Annual Meeting 2024 Program Book

This paper focuses on how members of the magical order Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) build and maintained their religion in the greater Los Angeles area in the wake of scandal. Focusing on the events in the late forties surrounding the Agape Lodge and Jack Parsons as well as those related to the Solar Lodge of the late sixties, this work relies on both correspondence of past leadership and field work with current members of the Star Sapphire Lodge, the OTO’s current LA home. This material reveals the creative work needed to maintain a new religious movement while accepting the scandal that is native to the city they call home and inevitable in an order intent on changing the world through magical means.

This qualitative analysis examines the influence of race, religion, and politics in constructing alien abduction narratives. In the 1961 case of Betty and Barney Hill, I argue both the structured retelling of and shifting motifs in the narrative are inextricably linked to the developmental shift in their personal worldviews and social locations—racial, religious, and political. In addition, my research examines the influence of the Hills’ narrative on modern media and contemporary Ufology. I argue that the sensationalization and popularization by media coverage cemented the Hills’ narrative as the model structure for contemporary alien abduction narratives and mythology. Through my analysis, I will demonstrate that despite changing motifs within each retelling and their fluctuating public credibility, the subsequent literary and media adaptations have canonized the Hills’ narrative as the contemporary model for alien abduction narratives.

Scott Cunningham, native son of San Diego is one of, if not the most, prolific contemporary Pagan writer. At the age of thirty-three when he died, he had already published thirty-three books on magic and Wicca. Although not the first to share information about Wiccan initiation and rituals, he was the first to advocate solitary practice. His books helped to usher in the growth of solitary practice and the popularity of eclectic Paganism that are prevalent today in the movement. This paper will both exam the impact of his work on contemporary Paganism and place his writings within the larger framework of the occult in San Diego in the 1970s and 80s.

G.I. Gurdjieff, founder of the esoteric movement known as “The Fourth Way,” has long confounded his observers, pupils, and scholars of his life and work. This paper explores how Gurdjieff’s performative ambiguity in public self-presentations has contributed to the sense of mystery surrounding his identity and motivations as a spiritual teacher. To examine Gurdjieff’s performativity in the context of one of its most formative historical cases, this paper considers his often-overlooked visit to America in 1924, when he and twenty-three of his pupils arrived from France to perform “demonstrations” of sacred dances, music, and “tricks, half-tricks, and real supernatural phenomena” for audiences in New York City, Boston, and Chicago. Revisiting primary sources from the 1924 tour alongside historical studies on religion, Orientalism, popular science, and stage magic in early twentieth-century America suggests that Gurdjieff’s mysterious persona was a product of his own self-fashioning, an identity that he developed as a means of inviting skepticism and debate. This analysis suggests we may reconceive Gurdjieff’s public performativity as ritualized mystery-making, constituting a provocative invitation to engage in Fourth Way praxis.

This paper explores how Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk harnessed Christian Nationalist rhetoric to motivate evangelicals toward reactionary neoliberal political engagement. Analysis of the first 10 Freedom Square nights that Kirk launched in May 2021 out of Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona, illustrates how Kirk danced on the knife’s edge of promoting violence. Kirk promoted “spiritual warfare” against the “dehumanizing” and “Satanic” tactics of the “woke left,” public educators, and marginalized identities that he believes threaten American society. He urged attendees to “demand the welfare” of their cities and “reclaim the country for Christ” by proscription and “political extinction.” Contrastingly, Kirk reminded listeners to seek “fruits of the spirit,” proclaim truth, and expose darkness. The freedom nights launched Turning Point Faith to embolden pastors to fight what Kirk called “the great reset,” a conspiracy-and-apocalyptic-laden narrative that COVID-19 was a smokescreen to usher in an authoritarian communist state.

Conservative evangelicals have, through the 20th century, used violent, militarist language, to describe their relation to  worldly society. They have, however, understood this language as figural because their warfare was supernaturally oriented: spiritual warfare conducted via prayer and proselytization against “the spiritual forces of evil” (Ephesians 6:10-18). This paper explores the way that the ideational logic of conspiratorialism provides a vector for certain forms of the American evangelical imagination to import rhetorics that allow the literalization of its discourses’ figural militancy. It discusses psychologist Jordan Peterson as a bridge figure whose conspiratorialist homiletic rhetorical style, figural schemata, narrative and affect is congruent with the imaginative substructure of this kind of evangelical imagination and allows it to exchange and integrate ideas with other online domains whose concerns he engages, such as the “manosphere,” a corner of the internet devoted to legitimizing (white) male grievance, persecution anxieties and violent revenge fantasies.

Many commentators have noted the markers of evangelical theology and spirituality on display during the violence and chaos of the January 6th Capitol Riot. Rioters and the surrounding crowds prayed, sang evangelical worship songs, did spiritual warfare against demonic entities, and carried flags and wore apparel that signified their loyalty to Jesus, the Bible, and Donald Trump. But what was the relationship between these spiritual practices and the violence that occurred that day? This paper examines how spiritual warfare thought leaders and paradigms that were popularized among American and global evangelicals in the 1990s through the massive 10/40 Window missions prayer campaign became instrumental in the Christian mobilization for and participation in January 6th. Following the trajectory of three of these 1990s leaders, the paper will show how organized campaigns of spiritual violence became increasingly politicized over time and then tipped over into literal violence at the US Capitol.

From access to reproductive healthcare to border immigration policies to policies impacting the lives of trans people to opinions on the US involvement in international conflicts, US Christians hold divergent theologically influenced stances. However, for those US evangelicals that adhere to penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) and hold gender complementarianism as sacrosanct, these socio-political leanings may not be that surprising. Findings from an empirical study of evangelicals will be presented with the goal of identifying some of the ways PSA relates to the attitudes and beliefs of its adherents. 225 masters-level students at an Evangelical seminary were asked about their beliefs in PSA, complementarian gender roles, and sense of personal responsibility for reducing the pain and suffering of others. In short, stronger adherence to PSA was significantly associated with lower levels of concern for alleviating others’ suffering, with gender complementarian beliefs mediating the negative association. 

In this paper I will reflect on my experiences, lessons and insights teaching Islam & Gender at the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani and which pedagogical tools I applied to foster a feminist pedagogical approach to the Islamic Studies classroom. I will do so by reflecting on the specifics of teaching ‘Islam & Gender’ at an English speaking university in a Muslim majority context and which pedagogical tools I used.  I will specifically zoom in on the assignments I designed and the teaching methods inside the classroom to ensure that their voices and stories were at the center of their learning journey, and that the content remained culturally responsive and meaningful.

My training in Islamic theology and women’s studies has awarded me a unique opportunity to develop a pedagogical paradigm that integrates the Qur’anic notion of prophetic pedagogy with bell hooks’s concept of a “holistic and engaged pedagogy,” aimed at fostering discourse in an Islamic studies classroom. Prophetic pedagogy, as I interpret it based on Q 62:2, encompasses a pedagogical approach that informs, unforms, reforms, and transforms learning communities. In this paper, I will focus on three key pedagogical elements of my Intro to Islam class: a required assignment, a classroom activity, and a curriculum design feature. These components are guided by feminist pedagogical principles that prioritize engaging bodies and experiences alongside intellectual inquiry. Through their implementation, I advocate for a learning environment that celebrates diversity and inclusion, embraces holistic engagement, and champions justice by critically examining prevailing gender, race, and sectarian biases within Islamic scholarship, both historical and contemporary.

My proposal advocates for a transformative approach to Islamic Studies, emphasizing the significance of interdisciplinary methodologies, visual studies, and creative storytelling. It explores the challenges posed by epistemic colonization, urging a shift from reactionary stance to proactive action. Drawing inspiration from Audre Lorde and Helene Cixous the proposal underscores the role of language in decolonization, urging a reevaluation of power dynamics in scholarly discourse. The integration of visual studies, exemplified through a visual essay on a Bangladeshi surfer, Nasima, offers a unique perspective on subaltern voices. The proposal also delves into the meaning of religious symbol highlighting spacial and contextual variations. Emphasizing the dynamism of Islamic Studies through the visual storytelling, the proposal concludes with a call for increased engagement with visual media in Islamic Studies courses, fostering a more immersive and enriching educational experience for students. 

This presentation focuses on an op-ed assignment for a writing-intensive seminar course, "Islam, Gender, and Sexuality." The assignment has three feminist pedagogical aims: to develop and hone student voice; facilitate critical reflection around authority and expertise; and to build a collaborative writing community. The broader goal is to empower undergraduate students to develop their own voices, to deepen their persuasive skills, and to seek additional venues for the articulation of their views within and outside the university.

This paper’s primary concern is to uncover the role of religiously-inflected symbols of guilt in the plea bargain ritual’s production of criminal bodies. It argues, first, that Christian guilt symbolism is interwoven with the raced, gendered, and classed social hierarchy in America, which produces criminal typologies that influence prosecutors’ and judges’ perceptions of defendants’ guilt. Second, it claims that plea bargain rituals are a strategic point in the American carceral system in which this guilt is transferred—or to use more theological language, imputed—to the individual who confesses. The confession that lies at the heart of the plea bargain ritual functions on the one hand, as the defendant’s (often coerced) confirmation of the ‘truth’ of their criminal identities and on the other hand, as an absolution of the carceral state’s complicity in the creation and condemnation of criminal bodies.

Texas hanged James Morris in 1904 and electrocuted Charles Reynolds and five others in 1924. At each execution, Christian clergy played wildly different roles. At the hanging, the preacher led the crowd in prayer and song. At the electrocutions, it's unclear what, exactly, the prison chaplain did, if anything. Between the two executions, Texas changed how and where it conducted executions. How did the changes in law and execution setting affect carceral religious practice? To answer this question, this paper will look at Texas history and capital punishment archives. It will attempt to explore the particulars of the execution days and the clergy’s role in both, with particular attention to the carceral setting, the role of the law, and race. Exploring the history of their presence is paramount to our understanding of the relationship between religion and carceral law, as well as the assurance of prisoners' religious rights. 

This paper advances a legal, moral, and theological argument justifying poor Black mothers’ who break the law to survive and secure quality of life for themselves and their families against unjust social conditions. A critical task is to uncover the synergistic and contentious relationship between law and morality that intersect with harmful theologies and punitive philosophies in the context of Black motherhood and the criminalization of survival. In response, I conceptualize a new paradigm called Womanist Abolition that contributes theoretical and methodological interventions pushing forward frontiers in the study of religion. Womanist Abolition consists of legal analyses, moral reappraisals, and an emancipatory theology to undermine carceral systems that limit and foreclose Black mothers’ survival practices. This study’s outcome is the organization Abolitionist Sanctuary. In the final analysis, Womanist Abolition extends an academic study to coalitions of solidarity that expand a faith-based abolitionist movement validating the divinity and dignity of Black mothers as sources of moral integrity and salvation necessary to create a more just and equitable world beyond punishment, policing, and prisons.

In “Moral Injury and Human Relationship,” Michael Yandell explores the many layers and scales of responsibility in the waging and fighting of war. After locating himself as a US veteran and reviewing core literature in the study of moral injury, which is yet only in its nascence, he draws on Bonhoeffer’s account of conscience and shame to offer substantive theological engagement with more clinical definitions. Against the backdrop of the growing understanding of moral injury and Yandell’s theological response that draws upon Bonhoeffer’s theology, this paper will reverse the hermeneutical flow to explore how moral injury might be a helpful category for understanding Bonhoeffer’s theological moves most nearly associated with his decision to join a conspiracy. These include the claim that “everyone who acts responsibly becomes guilty,” his preference for concreteness over abstract principles, and his notions of “free, responsible action” with hope for only a “relative sinlessness” in Christ.

In this paper, I analyze the underlying logics of Bonhoeffer's view, found in Letters and Papers from Prison and Ethics, that the church can enjoy a clean break from injustice through prayer and confessional practices. I do so first by engaging the work of Ernst Käsemann, who offers a post-war critique of clean break thinking in light of the German Church’s ongoing entanglement with white supremacy. I then turn to the the Black Pentecostal Tradition, and its own confrontation of white supremacy through tongues speech, to develop an account, in conversation with Bonhoeffer and Käsemann, of the type of prayer that might confront white supremacy in our day and accomplish Bonhoeffer’s desire for the church to one day regain the authority to speak liberative and redemptive words evoking those spoken by Jesus.

Though a student of Harnack, Bonhoeffer did not shy away from figural exegesis since his early period. He approached Genesis 1-3 from a theological perspective and interpreted the Psalms as Christ's own prayers. However, during his time in prison, he began to affirm earthly love by turning to the Song of Songs, a book traditionally interpreted through the lens of the love between Christ and the Church or believers. In a later letter, he even told Bethge that reading the this book as an earthly love poem was ‘probably the best “Christological” interpretation’.(DBWE 8, 410.)This affirmation of earthly love from the standpoint of holy scriptures and Christology is uncommon in Christian theology. So why could reading the Song of Songs as an earthly love poem be considered a Christological interpretation, and even the best one? This paper aims to explore Bonhoeffer’s exegetical logic behind this fragmented reflection.

Although the German title of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s prison letters—Resistance and Submission [Widerstand und Ergebung]—suggests a direct reference to political activity, it actually comes from his reflection on two ways to confront one’s “fate.” “I’ve often wondered,” he writes in a 1944 letter to Eberhard Bethge, “where we are to draw the line between necessary resistance to ‘fate’ and equally necessary submission.” This essay situates Bonhoeffer’s remark within the frequent references to “fate” [Schicksal] among German theologians working between 1919-45, including Emanuel Hirsch and Werner Elert. It then shows how Bonhoeffer creatively engages with the question of fate by retrieving Martin Luther’s concept of social realities as “masks” of God, an insight that leads him to adapt his personalist philosophy. Finally, I demonstrate how Bonhoeffer’s treatment of fate is related to his disavowal of tragedy, both in his Ethics and in an unpublished note from the archive.

This paper traces the co-constitution of two figures—the homosexual and the Jew—in pedagogical materials circulated by Christian clinical pastoral educators from 1928 to 1941. Historians of religion and sexuality often narrate Christians’ embrace of psychiatry as an attempt to modernize amid increasing anxieties about secularism. However, this paper reframes the incorporation of psychoanalysis into Christian practices of pastoral care as a repositioning of liberal Protestantism vis-à-vis the figure of the Jew. Pedagogical documents demonstrate a convergence of medicalized and pastoral surveillance in disciplining race, sex, and religion. Drawing on the ACPE archives, I consider the production and transference of knowledge about sex and race in clinical pastoral education settings, with special attention to Jewish psychiatric patients. I trace how the clinical pastoral educators’ stress on correcting non-normative sexuality carved out new landscapes for theologies of racial difference, grounded in developmental teleologies.

This paper will map the terrain of queer Jewish place and space-making in the context of U.S. anti-Zionist movements. Both Jewishness and queerness have historically been invested in the production of counter spaces. While anti-Zionist movements in the U.S. are historically rooted in liberatory and solidarity-based lesbian feminist identity politics, solidarity alone is inadequate for explaining the abundant queerness and creativity of the Jewish anti-Zionist place-making occurring today. The vibrant queerness of Jewish place-making beyond Zionism attests to the power of spatial disorientation across the layers of social, political, and ecological notions of “home” in ways that are essential to re-imagining our relationships to “place.”

Both cisness and Zionism seem to be at a crisis point. As increasing numbers of young people come out as trans and nonbinary, those invested in normative gender are engaged in a prolonged campaign of legislative and cultural backlash; some of these same anti-trans figures promote unwavering support of the state of Israel, even as uncritical pro-Zionism wanes among younger Americans horrified by Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians. This paper argues that cisness and Zionism are ideologically linked, as biopolitical projects of the state. By analyzing cisness and Zionism as biopolitical projects directed at controlling the affective flows of gender and Judaism, we gain clarity about both the violence of enforcing strict borders (around territory, peoplehood, gender, and subjecthood) and also the inevitability of resistance and refusal.

The paper reconstructs the reception of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy in the theologies of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Albrecht Ritschl and Wilhelm Herrmann, taking into account the modernization process in the 19th century. They used Kant’s philosophy to modernize the self-image of Protestant theology as a ‘science’. Around 1800, theologies emerged which took up the differentiation of religion in culture as an independent form. This transforms Kant’s religion of reason into the concept of the independence of religion in consciousness and determines theology as a ‘science’ that operates on the basis of the philosophy of religion. Against the backdrop of advancing cultural modernization, the special nature of the Christian religion became the focus of theology from the 1870s onwards. In these conceptions, religion is increasingly detached from the self-relationship of consciousness, and theology is understood as an autonomous Wissenschaft. This shows that in the history of the development of Protestant theology in the 19th century, it was not only the understanding of religion and theology that changed, but also the image of Kant’s philosophy that was referred to.

The significance of Kant’s thinking for Christian theology is fiercely contested. In the second half of the 20thcentury, Kant was regarded mostly as a theological skeptic. The last two decades have seen the emergence of a more balanced view, especially in the Anglophone world. Some interpreters challenge Kant’s epistemological dogma, others ask unapologetically for his constructive contribution to Christian theology. This paper demonstrates that a similar hermeneutical strategy is already visible in the work of 19th-century theologians, among them Friedrich Schleiermacher and Isaak August Dorner. Since Schleiermacher’s relation to Kant has received a fair amount of recent scholarly attention, the paper will focus on Dorner. His indebtedness to German Idealism, especially Schelling, is well known, but what about his direct or indirect indebtedness to Kant, whose work, after all, lay at the root of the history of German Idealism? This will be the guiding question.

By the 1790’s there were two fundamental avenues for the reception of Kant’s critical

philosophy. First, there was the way of Reinhold, Fichte, and Hegel, who sought complete closure

in the derivation of a system of reason from first principles concerning consciousness and its

possibility. The second way was that of Schleiermacher and the Romantics, who denied that such

systematization was possible. Schleiermacher located the ground of self-consciousness in an

immediate relation to the Absolute given to consciousness in feeling. This ground could not be

grasped by the intellect but could only be experienced. It conditioned all knowing and willing,

and thereby conditioned the possibility of ethics and metaphysics. This understanding of the self

lay at the basis of the existentialism of Heidegger and Kierkegaard. It also made possible a

philosophical and theological systematic appropriation of Luther’s radical insights. In this paper

I will discuss how Schleiermacher’s reception of Kant’s philosophy conditioned his understanding

of self-consciousness, and the implications of this understanding for existentialist theology

grounded in experience and praxis.

The paper argues that Kant has significant theological commitments, in relation to God and a conception of transcendence. At the same time, he is not easily regarded as a traditional Christian, because of his views about the relationship between divine action, grace, human freedom, and happiness. Kant witnesses to a perennial strand of philosophy that leans into the category of the divine at the edges of what we can say about reason and freedom. Trajectories and possibilities inherent within Kant’s philosophical theology can go in a number of directions, not all of them compatible with each other. Kant’s philosophical theology can therefore provide a resource and impetus for a wide range of theological movements in the long nineteenth century.

Feminist readers of Søren Kierkegaard’s corpus may be all too familiar with Judge William’s troublesome view of his wife in Either/Or Part II. As readers, we may be able to find refuge in the fact that Judge William is a pseudonym whose very worldview Kierkegaard seeks to undermine, but what are readers to do when they find similar words about marriage and domesticity under Kierkegaard’s own name in For Self-Examination? In this paper, I compare Kierkegaard and his pseudonym Judge William’s view on women, their relationship to men, and the implications this has on femininity and masculinity. It is not the goal of this paper to exonerate Kierkegaard’s view of women. Rather, it is the goal to discern the similarities and differences between the two views and ‘judge for ourselves’ what wisdom, if any, we may take from Kierkegaard’s words on women and their relationship to men and masculinity.

This paper will explore how disability, or more specifically depression, informs selfhood in dialogue with the individual’s relation to gender in “Guilty?/Not Guilty” from Stages on Life’s Way. This imaginary psychological construction offers a first-personal account of the narrator’s inability to fulfil his own, and society’s, expectations, describing the fact that his depressed nature prevents him from taking up the roles that befall a man—to become a husband—but also his complex relation to outward performance of gender norms through masking. Behind the stereotypical depictions of masculinity, however, lies a deeper concern: a concern with the possibility of being and making oneself understood, and of the possibilities for true connectedness and sympathy. Through a dialectics of negativity, the text offers an intricate understanding of the interplay between the inner and the outer, and the ways in which gender and selfhood are constructed through public presentation and social interaction.

This paper explores constructive possibilities in Kierkegaard for masculinity in theology. In *Sickness Unto Death,* masculine despair arises from self-assertion and remove from total devotion to a deserving object. Feminine despair comes from total devotion to the object, without genuine selfhood. Ironically, ‘feminine despair’ applies well to current conversations around toxic masculinity and how to solve it, since many are arguing for a reformed masculinity only so men will benefit others in society. Instead, the Socratic approach to masculinity would do better: asking, what masculinity is (rather than what masculinity is good for) accepts a risk that one is not manly and must find out what manliness is for oneself. This search parallels the development of selfhood into faithful reliance on God. As Kierkegaard contends, risk is the condition for faith, and faith is the condition for selfhood. I will conclude that the same applies for constructive accounts of masculinity.

How are we to use Kierkegaard’s 19th century views to inform a current discussion on the construction of masculinity and more specifically the normativity en-gendered therein? I will try to read the construction of masculinity as a specific form of despair. That is to say a form of willing to be oneself and of the willing to not be oneself Kierkegaard describes in the Sickness unto Death. This societal form of despair ascribes specific acts to “real” men and invalidates the existence of others. The “alpha” male seen as hyperbolic masculinity creates an exclusion of more feminine, exuberant masculinities such as the camp male (Sontag, 1963; Newton, 1979).

However, both of these masculinities reveal themselves, within a context of theatrical ontology of social life (Goffman, 1956), as performances given to convince others of one’s adequation to a given social norm. The difference resides within the consciousness of the performance. The camp individual as conscious of his performative nature is conscious of his despair and therefore on the road to overcoming it.