Annual Meeting 2023 Program Book

Set in “an alternate or shadow Appalachia . . . where these mountains were never meant to be inhabited,” the horror anthology podcast Old Gods of Appalachia is a work of speculative fiction that addresses themes of labor, ecology, and industry in Central Appalachia.  After a coal mine disaster in 1917, horror awakens in the town of Barlo, KY. The horror serves to dramatize and draw attention to the historical and ongoing social concerns of the region, portraying the pain and difficulties of working-class life through the story’s supernatural frame. My analysis of Season One of Old Gods of Appalachia will bring the emerging field of Monster Theory together into conversation with working-class religion and ecocriticism.

Anthony Doerr’s recent novel Cloud Cuckoo Land focuses on the healing power of story through three apocalypses spanning centuries. This story follows characters across time and space. From early fifteenth-century Constantinople and its destruction, to the late twentieth century middle-America, and finally an uncertain future period in the middle of space where humans have rendered Earth unlivable, this novel provides a vision of how destructive human actions shape our world and the possibility of resistance and healing through themes of displacement, war, and the othering of bodies. This paper will explore the many human actions of construction and destruction and the religious element of healing as it appears throughout the novel, opening up a theological and ethical imagination of restoration, wholeness, and the future of our world.

This paper explores the often paradoxically disruptive force of efforts to achieve harmony in Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti Trilogy of novellas. With Binti, her protagonist for Binti (2015), Binti: Home (2017), and Binti: The Night Masquerade (2018), as well as an accompanying short story, “Binti: Sacred Fire” (2019), Okorafor offers a futuristic character rooted in African tradition whose work as a “master harmonizer” bridges the technological and social. With her mystical access to the spiritual resonances of mathematics, Binti is both an expert designer of “astrolabes,” a form of highly advanced smart phone, and a skilled mediator of division. As Binti sums up, master harmonizers can “create harmony anywhere,” yet her choices in pursuing her vocation undercut tribal expectations and gender roles while complicating assumed distinctions between individuals and groups. Okorafor’s Africanfuturist and postcolonial vision, meanwhile, disrupts traditionally perceived limits of science fiction as a field.

The post-Vatican II secularization of Catholic higher education in tandem with the secularization of their religious congregations is a consistent cause of the growth of adjunct faculty and other practices which ape their secular counterparts. Secular ways of doing business in higher education replaced ways integral to how Catholics have managed their institutions in the past, amplified by the need for Government grants, lay collaborators who were not formed by the sponsoring religious congregations to take co-responsibility with the mission, or were indifferent to the mission in favor of market “realities,” and a general collapse of confidence by religious congregations and their lay collaborators in their received spiritual and theological traditions having anything to say to critique, reform, or provide an alternate vision to manage their educational institutions to survive and thrive.

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In this presentation, I explore the possibility of interreligious dialogue between adherents of Vodou and Christianity in Haiti. I suggest that the aim of interreligious dialogue between Vodouists and Haitian Protestant Christians in Haiti should involve first candid conversations about the roots or causes of religious conflict and group hostility that have divided both Haitian Vodouists and Protestant (Evangelical) Christians. Interreligious dialogue should contribute to a better understanding of these two dominant religious systems, enhance interreligious literacy, cultivate intentional friendship and hospitality, and contribute to peace-making and nation-building in the Haitian society. In light of both objectives, the paper will bring clarity on the nature of interfaith dialogue and analyze how both Vodouist writers and Christian theologians of the Protestant tradition have responded to conflict and differences in relationship to Haitian history, theology, ethics, and culture. I close this paper with some recommendations on how adherents of Vodou and Protestant Christianity can pursue genuine interfaith dialogue toward the common good and human flourishing in the Haitian society and the Haitian diaspora.

In the 1930’s, folklorist Harry Hyatt began an extensive project collecting supernatural folk-beliefs throughout the American Gulf and Coastal South. More than a mere collection of otherworldly curiosa, Hyatt’s Hoodoo, Conjuration, Witchcraft, Rootwork offers a largely unvarnished glimpse of everyday experience – bootlegging, gambling, sex-work - not often openly discussed in 1930’s academic discourse. Two of Hyatt’s most remarkable interviews involve interlocutors who did not conform to binary gender or sexual roles, and whose pragmatic occult instructions provide us with views of both quotidian and supernatural experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals in the early 20th century South. Through a close reading of these interviews, elements drawn from other ethnographies of Conjure, and my own fieldwork with Healers and Spiritualists in New Orleans, I wish to suggest a necessary “Queering of Conjure” – an articulation of the vital roles LGBTQ+ people of color have played in creating, shaping and disseminating these traditions.

Scholars researching Black Religion give limited attention to its geographical scope beyond tightly guarded ecclesiastical places. Even fewer explore Black Women’s essential contributions to Black lived religion. I seek to expand such by proposing that stripping be read as Black religious ritual and strip clubs as hush harbors- sacred, religious spaces where Black Women spiritually commune with Deity. Using Womanist theologians and feminists to shape my theoretical framework, this paper examines playwright Katori Hall’s tv show P-Valley, arguing that stripping and strip clubs provide Black Women with transcendent ecstasy beyond sociohistorical limitations of their race, gender, sexuality, geography, and class. Through ritual, P Valley’s Black Women struggle for complex subjectivities that reconceptualize adverse, hegemonic representations. They also reject patron’s misogynoir bodily consumptions and resist gentrifying land developments that would hinder and displace their liturgy. These Black Women remind viewers that religion abounds everywhere, revealing God in their sexual bodies and performances.

This paper aims to establish a preliminary connection between the practical principles and theoretical background of fengshui using the Southern Song literati Zheng Sixiao’s (鄭思肖, 1241-1318) interpretation from a Daoism perspective. Zheng, a Daoist scholar active during the Southern Song and early Yuan, offered a crucial theoretical background for the prevailing writing which focused mainly on documenting the practical principles of fengshui. After a summary of Zheng’s idiosyncratic take on fengshui, a few key terms frequently used by him will be highlighted and scrutinized. The use of these terms will also be compared and contrasted to their use in the official manual books and other types of literati accounts (epitaphs, eulogies, and private letters). By this, the article intend to enhance our understanding of fengshui through a Daoist perspective. It start from the theoretical background and moves to the practical principle, and culminate in the final outcome where a connection between the two aspects is established.

Drawing on the case of the Temple of the Central Great One (zhong Taiyi gong 中太一宮), this paper investigates a topic that has been inadequately studied—the Wang Anshi 王安石 administration’s religious policies. Surveying primary sources about the temple construction, my research suggests that this temple’s theological framework derived from Confucian and Daoist traditions, in which the Han weft-text tradition and the Daoist Lingbao tradition played significant roles. Confronted with censures from the opponents of the Wang administration and its New Policies, Wang Anshi, who is often regarded as a Confucian scholar-official, collaborated with Emperor Shenzong (r.1067–1085) to make the temple construction possible. Although Wang Anshi’s primary aide Lü Huiqing 呂惠卿 (1032–1111) utilized the Rites of Zhou (Zhouli 周禮) as the ground for the temple construction, both Wang and Lü tolerated the Daoist components of the temple. In addition, Wang befriended the temple’s director Chen Jingyuan 陳景元 (1035–1094), who was a renowned Daoist priest. I argue that the Wang Anshi administration’s eclectic attitude toward religious traditions enabled Wang and his colleagues to serve as technocratic device for the emperor to establish an imperial religion.

In recognition of the late John Berthrong’s singular contributions to Confucian-Christian comparison, this paper will assess his work on the question of "dual religious citizenship" and then propose a further direction for exploration: the study of “Confucian-Christian” traditions in East Asian history. As will be argued, recognizing the existence and development of Confucian-Christian traditions affords a distinct hermeneutic by which to complexify studies of Confucianism more broadly. Indeed, this raises important questions: What is at stake in recognizing Confucian-Christian traditions as not simply expressions of Christianity in Confucian-inspired idiom, but also as developments within Confucian traditions? How might Confucian-Christian traditions shed complexifying light on phenomena otherwise labeled “Confucian” without hesitation? What are the boundaries of Confucianism itself? By temporarily bracketing the contemporary questions around dual religious citizenship Berthrong rightly considers, and first attending to the realities of historical Confucian-Christian traditions, how might we build on Berthrong’s insights in new ways?

The paper explores Han Chinese Buddhists’ learning of Tibetan Buddhism in the first decades of the twentieth century, particularly the lay Buddhists’ translation of Tibetan texts. It examines the translation and interpretation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which became popular among some Chinese esoteric practitioners as a guide to assist their practice. The paper also discusses the influence of Western interest in Tibetan Buddhism on Chinese knowledge of the tradition. This influence can be seen in the translation and interpretation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead by Walter Evans-Wentz and its subsequent translation into Chinese in the 1930s and 1940s. Furthermore, the paper highlights the political and social context of Han Buddhists' interest in the Tibetan teaching of “intermediate state (bardo) liberation,” which they considered as providing practical techniques for preparing for death during a time of political instability and war.

Based on large amount of archival materials, my paper examines the ways in which Lu Zhengxiang (陸徵祥, 1871-1949) advocated on behalf of China in the aftermath of Japan’s occupation of Manchuria on September 18, 1931.  The first part of my paper traces the correspondence between Lu and the Holy See between 1931 and 1934 when Lu appealed to the pope’s spiritual authority.  The second part analyzes Lu’s 1933 brochure which judged Japan’s occupation of Manchuria in light of Cardinal Mercier’s Catholic doctrine of just resistance in time of war. The third part examines the global context in which Lu’s brochure was drafted and disseminated when St. Andrew’s Abbey became a center linking Chinese and global Catholicism. By revisiting Lu’s elaboration of Mercier’s doctrine, this paper hopes to reflect on questions that remain relevant for present-day Christians when their countries are thrusted into global conflicts.

The National Christian Council of China (NCCC) is one of the most important Protestant institutions in Republican China. While most research focuses on its founders like Cheng Ching-yi or its final years, little attention has been paid to its ministries during the Sino-Japanese War under its second General Secretary, Bishop Chen Wen-yuan, who served from 1936 to 1946. This paper studies Bishop Chen’s leadership of the NCCC, especially his international liaison efforts, focusing on his 1944-1945 tour of North America and the United Kingdom. It uncovers the significant role this “China’s No. 1 Christian” (as designated by Time magazine) played in rallying wartime spiritual, moral, financial, political and even military support for China from Christians and non-Christians worldwide. It also explores how he achieved that by utilizing his three unique roles: ecumenically as the NCCC leader, denominationally as a Methodist bishop, and politically as Chiang Kai-shek’s unofficial ambassador.

This paper aims to illustrate that war contributed to Hong Kong’s historical role as a space of facilitation in the development of Chinese Christianities through a study of the origin and early history of the Hong Kong Bible House (HKBH). After explaining why the China Bible House (CBH), the de facto national Bible society in China, decided in 1948 to establish an emergency office in Hong Kong, it will highlight that, thanks to the outbreak of the Korean War, the CBH was forced to sever its connection with the emergency office in 1951, marking the latter’s beginning as a separate agency known as the HKBH. This paper will conclude with examining the HKBH’s operation in its first year after independence, which indicates that the HKBH began to be developed into a Chinese Bible publisher and distributor serving Chinese Christian communities worldwide within the context of the Cold War geopolitical climate.

A liberal cosmopolitan and best-selling author in the United States, Lin Yutang (1895-1976) was nevertheless countercultural in his discussion of war. He irritated his western audience by protesting the imperialism of the Allies, especially British imperialism, against Asian countries during World War II. During China’s civil war, he was the first to sound a warning bell against the authoritarian practices of the Communists, countering the prevailing wisdom of the American China Hands. During the Cold War, he came to the gradual realization that the only remedy against rampant materialism and the grip of Communism was the light and power of the teachings of Christ. No other means existed that could heal the ills of modernity. My paper will discuss how Lin constructed the argument for his philosophy of peace using the resources of Confucianism, Daoism, and Christianity, and how he sheds light on an alternative path to peace.

The majdhūb is a deviant saint. The majdhūb veers from the sober path of disciplining the self, pulled directly toward God. In entering the mystical state of jadhb, a majdhūb begins to act in erratic, sometimes terrible ways. Narratives of the majdhūb can cause discomfort, prompting hagiographers to justify the majdhūb’s saintly status. In this presentation, I examine the use of deviant majdhūb narratives within Maghribi Sufi hagiographical literature. I ask: How do hagiographers navigate the discomfort produced by the majdhūb? What strategies do they draw on to alternately mute or highlight the relationship of the majdhūb to madness, of the majdhūb to sainthood? Finally, what do deviant majdhūb narratives reveal about the relationship between sainthood and power? I argue that hagiographies of majdhūb saints are never merely descriptive; rather, they illuminate broader arguments about who is considered a saint and what acts, while terrible, may be considered miraculous.

This paper presents three modern Orthodox candidates as “dangerous saints.” Mother Maria Skobtsova of Paris was a scandal to many of her time, even though she devoted that last twenty years of the life to assisting the poor and outcast, and, during WW II, Jews. She was gassed in a German concentration camp in March 1945. Fr. Pavel Florensky was a bold theologian whose ideas disturbed many. He remained in the Soviet Union, but was eventually arrested, sent to the gulag, and executed in 1937. Fr. Alexander Men was an innovative pastor and theologian who became prominent in the Gorbachev era, only to be assassinated in 1990. The Orthodox Church has difficulty accommodating unconventional but manifestly saintly persons, such as our three candidates, when they challenge, by their lives or their teachings, conventional views about what Orthodoxy is and what holiness in the Orthodox Church should be.

I argue that MLK’s transformation from a publicly disavowed critic of American society during his lifetime to a celebrated and honored hero of racial integration in the collective memory of the American public constitutes the construction persona of a secular saint for and by the American public that follows along the same narrative structures that we encounter in hagiographies of sanctified religious figures. The curtailed and tailored portrayal of MLK’s activism focuses on the iconic moment of his speech during the March on Washington and is meant to cast him as an emblem of successful and peaceful racial integration that reflects positively on the American society at large.