Annual Meeting 2024 Program Book

This paper describes the creation and evolution of a group psilocybin ritual developed under the Oregon Psilocybin Services program. The religiously-neutral regulatory structure of the Oregon program poses a challenge for facilitators, namely, how to cultivate bonds of trust and construct an interpersonal “container” that is solid enough for participants to accept the disorientation of altered consciousness, without transgressing state-mandated regulatory limits on religious content in psilocybin administration sessions? As regulated psychedelic-assisted therapy expands to other states, improvisational ritualization around psychedelics offers scholars an unprecedented opportunity to observe the rapid development ritual in non-religious, pseudo-religious, or religion-adjacent contexts. The high stakes and personal precarity inherent in psychedelic environments reveals the precise work that ritual accomplishes, of providing a bridge from “normal” life into liminal or even exceptional/transcendent states. The importance of pre-dose rituals to group psychedelic processes underscores the role ritual can play in developing social cohesion and social trust.

Many people come to Alcoholics Anonymous less than enthusiastic about the “God part.” How then do they come to experience a relationship with some kind of higher power that they say helps them to stop drinking? Reluctant newcomers are often reassured that they can choose a higher power that works for them and are sometimes encouraged to “act as if” they believe, until they actually do. Using anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann’s helpful concept of spiritual “kindling,” this paper will explore how AA members make “conscious contact” (Step 11) with their higher powers to help them get and stay sober. Grounded in archive research, ethnographic observation, and interviews with 34 current and former members of AA, I will reveal how ongoing “conscious contact” became the proposed solution to alcoholism advocated by AA’s founders and how contemporary members seek such contact through ritualized practices and resulting spiritual experiences.

In 2015, Bill Levin established the First Church of Cannabis (FCOC) in Indiana, and claimed that the state’s newly passed Religious Freedom Restoration Act legalized his church’s central ritual, i.e., the corporate smoking of marijuana. Subsequent lawsuits determined otherwise, but the FCOC continues to operate today, gathering weekly to hear sermons, share testimonials, and engage in what I call a “hypothetical” version of the this central ritual. The endurance of the FCOC and of a denuded version of this central ritual raises fascinating religious studies questions. This paper focuses on three: 1) The power of even a “hypothetical” ritual to organize and link a community’s ethos and worldview, 2) the fact and nature of ritual innovation, and 3) affect in the context of religious rituals and beliefs that explicitly center the body and acknowledge its needs and desires.

Episodes of systematic marginalization and outrageous acts of violence are carved in the Coptic collective memory. This has often led the political tendencies of Christian Egyptians to emerge from a profound sense of despair and alienation. For long, the Coptic mode of political existence has been characterized by the “martyr-complex” (uqdat al-shuhada) and the lingering question of destiny. Against the backdrop of these pessimistic, self-preserving, and escapist Coptic political tendencies, Abbot Matta al-Miskin (1919 – 2006), the Maqqarian monk, develops a theology of citizenship that promotes spiritually-based patriotic activism. Although his theology has been widely perceived as quietist, a more comprehensive reading of al-Miskin’s thought shows that while he vehemently renounces the political activism of the clerical hierarchy, he equally renounces the political indifference and self-isolation of the Christian citizen. According to al-Miskin, the church should stay away from politics, but she cannot tolerate being “a mother to the coward.”

Munib A. Younan (1950–) is a Palestinian Lutheran emeritus bishop of Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and Holy Land and a former president of Lutheran World Federation (LWF). Concept of martyria (witness) is a recurring theme on the work of Younan throughout his career. Martyria is a central concept in Palestinian society, especially in the framework of prolonged political conflict. Concept is also related to Christianity and Islam. Both in the approach of Younan and of contextual liberation theologies, Christian witness is based on defending suffering people. Most of Younan’s work is rooted to his aim to provide a Christian witness, whether it was congregational work, local or global ecumenism, religious dialogue, or even contextualizing Christianity to Palestinians living under occupation and tumultuous contemporary context. Younan’s theology of Martyria is a construction of martyrdom that supports Palestinian Christians in their tumultuous context and denounces violence and extremist interpretations.

This paper examines Israel-Palestine through the lens of Christian Zionism, and its critic, Palestinian Christian liberation theology. Christian Zionism exerts influence through political and economic support for Israel, affecting the lives of everyday Israelis and Palestinians. As a theology and a political movement, it holds renewed significance given increased attention on the U.S. government’s role in Israel's campaign in Gaza since October 7, 2023. This paper compares two seminal liberation theology works, Naim Ateek’s Justice, and Only Justice and Katie Geneva Cannon’s Black Womanist Ethics to understand how white, Western Christianity has influenced their communities’ lived experiences and their theologies. Both authors reclaim from hegemonic interpretation the power to understand sacred texts and the power to define moral living despite limited agency. Using Larry Rasmussen’s power analysis framework, I argue that white Christianity must interrogate its power over others as a starting point for ethical engagement in Israel-Palestine. 

This presentation investigates indigenous theological models centered on socio-political activism within the Antiochian Orthodox Church and their activation amid the multipronged crises in present-day Lebanon. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research conducted from 2019 to 2021, I trace the discursive genealogies of these models back to the twentieth-century Antiochian revival (*nahda*). I also frame their activation on the ground within the context of an Orthodox socio-medical center in Beirut. Here I investigate welfare practices shaped at the intersection of embodied theology, sectarian practices, and community services. Along sect-based and humanitarian incentives, I argue that the center’s work and identity were defined by Orthodox calls of engagement with the divine through immersion into history. Yet, the human-divine relationality shaped by these calls intersected with sect and class sensibilities, calling for a reconsideration of the relation between Orthodox theology, sectarianism, and precarious livelihoods beyond traditional divisions of sacred-secular and national-sectarian.

This paper argues for sustained critical attention to the instances of violence that pervade the life stories of exemplary Tibetan Buddhist women. In doing so, it challenges frameworks that interpret scenes of cruelty, abuse, and assault primarily in ways delimited by the spiritual progress achieved *in spite of* them. The hagiography of Yeshé Tsogyal (fl. 8th century) serves as a case study, both for illuminating what scholars talk about when they talk about violence in eminent female practitioners' *lives* and for rethinking analytical approaches to violent stories about accomplished women. The goal of this approach is to better equip scholars to evaluate the role of enlightenment narratives in normalizing gender-based forms of suffering and oppression.

Through reading and translating "Prophecies and Pure Perceptions" (ལུང་བསྟན་དང་ཉམས་མྱོང་དག་སྣང་།), found in vol. 149 of the Bon Katen spanning 52 pages, by Khandro Dechen Wangmo (1868-1935?), a female Bonpo treasure revealer from Kham Nyarong, located in the current Ganzi prefecture of Sichuan Province, China, I analyze the functions of this text and the ways in which she claims authority and agency through specific literary strategies. These strategies include the juxtaposition between the Dakinis' immediate recognition of her and Khandro Dechen Wangmo's "feigned ignorance," which allows her to claim a certain authority, along with her transition from being a medium receiving prophecy from various dakinis and siddhis to the agent who gives prophecy to others. This paper also discusses writing prophecy in the face of violence committed by political and social upheaval at the time to cope with and process the misfortunes that change has brought.

This paper offers preliminary reflections on a larger study, in which I seek to outline the roles of education and gender in determining whether and how patronage patterns have shifted with the rise of nuns’ education in recent decades. The larger project addresses relationships among monastics, and between monastics and laity, in the Drikung Kagyu communities found across the Himalayas. This paper describes research outcomes from initial phases of ethnographic fieldwork and data gathering in Drikung monasteries and nunneries in Ladakh and Uttarakhand, It describes the ways in which this author’s presuppositions about lay patronage were reinforced, as well as some unexpected results, while attending to the necessary consideration of how research positionality can influence one’s findings. I focus on who (and who is not) choosing to join Drikung monastic communities, and details of the internal and external pressures that are changing the face of Drikung monasticism in the 21st century.

The Seminal Heart (snying thig) tradition of the Great Perfection (rdzogs chen) begins with eleventh century Tibetan revelations, becomes dominant by the fourteenth, and has continued as such into the present. The difference in narrative, philosophy, and practice between these origins and contemporary realities is extraordinary, though the tradition stressed continuity throughout with the original scriptural sources. These striking transformations are not significantly acknowledged by Tibetan authors, apart from scattered references to discontinued practices, lost texts, and attenuated transmissions; there is even less attempt to explain or theorize these vast differences.  I will offer a history and theorization of these changes  to make sense of the drivers and significance of these patterns of profound continuity and discontinuity. In addition to detailing my methodology, I will reflect on the ethics and social conundrums of writing a history of a visionary tradition that is in deep tension with its own modern narratives.

This paper delves into the ethical and methodological dimensions of reconstructing the early Dzogchen Nyingthig tradition, from the 11th to 14th centuries, focusing on influential texts and methodological challenges. The investigation centers on key texts like the Eleven Words and Meanings, authored by Nyi ma ʼbum. Such texts serve as vital cornerstones for understanding the evolution of Nyingthig within Tibetan Buddhism. Subsequent texts, attributed to legendary masters like Vimalamitra and Padmasambhava, underscore the dynamic nature of Dzogchen teachings and the continual evolution of the tradition. It emphasizes the significance of Nyima bum's teachings as a roadmap for understanding later texts. This paper addresses the challenges of interpreting ancient texts, emphasizing the need for a critical approach. Engaging with contemporary Dzogchen communities and practitioners enriches scholarship, fostering a nuanced understanding of this ancient tradition. This research contributes to a deeper comprehension of the Dzogchen tradition, honoring its richness within Tibetan Buddhism.

Following the 16th Century invasion of the Anahuac by Hernán Cortés different forms of assimilation, acculturation, accommodation took place amongst the Nahua people throughout the centuries. Notwithstanding, the Nahua resisted and persevered to become an enduring people. A distinct Nahua ontology, in contrast to Western forms of ontology arising from Aristotle and a consequent arising therefrom - namely, an emphasis on imagination - has contributed to Nahua perseverance. A result of the Nahua worldview is an emphasis on work, discipline, and penance. This is expressed in collective community, obligations to the earth, and self-identity with respect for difference. An inclusion of variety of modern Nahua voices, arising from interviews across Mexico is included to support these claims. These voices also shed light on the past, particularly where the Nahua fell at diverse times on the three pillar modalities which facilitate change in subaltern-dominant group interactions: assimilation, acculturation, accommodation.

This paper explores how religion played a central role in the understanding of US citizenship and racial categorizations during World War II, centering on Haan Kilsoo, a Korean immigrant who firmly supported a nativist viewpoint toward Japanese Americans. Drawing from public statements, correspondence between intelligence agencies, legal documents, news articles, and letters, this paper examines how Korean immigrants like Kilsoo claimed their loyalty to the States by drawing from the predominant idea of America as a “White Christian nation” in Korean immigrant communities. Korean immigrants’ understanding of race as intertwined with religious affiliation helped many to disassociate themselves from the broader racial category of “Asian,” particularly during a time in which Korean immigrants were negotiating between their racialization in the States and the colonization of their homeland by the Japanese empire.  

This paper examines three kinds of tents and tented events that have been erected and coordinated in the US/Mexico borderlands, particularly Texas. The first two, early Pentecostal missionary meetings designed to convert Mexican people, and semi-local, small Mexican circuses, or *carpas,* coincided in the nineteen teens and early nineteen twenties. The third, tented migrant detention camps run by the US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol, especially those used to detain minors seperated from their caregivers, exploded across the borderlands and the national consciousness almost exactly one hundred years after the heyday of missionary tents and *carpas.* The paper details the similarities of the material infrastructure of the tent at all three sites, noting how the tent form offers a set of affordances and connotations that enable and constrain three distinct subject-making enterprises. 

Discussions of the religious and affective elements of U.S. support for Israel often invoke dispensationalist theology, Christian and Jewish Zionisms, and Jewish American support for a Jewish state. All are important. Yet U.S. support for Israel is also more complex and conflicted. This paper takes the U.S. border as a heuristic to explore the boundaries of political and religious dissent involving U.S. support for Israel. I examine the curious affective politics of this support and its implications for the public policing of dissent. To develop this argument, I introduce the construct of “AmericaIsrael, " in which Israel and America act in concert as interwoven expressions of redemption. The border between the two states is both posited and suspended. For many Americans, Israel—both the State of Israel and the idea of U.S. support for Israel—represents a unique capacity for boundless collective self-realization. AmericaIsrael is a central figure in the US spiritual-political imagination.

This paper argues that Arab American Midwesterners, both Christians and Muslims, identified inter-religious unity as a foundation of Arab American solidarity with Palestine from the time of the Palestinian revolt in 1936 until a more confessional politics overtook Arab Midwestern civil society in the 1950s. Using the writings of many Arab American Midwesterners as well as news articles published in the Indianapolis-based Syrian Ark newspaper, I show how Palestinian liberation and anti-Zionism were presented as an inter-religious concern among Muslim, Orthodox, and Melkite leaders of the mainly Syrian-Lebanese Americans of the Midwest. In addition, this presentation asserts that a commitment to Palestine was not in tension with Arab Midwesterners' local, regional, and national identities but was in fact generative of communal solidarity and homemaking in all of these domains.

In the recent past, debates have popularized concerning the value and meaning of the term
apartheid. Is it a term that is adequate for discerning Israel’s subjugation of Palestine, or not? In
this paper, I provide a conceptual comparative framework for understanding the various
dimensions of apartheid as it relates to settler-colonialism and racial capitalism. Through
engaging in contemporary debates within Palestine Studies, I demonstrate that the term apartheid
has always been used to describe the legal, political, economic and gendered ways in which
apartheid was understood in South Africa and globally. With regards to the concepts of settler-
colonialism and racial capitalism, I place them within debates emanating from Decolonial
Theory which outline their varied dimensions as understood by the long-duree critique of
coloniality and capitalism. In conclusion, I argue that approaching the definition of apartheid
from within this comparative conceptual framework demonstrates that their meanings are co-
constitutive and co-determinative.