Annual Meeting 2023 Program Book

The 1971 Greater Chicago Crusade debuted simultaneously with _The Exorcist_. The novel immediately joined Graham’s inventory of Bad News as a foil for Good News, his strategy for leading his audiences to “decision.” Such dualism facilitated ideological manipulation by assigning challenges to preferred alternatives to the side of Satan. Graham’s sermons, books, archives, media accounts and White House tapes show that this first summer of _The Exorcist_, he repeatedly identified political protests as attacks by Satan Worshipers. Backstage, he tutored Richard Nixon in antisemitic mythologies equating the New Left with Jews and Jews with Satan Worshipers. As the evangelist invoked (and so legitimized) Satanic conspiracies, these were being amplified by figures like “ex-Satanist high priest” Mike Warnke into what subsequently became a Satanic Panic. This paper locates Billy Graham in the genealogy of that era’s Satanic Panic and within a larger landscape of demonizing enemies and others – ancient and ongoing.

On the fiftieth anniversary of The Exorcist’s release, this presentation will scaffold upon Barbara Creed’s analysis of the Monstrous-Feminine as ‘possessed woman’ with the addition of neurodivergent feminist critique, arguing that possession narratives are best analyzed relative to the level of agency the protagonist either gains or loses via the act of possession.  Under the traditional understanding of possession narratives popularized by The Exorcist, the concept of ‘gaining agency while possessed’ may appear oxymoronic.  Therefore, in conversation with the scholarship of Creed, Kristeva, as well as the feminist dis/ability scholarship of Rosemarie-Garland Thompson and Marja Evelyn Mogk, this presentation will analyze three possession style films released during the last decade (The Babadook [2014], The Blackcoat's Daughter [2015] and Smile [2022]), emphasizing agency as framework for broader conversations regarding neurodivergent feminist critique.

This paper traces secularism in The Exorcist (1973), arguing that the film’s representation of the demonic possession relies on, rather than rejects, secular epistemologies. While the film’s aesthetics revel in abject bodily horror, its subjectification of the viewer utilizes and stretches what secular or religious thought is meant to accomplish. Pazuzu, the demon being exorcized, is only felt as real to the exorcist, Father Karras, via the careful disclosure of material continuities and information only the demon and the audience possess. Pazuzu’s knowledge about the intimate details of these strangers’ lives, which the audience shares, instills terror within the characters and, we argue, the audience. In this paper, we suggest understanding The Exorcist’s emphasis on the characters’ connectivity as demonic. Rather than reject the secular, the cinematic rendering of the audience illuminates a violent intimacy between secularity and demonology, an immanent horror of not only bodily penetrability but rational vulnerability.

Modeled on The Exorcist (1973), possession films use possessed mangled bodies to prompt the exorcists (and audiences) to confront their existential doubts, checkered pasts, and redemptive ennui. Using abjection theory, these anxieties challenge prevalent social systems including religious institutions, reaching their horrific climaxes when the possessing entity grotesquely violates sex taboos. The invasive sexual act renews the exorcist’s faith and infuses them with salvific resolve to return the abject body to its socially acceptable state. By framing possession narratives from the possessed perspective, the films Saint Maud (2019), The Witch (2015), and First Reformed (2017) embrace social abjection, reorienting the status quo and social institutions, rather than the abject body, as problematic. Possession is rewritten as liberating and the climactic moment as ecstatically validating. Audiences see the untenable horror of oppressive social systems and without the resolution provided by exorcism, they are challenged to take action.

The 2022 film Everything Everywhere All At Once has become an instant and award-winning classic due to its novel and bold storytelling. Given the dense symbolism within the film, I will begin showing it in my class “Religions of China and Japan,” starting in the summer of 2023, as a pedagogical exercise. This paper will first argue that Everything Everywhere All At Once is indeed an allegorical Buddhist film, using John Whalen-Bridge’s categorization scheme. Then I will discuss and examine the results of my students’ observations, with the intent of assigning a reflection paper after watching the film in class to see how my students tease out the various elements of Buddhism the film exhibits. This exercise will thus begin to build a repertoire of observations to strengthen not only my students’ understanding of Buddhism, but to contribute to the rapidly growing literature about the film.

This paper treats Buddhist pedagogy in the undergraduate classroom as it relates to the topic of Buddhism and ecology. A distinct strategy of the pedagogy is to trace the occurrence of a specific natural phenomena, in this case trees, throughout the history of the Buddhist tradition. An outcome of this approach is to locate what I am calling an Arboreal Buddhism within the history of the tradition.  In addition, the paper reflects on how the 2022 NEH Summer Institute “The Ritual Arts of Hinduism and Buddhism” shaped the presenter’s pedagogical approach to the topic. Two aims of the Institute were to promote emphasis on popular expressions of religion and to move religious art and ritual from periphery to center in teaching Buddhism. In that spirit, the paper describes a pedagogy that makes extensive use of the visual, poetic, and narrative arts of Buddhism in the presentation of its topic.

What do students hear when we talk of mindfulness? To reframe unexamined assumptions among students that conceptualize both mindfulness and honors education as “doing more” (more exercises to gain psychological benefits, and more work to gain higher GPAs) the authors of this paper piloted a new course. In this paper, they discuss their collaborative experience designing, co-teaching, and assessing an honors course on mindfulness: its roots in Buddhist thought and practices, and its contemporary secular developments. Integral to this experiment is also an approach to teaching philosophy, ethics and religious studies in the context of a general education curriculum, that aims at presenting the disciplines and their focus areas as forms of experiential learning.

There is a need to articulate pedagogies for “ministry of presence” in Buddhist education. Ministry of presence is what keeps teaching and learning alive in the classroom. Modeling ministry of presence is staying connected, deeply listening, and being open to the unknown. To have alive encounters in the classroom where real learning occurs, educators may need to facilitate different methods of learning that incorporate a whole-person education. This project will draw upon Buddhist primary and secondary sources, as well as the experiences of Buddhist monastics, ministers, and educators from multiple traditions to create a Buddhist-centered pedagogy. Buddhist ministry of presence can serve as an important pedagogical model that provides practical methods for educators to use in the classroom. Such methods can more effectively address suffering, incorporate self-care, and navigate conflict while remaining grounded in body and mind.

Who is the “god” (īśvara) of Classical Yoga? This paper engages a persistent question in Indian philosophy and modern yoga through an extended investigation of the figure of īśvara in Classical Yoga. I specifically analyze the “īśvara sūtras” of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra in view of premodern, modern, and contemporary interpretations. I conclude that while the driving theme of the text is not a theistic devotionalism, the work still contains and boasts a supreme divinity capable of assisting the yoga practitioner in their quest for ultimate liberation. Īśvara may not be soteriologically indispensable for Patañjali, but devotion to “Him” remains a viable liberatory option to any aspirant disinclined to the path of self-reliance. Accordingly, we may wonder what Yoga’s theism means for Christians—or the alternatively religious or non-religious—who already practice yoga or who are “yoga curious.”

While forms of yoga have been practiced for thousands of years, “Christian” yoga practices are a newer phenomenon. Rather than researching Christians engaging in yoga practices today from a historical or text-based analysis, my interest arose out of my familiarity with several Christian-based yoga organizations, studios, and teacher trainings. Therefore, I ask how American Christians view their yoga practice using their own words and how Christians are molding yoga to fit within their previous spiritual commitments. This presentation is based on a previous project conducted in 2020 and my current interest in the intersections of yoga and  interreligious dialogue. This paper argues that when viewing the lived experience of Christians who practice yoga should be seen as an interreligious phenomenon between Christianity and what Jain and others have termed neo-liberalist spiritual movements, thus giving religious studies scholars a framework for evaluating Christians who practice yoga.

How might la labor de nuestras manos [the work of our hands] serve as a means to connect with the Divine, to find union with the Holy?  And how does this understanding have deep resonances in both the Christian and the Dharmic Traditions?  Nineteenth-century Bengali sanyāsī [monk] Swami Vivekananda came to espouse the understanding that seva [selfless service] is actually karma yoga (the yogic path of action), a true means for union with the Divine through our actions of selfless service.  Similarly, Jesus reminded us that whenever we serve the least of these, we are in fact serving Jesus.  Therefore, when our actions embody selfless service, we find union with the Divine, we experience communion with the Holy.  In this way, la labor de nuestras manos can be our lived-out yogic worship.  Our very way of life of selfless service to others, rooted in deep theology, becomes our worshipful praxis.

It is clear that American evangelicals’ relationship to modern postural yoga is a fraught one. This paper, based on ethnographic research conducted among Christian yoga practitioners, draws attention to the strategies by which a Christian-based yoga makes sense of the relationship between yoga and Hinduism in order to subvert concerns around the worship of other deities. This relationship is articulated in three ways:  (1) yoga as having mixed-up roots, (2) yoga as predating Hinduism, and (3) yoga as a gift to the West. In order to navigate the ethical and spiritual tensions that practitioners face regarding yoga’s religious entanglements, a Christian-based yoga must first construct yoga as a universal spirituality or philosophy that is easily detached from any one religious context. Only when properly disentangled from other religious traditions can modern postural yoga be transformed and re-appropriated into an acceptably Christian practice.

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