Annual Meeting 2023 Program Book

Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church by Nijay K. Gupta

For centuries, discussions of early Christianity have focused on male leaders in the church. But there is ample evidence right in the New Testament that women were actively involved in ministry, at the frontier of the gospel mission, and as respected leaders. Women were there.

Nijay Gupta calls us to bring these women out of the shadows by shining light on their many inspiring contributions to the planting, growth, and health of the first Christian churches. He sets the context by exploring the lives of first-century women and addressing common misconceptions, then focuses on the women leaders of the early churches as revealed in Paul’s writings.

Drawing on major figures in feminist and womanist theologies as well as public theology, Nevertheless, We Persist elaborates an innovative feminist theological approach to the public church and to the praxis of public theology as ekklesial work, that is, the creation of community or a shared public life. This book initially constructs and then applies this approach to identify and interpret central theological claims and rhetorical, symbolic, and prophetic practices of public engagement, exemplified by a rich range of salient historical and contemporary US social justice leaders and movements. From this feminist perspective, these movements wrestle with different social issues fragmenting and fracturing US public life in our time and fuse religion and politics through various theological claims and public practices in order to engage in and enhance world-making, that is, to build a public or common life that edges toward intersectional justice.

_Language for God_ explores the ways language and images influence who we are and how we live. It declares the necessity of language and images for God that are expansive and inclusive of all genders. Streufert uses Lutheran perspectives as a compass to offer scriptural, theological, and historical insights that advance the reformation of Christian language. As Caryn D. Riswold observes, Streufert's work "is to Lutheran theology in the twenty-first century what Elizabeth Johnson's _She Who Is_ was to Catholic theology in the twentieth century. Grounded in the Lutheran tradition, this book is truly relevant for all people of faith and for all those who have lost faith in the church's ability to include them."

The Rev. Amy Peeler, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, IL and an Associate Rector at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Geneva, IL.

God values women. While many Christians would readily affirm this truth, the widely held assumption that the Bible depicts a male God persists—as it has for centuries. This misperception of Christianity not only perniciously implies that men deserve an elevated place over women but also compromises the glory of God by making God appear to be part of creation, subject to it and its categories, rather than in transcendence of it.

Through a deep reading of the incarnation narratives of the New Testament and other relevant scriptural texts, Amy Peeler shows how the Bible depicts a God beyond gender and a savior who, while embodied as a man, is the unification in one person of the image of God that resides in both male and female.

In my forthcoming book, _The Theology of Mercy Amba Oduyoye: Ecumenism, Feminism, and Communal Practice_ (Notre Dame University Press, 2023), I overview how the events of Oduyoye’s life inscribed themselves on her theological formation and outlook. I examine the process of her spiritual journey and how it sharpened her doctrinal tongue. Her experiences with African culture and African women’s aspirations invite her to interrogate: a theological foundation steeped on colonial history; the possibility of a salvific figurehead attuned to women’s plights; an understanding of humanity cognizant of the beauty of difference, and; a practice of being the Christian church steeped in practices of solidarity, humaneness, and dignity. To be Christian, Oduyoye’s theology shows, is to live in a state of compassionate awareness: in word, deed, practice, and belief.

This book is for seekers—for those with restless hearts. It is especially for those who express their hope through the Catholic tradition but struggle with disillusionment and long for something more. (R)evolutionary Hope invites readers to journey toward that More. With theological reflection explored and interrogated through memoir, this work reimagines what it means to be Catholic, challenging readers to remain open to the grace that draws them from certainty to possibility, beyond what is to what could be. By infusing the theological tradition of St. Augustine with the spirituality emerging in contemporary women of the Church, (R)evolutionary Hope invites readers to shift their paradigm from one of hierarchy to one of interconnection, offering a theology of encounter that is rooted in tradition, responsive to present realities, and ever open to the future.

Beginning in 1971, network newscasts frequently regaled their audiences with stories of the Children of God, a movement begun among the Jesus People of Southern California but which quickly spread internationally and eventually renamed itself The Family International. This paper analyzes and contextualizes three pieces of long-form TV journalism, showing how – far from being unremittingly hostile to a new religion as part of a supposed media secularization – reporters viewed and subsequently translated the group to their audience through a series of unspoken middle-class white Protestant myths of the frontier: the garden, the carnival, and the gothic.

The assassin Yamagami Tetsuya has been variously described in traditional and social media as a mentally unstable lone wolf, an anti-cult warrior, and a god-hero of the lower classes. This paper offers a translation and analysis of Yamagami’s manifesto and then a discussion of its social context. It is argued that the intended audience of Yamagami’s manifesto (which was addressed to an anti-cult journalist) and the letter’s contents indicate that Yamagami belongs to Japan’s own version of the “cult wars”—mediatized legal conflicts over the place of marginal NRMs in society. Yamagami’s statement inhabits the intersection of two genres. It bears the hallmarks of the increasingly prevalent “second-generation” grievance narratives penned by adult children who resent their parents’ religions; and the manifesto also mimics the literary trope of last testaments composed by Japanese “tragic heroes” who protest corruption. The sympathetic media reception indicates that these themes resonate with the public.

The E-meter is a device used by Scientologists to aid in spiritual progress. Regarded by Scientologists as a tool used during spiritual counseling and other procedures followed within the church, the E-meter is said to do nothing on its own. However, I suggest this notion flattens the E-meter’s effectivity and does not account for its authoritative role within the church. Understanding the E-meter as an omniscient presence within its social context offers a new way of “reading” the device and its potential to affect the lived and felt experience of those who use it. Written from the perspective of a former second-generation member of the Church of Scientology, this paper will mobilize a psychoanalytic and autoethnographic perspective to discuss my childhood perception and conceptualization of the E-meter as an omniscient and agentic presence, and to examine how my interactions with the device contributed to my experience as a young Scientologist.

The new religious movement Unicult, founded in 2012 by Unicole Unicron, blends New Age spiritual teachings, abundance practices, and an intensive engagement with popular culture. Unicult is also one of the few new religious movements to call itself a “cult,” its founder a “cult leader,” and its proselytizing “brainwashing.” Given the negative association of these terms, I ask why? By examining Unicult material across multiple media, I argue that the group does so for multiple reasons: to seek attention, as a form of culture jamming and cultural critique, and for ideological reasons internal to the group. I also argue that the group’s cult rhetoric subverts the very concepts of cult and brainwashing, and reveals the latent tensions present in popular discourse about “cults.”

The Shincheonji Church of Jesus is a new millenarian Korean Christian movement that is widely referred to as a “pseudo” religion (saibi jonggyo) in South Korean media and accused of heresy (idan) by mainstream Protestant churches. Since at least the early 2000s, news and entertainment media, Protestant theologians, and anti-cult activists in South Korea have accused The Shincheonji Church of Jesus of deceiving people into joining their religion and often refer to members as “victims.” In this paper, I will first use data collected during my doctoral research through a combination of digital ethnography and media content analysis to illustrate the diverse ways in which Shincheonji members join this new Christian movement and their reasons for leaving Protestantism. I will then explain how the assertions that Shincheonji has only grown through dubious methods reveal greater anxieties about South Korea’s changing religious landscape, particularly regarding the decline of mainstream Protestantism.

Folkish Heathens—those that view their religion as only for white people--are purchasing land in rural areas in the United States. Some of these communities have almost no minorities living in them. However, at least one of these is a majority African American community and another has a sizable African American population. The hofs (Heathen churches) and community centers are part of folkish heathens’ larger racial, gender and immigration agendas. This paper explores the response of both the communities in which these lands are embedded and of other inclusive Heathens to these purchases by folkish Heathens.

While “cybercovens” have been a feature of eclectic Wiccan practice, they have not been the norm in Traditional initiatory Wicca. During the Covid pandemic, however, many Traditional Wiccan covens responded to members’ needs for spiritual and social interaction by creating innovative hybrid rituals with in-person and online elements. This paper utilizes two recent psychological frameworks for theorizing about ritual experience to analyze qualitative interviews with practitioners in such groups. The interviews explore practitioners’ motivations for performing hybrid rituals, the adaptations made to create emotional intensity, social connection, and other significant psychological features of Wiccan ritual, the extent to which such rituals were deemed efficacious and fulfilled members’ psychological needs, and whether the innovations have had lasting effects on subsequent practice. The paper examines the applicability and value of the psychological frameworks for  the analysis of Wiccan ritual and discusses implications for future research on the psychology of ritual.

For the supposedly iconophobic Puritans, colonial New England tombstones served as a posthumous canvas, which only in death, were they granted a form of religious imagery. The graven images carved onto the early Puritan headstones illuminate theological evidence that reflects ideological shifts in time. However, unexpectedly magical musings mark a delineation between the common academic, literary perception of the Puritans and the archaeological remains from ordinary life which paint a more superstitious portrait. Based upon the historical usage of magical symbols, and in conjunction with Puritan theology, daisy wheels and pagan water deities were carved onto 17th and 18th century New England tombstones as a source of apotropaic magic against witches, the devil, and all evils of the New World. Even before the witchcraft accusations of Salem and Essex County, colonists participated in the very same occult practices for which they had condemned and demonized their neighbors.

Generally speaking, the pneumatology of John and Charles Wesley can be summarized with words like fullness, assurance, and confidence. In this paper, however, I explore an overlooked and underemphasized dimension of the Wesleyan understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit: spiritual emptiness, or the sense of distance or absence from God. Within the writings of the Wesleys, spiritual emptiness, as a work of the Holy Spirit, can motivate a return to God (prevenient and justifying grace) or facilitate amenability to the divine will (sanctifying grace). Identifying a connection between emptiness and the work of the Holy Spirit provides a more nuanced view of John and Charles Wesley with respect to their pneumatology; their theology of divine grace; and their understanding of Christian maturity, sanctification, and perfection.

This paper investigates the power and place of *witnessing* and *experiencing* Spirit-led worship in a multiracial, international, intersectional atmosphere, namely 1830s and '40s Liberia. By analyzing the journal of white Methodist missionary Walter P. Jayne through the methods of religious history, literary analysis, and a critical intersectional approach, this paper explores the racial, gender, and national boundaries that American Methodism attempted to establish in Liberia. By focusing in on how Jayne understood the Spirit to be working in and through the church, and how the experiences of native Africans like King Tom challenged him, this paper can further see how these boundaries structured and were in turn shaped and contested by the worshipping together of white and black American and African peoples.

This paper explores the themes of religion and ecology by examining the changing posture of Catholic agricultural programming in Canada and the United States. Whereas most analysis of Catholic social thought emphasizes its doctrinal features, this paper considers the actual pedagogical mechanisms with which the Catholic Church participates in the public sphere through its social and ecological teaching. It examines specifically how Catholic agricultural programmes act as pedagogical “hubs” which deliver practical agricultural training, but also promote Catholic ecological, social, and economic principles through various public vectors. Ethnographic research carried out at three Canadian training sites highlights three recent developments: an emphasis on practical place-based programming, the pursuit of secular partnerships, and increasingly decentralized political advocacy. Subsequent discussions around sustainability, secularity, and subsidiarity have application outside the Catholic world, especially as climate change forces religious communities to confront issues of land sovereignty, agronomic industry, and the rights of citizens.

This paper explores how outdoor experiential education (OEE), taken as a means of spiritual formation centered around the experience of ‘wildness’, can enable seminarians–as spiritual leaders–to better engage with our ecological crisis. Taking seriously the charge that our dominant paradigms ill-equip us in facing the very consequences of the extractive and destructive systems that they perpetuate, what appears necessary is a transformation of our epistemologies. Seminaries ought to consider this need for epistemic transformation seriously in their pedagogy and embrace OEE as a means of spiritual formation. Empirical research and literary evidence have long established the connection between outdoor experience and spiritual transformation. Yet there appears to be a conceptual and disciplinary ‘gap’ between OEE and religious education. This paper develops ‘wildness’ as a keystone experience and ‘bridging’ concept, and addresses the Christian roots of OEE in America as a means to historically integrate these two fields.

The Catholic Climate Covenant is an environmental nonprofit organization based in Washington D.C. Some of their initiatives include petitions, solar power, climate prayers, and community events. Seven of their articles emphasize the intersection of sustainability with well-being, which I focus on in my paper. My methods focus on examining each of the articles which address well-being on the organization’s website. I find three themes of presenting sustainable behaviors as part of the Catholic identity, essential for protecting the poor, and fundamental to well-being. The Catholic Climate Covenant demonstrates how a faith can substantially motivate sustainability efforts through a nonprofit organization medium.

Whatever possibilities persist for meaningful human community amid climate catastrophe, none will be possible without seeds. It is thus worth asking: What concepts can seeds create? What can environmental justice advocates learn from seeds? What does seed-saving have to teach scholars of religion? While the ecological importance of biodiversity is well-documented, the impending cultural disasters accompanying climate change warrant a serious exploration of the value of seeds beyond the ecological.

In any account of the intersections between religion, labor, and environment, it is necessary to consider not only human labor with and among the more-than-human but, further, the labor of the more-than-human, as such. Thus, what of the labor of seed-savers and seed-keepers? How might this vital work disclose anti-capitalist forms of laboral interrelation? Further, what of the laboral value of seeds, themselves, wherein value is figured in anti-capitalist registers? What can seeds unveil at economic, epistemological, indeed ecotheological levels?

This paper examines the theory, methodologies, and findings of a larger study exploring the impacts of whiteness - and specifically, White Christianity - on racial justice movements within the state of Texas. Employing Critical Whiteness Studies as a methodological tool, community organizers working in the areas of incarceration and immigration reform/abolition were interviewed for two primary purposes: to better understand how White Christians engage in and are impacted by organizing for racial justice (do these movements have the potential to “un-suture” White Christians/Christianity from whiteness?); and to better understand how the presence of White Christians impacts the work of such organizations and movements (what are the benefits, as well as the costs, of allowing White Christians into power-building spaces/movements for BIPOC communities?). This paper reflects on the findings of this study while also calling into question the impact of the primary researcher’s identity on its relational dynamics and outcomes.

What generates divides within evangelicalism over individualist and structural frameworks for understanding racial inequity? Some research has pointed to gender and education as key factors in shaping racial attitudes (Edgell and Tranby 2007). We investigate these claims with recent national survey data, while considering other sources of contemporary evangelical divides, including Christian Nationalism, generation, and urbanicity. We argue that divisions within evangelicalism reflect generational and class shifts within evangelicalism, especially due to the effect of the Trump movement on evangelicalism. Evangelicals who are supportive of Christian nationalism are at odds with those skeptical of the uniting of God and Caesar. National survey results from 2022 provide support for generational, class, and political divides within evangelicalism on issues of racial inequity.

This paper draws from the author’s ethnographic fieldwork with Christian handgun owners and Christian anti-gun violence activists in the Triangle region of North Carolina to develop an immanent critique of Christian handgun ownership as encountered in the field. Drawing from the work of Luke Bretherton and Willie Jennings, it explores how an ethnographically grounded analysis can make an ethico-political intervention into the place of guns in US American life, one that employs practices of listening and joining across vectors of difference as a way of responding to the continued harm of guns on our common life in the United States.

While religion and race have separately been established as meaningful drivers of elite and public behavior, I argue that we cannot truly understand their impact on American politics without being considered together. In this project, I ask whether the ways in which religious experiences shape U.S. race relations by investigating how racism is discussed during religious services. I examine the contexts of discussions about racism in 10,900 sermons from 1,047 U.S. congregations through the use of computational text analysis methods. I show that there is variation in how clergy discuss racism during religious services, an established avenue through which religious experiences shape political behavior. I connect these quantitative results to previous literature that shows white evangelicals are hesitant to connect issues related to race/ism to politics.

My presentation focuses on the deity traditions observed in the Western Himalayas, specifically the Kullu district in the North Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. I aim to discuss how the thriving presence of mediumship and oral traditions helps maintain important trans-Himalayan connections among the deities of the Western Himalayas. Drawing from fieldwork conducted in 2021-2022, I will present the example of the indigenous pantheon of Tharah Kardu and the figure of the deity Jamlu to explore how the deity traditions sustain an age-old relationship with the Himalayan landscape. Using this example, I will discuss the deities’ trans-Himalayan connections – which also cut across national boundaries – in juxtaposition to the rising influence of Hindu nationalism in the context of the Kullu Valley, Himachal Pradesh, India.

Chapa Chökyi Sengé (ca. 1109 - ca. 1169) played a central role in the later propagation of Buddhism in Tibet Buddhism. For example, Chapa’s commentaries on seminal works by the Three Eastern Madhyamikas—Jñānagarbha’s Distinguishing the Two Truths (Satyadvayavibhaṅga), Śāntarakṣita’s Ornament of the Middle Way (Madhyamakālaṃkāra), and Kamalaśīla’s Illumination of The Middle Way (Madhyamakāloka)—are among the earliest native Tibetan commentaries on important Indian texts during this period. Even though the root of the Tibetan doxographical genre can probably be traced as early as the early ninth century, in the fom of Yeshé Dé’s (eighth century) Distinguishing Philosophical Views and Kawa Paltsek’s (ninth century) Instructions of the Order of Philosophical Views, I argue that Chapa’s doxographical work, the Distinguishing Buddhist and non-Buddhist Scriptural System (Bde bar gshegs pa dang phyi rol pa’i gzhung rnam par ’byed pa) represents the first fully elaborated native Tibetan work of doxographical literature.  

This paper focuses on the current generation of five monastic sisters, who contributed to the rebuilding of a Drikung Kagyu nunnery after its destruction in the Cultural Revolution, who fled into exile, who have performed dozens of years of closed retreats in Tibet and India, and who continue to strive for educational reform and access to teachings for nuns today. The lives of these women trace the history of political upheaval during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, the resurgence of religious activity during the Reform and Opening Up period and the complex religious negotiations currently being enacted within monastic and nunnery spaces throughout the plateau. Their ability to work within Buddhist frameworks to accomplish their goals sets them apart as highly skilled Buddhist masters. I argue that these women, beyond their mastery of Buddhist ritual and retreat practice, are also masters of alternative technologies of authority.

This paper shows the transformations in the usage of the Tibetan term ris med between the death of Jamgon Kongtrul (‘jam mgon kong sprul blo gros mtha’ yas, 1813-1899) in 1899 and Gene Smith’s “creation” of the “ris med movement” in a 1969 landmark article. Was Smith vocalizing an existing understanding of ris medamong his Tibetan interlocutors, or did he inadvertently invent ris med in his introduction to Kongtrul’s Treasury? In tracing ris med’s genealogy, the paper follows on three thinkers who were especially influential in ris med’s transformation from a term used primarily esoteric states of Dzogchen meditation to one of the most profound expressions of political and religious non-sectarianism in Tibetan history: Jamgon Mipham (‘jam mgon ‘ju mi pham rnam rgyal rgya mtsho, 1846-1912), Dezhung Rinpoche (sde gzhung rin po che kun dga’ bstan pa’i nyi ma, 1906-1987), and Dilgo Khyentse (dil mgo mkhyen brtse, 1910-1991).

This paper discusses a genealogy of devotional music of a Tibetan female singer Tsewang Lhamo. This paper accounts for well-regarded musical and historical figures such as Palgong, Yadong, Dadon, and Dubhe and their vital roles in giving encouragement, innovation, and guidance to the singers like Tsewang Lhamo. Also, this paper examines Tsewang Lhamo’s  private and public socio-cultural environments, in which she establishes her musical creativity and audacity. Finally, we analyze the lyrical aspects of her devotional songs demonstrating the intersections of devotion for the Dharma and lamas, a sense of loss and alienation, and a notion of self-assertion with the subtle nuance of the nation and politics through figurative languages. In essence, through examining these historical backgrounds and influences within the socio-cultural contexts of her musical world, we illustrate the ways she blazes the path of musical creativity and audacity inside Tibet and beyond.