Annual Meeting 2023 Program Book

Can visual data provide insights that words do not reveal? Meanings of objects in visual studies are usually captured through elicitation meetings. In this article, we propose to explore them from a purely visual standpoint and assess the methodological and substantive benefits of such denotative approach. We used a database of 660 photographs produced by 228 participants in three Latin American cities. Following a “lived religion” approach, respondents were asked to present an object that was ‘meaningful’ for them. Analyzing these pictures beyond words, proved useful to operationalize a large corpus of visual data, facilitate the transmission of the results and build a representative classification of the types of objects most commonly brought by participants. We conclude that a denotative analysis of participant-produced visuals ‘beyond words’ represents an untapped opportunity to challenge existing representations and elicit new research directions, which, in turn, require returning to verbal data to be elucidated.

Sociologists and social psychologists such as Charles H. Cooley have long understood the self to be fundamentally social. In this paper, I apply Cooley’s theory of the self to Sikhs’ reflections on their identity as Sikh. I draw on in-depth interviews with Sikhs to unpack identity construction processes for members of minoritized communities. My respondents strive to present an idealized image of “Sikh” in contexts characterized by discrimination towards Sikhs. They actively seek to present an idealized image of Sikh in response. Further, I find unpack the implications of Sikhs’ views of their interactions with non-Sikhs for racial identity. Through a comparison of Sikhs in racially distinct groups, we are able to better understand the role of both race and religion in influencing the looking glass self. This has important implications for our understanding of the social processes that underpin racial identity and the flexibility and durability of whiteness.

This paper aims to analyze the Abrahamic Family House (AFH) in Abu Dhabi, UAE, as an example of how religion is theorized and discourses on religion are materialized in the Arab world. The AFH is a larg government-sponsored multi-religious space, which includes a mosque, a church and a synagogue with a shared garden and a central forum, which “functions as a visitor experience center, where an immersive exhibition will introduce visitors to the [project] and invite reflection on the three faiths” involved in it. The AFH was inaugurated on 16th February 2023 and has been opened to visitors since 1st March 2023. It represents the materialization of the principles (among other, the importance of dialogue among religions believing in God and the rejections of any forms of religious extremism) set out in the 2019 Document on “Human Fraternity” signed by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahamad al-Tayyib.

This paper reports on historical sociology research that conceptually centered ‘power’ as the ability to impose ‘will,’ no matter opposition, and viewed ‘power’ as a dynamic, interactive social phenomenon, not static organizational position. It is an exploration of African Methodist Episcopal Church women acquiring and using ‘power’ to extraordinary impact on the denomination’s first century of emergence and organization. Consideration of slavery, sexism, and racism are explored as social context AME women had to encounter as they adjusted and struggled against the Church’s male-domination structure. ‘Everyday’ women, not necessarily leaders, prominent or renowned, are the paper’s focus. The research demonstrates women’s effectiveness in causing changes in denomination authority structure to include women. An exemplary and contemporary consequence of their struggles was the 21st century election of a woman Bishop. The paper will surely generate cross-fertilization between Sociology of Religion and other disciplinary arenas.

In this paper I center the White Shaman mural, ancient rock art located in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Texas. Responding to the theme of “La Labor de Nuestras Manos,” I consider the work of our ancestors’ hands along what is now known as the Mexico-US border, the land of Kickapoo, Jumanos, Lipan Apache, and Coahuiltecan peoples. The White Shaman is considered one of the oldest manuscripts in North America at approximately 2,000 years old and it has been interpreted by art historians and Indigenous descendants to reveal compelling philosophies, astronomical patterns, and ritual processes (Boyd, The White Shaman Mural, 158). In this paper I propose a set of prepositions to guide engagement with the White Shaman: thinking from (land-based creation stories and cosmovision), being with (Indigenous ritual relationships), and moving towards (decolonial futurities). This requires addressing colonial legacies and exploring questions of Indigeneity in the borderlands.

Fruitful comparison of psychedelic, spiritual, and psychotic experiences requires a degree phenomenological nuance. Some shared features, such as encounters and communications with supernatural entities, are obfuscated by scientific and clinical terminology. Other supposed distinctions are based on an atemporal view of dynamic experiences. The trajectory of the psilocybe mushroom experience – from illness-like feelings during the comeup, to often awe-inspiring peak experience, to relief in the comedown – maps, at different points in time, onto different facets of spiritual and psychotic experiences. Acknowledging these temporal dynamics helps inform cognitive scientific perspectives on religion and 'spirit medicine'. For example, the psychedelic transition from illness-like comeup to peak experience supports the idea that stress triggers a detection of supernatural agency. Additionally, while most comedowns are characterized by love, peace, and calm, a minority resemble manic states. We provide examples of how spiritual traditions guide psychedelic-like compensations to stress (e.g., shamanic sickness) towards prosocial outcomes.

Spirit medicines elicit experiences of fundamental and enduring subjective spiritual and psychological variations in self-concepts and ontologies. Given such implications, a rigorous evaluation of ethical frameworks must require considerations beyond the physiological functions and effects that are now central to Western psychedelic research and praxis. The Indigenous ethical framework proposed safeguards the contemplative qualities of prosocial and collective engagement of Indigenous lineage holders through principles of flourishing social transformation. These include contemplative aspects of inquiry, relationality, and meaning guided through the Spirit medicine experience; the direct participation of Indigenous Nations in the decisions that impact their rights to tangible and intangible heritage currently violated by the Western psychedelic system; the prevention of harm to human subjects, including the respect of autonomy and agency pre-during-post treatment; and mind-body-spirit practices centered on right relationships intra and inter-species. Thus, evolving Indigenous contemplative frameworks ensure psychological, social, and judicial transformation beyond religion, medicine, and policy. 

Through examination of the fictional world of Sara Nović’s novel Tru Biz, the Inspiriles role playing game developed by Hatchling Games, Sign: A game about being understood from Thorny Games, and the online role playing game, Deafverse, this paper will track the expression of a humanistic Deaf spirituality rooted in finding hope and creating meaning in the struggle for self-determination and autonomy in the face of continued colonialist encroachment on our communities, languages, identities, and bodies.

This paper takes a multidisciplinary and multilevel look at Black disabled men in society as they struggle towards thriving. As we look at constructs of masculinity, ableism, and a theology that promotes wellness, what wisdom do Black disabled men bring to the table? 

Nineteenth-century experts produced medical theories in which the physical integrity of the brain dictated one’s ability to recognize morality or perform it. Psychobiological health thus determined the extent to which one could be moral. In the later nineteenth century, some states began building new institutions to segregate certain types of disability, including epilepsy. Medical experts argued that epileptics straddled the line dividing sanity from madness. Even sane epileptics, however, were typically considered morally suspicious and a dangerous threat to others.

Modeled after Germany’s Bethel epileptic colony, New York’s Craig Colony for Epileptics absorbed an old, remote Shaker site in order to segregate epileptics from everyone else. Once institutionalized, epileptics’ lives were managed for them. Like most US epileptic colonies, Craig saw religion as a moral good and helpful disciplinary strategy. Chaplains’ religious ideals and practices conversed with medical expertise, valorized eugenic biopolitics, and anchored religious services in medical authority.  

When the construction of Interstate 94 in St. Paul, MN, ripped through the African American community of Rondo during the 1950s and 1960s, it spawned resistance campaigns, cultural preservation efforts, and, more recently, restorative agendas funded by local foundations and city governments. Associated with famous residents such as Roy Wilkins and August Wilson, the Rondo community has risen to national notoriety. Animated by thriving professional, athletic, and social clubs, hair salons, newspapers, banks, restaurants, and labor unions, before the implementation of eminent domain under the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, Rondo was the Twin Cities' Black Wall Street. In this paper, I employ interviews conducted in the summer of 2022 with members of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in St. Paul, MN – to describe how recollections of the displacement and destruction of Black sacred centers inspire new memory landscapes where religious and business life intertwine as integrated and orienting belief systems.

This paper elucidates what a Shinto shrine is in relation to business enterprise. When I worked in a Shinto shrine for the first time, I was told that a religious organization is different from shoubai (business). Through the language, the shrine was trying to emphasize the difference between a shrine and a commercial enterprise. However, I was bewildered when a kannushi (Shinto priest) called himself a salaryman (corporate employee) and shrine a company. This contradiction led me to reflect on what is the difference between a religious corporation and a business corporation. In this paper, I will explore the interpenetration and tension between religious and economic interest in a Shinto shrine, from the perspective of the insiders. Although seeking economic (secular) gain is not appropriate for a religious (sacred) organization, a shrine cannot operate without economic interest. How does the administration manage the shrine, maintaining the appropriate relationship between them?

In 1995, evangelical financial counselor Larry Burkett published Women Leaving the Workplace, a book dedicated to helping American evangelical women quit their jobs and become homemakers. Placing Women Leaving the Workplace in historical context, this paper examines three moral problems in Burkett’s text: the problem of wage work, which took women from their children and left the home vulnerable; the problem of consumer culture, which depleted wages, distracted the family from spiritual pursuits, and resulted in debt; and the problem of dependency, particularly dependence upon welfare, which threatened the moral fiber of both the family and the nation. Burkett solved these problems by encouraging women to bring the workplace home—to import business practices into homemaking and to start home-based businesses. In contrast to the midcentury ideal of the housewife who depended on her husband’s wages, Burkett praised the female entrepreneur as a moral exemplar for an emerging postindustrial economy.

This presentation analyzes one of the world’s largest Hindu standardized testing systems by comparing the waged and unwaged intellectual labors of its test administrators and test-takers. In the early 1970s, the Swaminarayan Hindu sub-group called BAPS (the Bocasanwasi Akshar-Purushottam Sanstha) inaugurated a standardized testing system, which currently tests around 50,000 devotees annually, from young children to senior citizens. This presentation draws on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews from 2018 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat and Chicago, Illinois, with the salaried devotees who administer the testing system and the transnational, unpaid devotees who study and complete the exams every year. Ultimately, I argue that both waged and unwaged devotees engage in knowledge production labor that is invaluable for BAPS as an institution. The small number of waged administrators produce the officially sanctioned theological and historical knowledge standards of BAPS, while the large numbers of unwaged test-takers generate quantifiable yet intimate data on the organization’s transnational community, which organizes and ranks their massive devotee following.

This paper will use the Pallottine Fathers, an order of Catholic priests, to examine how new forms of fundraising challenged notions of religious “authenticity” in the twentieth-century United States. The Pallottine Fathers were pioneers of direct-mail fundraising in the early 1970s. The order sent out millions of pieces of mail every day, each one containing urgent pleas for money and heart-rending pictures of starving children. Pallottine letters also touted the “Pallottine sweepstakes,” with prizes ranging from dinner sets to new cars. This strategy was fabulously successful; the order raised millions. However, investigations revealed the Pallottines were using this money to build a real estate empire rather than to feed starving children. This paper will show how the “shadow economies” of religious fundraising cast a shadow on the American ideal of religious authenticity.

The political identity and activism of American evangelical Christians in the twentieth century has been given great attention in recent years, but far less attention has been paid to the actual theology—especially the biblical theology—animating these political concerns. In the 1970s and 80s, evangelical theologians, pastors, and biblical scholars fiercely debated questions of political economy, producing a multitude of popular books on the subject. This paper will explore the evangelical defenses of “Reaganomics” through an analysis of the biblical theological literature of the period—primarily Ronald Nash’s *Poverty and Wealth* (1986) and John Jefferson Davis’s *Your Wealth in God’s World: Does the Bible Support the Free Market* (1984). These texts, in their defenses of a capitalist political economy, illuminate the convergence of evangelical political and economic theologies, biblical hermeneutics, and accounts of work and vocation.

Jerry Falwell, Senior helped build the Religious Right as a reaction against the gains of the Civil Rights Movement. Yet when he preached about segregation and black liberationism, he was not so much rejecting the idea of black bodies in historically white spaces (although for a time, he did not allow African Americans at his church or school) as much as he was rejecting Martin Luther King's iteration of the Social Gospel. Falwell was a severe capitalist who saw any form of government regulation, especially the form that King was advocating, as part of a slide towards Soviet-style communism. He saw the Social Gospel itself, including the contemperaneous Civil Rights Movement, as part of a communist plot to take over America's churches.

Willow Creek is a paradigmatic megachurch, the blueprint for the “seeker-sensitive” and corporate-friendly church that became popular in late twentieth and early twenty-first century American evangelicalism. It presides over a global network of churches and partner organizations, at the center of which is the Global Leadership Summit, which Bill Hybels created in 1995. Founded as a workshop for church leaders, the GLS quickly exceeded Hybels’ initial plans, evolving into a kind of Davos for evangelicals. The GLS is the focal point of Willow’s influence on Christianity around the world. I argue that the GLS facilitates a dual revival that combines the theology and affective strategies of evangelical revivalism with neoliberal corporate leadership discourse in order to pump new life into businesses and churches for the salvation of the world. The salvific religion of the GLS is neoliberal leadership formation encased in evangelical affect. This is Willow Creek’s global imprint.

A distinctive feature of evangelical action, both in worship and in its creation of cultural products, is its appropriation of secular forms. Jill Stevenson identifies this appropriation as a signature method of what she calls “evangelical dramaturgy,” or the performative tactics used by evangelical media to shape the emotional responses of attendees. This paper asks what happens when appropriation moves in the other direction and technology companies, like Salesforce.com, adopt evangelical dramaturgies to structure their annual user conference. Based on ethnographic observations and interviews, I argue that North American corporations, such as Salesforce, now borrow from evangelicalism’s performance repertoire, and especially from strategies associated with seeker sensitive megachurches. Furthermore, the secular marking of evangelical forms allows companies to deploy them without anyone taking notice or taking offense, even as the company explicitly associates itself with indigenous or Buddhist philosophies and practitioners.

Church work is often assumed to rest with preachers, pastors, elders, and worship leaders. However, before the doors open on Sunday morning, the ecclesial space has already been established and maintained by the work of laborers often overlooked—plumbers, electricians, janitors, construction workers, landscapers, and others. This oversight is mirrored in the broader Faith and Work movement, which itself prioritizes white-collar vocations over blue-collar labor. At the root of this oversight lies a particular ecclesiological assumption of what it means for work to be “spiritual” or “ministerial”, an assumption tied to privileged ideas of enlightenment and self-actualization. This paper will interrogate this assumption for its lack of biblical and theological warrant and then offer a working ecclesiology for blue-collar participation based on a more grounded understanding of ecclesial and faithful labor, one in which the facilitation of communal space is at the heart of the work of the church.

Kevin Gordon was a lay gay Catholic theologian. After starting a PhD at Union in the late 1960s, he moved to the Castro, where he worked as an analyst while teaching, writing, and organizing a task force on homosexuality for the Archdiocese of San Francisco. In the 80s, Gordon returned to New York and assembled a group called the Consultation on Homosexuality, Social Justice, and Catholic Theology, which included John Boswell, Mary Hunt, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and others. He died of AIDS before completing his dissertation. This paper will examine two elements of Gordon’s work—his ecclesiological legacy found in his work on the World Council of Church’s document “The Church as Healing Community” and his influence on later AIDS ecclesiology, and his skepticism of premature meaning making—to press on a tension at the heart of the church and its metaphors: that between fragmentation and wholeness.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, considerable attention has been given to the changing role of clergy, as congregations often shifted exclusively to online worship. What has received less explicit analysis were the ways in which many lay people adapted and responded to help their communities navigate the challenging restrictions of the lockdown. This paper draws upon qualitative studies of eight congregations that focused on the impact of the lockdowns on the experience of church during the COVID-19 pandemic. The focus of the discussion will be on ways in which lay people, sometimes for the first time, took up leadership roles to respond to the needs of their community. The second concern of the paper will be to analyze the challenge that the re-opening of church buildings post-pandemic represents to such new initiatives, as many of the newly engaged lay people have sometimes experienced their ideas and interests being left behind or disregarded.

The term “othermothers” was first coined by Patricia Hill Collins to refer to the Black cultural phenomenon where individuals “actively and positively assume responsibility as role model, mentor, protector, and provider to children who are not biologically their own.” In my research for the Missing Voices Project, which centered and empowered marginalized youth to start new ministries, we found that mothers and “othermothers” of all racial and ethnic identities were active advocates, allies, and accomplices for marginalized youth in and beyond their congregations. Mothers and othermothers acted as public theologians, living their theological beliefs on behalf of their (and other) children. Using a practical theological framework and an ethnographic approach to research, this paper will analyze the lived theology of these mothers and othermothers through the theology of motherhood presented by Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder in order to critique the gaps and failures of our political system.