternative estimation of sacred space is emerging that addresses the reclamation of blighted landscapes and the resacralization of agricultural lands that serve urban populations.

The Souls of Wyoming
Mary Keller, University of Wyoming

“The Souls of Wyoming,” raises the epistemological and ontological significance of mapmaking, drawing from contemporary theory in the history of cartography (J.B. Harley), geography (Yi-Fu Tuan) and the history or religions. Based on Charles Long’s argument that religion is best understood as an orientation that gives meaning to the ultimate significance of one’s place in the world, the paper compares Native American rock art and the Medicine Wheel to contemporary maps of coalbed methane production. Each cultural "map" is read following W. E. B. Du Bois's phenomenological exploration of the American soul. The paper argues that the term soul can be employed as a rubric (complete with its resonances regarding the red buttes of Wyoming, the "red" skin of Native Americans, and the blood shed in the conquest of Native Americans) for comparing the significance of the human in relation to the land as found in these maps. That is, maps give evidence of the mapmaker’s valuation of their relationship to the land, their ultimate significance with respect to the land. Thus, “The Souls of Wyoming” reads humans as religious in their needs and desires to orient themselves and figure out their ultimate significance through the representational schemes of maps, read broadly from Medicine Wheels and rock art to contemporary pie charts of state economic production.

Pure Land/Good Earth: Buddhism, the Land Institute, and Care of Spiritual Space
Philip Meckley, Kansas Wesleyan University

“Pure Land/Good Earth: Buddhism, the Land Institute, and Care of Spiritual Space,” will look at the ecological philosophy of the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas with reference to Pure Land Buddhism. The stated purpose of the Land Institute is to develop and promote an agricultural system to maintain the ecological stability of the prairie, and to produce a sustainable crop yield through the use of perennial grains and legumes. Hence, the Land Institute develops agronomic technologies to wean farmers from reliance upon fossil fuel intensive agricultural methods. Pure Land Buddhism, for its part, makes the claim that bodhisattvas established celestial paradises for those seeking nirvana. Human flourishing in an enduring future is possible, according to this branch of Buddhism, only in a situation of sustained meditation characterized by purity. This view of human topography rests upon the bases of enlightenment, renewal, and continuity with the past. It is the contention of this paper that the philosophical underpinnings of the Land Institute bear much in common with traditional Buddhist ecological ethics. Even more, this paper argues that the ecological philosophy underlying the Institute’s stated aims is fundamentally based upon an idea of the land as numinous space, and draws a close connection between geographical and spiritual topography. In this regard, “Pure Land/Good Earth” illuminates some of the basic features of Pure Land Buddhism, in order to demonstrate the similarities of Buddhist views with the aims of the Land Institute. In particular, this paper aligns the functional spaces of both Pure Land Buddhism and the Land Institute through the conjunction of geography and human spirituality.

"Living Waters" and "Forest Cathedrals": Practices to Re-sacralize "Ordinary" Land
Celeste J. Rossmiller, Regis University, Denver

“’Living Waters’ and ‘Forest Cathedrals:’ Practices to Re-Sacralize ‘Ordinary’ Land,” posits that in many instances, the notion of “sacred space” is associated with settings such as the National Cathedral or the Lincoln Memorial. Indeed, British theologian John Inge’s A Christian Theology of Place focuses on the great cathedrals of England as pilgrimage sites that anchor and invite experience of the divine. Other categories of sacred spaces, it could be argued, are our so-called “wilderness” areas and national parks. These places fulfill Mircea Eliade’s definition of “sacred” as that which is set apart by societies for the purpose of human renewal and sustenance. Millions and more make pilgrimages annually to these “shrines” of nature—to the point of overburdening their ecosystems. However, an alternative estimation of sacred space and place is emerging both around blighted landscapes that call out for reclamation and agricultural lands that serve urban populations. These latter sacred places are evoked in a bioregional pastoral letter by a local group of U.S. Catholic bishops and in the workings of the incipient Colorado Food and Agriculture Policy Council (CoFAPC)—a coalition of secular organizations gathered to promote local food practices that are healthy for both land and all its denizens. This paper traverses a pastoral document from one religious community as a prime example of combining religious and theological categories with praxes for the purpose of re-sacralizing and rejuvenating the land and its multiple communities. It then points out lacunae in the pastoral’s theological thinking, and supplies the alternative theological image of perichoresis to replace a more transcendent interpretation of divine and humans with one full of mutuality, diversity, and community. Next, “Living Waters and Forest Cathedrals” outlines a “Eucharistic lifestyle” emerging from a perichoretic worldview to enrich the transformational praxis sought by the bishops. That is, based on a religious “table practice” characterized by the free gift of life, now shared communally, Christian communities come to adopt lifestyles based on serving the diversity of life in their human and land-based communities. Thus, in conclusion, the paper applies this thinking to local church involvement in the workings of CoFAPC.

    A19-54

Academic Teaching and the Study of Religion Section

Theme: Walk, Talk, Teach, and Learn: A Street Fair of Posters, Exhibits, and Interactive Displays That Will Educate and Excite about a Breakthrough Moment in the Classroom or a Great Course

"Quilting" as Metaphor and Practice in the Teaching of Feminist Theology
Millicent Feske, Saint Joseph's University

“Quilting” is one of a series of domestic and communal images that function as metaphors in the development of feminist thought and theology in the last three decades. This presentation will display and discuss two simple “quilts” that were created in group projects by students in undergraduate feminist theology courses to demonstrate how the idea of quilting as used in contemporary Christian feminist theologies served both to engender a model for classroom teaching and learning for feminist pedagogy and to serve as a theme and organizing principal for the content of such a course. It will describe the specifics of the assignment, its place in the larger course as organized around the theme of quilting, and discuss the ways in which quilting served as both methodological metaphor and pedagogical practice for both instructor and students.

The Religion Project: Engaging the Non-Religious Studies Major
Donald J Monnin, Villa Maria College

This paper will provide one example of how to engage the non-religious studies major in an Introduction to Religious Studies or World Religions course. The Religion Project that I assign is not one, but fifteen different options from which students may choose. A number of these options are program-related to their majors. I have created options for students in education, graphic design, interior design, liberal arts, music, and photography programs. I will display beautifully-done, professional-looking examples of work from students in graphic design, interior design, and photgraphy. Copies of the Religion Project, with detailed descriptions of all fifteen options will be provided. I believe that instructors will find these displays exciting and impressive, and that they will inspire them to create religion projects and assignments that can be related to other academic programs at their own institutions.

Taste and See: Contemplative Practice as an Invitation to Animate the Study of Religion
John D. Copenhaver, Jr., Shenandoah University

For the most part, I employ the phenomenological method in teaching religion. But many of my classes also include an experiential component because I want students to taste, however momentarily, religious experience from inside. Experiential exercises have the capacity to breathe life into the study of a religion and expose the beating heart of faith.

Drawing on spiritual exercises I learned during graduate studies at the Shalem Institute in Washington, D. C., I have found ways to incorporate short sabbaths into the classroom that refresh and enrich the learning experience. The exercises are most prominent in my courses on Religion and Ecology, Asian Religions, and Christian Spirituality. The exercises vary according to the course, but are always carefully related to readings. In my presentation, I will discuss the specific practices I use and invite the audience to participate in one animating contemplative exercise.

The Six Gatis and Their Enactment on the Lawn of Vassar College
E. H. Jarow, Vassar College

This paper discusses the theory and praxis around ritual/theatrical productions of the Six Gatis (“realms of existence” as described in seminal texts of Tibetan Buddhism) by students in a 'Death and Dying 'course at Vassar College. As part of an ongoing project to “re-embody” the learning process, it points to further possibilities for both viscerally participatory and collaborative education.

The paper discusses efforts to integrate body and mind, feeling and thought, individual and community, and engagement and critical awareness in the study of religion. The contention is that collaborative and embodied learning can help situate the humanities, and the field of religious studies, in the center of an effort to ground the pursuit of knowledge in embodied communities as well as in theoretical speculations.

Making Them Read; Making Them Engage: The Use of Process Notes in Daily Assignments
Merrill M. Hawkins, Carson-Newman College

This presentation discusses process notes to promote student engagement with the content and process of learning. The process note is a standard practice in Clinical Pastoral Education. Conceieved by Anton Boisen, the process note calls on the student to describe how she/he feels, as well as what she/he thinks. The use of process notes promotes active and engaged reading and learning about content and process. Many of my students either do not read at all or do not comprehend the idea of critical reading. This limited background in critcial reading hinders the student from discussing texts. The process note provides a bridge that leads to critical reading and engagement. In addition to promoting cognitive learning, the process note promotes affective learning. This learning from cognitive and affective dimensions of both content and process creates a student who can be more engaged with the class.

Strategic Teaching, Strategic Learning: Using Religious Studies to Teach Study Skills
Stephen Murphy, University of Virginia

The advent of technologies like Internet searching, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Instant Messenger has radically changed collegiate research, presentation, and communication. Unfortunately, for many college students such technologies serve not as learning aids but as shortcuts; not as tools, but as distractions. As a result, many incoming college students lack the skills in studying and organization that will be expected of them throughout college and beyond. After three years of teaching dedicated study skills courses to freshman students and tutoring these same students in Religious Studies, I have found that the variety of lectures, readings, and assignments found in Religious Studies courses offer an excellent opportunity to introduce students to a wide range of study skills and analytical thinking. This streetfair session will discuss ways to use Religious Studies courses as a vehicle for teaching students various ways of learning, studying, and preparing assignments.

Teaching through the Oral Tradition
Yolanda Yvette Smith, Yale University

The oral tradition was once a critical component of education for African Americans. Although many African American churches have abandoned aspects of the oral tradition in favor of formal education and printed resources, the oral tradition can still be a legitimate system of teaching and learning. This system of teaching and learning, grounded in African tradition, was not only creative and fun, but it was an important vehicle for transmitting communal wisdom along with vital information. A strategy for teaching through the oral tradition can assist the church in drawing upon resources that emerge from African American traditions as viable modes of education. It can further inspire African American churches to reclaim indigenous cultural expressions throughout the educational process.

Creative Cosmology: Drawing Genesis 1
Paul Thomas, University of Missouri, Kansas City

This poster presentation explores the results of a drawing exercise in which students were asked to draw the activity described in Genesis 1 and 'The Babylonian Creation Epic.' The pedagological issues explored in this poster include the value of visual learning and hands-on learning activites, how such exercises can teach students to cull information from a text that is not evident based upon a superficial reading, the effects familiarity has upon reading practices, as well as teaching students how to identify anachronism and how modern cosmologies are not translatable to ancient cultures.

    A19-55

Ethics Section

Theme: From Africa to New Orleans: Healing Racial and Urban Divides

"If I Could Become Death, I Would Fall on the White Man": Ugandan Hope and Hatred Towards the United States
Todd D. Whitmore, University of Notre Dame

I argue that the best way for religious ethicists to ascertain African attitudes towards the United States is through incorporating ethnography into their discipline. I draw from my fieldwork in conflict-ridden northern Uganda, including time in Internally Displaced Persons camps, to make the case that a prime interpretive lens for African attitudes towards the United States is the category of whiteness.

The prominence of the category of whiteness is evident in the conflicted attitudes of northern Ugandans towards the United States. On the one hand, I have been told several times during my research that my mere presence in northern Uganda is a sign of hope that the world has not forgotten the victims of the twenty-year conflict. On the other hand, there is deep resentment towards whites, as evidenced in Omal Lakana's poetry when he writes, 'If I could become Death, I would fall on the white man.'

"Rebuilding Better" the City of God: Compassion as Justice after Katrina
Maureen O'Connell, Fordham University

This paper proposes compassion as an immediate and long-term response to the unjust suffering of concentrated poverty brought to the American consciousness by Hurrican Katrina. I retrieve elements of compassion from the theological and philosophical tradition, particularly political theology and Catholic social thought, to suggest that compassion can be rightly understood as an interruptive, self-critical and communal means of perceiving, interpreting and transforming the causes of concentrated poverty that surfaced in the American consciousness after Katrina. I propose that compassion is essential for “rebuilding better” urban communities because it interrupts prevailing notions of suffering, flourishing and models of justice with the memories, narratives, and urgent demands for empowerment and participation of those most directly affected by the disaster and urban poverty. I illustrate that compassion redirects responses to social suffering from charitable amelioration to a just eradication of suffering through empowerment and participation in the co