Annual Meeting 2023 Program Book

The so-called Constitution of Medina has often been used to buttress the idea that the centralized state is the principal medium through which an Islamic politics should be realized. Ali Bulaç, however, argues that the Document of Medina is a model for a radically decentralized and communitarian political system in which there is a considerable diffusion of legal authority. Such multi-faceted pluralism, which goes far beyond freedom of religion for Jews and Christians to encompass a variety of religious and ideological differences, puts considerable limits on the reach of the state. This paper argues that Bulaç goes much further than adopting a critical attitude against the state’s domination of religion or against the establishment of an Islamic state. It contends that Bulaç’s thought implies that a neutral state is not possible and, for this reason, seeks to limit the reach of any kind of state, thereby transcending “modernity itself.”

The SCOTUS conservative supermajority is dominated by Catholics, and the recent Dobbs decision discusses questions of human rights and ordered liberty which have their genesis in the tradition of Christian natural law theology. This paper urges against the temptation to conflate Dobbs and state abortion bans with conservative Islam (as critics do in referring to the “Texas Taliban” or “Christian Sharia”). Such slurs grossly misrepresent the diversity of Islamic jurisprudential views on abortion and of American Muslim opinion; they also prematurely foreclose Islamic and Christian feminist reappraisals of abortion. This paper undertakes an interfaith comparison of works by Zahra Ayubi and Cristina Traina, both of whom understand themselves to be recovering feminist natural law traditions as they reconsider women’s reproductive and other rights issues. Feminist commitments require focusing, not silencing the voices of those directly impacted.

Where are we to position the category of devotional labor within the panoply of capitalist economies of exchange? The Aga Khan Development Network is a multi-billion-dollar philanthropic network that provides aid to Muslims and non-Muslims worldwide. A large portion of the services provided by the Network is made possible through the devotional labor of the Ismailis—a minority Shi’a group who recognizes the Aga Khan IV (b. 1936) as their hereditary religious authority. What return comes from the gift of reverential service? This paper examines how the Aga Khan frames philanthropic work as an Islamic ethical virtue in balancing din, the mandates of religious life, with donya, the necessities of worldly life. This paper synthesizes Walter Mignolo’s notion of “salvation by development” and Max Weber’s “worldly politics” to argue that the Aga Khan Network rewrites devotional labor into a political theology that is aligned with the neoliberal “entrepreneurial philanthropy.”

To what extent should heterosexist patriarchy be understood as a Western modern/colonial invention, as opposed to an oppressive system with origins that can be traced prior to Western colonization? This paper addresses this question through an interpretative-comparative account of *Borderlands/La Frontera* (1987) and *Indecent Theology* (2000), in which queer decolonial feminist scholars Gloria Anzaldúa and Marcella Althaus-Reid respond to histories of colonialism in Mesoamerican and Latin American contexts. Each offers a different way of framing the precolonial past: while Anzaldúa roots her mestiza consciousness in suppressed matriarchal and feminist histories, Althaus-Reid’s argument emphasizes the continuity of patriarchy across empires and always-structurally-marginal eruptions of resistance. This paper discusses the value and limitations of these contrasting images of pre-Spanish-colonial life, concluding by offering constructive proposals for a mode of decolonial memory that honors feminist and queer histories without dependence on a particular image of the past.

Intentional intersectional analysis has, until recently, been largely missing from the sociology of religion (Page and Yip 2021). This paper revisits Crenshaw’s (1989, 1991) pioneering work on intersectionality as an analytical framework to understand structural oppression, combined with insights gained from critical menstruation studies, to explore how leadership and power in the Sydney Anglican Diocese is embodied, gendered and raced. This paper addresses a simple question, why are there (still) so many white men leading the Sydney Anglican church? I offer a feminist, sociological and intersectional discussion, which is illuminated by life-stories collected from Sydney Anglicans during the course of my PhD fieldwork.  I present the overwhelmingly white and male diocesan leadership structure as a colonial legacy. This reading of the gendered and raced colonial legacies which persist in the diocese today can operate as a case study in broader discussions on evangelicalism, and on decolonizing the study of religion.

In my research into male intellectuals who promoted feminist discourse in late Qing dynasty and early Republic of China , I have discovered that they were not primarily motivated by a desire to benefit women. Instead, their focus was on serving larger purposes such as their country, society, culture, and their own interests as male intellectuals. They saw women's emancipation as a means to achieve these larger goals, rather than as an end in itself.

On the other hand, Chinese women who promoted feminism in China after the 1920s were more actively pursuing liberal women's rights. They explored the collective power of women and demonstrated a deep concern for other oppressed women. Notably, three Christian women, Ding Shujing(丁淑静), Wang Liming（王立明）, and Zeng Baosun（曾宝蓀）, made significant contributions to empowering women and advancing feminism in China.

This paper seeks to engage with the literature of recent years of those theologians and theorists who are grappling with the manifold ways in which decolonial theory can be applied to the legacy of the Christian church, in its various expressions, across Latin America. The paper seeks to establish a historical tracing of the work of Enrique Dussel as a church historian and even “theologian”, in proposing new ways of situating the questions of decolonization to the complicated legacy of evangelization and missionization in the region. The paper then moves towards more contemporary iterations of decoloniality in working out this principle towards Christianity and theology broadly speaking.

Based on a case study of a ranchería belonging to the Wayúu Indigenous community, this presentation will critically analyze the Colombian State’s historical omission of basic public services provision in rural communities of energy poverty (specifically, electricity) and how religious leaders (in this case, Catholic priests) supply this function as part of their work in these areas. The analysis will raise possible cultural impacts derived from connecting the provision of these public services with beliefs traditionally unfamiliar to these communities, including both how priests’ views have shifted over time (including what is adaptable to Christianity and what remains of particular Wayúu culture), as well as how the community’s beliefs have shifted about energy and the environment. 

The cult of Santa Muerte (Saint Death/Holy Death) has had a spectacular rise in popularity across borders over the past ten years. It has also risen in popularity among scholars, who have focused on using archival accounts to prove or disprove a connection between the modern Santa Muerte movement and Indigenous religions. These historical approaches have ignored and obstructed the voices of devotees. I instead center Santa Muerte devotees' devotional materials, bodily practices, and voices. I argue that by taking these materials into account Santa Muerte becomes a space not only for critique of historical scholarship but also a saint that represents the endless possibilities of a Latinx past and future.

This paper explores the promotion of the cult of La Virgen de la Puerta, in Otuzco, Peru through contemporary digital spaces. This cult, which has been variously celebrated in Peru for over 350 years, has a new medium for celebration, the virtual ‘space’ of FaceBook. Virtual media is controversial in the field of academic theology. I will explore various viewpoints surrounding this controversy. I will then examine two specific posts from FaceBook to see the ways in which this space promotes a particular kind of community. I argue that there is a kind of ‘space’ being engaged in this virtual format and that a form of embodiment is occurring for individuals engaging in devotional activities in this space. Both the features of the space and the ways in which individuals engage in embodiment are important for the Church to contemplate as virtual spaces become more ubiquitous across the world.

This paper analyzes Zhiyi's 智顗 (538-597) “Shi chan boluomi cidi famen” 釋禪波羅蜜次第法門 (T1916) as an edited record of oral preaching on the subject of meditation rather than only a system for teaching the theory or the practice of meditation. By examining Zhiyi's characteristic methods of expounding individual meditation teachings, the paper argues that Zhiyi intended to teach his audience a systematic method to perform exegesis on meditation texts, rather than teaching meditation practice per se. The result of its application, achieved through the repetitive overlaying of exegetical structures and timely prescription of “homework”, serves this pedagogical goal. Furthermore, it shows that Zhiyi’s originality lies not just in his synthesis of “meditation theory”, but also in his dynamic way of preaching, which provides exegetical formulas capable of turning every transmitted teaching into his own teaching.

Vigorous debate arose in early Song (960-1279) Tiantai Buddhism during a period of institutional and intellectual flourishing. The “Home Mountain-Off Mountain” controversy, as this event came to be known, refers to the Song Tiantai schism and the initial doctrinal disputes from which it emerged. Each side offered competing interpretations of a fundamental ambiguity inherent in the writings of the Tang master Zhanran 湛然 (711-782). I focus on the development of the supposedly heretical Qiantang community’s soteriology which amalgamated “tathāgatagarbha” doctrine within their own vision of Tiantai orthodoxy. I explain how members sought to demonstrate Tiantai was capacious and flexible enough to accommodate “tathāgatagarbha” ideas through explanations grounded in the “Nirvana-sūtra” and Zhanran’s texts, as well as classical Tiantai thought. More broadly, I seek to illuminate the wider early Song embrace of “tathāgatagarbha” thought and its representative Chinese texts, a momentous shift towards buddha-nature in the history of Chinese Buddhism.

What became of the Tiantai school after the famous “Home Mountain-Off Mountain” debates of the early Northern Song? How did Tiantai monks assert their presence and relevance in a Buddhist landscape dominated by the Chan school? This paper is a step towards understanding the social-institutional history of the Tiantai school as it (re)emerged in the Buddhist world of the Song dynasty. It takes the career of Huiguang Ruone 慧光若訥 (1110-1191), abbot of the Upper Tianzhu Monastery (“Shang Tianzhu si” 上天竺寺) in Hangzhou, to argue for the elevation of the school to national importance in the early decades of the Southern Song (1127-1279). It explores how Ruone was made national Sangha Registrar (“senglu” 僧錄), thus situating his monastery at the political center of the Buddhist world for centuries to come.

During the 17th century, a Buddhist master called Zhixu智旭 (1599-1655) wrote a Memorial Statement in which he made a deliberate distinction between two “Shuilu” (“Water-and-Land”) ritual traditions known as the “Northern Shuilu” and “Southern Shuilu.” The “Southern Shuilu” is represented by a ritual manual compiled and redacted by two Tiantai Buddhist masters respectively in the 13th and 16th centuries, while the “Northern Shuilu,” with a murky origin, demonstrates a highly synthetic and esoteric feature. This paper compares these two “Shuilu” traditions with a particular focus on the sociopolitical contexts in which they were produced and practiced. It aims to explore the changing relationship between the Song Tiantai Buddhism and other religious traditions such as Esoteric Buddhism and Daoism by examining how the negotiations of sectarian boundaries and the doctrinal content of these rituals gave rise to the different ritual practices of the same soteriological goal of universal salvation.

The ‘Poet and Personality’ (shā’ir-u shakhṣiyat) exposition is a widely practiced mode of writing within twentieth century Urdu and Persian literary criticism that narrativizes the corporeal mannerisms of poets. Taking Faiz Ahmed and Khaliliullah Khalili as examples, I pay attention to how corporeal vocabulary like presence (huzūr), service (khidmat), and nearness (qurbat), turn Faiz and Khalili into "hagiographic subjects." Instead of disclaiming these texts for lack of literary rigor, as a number of modern critics have done, I see it more fruitful to highlight their engagement with a particular iteration of adab, a duty to publicly commit acts of remembrance for “one’s elders” (buzurgān). What are the “forms of expression and practice” that animate the ways in which the Islamic adab of remembrance is performed in the twentieth century, and how did newly emergent technologies, like cassettes and audio recordings, get conscripted as technologies of adab?

What does it mean for a stylized and shrine-based debate to be a devotional performance? Echoing recent works on contemporary Sufisms that highlight the intersectionality of communities, repertoires, and narratives, Bangladesh’s *bicār gān* (“songs of rumination”) is an extemporized wellspring for articulating concurrent devotional subjectivities. In this performance, a network of Sufi interlocutors engage in an aggregative musicality that combines versified, saintly, and polemical elements into a staged discourse on loss, alterity, and sometimes absurdism. Drawing attention to interlocking tropes in ritual theory, migration studies, and the anthropology of media, this discursive devotionalism can be understood as a series of interspaces that converge through pilgrimage routes, shrine committees, itinerant programming, stylized listening practices, and a popular folk music revival.

This paper addresses the "roots and routes" of American Muslim comedy by retracing the intentions of its pioneer, Preacher Moss, and considers how his narrative sets the tone for the articulation of so-called American Muslim comedy into the 21st century. This paper expands on the historical development of American Muslim comedy and situates ‘Muslim comedy’ within the traditions of both religious and charged humor, recognizing Islam as a praxis and marker of protest, identity and faith. Despite the centrality of 9/11 and its aftermath in the materials of American Muslim comedians, Preacher Moss’ early career and narrative complicate the systematic focus on 9/11 as the point of departure for the story of American Muslim comedy. Furthermore, the creedal and revolutionary expression of American Muslim comedy as defined by Preacher Moss complicates early conceptualizations of American Muslim comedy as ethnic comedy and expands our understanding of charged humor.

This paper investigates a largely forgotten 1567 debate early between two Jesuit missionaries in Brazil as a cipher for growing anxieties around the enslavement of the wrong people. Influential Jesuit leader Manuel da Nóbrega’s argument against voluntary slavery sought to continue his reformist Aldeias, while relative newcomer Quirício Caxa, disinclined by his superior’s ardent belief in the redeeming power of persuasion and conversion, argued native peoples can sell themselves into slavery if they so choose. Following Sylvia Wynter, I identify another dimension of the encounter: the necessary suspension of the justice of African’s enslavement. Drawing attention to the Jesuit debate’s importance for emerging conceptions of subjective right, I argue that blackness is the point where all origin stories of slavery—war, debt, nature, will—condense and can be seen as legitimate without just cause, in ways that have profound consequence for secularizing narratives that reverberate through contract theory and political economy.

This paper tracks a doubling of the slave in Kant’s repudiation of ‘contractual slavery’ in the Metaphysics of Morals, placing it in the context of early modern theological and jurisprudential debates over the status of the voluntary slave in the Americas and the West Indies. I argue that Kant–in line with a long history of theological debate–positions the racial slave ‘outside’ the question of justice. But in line with the dictates of the critical philosophy, he also insists that whoever is rational must see all things, even those that fall outside the ambit of morality and right, as law-governed. The racial slave’s unspoken status in Kant’s philosophy is thus extrajudicial, but not extralegal; while the legitimate slave is ‘no longer’ a person in the eyes of justice, for the racial slave, justice–not only as achievement but as possibility and demand–is ‘not yet.’

Black Emancipation marks a paradigm shift in the political and theological reproduction of the image of freedom. Under the call of the theological imitation of Christ and the political imitation of the free laborer, the formerly enslaved came to be known under the banner of the Freedmen. This image of freedom served to cultivate black and national political and social unity by reorienting the significance of blackness’ political theological and ontological status as slaveness. A near indelible mark of a social disinheritance, post-Emancipation writings see black people’s journey from slavery to Emancipation as living images that tell of God’s redemptive work. Through education and exhortation to take on the form of the Freedmen, they incarnate domestic and civic virtue and so legitimate the truth of Christian and national redemption. Read from the underside, we can see the figure of the Freedmen as an instrument for resolving the crisis of black political and theological illegitimacy. By redirecting the significance of blackness, the Freedmen aim to reproduce a redeemable form of black subjectivity by making willful agents in the narration of black subjection as incarnating the truth of Christian and national redemption.

The theological problem of evil is also a problem of sovereignty. Manicheanism - the possibility of two sovereign powers, rather than one - lurks in the background of Christian accounts of the devil. If power has been thought in divine terms, how are the ideas of sovereignty inherited from Christianity transposed into political philosophy so as to enable an account of politics which recognises the existence of multiple legitimate powers - multiple sovereign nations? How does this shift shape early modern political philosophers’ understanding of power - both divine and demonic? This paper will explore the role of demonology in Hobbes’ account of political sovereignty, suggesting that it is only by removing God from the sphere of history and demythologising demonology that Hobbes is able to effect a transition from the paternal patriarchy of the medieval world to the fraternal patriarchy of early modernity.