Annual Meeting 2023 Program Book

This paper examines how the social and economic impact of the Great Depression shaped the theology, memory, and politics of the leading evangelists of the postwar Pentecostal healing revival in the United States. The narratives and histories written by Pentecostal evangelists, such as William Branham, A. A. Allen, Kenneth Hagin, and Oral Roberts, stress the importance of an impoverished past in shaping their ministries. While much Pentecostal historiography focuses on either the origins and early shape of the Pentecostal movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries or the postwar period, this paper explores how the years from the late 1920s through to the mid-1940s influenced postwar Pentecostalism historically and theologically.

Foregrounding Mamie Till-Mobley’s African American pentecostal religious roots, this article argues for the necessity of black pentecostal religious aesthetics as a method for doing African American religious history and understanding African American political activism. Till-Mobley organized the funerary rites of Emmett Till, notably deciding to exhibit her son vis-à-vis an open casket funeral. By offering a close reading of the funeral liturgy that have been fragmented in the archive, this article curates an exhibition of Till’s homegoing service that exposes it as a necessary source for scholarship within Religious History. This essay will engage the religious rite of tarrying as a critical category of analysis. Through centering the archives orbiting the funeral of Till which include memoirs, newspapers, interviews, and newsreels, I argue that Till-Mobley provides an altar at Emmett’s homegoing to tarry with the wanton death of African Americans.

Scholars of Latino Pentecostalism have noted that the growth of Latino Pentecostalism was in part fueled by the transfer of mainline Latinx leaders into burgeoning Latino Pentecostal movements. As I argue in this paper, a religious ecology perspective provides insights into the relationship between Mainline Protestantism broadly, Methodism in particular, and the emergence of Latino Pentecostalism.  I am especially interested in the resource transfer that has taken place across movements and/or institutions which in turn helps to sustain multiple movements and institutions within their respective religious ecologies.  I posit that Methodism’s presence within particular religious ecologies where Latino Pentecostalism emerged, furthered Latino Pentecostalism’s success, even as Latino Methodism persisted as a movement.  The forms of resource transfer that took place did entail the transfer of leaders from Methodism to Pentecostalism, but I also consider forms of resource transfer that took place as ongoing multidirectional exchange. 

Therapeutic culture is a collective gestalt of knowledge and practices focusing on emotional health, self-help, personal development, and recovery, and it has been transforming Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity since the mid-twentieth century. Christian Healing Ministry, a charismatic organization founded by Francis and Judith MacNutt, promotes healing and deliverance that include therapeutic techniques to deal with emotional imbalance, grief, addiction, trauma, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Specifically, inner healing is a charismatic ritual that includes a range of rituals and practices designed to help participants manage their emotions and attain mental health. Findings are based on participant observations and interviews.

Between 1950 and 1976, single frame “gag” cartoons depicting clergy and congregations in humorous situations flourished in religious publications, but also in syndication in major metropolitan newspapers across the United States. Coinciding as they did with important issues in American religion, these images—their rise, their content, and their decline—have been overlooked by historians of Catholicism, Protestantism, and American religion generally, as well as scholars of popular culture, print media, and graphic arts. This paper analyzes over 13,000 images, putting them in historical and sociological perspective. It argues that, because these images reflect both what the artists understood about their own religious traditions and what the religious and secular publishers understood about presenting that image to the public, they reveal an unexplored perspective on the post-World War II integration of Catholics into American public culture, concurrent transformations in American Catholicism and Protestantism, and broader shifts in American religion.

While Muslim men – nearly all comedians – have ascended in the world of American pop culture representation, the many Muslim women comedians performing across the U.S. have not found the same success. Why is it Muslim men who primarily reap the benefits of the “Representation Matters” movement? The dearth of fully-realized Muslim women in pop media imagery of Islam emerges out of patriarchal dividends and discourses of consumption and control which hover over Muslim women’s bodies. In standup, this becomes an added precondition to the material Muslim women comics write and make light of, a limitation on the “secular range of motion” available otherwise to Muslim comedians who are men. Due to the heightened apprehension that the dangerous Muslim amalgam continues to summon, those that resemble the terrifying Muslim (man) are thus also the recipients of the opportunity to confront him while the possibilities of women are swallowed and sacrificed.

Afterlives of Jesus in the hybrid medium of comics illustrate complex and provocative dynamics of reception and textual reworking. Much of the irony that characterizes so much of Mark Russell and Richard Pace’s _Second Coming_ (Ahoy Comics, 2019) and _Second Coming: Only Begotten Son_ (Ahoy Comics, 2020-21) cleverly echoes the iconoclasm of the historical Jesus in its critique of Christianity and American culture. However, the alternative put forward is marked by leitmotifs of failure, melancholy, and regret. This article traces these themes across the narrative and argues that the comic’s proleptic recasting of Jesus results in a nihilistic dystopia reflective of postmodern ennui, thus contributing to conversations concerning how questions about the present and future are being negotiated in this present historical moment.

Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork, this paper aims to propose a new theoretical approach to the study of interreligious relations among Christians and Muslims by introducing an aesthetic and semiotic approach to interrituality. The theoretical and methodological claim of this paper is that this framework is applicable to the study of all types of interreligious relations that are mediated through different rituals and ritual acts. The introduction of an aesthetically and semiotically informed concept of mimesis will account for the relational configurations and intersections between textual representations, ritual imitations, and sensory simulations as they materialize in the ethnographic case under consideration through the coordination of the specific times and places in saint veneration rituals at shared sacred sites and festivals. Defined as a relational concept, mimesis indexes the triadic relationships and dynamic configurations between persons, times and places that can be accounted for as dynamic processes of continuous appropriation and transformation.

According to US flag code, flags that have become damaged or are in some way no longer serviceable must be disposed of in a solemn and respectful manner. Paradoxically, burning flags which is often done in protest is viewed as one of the most disrespectful acts to a flag, is the same method of how they are supposed to be disposed of, albeit within a ritual context. In a flag retirement ceremony, the flag takes on the same status as a deceased human body. This reflects the fact the flag is a symbol for all those who lost their lives fighting to defend the flag, America more broadly, and the cultural values symbolized in a single piece of cloth. Cremation (and sometimes burial) are seen as the most appropriate methods for respectful disposition of sacred remains.

From Pierre Nora to Paul Connerton, memory theorists have argued that “modernity forgets.” Nowhere is this said to be more obvious than in the urban landscape, whose ever-shifting and always-expanding topography reflects the alienation intrinsic to capitalist modernity. But if modern space is “space wiped clean” (Connerton 2009), we might ask: wiped clean of what? Through an examination of a vibrant devotion to the souls of the suffering dead at a small chapel in São Paulo, Brazil, this paper examines “forgetting things,” or the material culture that conjures a sense of absence, loss, or erasure. In so doing, it argues that in the Americas, “modernization” has depended upon the eradication of Black and Indigenous presence. And it traces how at the Chapel of the Afflicted, devotees and activists have produced “forgetting things” to advance a political project of material and mnemonic reparations in São Paulo.

In the largely rural landscape of the Kullu district in the North Indian hill-state of Himachal Pradesh, most villages are presided over by territorial village deities which exercise significant influence over the everyday lives of their followers. Many of these deities are recognised as land-owning ‘perennial minors’ by the district administration. The deities are active agents who speak through their mediums and move through their chariots. Drawing from my fieldwork conducted in 2021-2022, I aim to discuss how these moving, territorial deities shape sacred landscape through pilgrimages, territorial surveys and festivals. I also aim to look at oral traditions around these deities to explore how they sustain the deities’ historic ties to the landscape of Kullu. In a context where the State officially recognises the presence  and land-ownership of deities, I wish to explore the role of the state in sustaining a sacred landscape.

In this paper, I analyze the narrative descriptions in the Pachomian corpus in order to construct a detailed description of the process of entry for a beginner joining a Pachomian monastery, with an emphasis on the religious landscapes involved, which is presented in the literature as a stark contrast between the chaotic, dangerous desert outside the walls, and the ideal, sacred space set apart by the monastery.  Entry through the front gatehouse, then, marks the liminal passage from the harsh desert wilderness to a life of order, peace, and holiness, so the rituals and architecture of the gatehouse are significant for framing and imagining one’s new life and identity.

In the Holy Quran, the earth, an inanimate space and place, is promised by God to be given a voice to “declare” and testify about the actions of the humans who lived upon it. Built structures such as mosques, both located upon earth and made of earthen materials, become creatures of memory. Engaging traditional Islamic cosmology, built structures of American Muslim worship are more than public spaces of congregation, but also deeply intimate, animate interiors who observe, recollect, and feel. Through a serious engagement with the sacred memory of American Masajid, new dimensions of communal ritual are made evident.

With Mircea Eliade, Borders are theorized as an act of worldmaking where “foreign and unoccupied” space becomes settled and inhabited through an ordering of chaos in and through the sacred. The religious man remains near the divine while the chaotic outside carries “demons, foreigners” and the “souls of the dead.”

With Sylvia Wynter, these structural ontological oppositions (divine/demon, order/chaos) are seen as mapped onto the landscape itself. Ontological divides appear inside geographies as certain areas are deemed “habitable” while others are “unhabitable.” Dominant discourses are infused into the space/landscape of the Border in order relocate space and people crossing through as outside the human.

In the location of chaos, what is space for the migrant moving through the violence of such enclosure? What is the pressure migrants crossing these borders enact on dominant spatial formations? What are the geographies built by them as they traverse these spaces?

This paper focuses on the mystical re-interpretation of medieval philosophical concepts in the lettrism of Ibn al-ʿArabī. Ibn al-ʿArabī’s theory about the origins of the world (the building blocks of which are the letters of the Arabic alphabet) centers on three aspects of Arabic letters: physical, spoken, and written. The third dimension of letters – their graphic representation and the symbolic meanings of their calligraphic forms – is the focus of this paper. Here, I seek to contextualize Ibn al-ʿArabī’s theory of the Arabic written letters as cosmogonic entities, within its philosophical framework (Arabic Neoplatonic philosophical concept of the intermediary and idealized forms) and its mystical milieu (in comparison with the lettrist works of Ibn Masarra and Saʿadia Gaon). This dynamic comparison brings forward a more comprehensive understanding of what I term Ibn al-ʿArabī’s “mystical calligraphy” – the forms and functions of the letters of the universe – across philosophical, mystical, and linguistic lines.

Translation is an interpretation. Thus, when we read a translated text, we must consider multiple contexts - the context the book was written in, and the context the book was translated in. In this way, translations function more like interpretive practices that engage with locally produced cultural milieu. In such a situation, how do we perceive a translation within a vernacular public culture? Seeking a possible response to this question, my presentation discusses three prominent translations of Umar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat into modern Telugu. Translated between 1926 and 1934—a period of great transition in the vernacular cultural sphere—these three translations played a key role in the making of a modern Persianate literary ethos and the making of the Telugu literary culture. This presentation argues that these translations offer a pluralist lens that sheds light on many practices of Islamic mysticism. In addition, these vernacular engagements help us to see a larger picture of an extended realm of Muslim and non-Muslim interpretations of Islamic mysticism.  These three translations from modern Telugu demonstrate a set of intriguing modes for interpreting the tradition of Umar Khayyam and its Sufi orientation.

This paper examines the intersections of sound and metaphysics in the first study of transnational Sri Lankan Sufi Shaikh M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen’s (?-1986) The Resonance of Allah: Resplendent Explanations Arising from the Nūr, Allah’s Wisdom of Grace (1969/2001). It focuses on three questions about sound in Islamic mysticism (with reference to Hinduism): What is the role of sound (and silence) as embodiments of the sacred, as significant for listening subjects, and as elements of meaning deeply linked to the human sensorium and to language? I argue that The Resonance of Allah enacts a uniquely inter-(and meta-religious) metaphysics of sound through its content, form, and reception and that M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen’s attention to resonance (which interfuses all of his textual and media materials), and his unique Sufi Islamic terminology and focus on experiential gnosis, offers a new approach to the study of philosophical Sufism and to broader conversations beyond.

While the popularity of the occult sciences in the medieval Islamic world has been well-established, Fatimid engagement with astrology, magic, divination, and other associated disciplines has been more difficult to prove. In this paper, I argue that the 10th-century Fatimid Ismaili text k. al-fatarāt wa-l-qirānāt (The Book of Interim Times and Planetary Conjunctions), attributed to the courtier and missionary Ja‘far b. Manṣūr al-Yaman (d. c. 358 AH/969 AD), suggests that the Fatimid mission sought to incorporate the occult sciences into their Ismaili theological framework. This accommodation was intended to demonstrate that no realm of knowledge escaped the Fatimid imam's mastery, and that the Fatimid imam of the era was superior to occult scientists due to his direct connection with the divine and perfect and immediate apprehension of all phenomena which grant him superior perception of the unseen.

The 12th century saw a proliferation of modes of spiritual life that used the erotic imagery of the Song of Songs and experimented with the possibilities of human affect. Bernard of Clairvaux's program of transformation of desire has been accused of erotizing violence, but its potential for the recovery of eros as a positive source for Christian spirituality emerges in conversation with Amia Srinivasan, with whom Bernard has surprising resonances. For both, desire is subject to critique, whether because of an Augustinian view of sinfulness, or its construction in formations of knowlege and power. For both, it is also open to transformation. Putting the two in conversation creates opportunity for both affirmation and skepticism of desire, including of Bernard's own entanglements, and opens the field for an experimental erotic spirituality that is a site of liberation.

Employing the work of Jean-Luc Marion in The Erotic Reduction, this presentation highlights the phenomenon of grace which opens humanity to love and communion. Desire drives life to the Beloved. The foundational question Marion posits is not “How do I know?” in the line of Descartes but “Does anyone love me?” One’s ability to love finds its basis in a prior love. Marion’s phenomenology of givenness presents a way of being that is rooted in grace. It's in this aesthetic, embodied encounter where theology finds its foundation. Drawing on sources such as St. Ephrem, Teresa of Avila, and Hans Urs von Balthasar, Christian spirituality is pursued more like a poet or lover than a scientist or investigator.

Drawing attention to the example of inner healing in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and of racial joining in the Azusa Street Revival, this paper explores the social implications of the erotic in Christian spirituality. While calling for ongoing engagement with Pentecostal manifestations of the erotic as guidepoints for Christian spirituality, this paper identifies the limitations as symbolized in the Catholic Charismatic focus on inner healing, and calls for a retrieval of the Pentecostal vision of Azusa Street as a more authentic, and decolonial, expression of the erotic in Christian spirituality.

In post-Nygren context, eros have received prominent attentions in theological conversations. One of the constructive approaches attempts to interpret eros as a creative, life-giving force that drives one’s desire for the other. Thus, eros can function as a theological resource for liberative theology and praxis. This article continues this path by exploring erotic desire in the life and thought of John of the Cross. John perceives God as the other who transcends all beings and definitions. Therefore, the ascent towards the other must include the purification of desire through detachment and negation of all senses and images. This language of silence generates a two-fold erotic movement: it yearns to touch the other, while at the same time respecting their elusiveness. Considering that John’s work emanates from marginal space, I infer that silence can be seen as erotic movement that subversively challenges the predominant narrative within the society.

Living Landscapes: Meditations on the Five Elements in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Yogas (SUNY 2020) explores the use of elemental meditations in key texts and ritual practices, including reflections on the author's own training in this discipline and exploration of the five elemental Saiva temples in south India. Resources include the Pṛthivī Sūkta, Yogavāsiṣṭha, and Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā (Hindu), the Dhātu Vibhaṅga, Mahārāhulovāda, and the Visuddhimagga (Buddhist), and the Ācārāṅga Sūtra, Jñānārṇava, and Yogaśāstra (Jaina). This presentation will provide a summary overview of meditations on the five elements as found in all three traditions.

The Kālacakra Tantra states that a physical body is requisite for complete buddhahood, and what constitutes a physical body are the four coarse elements (earth, wind, fire, water), the element of space that is characteristically included in late Indian Buddhist literature, plus the sixth element of gnosis (ye shes). Together, these six elements form the constitutive physiology for a body that, in its fullest expression, is known as the adamantine body endowed with the six elements (khams drug ldan pa rdo rje lus). Corresponding to this sixfold elemental theory, the tantra presents a successive development of a sixfold vajrayoga completion stage process that is incremental, progressive, and adheres to an internal sequential logic. This paper details and analyzes these contemplative processes of dematerializing and rematerializing the physical body into a gnostic body according to the Kālacakra’s metaphysics of the six elements, and its correlative sixfold vajrayoga contemplative practices.

The primary elements of earth, water, fire, and wind are widely known within Buddhist cosmologies and philosophies as units of matter. Less well known are the Buddhist contexts in which the elements function as objects of meditation, as devices for measuring time, and as technologies of information for ordering knowledge about practitioners’ lives and their surrounding material environments. This paper explores these dimensions of elemental thought within foundationally important Great Perfection Seminal Heart (Rdzogs chen snying thig) texts from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Drawing on key examples of elemental-contemplative thought and practice from the collection known as the Seventeen Great Perfection Tantras (Rdzogs chen rgyud bcu bdun), and their accompanying twelfth-century commentaries, this paper reflects on the role of elements as constitutive and agentive factors in Buddhist theories of meditation, and the ordering of Buddhist contemplative lives.

Newar Buddhism is often viewed in scholarship as being concerned with ritual at the expense of contemplative and/or philosophical practice. This presentation shows that located within the physical ritual space is an intersection of ritual, contemplative, and philosophical thought so deeply interwoven that to attempt to disentangle them in order to make them fit with contemporary categories could only happen at great detriment to the theory behind the practices highlighted. Critical to the conceptual transformation of the practitioner into a being who has fully realized the shared identity of oneself and all external phenomena (dharmadhātu) is the identification with the physical body and environment with the constituent gross elements. These elements form a critical part of the maṇḍala, which is mapped onto the body (private), social space (public) and reality itself (cosmic).