Annual Meeting 2024 Program Book

This paper explores the tendency of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) to analogously inform its reflections on immigration and border control through the lens of private property. Recent CST on immigration and border control has increasingly appealed to the ‘law of necessity’ (which traditionally justifies the appropriation of privately-held goods in times of extreme necessity) to promote a general right for migrants to enter new lands and pursue economic opportunities, even when this is not related to extreme necessity. This paper recalls CST’s predominant emphasis on the paradoxical role of stable private property in serving the common destination of goods. Hence, by analogy, it highlights how CST on private property can alternatively support stable and (forcibly) regulated borders in order to foster mutually-beneficial exchange and better address global poverty. Once facilitated by (still-needed) global governance structures, nation-states can appropriately use admission to their territory to better promote the universal common good.

This paper explores religious views of early Brethren on the American Indians forged as they journeyed westward, encountered indigenous peoples, and settled in the San Gabriel Valley in Southern California. Examined here are the challenges with which the Brethren contended concerning indigenous personhood during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries upon founding the Lordsburg or La Verne College (now called the University of La Verne). The paper focuses on artistic representations of Brethren identity, particularly depictions of the Gabrielinos, as portrayed in early historical pageants of the La Verne College between 1927 and 1933.

Chinese Yuan dramas (zaju 雜劇) often employed notions of Buddhist karma in their plots and subplots. To highlight this dramatic aspect, I will analyze the karmic components of the play Kanqiannu mai yuanjia zhaizhu (A Slave to Money Buys a Creditor as His Enemy). The dramatic plot connects two unrelated families through karmic retribution and the transfer of blessings, a method akin to the transfer of merit. The text of the play shows how a family member’s good and bad deeds not only bring good and bad karma to oneself, but also alter the collective karma of the entire family, affecting its collective rise and fall. I argue that such plot features were a means for Confucian dramatists to promote family-oriented collective values within the unique context of the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), at a time, when Confucian literati were disparaged and Buddhist monks were privileged.

This project focuses on the rhetorical modes of assessing reincarnation and karmic connections presented in prefaces and postfaces by Chinese literati from the Ming dynasty to the Republican Era who venerated the blood-copy of the Huayan Sutra by the Yuan dynasty monk Shanji善繼 (1286-1357). An intergenerational production, the progenitor of the project was thought to be the eminent monk Yongming Yanshou永明延壽 (904-975), who reincarnated as Shanji, and who completed the project through a second reincarnation as the great early Ming statesman Song Lian宋濂 (1310-1381).Literati argumentation often adopted a uniquely Buddhist method of historical proof premised on assessments of reincarnation, karmic connections, dream encounters, and personal realization. This work analyzes their assessments to better understand how these concepts functioned within the contexts of elite literati Buddhist belief and engagement with venerated artifacts like this very unique intergenerational blood-copy of the Huayan Sutra.

In general, Buddhists believe that one can improve one’s karmic fortunes and generate merit through copying, printing, distributing, or reading Buddhist scriptures (John Kieschnick, 2003, chapter three). In my fifteen year study of the Ming dynasty Yongle Northern Canon, I have discovered that the colophons, inscriptions, notes and prefaces attached to this project indicate that emperors, empresses, officials, eunuchs, and many others believed that if they gave donations for the printing and distributing of the Buddhist canon, they could accumulate enough merit for a better rebirth or to be reborn in the Pure Land of Amitabha Buddha. This paper will analyze these paracanonical sources in order to highlight how members of the court understood karma and used their positions and financial resources to print and distribute this multi-volume set. I will focus on references to this merit-making in the writings of members of the royal family, eunuchs, and monks.

Charles Wesley moved to Bristol with his new bride, Sarah Gwynne, in 1749. They would live in Bristol until 1771, when they moved to London, although they continued to own their Bristol home. After the marriage, Charles initially resumed his itinerant ministry, but even after this ceased his presence in Bristol shaped the Methodist institutions nearby, including Kingswood School. This presentation will consider the years Charles spent at Bristol though an examination of his correspondence. It will concentrate on what can be learned about Charles Wesley’s formation of the community in and near Bristol through his letters.

This paper examines the marriage of eighteenth-century Methodists John and Mary (née Bosanquet) Fletcher, arguing that it had roots of equalitarianism. John and Mary’s relationship showed a mutual respect that Charles Wesley noticed. Wesley wrote to Mary Fletcher, “Yours I believe is one of the few marriages that are made in heaven . . . I sincerely rejoice that he [John Fletcher] has at last found out his Twin-soul, and trust you will be happier, by your meeting thro’ all eternity.” This research, supported by the Manchester Wesley Research Centre and the John Rylands Library draws on the Fletcher Tooth Collection in Methodist Archives of the John Rylands Library (University of Manchester). The paper argues that John and Mary Fletcher’s marriage provides an example for future equalitarian marriages.

This paper explores Thomas Coke’s attitudes and relationships with people of African descent. During his lifetime Coke made eighteen voyages across the Atlantic Ocean, where he visited and preached in communities where Africans were enslaved in America and the West Indies. Utilizing primary sources, Coke’s letters and writings, and secondary sources, the paper will analyze the various experiences, relationships, and attitudes that Coke exhibited about Black people, including his advocacy on behalf of the rights of enslaved persons and the abolitionist cause. The paper makes the case that while Coke had a complex relationship with British colonialism, and worked within racist systems, his actions advanced the liberation of Black people.

In this paper, building on earlier work of my own, I will argue that the art poetry that dominated Classical Sanskrit literary culture, kāvya, has as its stylistic source the elaborate and self-conscious style of the earliest Sanskrit text, the Rig Veda. Despite the large chronological gap between the Rig Veda and Classical kāvya, and the apparent absence of this genre in Sanskrit in the intervening centuries, a missing link can be identified in the discourses of power in Middle Indic languages and in early Buddhist literary works. Both the similarities in poetic devices and the shaping of subject matter will be addressed, with ample examples.

In his The Language of the Gods in the World of Men (2006), Sheldon Pollock argues that Buddhists played a key role in the “the astonishing expansion of the discursive realm of Sanskrit in the century or two around the beginning off the Common Era” (75). This is not only a historical issue. Pollock begins his exploration of this expansion self-consciously by saying, “To speak of beginnings, especially literary beginnings, is to raise a host of conceptual problems” (75). This paper explores how we see important literary beginnings in the Therīgāthā and the Theragāthā, collections of poems of the first Buddhist women and men, and how we can see in them traces of the protean emergence of Literature as a cultural form of poeisis in South Asia.  This conceptual exploration focusing on Pali texts suggests that the historical problem of the beginnings of Literature in India is ripe for reconsideration.

In this paper, I discuss the adult sibling friendship between two biblical figures, Ishmael and Isaac. Their relationship embodies three characteristics highlighted in contemporary psychological literature. Successful sibling friends make time to enjoy each other’s company. They are mindful of how parents affect their dynamic. And they give each other permission to change. A close reading of Genesis 16-28, enhanced by Midrash Genesis Rabbah, shows these characteristics at play in Isaac and Ishmael’s relationship. Adult Isaac visits Ishmael and eventually chooses to live near his brother. After similar experiences with paternal violence, Ishmael and Isaac support one another. And, after becoming parents, the brothers encourage their children to marry. One purpose of my analysis is to highlight sibling friendship. Another is to suggest homiletic directions for discussing traditions of peace between Jews and Muslims.

Through the philosophical-theological lens of the works of Jonathan Sacks, this paper will examine the multiple ways in which inter-faith friendships between Jewish and Muslim women in the UK have been held to account through the period of the (current) Israel-Gaza War. Conflict travels, and in this case especially, has been intimately felt by Jewish and Muslim communities globally. Arguably, friendship is ‘a relationship of ethical significance, with public, political, and spiritual dimensions’ (Ellithorpe, A., 2022) and friends necessarily have differing, often opposing, perspectives; each have complex communal and religious commitments; each wrestle with alternative truths. Inter-State conflict is a time when friendship might be seen to make excessive demands of us — to reach across what could be perceived as unbridgeable divides; this paper argues that although some friendships have inevitably fallen apart, others have been strengthened, deepened and have conspicuously intensified.

This paper brings together theoretical and Christian theological reflection and case studies. First, it reviews some traditional resources for a kind of practical theory/theology of difference. It suggests that attention to difference is an important corrective to the, perhaps more familiar, appeals to common ground in pursuit of the common good and peace. From there, it considers the history and contemporary work of two organizations, the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies in Amman, Jordan and the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem, Israel. In the end, it argues that interreligious friendship is a productive site for the articulation of a practical theory/theology of difference, considering the so-called "strange," which attention can train us to see, in ourselves and in our friends, in the interest of a kind of personal and political devotion, the common good, and peace.  

Interreligious friendships are important not simply for how they enrich the spiritual, affective, and moral lives of the friends, but just as crucially for the way that they participate in important political work in the world. Through attending to the story of the remarkable friendship between British Anglican priest Charles Freer Andrews and Mahatma Gandhi, this paper illustrates how friendship across religious differences can energize peacebuilding and justice projects in the world. Drawing from the autobiographies of both men, I recount the political nature of this friendship. I draw on this story to make a wider theological case for how interreligious friendships serve as forms of Christian political witness in the world.

In multi-level marketing companies (MLMs), agents sell products and assemble sales teams, ‘downlines’, from whose sales they receive a commission. MLMs are popular but controversial due to pyramid distribution models that favour few agents who join early and their reliance on sales to friends/families. MLMs appeal to women by emphasizing flexibility, family, domesticity, positivity, and empowerment; however, this may not account for the unpaid, invisible, and emotional labour endured by MLM agents. MLMs recruit members of religious groups that may endorse certain gender roles and body expectations. Many MLMs sell weight-loss products, which draw from harmful body, gendered faith, and corporatized empowerment messages. This paper will report on the preliminary development of a ‘pyramidal prejudices’ framework based on a literature review and multi-modal critical discourse analysis of MLMs’ social media posts that considers the fatphobic, faith, and post-feminist aspirational labour discourses of MLMs, which help shape their influence.

The paper explores the intersections between food as a repository and archive of memory and connection to the past, the lingering presence of apartheid and the colonial history of slavery in the Cape, and the contemporary sociality of food-making in the context of a Muslim community in Cape Town. Drawing on a genealogy of Cape Malay food history, the paper discusses the ways in which the contemporary making of Cape Malay/Capetonian Muslim foods evoke, ascertain and imagine embodied foodscapes of the past and of the present. The paper is particularly attentive to narratives connecting the present to the presence of the past and the subversive potential of food-making. That is, food as memory-work and edible acts of re-membering, food as offering a site for contestation of the dominant legacies of the past, and food as a powerful aromatic response to histories of erasure, displacement and marginalisation.

Ashram communities, today, are largely defined by their guru and mostly always, His, bloated reputation. In this, we miss people’s practices, engagement with rituals, which rarely, if ever, inform ashram life. Visiting an ashram in Vrindavan, Unfurling Ashram Life pays close attention to mango for its ability to unfurl ashram life. So often things that seem inherently religious—Gods, guru, or sacred texts—inform our understandings of religion. A piece of fruit like mango is consumed and thrown away, without much thought about its entanglements constituting ashram-specific rituals, as well as conceptions about guru, bhakti, seva, gender, caste and class dynamics, Islamophobia, climate change, colonialism, and South Asia. This paper is an ethnography about mango, including the mango-inspired paisley design inside a Vrindavan ashram.

In a sewing class on the premises of a Hindu temple in small-town Pakistan, Hindu and Muslim girls met every day to learn to sew together. The class was held together as a collective space by female friendship arising from shared interests and neighborly ties. In an asymmetrical religious milieu laden with recent histories of violence, ordinary interactions could be poisoned by the past, but they also enabled alternative possibilities of inter-religious friendships. This paper attends to the management of inter-religious ritual tensions and elaborate forms of aversion by young women grasping for language to parry what they understood as religious difference, as well as to find some ritual common ground with one another. I show how their commitment to maintaining and repairing relations with one another relied on shared, gendered norms and comportments that could bear some transgressions and failures but could also come apart easily.

This paper investigates the relationship between religion, language, and translation in modern South Asia, with a focus on the question of the mutual translatability of Hindu and Muslim traditions. Recent scholarship has challenged traditional notions of syncretism, urging a nuanced understanding of religious interactions. This paper delves into the pivotal role of translation, especially between languages linked to Islam and Hinduism, examining how it shapes the inter-religious encounter. Contrary to the belief that such dynamics were lost amid the nationalist politics of colonial modernity, this paper introduces an unexplored archive of Urdu translations of the Bhagavad Gita (1880s-1940s), mostly by Hindu authors. What were the stakes of translating a Hindu text into Urdu during a period of heightened religious and political tension? Through an in-depth analysis of Munshi Bisheshwar Prashad’s 1935 translation, “Nasim-e Irfan,” this paper explores the complexities of rendering Hindu scripture in Sufi vocabulary amid deteriorating Hindu-Muslim relations, arguing that the act of translation offers a transformative lens that challenges the notion of self as purely itself, and exemplifies a radical experiment in the context of colonial modernity.

This paper builds on SherAli Tareen's monumental book, Perilous Intimacies: Debating Hindu-Muslim Friendship After Empire, to describe and analyze a range of multi-genre sources in Urdu that touch on Hindu-Muslim relations in modern South Asia. The paper takes Tareen's argument and theoretical assumptions to new texts to construct a theory of "genres of hostipitality." I extend this analysis by highlighting the concept of genre, and in turn raise questions about hostipitality's literary forms as well as relational forms that are embedded in certain texts not examined by Tareen. These texts include Shiblī Nu'mānī's "Hindu Musalmānõ kā ittiḥād," Sanā’ullāh Amritsarī's Ḥaqq prakāsh bajavāb Satiyārth prakāsh, ‘Abdur Raḥmān Shawq's Islām awr Hindustān, and Ḥasan Niẓāmī's Hindu mazhab kī ma‘lūmāt. I argue that these writings offer perceptive portals into the intellectual terrain in which “religion” was being constructed and contested in response to colonial modernity. The colonial-era Indo-Muslim authors whose writings I draw on to speak to Tareen's arguments appealed to a range of discursive paradigms, such as scripturalism, rationalism, history as well as historiography, and ethics of listening.