We invite academics in the field of biblical studies to join us for a workshop to explore the practical use of GPT in biblical scholarship. This workshop serves as a kickoff meeting to explore proposing a new SBL program unit dedicated to "AI, NLP, and GPT in Biblical Studies." Please join us if you are interested in exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and biblical studies. Although this technology holds great promise, scholars will need to learn how to use them wisely to ensure trustworthy and accurate results, and these technologies raise important questions about ethical and responsible scholarship. They also raise questions about the process of scholarship itself – what is gained and lost by using these technologies for specific purposes? We will collectively identify topics of interest and identify potential leaders.
Annual Meeting 2023 Program Book
Against the Katechon features three papers that creatively and antagonistically confront Schmitt’s reading of the Katechon, or “the one that withholds the man of lawlessness” that Paul speaks about in 2 Thessalonians. Schmitt’s conception of the katechon sees in this figure the paradigmatic function of state politics rooted in the law. In distinction, the papers on this panel seek to develop a political theology from below. With papers that consider the impact of Afropessimism, anarchist political thought, and radical messianisms against Christianity, this paper drives forward an important conversation in political theology.
Papers
In this paper, I consider the implications of Carl Schmitt’s claim that what matters most in the thought of Thomas Hobbes is the simple declaration of faith that “Jesus is the Christ.” I frame the problem by way of Giorgio Agamben’s several criticisms of Schmitt’s reading of 2 Thessalonians (in which the apocalyptic figure of the katechon holds back the lawlessness of the eschaton) as a scriptural basis for a Christian doctrine of State and Empire. Instead of neutralizing Schmitt by collapsing the katechon, and the lawlessness to which it is opposed, into a single mystery (as Agamben does), a political theology attuned to the messianic idea should rather confront Schmitt head-on. 2 Thessalonians is indeed a charter for a katechontic doctrine of Christian power, at least since Nicaea. The properly messianic act dispenses with all neutralizations and commences, instead, with a denial: Jesus is not the Christ.
This paper argues that Afropessimism reveals the Human(/)World as the katechonic apparatus restraining what Frank Wilderson calls gratuitous freedom—which is precisely freedom from the Human, the World, and even Being as such. Accordingly, it is from within what Jared Sexton calls a “blackened vantage or lens” that this paper reads Giorgio Agamben when he describes the katechōn as “the force ... that clashes with and hides katargēsis [inoperativity], the state of tendential lawlessness that characterizes the messianic, and in this sense delays unveiling the ‘mystery of lawlessness.’” This paper thus speculates that constellating Agamben’s paradigmatic analysis of 2 Thessalonians 2 with Afropessimism’s paradigmatic analysis of Blackness potentiates, on the one hand, the analytic of the katechōn as a paradigm for anti-Blackness and, on the other hand, the messianic mystery of lawlessness as a paradigm for what Wilderson calls "learn[ing] the steps" to the “dance of social death.”
Mainstream political theory remains dependent on notions of sovereignty. Who is sovereign and how sovereignty functions are up for debate, but the equating of sovereignty with politics remains unquestioned. In this paper, I argue that the concept of destituent power is one way to refuse the politics of sovereignty. After briefly tracing the functions of sovereignty, I locate a theory of destituent power in Benjamin’s ‘Critique of Violence’. I then contrast James Martel's and Marchello Tarì's readings of the text and explore the differences in the resulting forms of anarchism This comparison shows that destituent power is essential for an anarchist politics that rejects sovereignty at the level of the state as well as the individual. I conclude by considering how such an anarchism can respond to projects that seek to reclaim sovereignty rather than reject it outright.
Right now, cities across the globe are experiencing what one observer has called an “epidemic” of church closures as churches, mosques, synagogues, and other places of worship permanently shutter their doors. Declines in religious affiliation and worship attendance have driven much of this trend, but so too have aging congregations, rising costs of real estate, and other fluctuations accompanying gentrification and the historic preservation of old buildings. In some places, these empty houses of worship have been reimagined as homes, places of business, or the site of new religious communities as churches and synagogues becoming masjids or temples. In other places, they remain abandoned. This session examines the narratives, histories, transformations, religious reincarnations, or secular afterlives of abandoned places of worship in urban spaces across the globe.
Papers
Drawing on Marxist social theory related to the production of space, the paper offers an analysis of ethnographic interviews and public reporting on the construction, public ministry, and closure of the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, a Black Pentecostal church in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I argue that the building’s life cycle offers a clarifying lens for the vulnerability of minoritized houses of worship to the twin forces of capitalism and white supremacy at work in processes of gentrification. Focusing particularly on the loss of the building as tied to the dissolution of the congregation itself, as well as the building’s potential afterlife as a redeveloped space, I contend that the closure of physical places of worship is representational of gentrifications transfer of social and economic capital from poor communities of color to wealthy white communities.
In 2007, a six-decade-old Buddhist temple in Singapore called Chiam Pok Ee was opened to the public to much fanfare as the Kong Hiap Memorial Museum. Although this museum is dedicated to the esteemed Buddhist monk, Kong Hiap (1900–1994), it is not a traditional Chinese memorial hall but a fine arts museum showcasing works by Chinese monks, literati, and painters such as Hongyi, Yinguang, Feng Zikai, Qi Baishi, and Xu Beihong. Yet, it did not abandon its previous function as the religious base of Kong Hiap, but continued to hold dharma assemblies. I suggest that the case of the Kong Hiap Memorial Museum should give pause to the notion that museumification of religious sites is necessarily deleterious to lived religion but could instead illustrate how a community creatively reimagined a sacred space while reconstituting the memories of Kong Hiap through a threefold surrogacy of place, person, and processes.
This paper analyzes a growing trend in San Diego County in which faith communities are seeking to develop underutilized church properties into affordable housing. Such projects are often framed by church leaders and others as an opportunity for a congregation to expand the role that it plays in the local community (mission) while simultaneously growing the wealth of the congregation over time. Drawing from site visits and in-depth qualitative interviews conducted with pastors and others involved with this work, the author compares three different building projects with an eye towards the possible benefits and risks of each model. The results indicate that the success of such projects can hinge on a variety of factors such as: the consistent presence of a committed pastor and team of supporters from the church (leadership); the social, racial, and political dynamics of the neighborhood and city where the church is located; and, more. This paper also offers a list of best practices and points of advice for pastors and congregations that may be considering similar projects.
Like many urban areas, San Antonio has encountered issues related to the abandonment or historic preservation of aging buildings that were originally constructed to house religious communities. Some have been abandoned and left vacant. Some have been rehabilitated into art galleries or co-works spaces. And some have been bought by new religious communities. In this presentation, two staff members with the City of San Antonio’s Historic Preservation Office will discuss how urban planners and public historians engage with abandoned religious buildings. They will especially cover how the city has navigated these issues in light of Texas’s unique historic preservation laws that have specific rules for buildings that house religious communities.
This session draws on recent findings in evolutionary biology to clarify the “biocultural” character of human beings in theological anthropology. Presenters will engage the latest research on niche construction, gene-culture coevolution, and cultural evolution (including, but not limited to, work done under the banner of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis) to show the mutually constitutive interplay of biological and cultural processes in hominid evolution. Nature-culture continuities identified in this biology literature will be considered for each of the project's theological foci: aesthetics, morality, and purposiveness. In conversation with theological respondents, this panel session explores new pathways in science-engaged theological anthropology and seeks to bring the field up to date in terms of its engagement with current evolutionary thinking.
This roundtable discussion will feature responses to Leah DeVun’s book, The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance (Columbia, 2021). The Shape of Sex is a history of diverse and contradictory ideas about nonbinary gender from 200-1400 CE, or from patristic theories of Adam as “primal androgyne” to alchemical accounts of the “Jesus hermaphrodite.” Respondents will comment on the book’s revelations about premodern history as well as its relevance for scholars of contemporary sex and gender.
Respondent
Until recently, most scholarship on Buddhism in North America privileged the study of institutionalized Buddhist organizations. For example, few attempts have been made to study the lived experiences of North American Asian Buddhists and their lived religious practices in digital environments. Scholars have highlighted the idea of “global Buddhism” in the past decade, arguing that Buddhism in the West must be viewed as part of a worldwide transformational process. With the exponential development of digital technology, a global Buddhism approach has expanded and now encompasses the digital world, along with many issues such as digital Buddhist community and identity formation, digital rituals, digital Buddhist education, and the authenticity of digital Buddhist practices. Was the digital Buddhist community just a short-lived necessity, or is this the general direction of the future of Buddhist communities in North America? What does it mean to be globally networked Buddhist communities in a digital world?
Papers
The COVID-19 lockdown and social distancing caused religious organizations to adapt to maintain relevancy or lose potential followers. The Foguangshan Buddhist temple in Raleigh reopened their temple for in-person weekly meetings two years after covid began, offering a mix of both online and local teaching, rituals, and news. This newly hybridized Chinese Buddhist sangha places the local community in closer connection to other FGS followers both within the United States as well as globally producing an enhanced transnational religious consciousness. Venerable Master Hsing Yun’s weeks long funerary rituals including the globally broadcast ceremony epitomizes the newly formed local-transnational connection. While the funeral was filmed at the FGS temple headquarters in Kaohsiung Taiwan each center around the world was filled with followers being guided how to act ritually by the funeral announcer. This paper argues FGS’s shift to a hybridized format produced a stronger transnational religious consciousness than previously possible.
Drawing on my online fieldwork conducted from early 2020 to the present, this paper examines how globally-networked Chinese Buddhist individuals and communities in French Canada utilize multiple digital platforms to study, and communicate and practice Buddhism. I argue that digital space can be viewed as a crucial religious arena with both secular and transcendent affordance for Chinese Buddhists to engage in cyber-Buddhist rituals, form virtual Buddhist communities, and promote alternative Buddhist practises. I want to argue that the internet is not merely a temporary solution for cyber-Buddhists, but rather this new form of practice, which has flourished and thrived during the pandemic, will become a more natural and enduring aspect of people's Buddhist experiences. Additionally, the digital space should not be viewed as a substitute for physical communities, but rather as a thriving “home” for a strong and prosperous North American Chinese virtual sangha.
Recent scholarship on Buddhist youth has focused on their agency in constructing religious trajectories beyond the confines and expectations of families and institutionalised Buddhist organisations. However, the protraction of the youth phase, amid interrupted education to employment transitions and the rising cost of living, raises questions about the extent to which young Buddhists are (semi)-dependent on, and influenced by a diverse range of socialising influences with regard to religious identity development throughout young adulthood. Drawing on data collected from qualitative interviews conducted with young adult Buddhist practitioners living in Australia, this paper examines how young Buddhists live out both agentic and other-oriented religious trajectories in conditions of precarity through their embeddedness and interdependencies within families, institutionalised Buddhist organisations, and global and digital flows of Buddhism.
This workshop is for graduate students who are interested in exploring career possibilities outside of the faculty path in higher education. Borrowing from Bill Burnett and Dave Evan’s design approach to careers, we will reframe our doctoral training and experiences from the perspective of the “squiggly career” (Sarah Ellis and Helen Tupper), using a values inventory and case studies of humanities PhDs who work outside of academia. This workshop is also an opportunity for participants to begin building networks and community online, particularly through LinkedIn.
Panelist
The field of religion and ecology is a movement that was founded based upon certain figureheads (Tucker & Grim, Berry). The field is constantly transforming and growing as the environmental crisis demands more thoughtful and nuanced ways to think about religion and ecology. This panel welcomes a rejuvenated engagement with old thinkers–Agnes Arber, Simone Weil, and Bernard Charbonneau–as figureheads of religion and ecology. This panel explores new dimensions of vegetal philosophy, political ecology, and labor at the crux of ecospirituality.
Papers
This paper explores the spiritual significance of labour in the philosophy of the twentieth-century French philosopher and mystic, Simone Weil. Weil developed an incisive critique of industrial labour, yet she also spent a brief period of her life as a farm labourer. This paper will consider Weil’s philosophical and religious writings from this period, arguing that her agricultural experience informed her later claim that a new conception of labour—and in particular, of manual labour—must be the “spiritual core” of a well-ordered social life. I argue that Weil’s concept of “decreation,” a term she uses to describe God’s loving withdrawal and self-limitation in Creation, Incarnation, and Passion, is embodied in her theory of labour. The self-emptying, kenotic form of work exemplifies a relationship to the natural world through labour that is characterized by a posture of restraint and withdrawal, rather than one of control or mastery.
The mid-twentieth century Cambridge botanist Agnes Arber (1879-1960) has been woefully neglected in the scholarship of critical plant philosophy and religion. While botanists have engaged her reflections on botany and scientific method, Arber’s vegetal philosophy in its more metaphysical, cosmological, and mystical registers still offers much to scholars in critical plant studies, especially in religion and science. This paper engages cosmological-mystical fragments in The Natural Philosophy of Plant Form (1950), The Mind and the Eye (1953), and The Manifold and the One (1957). Many scholars view her latter scholarship as a rift or departure from her earlier approaches in plant morphology and philosophy. Instead, I’ll argue that Arber’s contemplative practice of “giving an account” of a plant (evoking and dialoguing in a posthuman way with Judith Butler’s work on the moral self), expands into a lush and strangely apophatic vegetal cosmology where a form of moral ecospiritual regard might emerge.
Individuals who have been members of the AAR for 40 years or more and those whose generosity allows us to continue many of our special programs are invited to a reception hosted by the AAR Board of Directors.