Annual Meeting 2023 Program Book

The idea of religious landscape significantly shaped the production and reception of James Tissot’s *The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ* (ca. 1886–1894), a series of 350 biblical scenes that enjoyed significant commercial success at the turn-of-the-twentieth century. Tissot portrayed himself as an artist committed to depicting the biblical landscape as realistically and comprehensively as possible, a modern form of *geographia sacra.* Viewers of the series – both in gallery exhibitions and via subsequent print editions – described experiencing Tissot’s series as if they had stepped into a religious landscape. This paper explores how *The Life of Chris* positioned the landscape as the truest, most faithful form of religious art and how Tissot’s efforts to create a totalizing, authoritative landscape fueled Americans’ particular love of the series.

The Maṇḍalikanṛpacarita, a Sanskrit courtly epic poem (mahākāvya) from Gujarat, details characteristics of ideal kingship in the fifteenth century. Geography and topography are important first-encounters to the king’s capacity: the first chapter of one-hundred verses describes the kingdom with great poetic fancy and florid language. The physical location is an integral part of the history of the king’s life, and chronologically it precedes even the birth of a king, demonstrating that the king has control over the long-standing land that is well-established in its glory. The land that the king of this poem, Mandalika, rules over includes a mountain called Girnar, which is important to various sects in that time period. The poem, though, includes only Puranic stories and figures. Through a literary analysis of this epic poem’s opening chapter, I argue that the poem constructs a forward-looking view of the kingdom’s history as Hindu.  

Gadhada is a small village and pilgrimage site in the Kathiawar region of western India. My paper explores how parts of Gadhada’s sacred landscape were depicted in correspondence between Hindu monks and laity and a religious magazine, the Swaminarayan Prakash, from the 1940s. I show how a piece of land on top of a hill by the banks of the River Ghela, where a new Swaminarayan sect sought to construct a stone temple, becomes contested space. The old Swaminarayan sect aligned with local rulers to prevent the new sect, led by the monk Shastriji Maharaj, from purchasing the hilltop. The letters and articles demonstrate how local political alliances, intra-sectarian conflicts, combined with collective aspirations and a strong memory of revelation shaped the changing nature of and disputes around local religious landscapes.

Takashi Nagai (1908-1951) wrote _The Bells of Nagasaki_ in 1946 (published, 1949) following his experience of the explosion of the atomic bomb at Nagasaki on 9 August 1945, and his work as a medical doctor in the days and weeks that followed. Nagai’s narrative recounts his travels through the “appalling atomic wasteland” that remained after the attack; it is in many respects the story of a pilgrimage through an apocalyptic landscape. Nagasaki has a complex religious history, and a distinctive religious and literary tradition emerged from the bombing of the city – overshadowed, to some extent, by Hiroshima’s better-known bomb literature. Working from William Johnston’s (1984) English translation of _The Bells of Nagasaki_, this paper explores Nagai’s framework of meaning for the city and its surrounding countryside as a result of the bomb, and analyses his description of the shattered landscape he travels through as a literary and religious artefact.

This paper will present the case that Pope Francis is a liturgical reformer par excellence and a worthy successor to Paul VI who carried out the monumental postconciliar liturgical reform, and also explore the reasons why Francis has not been entirely successful in persuading those who resist his efforts.

The use of the vernacular in the liturgy was a special concern of the prelates working in Africa during the Second Vatican Council. This paper discusses how the African Church problematized this issue at the antepreparatory phase, contributed to debating it in the conciliar phase, and has tried to receive the conciliar compromise on the Latin-vernacular issue (Sacrosanctum Concilium 36, 54, and 101). It will do so in two steps. Firstly, through a contextual analysis of the vota of these prelates and their inputs on this issue at the Council, the movement from discordance at the antepreparatory phase to a compromise at the conciliar phase of the Council will be accounted for. Secondly, using the historical-critical method, a reception case study of Igboland-Nigeria will be presented, considering the socio-political, economic, and cultural factors influencing the reception and rejection that greeted the conciliar authorization of the use of the vernacular.

Orientalium Ecclesiarum called the Eastern Catholic Churches to rediscover and preserve their heritage. This appeal concerned their spiritual, theological, and liturgical legacy and the established discipline of life (OE 5,6). After Vatican II, the Ukrainian Archeparchy of Philadelphia got into a whirlpool of discussions and arguments pro and contra of how it should live, develop, and preserve its heritage. These discussions were also on liturgical themes related to preserving the Ukrainian church heritage in diaspora, the liturgical language and calendar, and overcoming the Latinization of the rite. The hierarchy and laity did not always have the same perspective on these topics. Therefore, this paper will focus on the discussions on preserving the rite and liturgical changes and challenges after the council in the Ukrainian Archeparchy of Philadelphia. This analysis will consider the diaspora character of the faithful and the religious and cultural context in which they lived.

This paper focuses on Sacrosanctum Concilium 37-40, especially article 40, in which the Council admits the potential for “an even more radical adaptation” of the liturgy than what is explicitly outlined in articles 37-39. Specifically, this paper explores the realization of this potential among ecclesial base communities in El Salvador (CEBs, by their initials in Spanish), drawing on qualitative dissertation research carried out in El Salvador in 2022. This exploration of several different facets of the CEBs’ extra-ordinary liturgical celebrations will suggest that their liturgical creativity is a legitimate development of the liturgical theology of the Second Vatican Council and encourage similar creative celebration among other ecclesial communities on the peripheries of the Catholic church.

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The Iglesia Filipina Independiente (IFI - Independent Church of the Philippines) was formed in the beginning of the twentieth century as part of the broad nationalist struggle against Spanish colonialism and subsequently American imperialism. This paper focuses on the ecclesiology of the church, particularly how the IFI’s concept of the church shapes its theology of mission and ministry. The discussion will focus on two recent developments in order to explore how the IFI’s theology and understanding of church shapes its lived practices: the ‘Abundant Life’ programme with indigenous peoples, and the inclusion of LGBTQ+ peoples in the church. The paper offers an analysis of a church that is part of the Anglican Communion, which represents an intersection of post-colonial struggle, a liberative pastoral vision, Roman Catholic worship and sacramentality, Protestant concern for individual autonomy and self-determination, and a pastoral vision that encompasses the national as a whole. 

Zhao Zichen (1888–1979) is one of China's leading Protestant theologians of the twentieth century. After becoming a priest and deacon in the Anglican Church in China in 1941, he built upon the Anglican thought of theologians Oliver Chase Quick (1885–1944) and William Temple (1881–1944). In his published writings, Zhao developed his own vision for the church's substance and function in conversation with the philosophy of “substance-function” (ti-yong體用) that Song-dynasty Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi articulated in the twelfth century. Zhao thus the groundwork for a highly original sacramental ecclesiology in his Chinese context, shedding tremendous light on the theological shape of Anglican identity in China.

Through a critique of traditional Anglican approaches to Patristics, this paper will explore how those could be shifted and rethought in a way that is honest to diversity and conflict. Instead of a narrative that either glorifies or dismisses Late Antiquity, an understanding of the ancient church's struggles and conflicts is, in itself, a precedent for the Anglican Communion. When Constantine recognized Christianity as a religion of the Roman Empire, relatively isolated bishops with mixed autonomy and oppression were forced to shape a common identity. Beautiful treatises and wild conflicts followed and continued for centuries. Communion was defined as much by the willingness to continue to engage and fight as it was to reach a cohesive agreement. In the modern era, the Anglican Communion, with its deeply divided and wonderfully diverse components, shares much of the same tradition and may find blessing in the same unabashed embrace of collective struggle.

This paper proposes a new way for religious ethicists to think about the enduring relevance of the Ten Commandments in Judaism and Christianity. It argues that contemporary religious ethicists’ ambivalence about the Decalogue stems from a deficient understanding of law in Jewish and Christian thought. I draw upon the thought of historical figures such as Philo of Alexandria and Thomas Aquinas, philosophers such as Elizabeth Anscombe and Julia Annas, and insights from contemporary biblical scholarship (especially the emerging ‘Paul within Judaism’ school of interpretation) to develop a framework for religious ethics that elevates the status of law in moral discernment and moral formation. This framework makes it possible to affirm unequivocally the goodness of the Decalogue and its relevance for Christians, as well as the integrity of its Jewish character. In the process, it offers a radical critique of the supersessionism and Marcionism found in many writings of Christian ethicists.

Is canon closed? Can a community embed new meaning and elevate a text into a canonical space? Do colonial canonization vestiges help us discuss how a community perceives identity and ritual? This paper considers the 2015 court case, Nikhil Soni vs. the Union of India, that outlawed sallekhanā, a ritual fast until death, and the resultant response from the Jain community to address canonical mobility. The court depended on Jains, as defendants, to assert that sallekhanā is a central religious practice. Jain communities found one such instance in the Ratnakaranda Śrāvakācāra(RSK, 2nd century CE). The RSK, an often forgotten text, was superseded by the later text, Hemachandra’s Yogaśāstra (12th century CE). This paper centers on Folkert’s definition of canon to show that the RSK has reached an elevated canonical status. The process of canonization illuminates social and political violence that values scriptural authority over social definitions of religious practice.

This paper argues that the writings of Freidrich Nietzsche pose a profound challenge to guiding assumptions about textuality in the contemporary study of religion. Nietzsche’s texts intentionally parody and ironize conceptions of truth and knowledge that are foundational to modern scholarship, and so confront readers with questions that are prior to or outside of conventional scholarly concerns. The paper begins with an interpretation of Nietzsche’s late works, showing that Nietzsche writes esoterically and parodically to challenge the value of propositional language and knowledge, aiming instead to both describe and induce experiences of human deification. For Nietzsche, conventional scholarship (Wissenschaft) is antithetical to human life, and therefore must be infused with a parodic and playful joyousness. Through Nietzsche, the paper poses foundational questions about how and why we study and teach texts in the study of religion that defy or transcend the parameters of modern scholarship.

In the face of the climate crisis, children and youth are experiencing rising levels of eco-anxiety and climate-related trauma. What would it look like to equip children who are growing up in this context with protective factors for resilience in the face of trauma? Combining insights from studies in children’s spirituality, with studies in psychological development and resilience, this paper explores gardening as an embodied spiritual practice that both facilitates spiritual creativity and combats eco-anxiety through ecological resistance. Drawing upon empirical studies in resilience, this paper correlates specific protective factors in resilience to the act of gardening. Further, the act of gardening as a spiritual practice will then be explored through the contextual work of starting a children’s spiritual garden in the city of Hamilton, Ontario—considering the ways that this embodied practice brings healing and hope in the face of eco-anxiety and climate trauma.

This paper will explore the 2016 movie Arrival as a sensorial metaphor for the processing of traumatic experience. Director Denis Villeneuve allows a slow unfolding of the disruption of time, story, and soundscape to guide the viewer into a “bottom up” experience “by allowing the body to have experiences that viscerally contradict the helplessness, rage, or collapse that result from trauma” (van der Kolk, TBKS, 3). The music of Jóhann Jóhannsson embodies the feeling of how trauma can dislodge meaning and bodily sense for a person, and then help to reintegrate the inexplicable into new ways of comprehension and being. This taps into the primacy of the language of music to how humans make sense of the world and of reality (McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary). This demonstrates well that, “people can never get better without knowing what they know and feeling what they feel” (TBKS, 27).

For marginalized communities, especially those such as black queer folk, digital “embodiment” is an/other form of storytelling which can lead to a deepened sense of identity and communal belonging. Primarily focused on the types of engagement that black queer folk have facilitated via social media, the virtual reality has deeply affected both individual psychology and broader relationships and formations. This paper seeks to investigate the ways in which social media serves as a conduit of formation and belonging through balanced engagement, material resources, and connections to the larger diaspora. Further, the paper explores how in this regard, digital embodiment, too, can serve as a modality of care, providing tangible resources and strategies for those in need, and expanding the “work of our hands” into the virtual world.

This paper is a practice informed theological reflection drawing on Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem structure and her play development process[1] to explore ways in which imagining reveals a care receiver’s individual and communal embedded theological epistemologies. Discovering a person’s theological epistemologies through imaginative process is critical to their healing and liberation as it presents possibilities for an individual to access their wholeness, which can benefit, by extension, their surrounding communities.  I argue that Shange’s poetic exhortation infusing choreography, music and storytelling models an option for using a care receiver’s imaginative process for articulating their images of, relationship to, and communications with god in community.

[1] “New play development process” is a theatrical term used to describe crafting a play from inspiration to final production.

In this paper I discuss *Phénoménologie et psychologie* (2021), Michel Foucault’s book-length study of Husserlian phenomenology from 1953-54. I first situate the book in the wake of a contemporaneous course on philosophical anthropology, where phenomenology appears as a science that emerges in the shadow of the death of God. Next, I distinguish Foucault’s emphasis on the notion of world in Husserlian phenomenology from the then-dominant interpretations of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Ricoeur. Finally, I ask to what extent the concept of history afforded by this notion of world allows for renewed conversations between phenomenology and archaeology as practices of freedom. I conclude by suggesting, against Elisabetta Basso and Stuart Elden, that Foucault’s provocative pairing of critique and mythology in this text offers a new articulation of the importance of the study of religion for philosophical reflection about modernity and for thinking about the irrepressibility of myth in contemporary critique.

This paper examines the relationship between philosophy, religion and race in Michel Foucault’s lectures on governmentality, and the specter of the “philosophical state"--represented by Stalinism--against which his genealogy is deployed. Approaching Foucault through the question of whether his political critique participates in a tradition of anti-Semitism, this paper suggests that nineteenth century French anti-Semitic socialism was formative for Foucault's understanding of how race can shift from a discourse of resistance to a disturbing discourse of power, and influential for his critique of the communism as a philosophical totalitarianism. Following Foucault's turn to Christianity as the origin of biopolitics, it suggests that he draws on religious conceptions of bodily purity as the root of governmentality and resistance in response to his concern about the intractable violence of a philosophy emerging from race.  

The aim of this paper is to analyse the phenomenon of martyrdom as Foucault presents it in his various courses. In my opinion, martyrdom contains some of the main paradoxes of the last stage of Foucault's work. On the one hand, in his various courses on Patristics (especially On the government of the living and Wrong-doing, Truth-telling), Foucault links exomologesis with martyrdom, but on the other hand, in his last course at the Collège de France, the reading of martyrdom appears as a form of parrhesia. This paper will try to analyse this phenomenon from a double perspective, although connected in Foucault: the history of subjectivity and the history of governmentality, showing the paradoxes in the martyrdom phenomenon, which are also the paradoxes of the Christian confession as posed by the Foucauldian reading.

By using a critical-genealogical approach informed by grassroots LGBTQ+ perspectives to explore how disciplinary power operates in and through contemporary queer materiality as a regulatory process of identity formation, different underlying power dynamics across society can be revealed along with ways normative constructions of subjectivity reinforce and reproduce other dominant ideologies and structures such as Christian sexual ethics, the colonial gaze, and capitalism. Queerness may also provide a praxis-oriented framework to subvert these operations of power contributing to justice throughout individual, social, and religious arenas.

To understand the impact of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, one must uncover the competing biopolitical trends within the abortion law milieu.  On one hand, in the decades prior to Roe v. Wade and picking up steam immediately after, the American Evangelical movement utilized abortion law not only as a means for regulating conduct, but simultaneously as a totalizing anchor for an entire ideology centered around conservatism that created a unique political identity that continually motivates Christian voters.  On the other hand, appeals to “liberty,” “privacy,” and “equality” from the American Civil Religion structured a political terrain vulnerable to the diminishment of rights.  Following Foucault’s lead from The History of Sexuality, this paper shows how in tandem these juridical streams created an environment where neither abortion is repressed, nor is liberty actualized, but instead a socio-juridical framework is maintained that reifies and reinscribes this continuous biopolitical development.

How can Buddhists, whose five foundational precepts begin with “refrain from killing,” participate in the military where death and killing are ubiquitous? In my research on the early South Korean Buddhist military chaplaincy, I have found no voice in the Buddhist community opposing the idea of Buddhist chaplains or Buddhist soldiers in 1960’s and 1970’s South Korea. The culture of militarism during the Park Chung Hee era is certainly an important factor; but, I argue in this presentation that monastic leaders, chaplains, and scholars of Buddhism also emphasized something specifically “Korean” about the ability of Buddhists to expertly negotiate ethical restrictions on killing and violence. They created a narrative of Korean Buddhist history that centralized the “monk-soldier” (sǔnggun 僧軍), and championed Korean Buddhists’ unique interpretation of the Mahayana Buddhist tenets of no-self (mua 無我) and compassion (chabi 慈悲), building off of admonitions for “compassionate violence” seen throughout the Buddhist world.

Korean ki suryŏn (氣修練) mind-body practices have been reinvented in modernity based on ancient Asian traditions, similarly to Chinese qigong and Indian yoga. GiCheon (氣天) group is one example of ki suryŏn. I examine how GiCheon legends situate Korea within continuums connecting reality and myth, present and past. I look at the creative impetus for the legends, the questions they attempt to answer, and the manner by which they are experienced and lived again by the adepts. The first legend recounts the youth of Taeyang Chinin, the first GiCheon teacher, in the mountains, under the tutelage of an immortal. The other two legends depict the interaction of ancient GiCheon heroes with famous Chinese mythological protagonists, Huang Di (Yellow Emperor) and Bodhidharma. The legends insist on a certain superiority of Korea over China, in an attempt to affirm the value and identify of GiCheon, ki suryŏn, and Korea in general.

Donghak (東學, Eastern Learning)is a religious and a political movement in modern Korea beginning 1860s. Beyond reductive unity-seeking, otherworldly idealism, and faceless universalism, this study constructs a new universalism via rehearsing Donghak’s vision of a new world order as diversity-seeking, all-encompassing, and practice-centered. First, it is not a uniform order of the uni-verse but the many becoming one. As a religious-cultural ‘hybridity’ Donghak doesn’t belong to any conventional religions but collectively adapted life-centered concepts from Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Christianity with Korean’s cultural experience and spirituality. Secondly, the world that Donghak seeks is an all-encompassing plurisingular living organism that is called hanul (the divine). Finally, the universe is not an other-worldly utopia but a new earth, which has never been accomplished and exists only in our ideal hope and ethical imagination through practicing for realization. Donghak’s new world is a transformed earth community that should be realized every day.

In this paper, I seek to investigate the idea of “chosenness” among Korea Christians in North America using anti-colonial theories and historiography. Christian social ethics on holiness and justice will be my methods of investigation. Through such interdisciplinary perspectives, I address the white settler-colonial Christian appropriation of the divine election of people, i.e. a “chosen people,” in early Americas, and its subsequent deployment in the context of ethnic immigration churches in North America. Despite its contribution to the cohesion and survival of Korean North American Christian communities, such deployment was followed by consequences: by uncritically adopting the colonial views of “chosenness,” distorted expressions of “chosenness” have emerged within the Korean North American Christians. By critically examining how these expressions have worked as an apparatus of exclusion within and outside of Korean North American communities, I aim to offer deconstruction and reimagination of “chosenness” toward social responsibility, collective healing, and justice.

Racism erases Black and Brown bodies, making them invisible to the eyes of the privileged, thus, opening the door to exploit and dehumanize their sense of personhood. Immigrants in the U.S. are also faced with the challenge of establishing their own personhood within a land that operates within a black and white binary. Chaplains in the United States serve at the margins of institutions, as they often provide spiritual care to those left behind by the very institutions they work in. While it is vital that chaplains must have their gaze trained to adopt a divine standard of dignity bent towards the people most impacted by a racialized society, the field of chaplaincy must also make opportunities available to ensure that more BIPOC chaplains have the opportunities to become certified caregivers without barriers. An exegesis of the Genesis story between Cain’s brother Abel, whose name in Hebrew translates to ‘nothingness,’ will ground realities of race, privilege, power and invisibility in terms of Black and Brown immigrants who come to the U.S. and the chaplains working to, with and among these populations.

Migration continues to stir up controversies across Europe. Religion is cited as a reason to welcome or not to welcome migrants. In this paper, I analyze and assess the comparative theology operative in “A World of Neighbours” (AWoN), the largest multi-faith refugee relief network in Europe. At the core of AWoN is a grassroots network of practitioners from the Abrahamic religions who work with migrants across the continent. Drawing on three years of fieldwork, I argue that these practitioners embody a postmigrant ethics that revolves around a comparative theology of care. Through references to theological themes from the Abrahamic religions, they blur the boundaries between “refugees” and “receivers,” so crucial to classic and contemporary approaches to migration. Exploring AWoN’s everyday ethics, I advocate for the significance of a comparative theology of care for addressing the intersection of race and religion in contexts of forced migration today.

This presentation examines how migration experiences form Asian American theology in Journeys at the Margin—the first autographical theology book from the Asian-American perspective. In particular, the presentation engages with two leading Korean American theologians: Jung Young Lee (Methodist theologian) and Anselm Min (Jesuit theologian). Comparing their different migration experiences, the presentation finds that there cannot be one common category to summarize different migration experiences, while different in-between migration experiences lead these theologians to have a similar theological end: the breaking of particularism and binarism in Christian theology. In analyzing Lee’s “both-and theology” and Min’s “solidarity of others theology,” the presentation reflects on how the authors’ different migration experiences influenced their Asian-American theology. Having done so, the presentation will suggest a post-Asian American theology that sublates particular ethnic/racial identities through starting theology from God instead of particular experiences, while criticizing the danger of essentialism in racialized theology.