Annual Meeting 2023 Program Book

Among pop-cultural figures prominent in the 1960s, none were more influential on the understanding of the cultural impact of new media technologies as Marshall McLuhan. Part English professor, part media “guru,” McLuhan exerted a profound influence on the counterculture, meeting with such figures as Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and Tom Wolfe, and drawing inspiration from authors like Blake, Coleridge, and James Joyce in developing his theories. The esoteric dimensions of McLuhan’s thought, though largely unrecognized, constitute the ground for his work, and were inspired by his own mystical experiences. His ideas about how media reconfigure human perception and culture – positively and negatively - and the mystical potential inherent in electronic media to retrieve a spiritualized form of identity and integral mode of awareness underscore this dimension. While his pop-cultural status has waned, McLuhan’s insights still pertain to the media we use today, which have effectively become popular culture.

This paper argues that we are currently in the midst of a ‘Satanism Scare’, fuelled by conspiracy theories and misinformation across social media. These conspiracy theories allege that secret, Satanic cults are ritualistically abusing and sacrificing children, with theorists presenting themselves as moral crusaders against this Satanic threat. Despite an overwhelming lack of evidence for these claims, Satanic cult allegations have and continue to be weaponised as a means to stigmatise various communities, in a manner that can be likened to a modern-day witch-hunt. This new wave of Satanic Panic is pervasive, dangerous, and shows no signs of diminishing any time soon, yet little attention has currently been given to its online presence. This paper explores the resurgence of Satanic cult conspiracy discourses across social media - specifically Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok – and analyses the ways in which its contemporary narratives repackage biblical demonologies for contemporary online audiences.

The paper explores the representation of esotericism in the Russian segment of the Internet during the early period of its development from 1994 to 2004. At the time, a combination of factors created auspicious conditions for amalgamation of the Internet culture and esotericism in Russia. For the seekers of esoteric knowledge, the Internet became a treasure trove of esoteric lore and an important way to keep in touch with like-minded individuals motivating them to adopt new technologies. In many cases, the combination of interest to technology and esotericism lead to new computer-related metaphors and practices within the esoteric milieu resulting in the emergence of a new distinct flavor of Russian esotericism.

Food has always been intimately linked to religious identities whether through practices, restrictions, or as a tool for collective memory in religious communities. Food helps create spaces for understanding of religious values within a community but also inspires amalgamation of diverse religious and cultural networks and practices. Food helps cultivate trans-regional support networks and bring about a sense of belonging and renewal in times of crisis and beyond.

This paper takes an ethnographic approach to discuss the Faiz-ul-Mawaid (FMB), an initiative of the Dawoodi Bohra community, which provides one wholesome meal to every household through its network of community kitchens worldwide. Through a consideration of the operations, perception, and impact of this initiative, this paper assesses how FMB helps create and preserve a religious identity for the Bohras. It also contends that FMB has helped change community interpretations and attitudes to create more equitable gender roles and responsibilities.

This paper examines the transmission of Islamic sensibilities by Black and Muslim small business owners through a sandwich and its variations. The business owners who make these sandwiches—often known as the "Muslim fish hoagie"—connect their labor to a longer tradition of preparing "clean" food. I argue that the Muslim fish hoagie emerges from and shapes an "economy of cleanliness." This network of bodies, objects, and discourses orients Muslim and non-Muslim consumers alike toward objects that feel "clean," as shaped by Nation of Islam discourses and popular notions of health and well-being. Based on 12 months of extensive site visits, interviews, and digital mapping in Philadelphia, this paper focuses on the transmission of the Muslim fish hoagie to two businesses. Ultimately, these Muslim business owners creatively enact "cleanliness" to transmit Islamic tradition and navigate the precarity brought on by racialized urban change and economic hardship. 

The phrase “fasting food” appears to be an oxymoron, since a fast usually implies an absence of food. Within Hindu traditions however, this is not always the case. While there are many types of fasting within Hindu traditions such as nīrjala (without water), sajala (drinking only water), rasāhāri (drinking just juice and liquids), and phalāhāri (surviving off fruit). Yet, many non-fruit ingredients are now included in this final category, such as potatoes and tapioca. This paper examines how and why these ingredients, not available when the term phalāhāri was first used, were introduced, negotiated, accepted and assimilated into devotional fasting practices, particularly in nineteenth and twentieth century Gujarat, by exploring devotional literature and the trading routes of Hindu merchants—suggesting a transcultural process of adaptation.

Abstract for Comparative Studies of Iranian and Myanmar Women-led Protests from Feminist and Postcolonial Perspectives

Myanmar and Iran are different in many ways, but there are many similarities in protesting gender hierarchy and dictatorship. The oppressed women from both countries have reclaimed their liberated womanhood, women’s dignity, and self-esteem by correcting and/or reinterpreting unhealthy male-dominated religious teachings and cultural taboos and by protesting the dictators in creative ways. Thus, I would argue that a new interpretation of male-biased religious teachings/gender norms is needed, and it can help women realize their true liberated womanhood. Moreover, it will give them the courage to resist injustice, gender-based violence, and regime. First, I will present the similarities and differences between the two protests, and the intersection between gender, sexuality, religion, and politics will follow. In the last section, I will discuss a new interpretation of male-biased gender norms from feminist and postcolonial approaches.

My paper addresses the relationship between protest and religion in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran. This movement went from a women’s rights protest to a political revolution, and from political revolution to a mythological one. The latter became unavoidable once authorities began executing protestors for the crime of  moharebeh, or “war against God,” and thereby introducing mythical figures, i.e gods, onto the field of protest. Combining the journalistic method of following current events, with the comparative mythology method of observing emergent myths in them, I argue that declaration of religious freedom and reclamation of non-Islamic mythological traditions have become inextricable from the Woman, Life, Freedom movement and compare these moves with the equally revolutionary moves scholars make when taking a critical and comparative approach to the study of religion and myth. 

In the wake of Mahsa-Zhina Amini's killing while in the custody of the "Morality Police" for wearing an improper hijab, the Kurdish Freedom Movement's potent slogan "Woman Life Freedom" has become the rallying cry of Iranians. The women-led protests which started in response to the compulsory hijab and women’s rights violation went beyond the policy criticism and evolved into the cry for regime change, which the majority of Iranians see as the only way to end years of gender discrimination and the violation of human rights. The WLF movement is notable in particular for the strong support and active participation of men alongside women. This paper looks into Iranian women’s struggles against oppressive sexist gender norms, their positionality towards religion, their agency in acts of civil disobedience, and the gradual changes their resistance brought about in sociocultural dynamics that enabled the majority of the  society for a unanimous uprising.

HIV and AIDS, Covid-19, and Ebola have exposed the magnitude of care-related tasks on women. Most often, because of the gendered nature of domestic and reproductive roles, women are expected to assume unpaid care-related, nurturing, and domestic work. Despite the valuable duties, women are economically poor and othered. These unpaid care duties are exacerbated by pandemics and ratified even further by religion. In Nomiya Church, the first African independent church in Kenya, women's experience narratives and biblical texts such as the story of the Proverbs 31 virtuous woman are used to glorify unpaid charitable work for women. Women's virtuous personality, hard work, and character are upheld in Christian spaces, thus obstructing sound work theologies. This paper will employ African Women's theological lens in view of pointing out repressing and transformative tenets in charitable theologies of work for social and gender justice.

The faith participation of Catholic women is under-researched. In particular, there are few global studies that examine the lived experiences of women employed in Catholic parishes and organisations. The recent International Survey of Catholic Women (ISCW) provides a powerful insight into the complex diversity and shared concerns of Catholic women around the world. Distributed widely in 8 languages, it gathered 17,200 responses from women in 104 countries, making it the largest international survey of Catholic women ever carried out. This paper will report on in-depth analysis carried out on responses to open-text survey questions. It will reveal that although it is widely acknowledged that women carry out the bulk of labour in Catholic parishes and organisations, their labour is undervalued. Indeed, many ISCW respondents reported poor recognition of their labour and qualifications with little or no pay for skilled work; some respondents disclosed experiences of workplace harassment.

This paper will discuss the American Gay Atheists, a Houston-based secularist organization whose activism opposed, among other things, gay-affirming Christian groups, who inspired vitriol from those in the AGA who found their continued affiliation with Christianity “deluded” and “masochistic.” This paper will examine how the anti-religious evangelism of AGA’s members kept the gay atheist activists a distinct minority in Houston’s larger gay community, where many local religious (mostly but not exclusively Christian) organizations were vocal allies in supporting LGBT causes. The particular landscape of Texas at that time created a context where groups existed together and in conflict outside of prevailing gay-vs.-religion narratives. Examining AGA’s history and legacy sheds light on the complicated interactions between gay and lesbian groups, religious identity, and political activism deep in the heart of the AIDS epidemic

Prior to 1973 the APA classified “homosexuality” as being a mental illness in their diagnostic manual, the DSM. In 1974, the DSM changed the designation of homosexuality from a mental illness to that of “distress about one’s sexuality.” Almost immediately upon this manual being published there was an outcry from religious groups in the USA who saw this as a development that circumvented the long-held belief of conservative Christians in the USA that homosexuality was a sin against God. In 1973 Love in Action, a fundamentalist Christian organization was formed in California and promised to cure LGBT Christians of their “sexual addiction.” These types of pseudo-psychological and pseudo-theological devices have been documented, famously, in two novels by survivors of “conversion therapy.” This paper will examine the history of this movement, paying attention to the way that theology was manipulated in order to further the ex-gay cause from the 1970s-2023

Substantive due process rights, as recognized by the United States Supreme Court in cases like Lawrence v. Texas and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, strongly correlate with normative and contextual theology within U.S. Christian experiences. The experiences of gay men in Texas provide an opportunity to explore these normative shifts of queer progress within typically liberal Christian communities and the anti-queer normative rhetoric promoted by typically conservative Christian nationalism. This paper reviews the history of substantive due process rights applicable to gay men in the United States, recognizes the current religious and legal norms and contexts influencing gay men in the U.S., more particularly in Texas, and establishes a call to action for the stabilizing of queer-affirming norms against the socio-political challenges brought by the Christian nationalist movement.

                During the early 1920s a handful of students at Illinois’s Todd Seminary for Boys gathered to perform a secret wedding for three of them (Henry, Charlie, and Junior). Henry, who designed the ceremony, married Charlie, one of his sexual partners from the school. Henry explained that while Junior was “not queer” he loved them both enough to join their union. Henry and Charlie wed each other naked in front of their friends while Junior swore his own vows and signed the marriage certificate as their adopted son.

                Henry’s story is interpretively challenging however. The archival source was shaped by coercive pre-IRB research methods. Writing years later, Henry expressed competing desires, sometimes hoping for a heteronormative future where he was “cured,” sometimes pining for the queer family he had lost. The wedding, family, and space he built were also subversively queer in ways that defy easy religious categorization.

In Reel to Real: Race, Class, and Sex at the Movies, a collection of profound and paradigm-shifting essays on film, bell hooks writes, “And they do not want to hear it when I make the point that giving audiences what is real is precisely what movies do not do. They give the reimagined, reinvented, version of the real. It may look like something familiar, but in actuality, it is a different universe from the world of the real” (1). Hook’s compelling argument forms the theoretical backdrop of my course, “Muslims in Pop Culture,” which examines the ways in which popular culture and specifically, the genre of film, constructs an image of Muslims as an imaginary “Other” in the American public consciousness. This theoretical framework offered by hooks becomes the starting point of themes explored throughout the semester, including Orientalism, gendered Orientalism, Islamophobia, and their intersectionality with other forms of racism.

The Reading and Discussion Circle (RDC; name-changed for anonymity) is a 12-week reading and discussion program that uses circle pedagogy and a combined cohort model in which university students and incarcerated scholars study together as peers. bell hooks has a formative influence on program design. As hooks says, “When our lived experience of theorizing is fundamentally linked to the process of self-recovery, of collective liberation, no gap exists between theory and practice” (p. 61). Among her teachers, hooks names Thich Nhat Hanh, who pioneered Engaged Buddhism. I will briefly discuss bell hooks’ influence on the design of RDC and then facilitate a guided reading and discussion of one of Thich Nhat Hanh’s poems in order to draw on Engaged Buddhist teaching in pursuit of a deeper appreciation of hooks’ engaged pedagogy as a sacred vocation and form of soul care within her Black feminist commitment to collective liberation through education.

A revamped graduate course within a Master of Bio/Tech Ethics & Science Policy integrated a class session on ‘Religion & Spirituality’ (R&S). Inspired by bell hook’s aspirations for liberatory and engaged pedagogy as reflected in ‘Teaching to Transgress’ (2014), the instructor implemented coursework that included generative assignments, shared leadership, small group work, and critical reflection. A teaching strategy demonstration will revisit the R&S class activity, which assigned students to one of five faith perspectives and invited them to consider a little known and under-studied end-of-life option called Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking. Employing this teaching activity upheld and reinforced the elements of liberatory pedagogy by engaging students as active co-laborers in knowledge production, usurping traditional methods of learning in which a credentialed expert delivers a “right” answer to novice learners. Students were instead invited to mindfully imagine varying perspectives for and against this choice to hasten death.

The rise of new artificial intelligence based services has implications for the development of autonomous AI replicas. These new technologies are AI avatars that can model the visual of natural speech, AI chatbots that can write in a conversational tone, and synthetic voice generators that can mimic the speech of a particular person. The convergence of these three technologies makes it possible to design AI replicas that can mimic a particular person. This paper will explore how these new AI technologies bring us closer to the qualitative improvements necessary to achieve digital immortality. Transhumanists will be increasingly incentivized to use AI services to create a replica of themselves given the uncertainty of the feasibility of mind uploading technologies, enabling a scenario in which they may be resurrected, even after death.

In this paper, I attempt to highlight and engage critical aspects of Sylvia Wynter’s postulations about personhood and the socio-historical and aesthetic rationale that gave rise to human enhancement innovations today. While personhood as an ideological concept may be elusive, its existential importance in achieving a framework that delineates epistemological formations; guides experimental activities, and assesses iterations of being-ness in recent human history cannot be overemphasized. Drawing from a collection of Wynter’s oeuvres, this paper juxtaposes her reflections on the historical developments that laid the foundations for the current understanding of personhood and beingness in essentially biocentric cum aesthetic terms, in the wake of the biotechnological revolution – genetic designing, transhumanism, cybernetics, and many others; vis a vis her postulation of humans as hybrid beings. Is there more to personhood than the biological? Will human enhancement diminish or advance personhood in the nearest future?

Keywords: Sylvia Wynter, Human enhancement, Personhood, Biocentric

In this paper we suggest that discourses within disability theology can be brought into fruitful dialogue with ethical/theological reflections on human interconnectedness with technology, enhancement and transhumanism. We do so by bringing ideas related to Creamer’s limits model of disability to bear on such discourses. Creamer’s model challenges essentialist views of limits and enables both examination of the values behind our postures towards limits and judicious theological conversations about what it means to live with them. However, Creamer does not address how specific human limits might be lived with and negotiated. Thus, we also turn to Graham’s practical theology based on Heidegger’s idea of “indwelling” as “finding one’s place”, which allows us to consider more broadly what it means to live with our technologies. We bring these concepts to discourses on human enhancement and transhumanism in order to explore possible correlations, and the implications and insights that emerge.

Taking its title from the last line of Mary Oliver's poem "Upstream" -- "attention is the beginning of devotion" -- this paper argues that interreligious friendship offers a meaningful perspective onto both religious reflection on friendship and interreligious studies. First, it describes interreligious friendship as a place for attention, a practice of attention, and a prize of attention. From there, it argues that interreligious friendship can train each friend in attention -- to self, other, and difference. In the end, it suggests that attention to difference is an important corrective to the, perhaps more familiar, appeals to common ground in pursuit of common good.

John Henry Newman once declared that friendship is the best preparation for loving the world at large. For the Catholic Church, following Vatican II (1962-1965), there was a dramatic about-face from previous generations in its approach to other religious faiths.  The Declaration on Non-Christian Relations, Nostra Aetate (1965), a short document from the Council, officially declared a positive appraisal of other religions for the first time in the church’s history. This paper examines the role of friendship as a model for the Catholic church’s relationship with other religions in a post-Vatican context, and more specifically the role of interfaith friendship, as a method in interfaith dialogue and comparative theology. Friendship offers a unique model wherein two or more people can engage commonalities, similarities, and differences through a prior commitment of filial understanding.

This paper aims at presenting Nahdlatul Ulama (NU)’s view of fraternities beyond the boundary of Islamic fold to unite members of Indonesia’s multicultural communities. The first part of the paper will elaborate on how Indonesia’s biggest socio-religious organization sees the challenges of multicultural communities such as intolerance, social conflicts, and violent religious extremism. The second part will demonstrate how Nahdlatul Ulama offers the theological concepts of fraternities that appeal to Muslims’ political identity and is consistent with Islam’s multicultural values as articulated in the concepts of Islamic fraternity (ukuwwah islamiyyah), national fraternity (ukhuwwah wathoniyyah), and human fraternity (ukhuwwah basyariyyah).  Finally, the paper will evaluate NU’s epistemology to arrive at the inclusive concepts of fraternities. While these concepts derive from, and express, Islamic identity, they respect and affirm the values of multicultural Indonesia.

“If you see your enemy’s donkey falling down under its burden...help him unburden it” (Exod. 23:5). Traditional Jewish sources (Talmud, Targum Onkelos, Maimonides) place this verse in conversation with a parallel verse in Deuteronomy about helping a friend’s donkey. Can one turn an enemy into a friend by helping their donkey? If so, how does this happen? Does the helper learn to set aside hate, at least briefly? Does the donkey’s owner change their perception of the helper? Do both work together to do good, despite their differences? Do both realize that indulging their hate affects innocent others as well? In this paper, I summarize, interpret, and add to the discussion. Next, I draw parallels with approaches to inter-religious dialogue (MacKenzie, Falcon, and Rahman). What kinds of dialogue and shared activity help us “lift the donkey,” i.e., set aside hate, change our perceptions, and work towards shared goods?

This paper offers an overview of the concept of religion developed by one of its most important, and mostly forgotten modern innovators, Johann Salomo Semler. Semler, a theologian at the University of Halle and central thinker of the theological Aufklärung in the second half of the eighteenth century, developed a liberal theology––a term he coined––aimed at bringing theology in better harmony with contemporary philosophy while protecting Christianity from the creep of naturalism. Yet Semler’s conception of Christianity and religion depended on anti-Judaism, one which freed Christianity from dogmatic and historical ballast. Semler’s conception of religion and his larger theology, including his anti-Judaism, would strongly influence Schleiermacher’s own at the end of the century. After considering Semler’s conception of religion and its influence on Schleiermacher, this paper asks how this history helps contextualize the concept of religion and its relation to other, non-Christian traditions, above all Judaism.

This paper engages with Friedrich Schleiermacher's argument for the conditional emancipation of Jews, as it is laid out in "Letters on the Occasion of the Political-Theological Task, and the Open Letter of Jewish Householders." It focuses on the conditions Schleiermacher places on Jewish emancipation: the renunciation of messianism and subordination of Jewish law to German law. Focusing on these conditions, this paper asks: Is the microscope under which Schleiermacher places Judaism so friendly after all? Attention to the conditions Schleiermacher places to Jewish emancipation, I will argue, betrays an anxiety over forms of religious life that trouble his normative idea of religion and its relation to the nation state. Turning briefly to Hermann Cohen's idea of a messianic humanity, and its critical relation to the violent history of nation-states, the paper will conclude by gesturing towards a theology of community that troubles nationalistic prescriptions for or rejection of different and otherwise religious life.

In this paper, I will develop Hannah Arendt's argument about the role of antisemitism in the formation of 19th century European nationalism, particulary as regards what she terms "the pan movements" (eg. pan-Slavic). There, Arendt repeatedly makes the case that nationalism of this ilk is predicated on the traditional theological doctrine of the election of Israel--that is, that Jews are "the chosen people." The remainder of the paper will spell out the significance of this argument for our understanding of the modern (inter)-relationship of Judaism and Christianity. On Arendt's view, secular Christan nationalisms are a kind of Christian reversion to Judaism. But, this reversion is not to a monotheistic Judaism, but to Christian anti-Judaism's erstwhile portrayal of tribalistic and selfish Judaism. The final part of my paper will conclude with a reflection on the ongoing distinctiveness of Jewish and Christian secular nationalisms.