Annual Meeting 2024 Program Book

The paper revisits the live and work of Leonhard Ragaz (1868-1945) in the current crisis mode of thinking. Born as son of a peasant family himself, Rev. Ragaz first aligned himself publicly with the workers movement in his famous brick mason strike sermon (Maurerstreikpredigt) in the Basel cathedral 1902. In 1921 he quit his professorship to live in a workers’ quarter in Zurich and devoted himself to workers education. Ragaz was convinced that Christians not only have to be always on the side of the weak, but they also must be socialists! He interpreted Socialism as judgement and promise for Christians. What can we learn from his vision of becoming human, the new human being and the Reign of the living God for a Pantopia against the New Normal?

 Salafism is a conservative movement within Sunni Islam, and Salafists are a group that relies on the literal interpretation of the Quran, the Sunna, and the consensus of the Salaf. Women within Salafism are deemed ignorant, weak, and unfit for participation in social life. Many Salafi scholars encourage the exploitation of women and use violence as the only means of control. Whereas this dynamic unfolds in many Muslim societies across the world and contradicts the teaching of Islam on the role and rights of women, we can spot some similarities between the women in the Salafi thought and Karl Marx’s theory on class struggle. I will be comparing the role of women in Salafi’s thought with Marx’s perceived role of the proletariat while highlighting the women’s autonomy over their bodies and earnings as dictated by the Shia interpretation of the status of women in Islam.

Literature produced by proscribed Islamist groups such as Islamic State (IS) and, their off-shoot and affiliate, Islamic State in Khurasan Province (ISKP) contain Qur’anic verses and religious teachings which are employed to support and justify the political and military aims of the groups. In their politicisation of Islam, scripture is often presented in a highly de-contextualised and manipulated way. Taking a more-or-less post-structuralist position towards the interpretation of texts, I do not argue that one interpretation of scripture is correct and another incorrect; however, I present a case for the legitimacy of practicing one’s judgmental rationality in the reading of scripture utilised by extremists. By treating the propaganda media materials produced by proscribed groups as objects-in-themselves to be deconstructed, emphasis is placed on the description, interpretation, and social analysis of texts to analyse the political intentions in the production, and offer a case for preferred readings which are consistent with the Qur’an as a whole.

The subreddit r/humansbeingbros, home to 5.6 million members, provides a fascinating medium for analyzing a dynamic virtual community in which the language and aesthetics of sanctity is routinely employed for the purpose of ethical reflection, veneration, humor, and entertainment. Declarations of sanctity (and an implied ethical “bro code”) abound in the subreddit, and saintly actors include children, women, men, and communities. All have the capacity to be “bros.” Through an examination of the language used by commenters and moderators, analytics on upvotes, and recurring saintly signifiers, this paper seeks to understand the yield and limitations of including a simultaneously sincere and tongue-in-cheek social media community in studies of the ethical self and sacred texts. Moreover, the presence of video shorts, diegetic sound, and non-diegetic music, as well as text, invites scholars to think more expansively about sacred texts and ethics both in and outside of their own research.

The paper introduces the concept of ‘practicing texts’ to broaden the notion of sacred texts beyond the written medium. ‘Practicing texts’ is a practice-centered approach to religious texts and textual media, considering the materiality of texts and the embodied engagement with them in religious practices. I refer to the nexus of texts and the entire spectrum of text-related practices as ‘practicing texts.’ This concept embraces a broad definition of text, including oral, performed, written, printed, or displayed forms. The range encompasses not only authoritative texts but also popular works and media formats conveying religious discourses. Each medium has specific affordances and mediates text in a unique manner. Therefore, I argue that studying textual media should ideally happen in connection with the practices they are embedded in, considering their material dimensions. Thus, ‘practicing texts’ unites three key elements: texts, practitioners engaging with religious texts (‘users’), and practices related to texts.

This paper presents preliminary findings from a new project, “Women in World Christianity: Global Perspectives on Christian Participation,” which measures the gendered gap between membership and participation in churches worldwide. The project’s Christian Participation Index allows for comparison at the country level of differences between men and women in church attendance, prayer, importance of religion, supernatural beliefs, pastoral leadership, and other forms of church leadership. Such information can be applied contextually to address the gendered dynamics of church life and interrogate unequal social norms that perpetuate women’s overlooked status in churches worldwide. This paper will present the assumptions and theories undergirding this project, methods and sources used to create this dataset, preliminary findings, and areas for future potential sociological and quantitative research on women in World Christianity.

Scholars in the social sciences have long observed that migration has been a central concern of ethnographers across disciplines. For ethnographers today research interests continue to expand focusing analysis on how the global intersects with the local in communities across borders. When theoretical analysis is employed alongside ethnographic fieldwork, the links between the global and the local come into sharper focus and we are able to make further connections across multiple locations in the lives of individual agents. Based on fieldwork in India and North American immigrant communities within the Hindu Adhiparasakthi tradition, this paper investigates the role of women’s leadership and ritual authority, community-building, and how religious communities are sustained locally in a transnational context. These components illustrate networks of people working transnationally to achieve a greater expression of community across borders, one that places devotion, service, and a sense of interconnectedness at the heart of everyday life.

Evidence of sexual violence has been notably visible within large religious organizations like the Catholic Church, but observational data highlight patterns of lenience towards perpetrators in other faith settings as well. Many spiritual leaders who violate their parishioners are recidivists, serially committing sexual crimes in multiple congregations. What remains unclear, however, is whether pastoral search committees are knowingly hiring spiritual leaders with histories of sexual misconduct. A field experiment run from Sept 2023-Sept 2024 explored whether an applicant’s acknowledgement of past professional misconduct affected opportunities for pastoral employment. Applicants to pastoral jobs who disclosed sexual misconduct were almost twice as likely to receive callbacks than those who did not. This study successfully applies a long-tested sociological experimental method to a setting where it has not yet been utilized, thus contributing novel causal evidence concerning a phenomenon that is just as socially important as it is empirically understudied.

This paper examines how religious involvement may be a particularly potent yet understudied resource for Black mothers embedded in a rural, predominantly Black community as they navigate a fragmented maternal health care system and cultivate strategies of healing and recovery in light of reproductive trauma. By drawing on 29 qualitative interviews with Black mothers, this study engages a life course perspective through a Womanist sociological lens to demonstrate how Black mothers navigate the long-term impacts of reproductive trauma through four key social processes: delaying individual responses to reproductive trauma, managing heightened grief across the life course, reevaluating healthcare utilization, and extending the “long arm” of religion through (non)organizational religious practices. We conclude by providing recommendations to guide future research examining the intersections of religious involvement and reproductive trauma in Black birthing communities.

Many members of the Taego Order scoff at the idea that one  needs to be celibate and cloistered to be authentically Buddhist, or specifically Korean Buddhist. Members of the Taego Order emphasize their practical similarities with the dominant Jogye Order and their strong affiliation with the Korean Seon tradition, but many also emphasize their own regional uniqueness vis-à-vis dominant mainland South Korean Buddhisms. This paper considers the self-perception of the Taego Order’s place within the larger category of “Korean” Buddhism but also explores the locality of place. I shall reexamine how the questions of place and “Korean” Buddhism played out in distinct ways during the coffee break pauses—the spaces in which self-perceptions tend to be the least fitted into conventional frameworks—in my 2012-2018 field research in Jeju Island, South Korea and Osaka, Japan as well as interviews in Anaheim Hills, California between 2014 and 2024.

Amidst Korea’s tumultuous modernization and colonial era in the early 20th century, Sot’aesan revitalized Chosŏn Buddhism, aligning it with the evolving times. Recognizing the limitations of traditional Chosŏn Buddhism, Sot’aesan endeavored to reshape it into a uniquely Korean Buddhism for Korean people. Wŏn Buddhism, which started from its early days with concerns about “Koreanness,” and “popularization,” has moved beyond Korea and moving towards globalization. Wŏn Buddhism began spreading in the United States in 1972, with the Central Headquarters in Iksan dispatching Rev. Yi Chesŏng to Los Angeles. As of 2024, approximately 60 ordained kyomus of Wŏn Buddhism in the United States engage in both Korean-centered and English-speaking Dharma services across 40 temples and institutions spanning the Americas. This paper delves into the fifty-year history of Wŏn Buddhism’s immigration to America, examining how the essence of Korean Buddhism has been preserved, confronted, and transformed as it ventured beyond the Korean Peninsula.  

The Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae order is one of the most successful contemporary Buddhist movements in Korea. After the 1970s, the Ch’ŏnt’ae order continuously interacted with Japanese Tendai and Chinese Buddhism. In 2007, Ch’ŏnt’ae donated 5,000 copies of the Chinese version of their catechism, which were distributed to Chinese temples and university libraries. While seeking religious identity in China, Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae emphasized a unique Korean Buddhist form worthy of being re-exported to China. Ch’ŏnt’ae presented itself as a lay-centered community, a characterization that was also reflected in the observations of Japanese monks and Chinese scholars. They noted practitioners, numbering up to 10,000, gathering in large halls at local temples, joint monastic-lay administration, a well-organized nationwide Lay Association, and 24-hour practice spaces. These elements, such as modern mega-temples, large collective dharma halls, lay-centered communities, and accessible practices, were recognized as distinctly Korean characteristics within the Ch’ŏnt’ae order itself.

The introduction of Wŏn Buddhism to the United States has reached its fifty-year mark. Innovation has always played an important role in the formation and growth of Wŏn Buddhism. The founder, Sot’aesan declared the necessity to reform traditional Buddhism to make it accessible to the laity and espoused values such as inclusiveness, equality, public work, and practicality. These innovations have helped Wŏn Buddhism in America to shift from a strictly ethnic-related context to an emphasis on its universal nature. What are the detriments to decontextualizing and de-emphasizing elements thought to be “too Korean” or “too traditional,” or thought to be irrelevant in the West? I argue in this paper that if Wŏn Buddhism is to thrive in the United States conscious consideration will have to be given to the indispensable aspects of its Korean roots and tradition while connecting with the multicultural and ethnic makeup of the US.

“What the map cuts up, the story cuts across,” writes Michel de Certeau in The Practice of Everyday Life. This paper seeks to tell a different story of the communist period by drawing on sources like prayerbooks, devotions, and shrine cards typically seen as irrelevant to the broader geopolitical and territorial disputes of 20th-century eastern Europe. In so doing, this paper renders visible the maps created by lay Catholics as they moved between Marian shrines and rural chapels that dotted the landscape, and I argue that another map of Hungary emerges, one that participates in but is not fully subsumed by the geopolitical border disputes of the time. Through a study of Hungarian-language sources that cut across such borders, I show how these lay Catholic cartographies were grounded in the notion that Hungary was, is, and will always be Mary’s country, that Mary is, in fact, what makes Hungary.

This paper explores enacted arts-based research of pilgrimage as essential to spiritual locatedness and journey. Maps are considered as a kind of sacred record or text in meaning-making, offering maps of pilgrimage created with needle and thread as records of spiritual pilgrimage. Through line and symbol, recorded in stitches, the process of pilgrimage is remembered and captured as physical artefact. The work becomes a way finder, a visible spirituality. Maps of biblical characters and the researcher will be shared as a new way of reading ‘sacred stories.’ In this way a cartography of pilgrimage invites meditation on landscapes of spiritual significance, insights, homecoming, exile and wandering as human aspects of being in a world as seekers and those sought. Connections to indigenous map-making and journey will be highlighted. Listeners will be invited to consider the cartography of their lives as a means to witness to their spiritual pilgrimage.

This paper explores the “mapping” out of sacred stor(ies), especially themes around wandering in the wilderness by examining the Japanese novel, A Record of Romantic Marching (2002) by Hikaru Okuizumi. This novel follows the journey of Japanese soldiers who are sent to an (imagined) island in Southeast Asia that was occupied and devastated by Japan during WWII. The story tours the “hell”: wounded and sick soldiers continue an “apocalyptic march” in the jungle in a fashion that mimics the Israelites wandering in the desert in the book of Exodus. Eventually, the novel reveals that the soldiers are ghosts who, eternally bound by the megalomania of colonialism, are doomed to perpetually wander the wilderness and never arrive to the promised (home)land. Describing a wandering without liberation, this “cartographic” novel criticizes Japanese imperialism and its legacy and urges the reader to ponder how to stop this—and other—“marches” through hell. 

This paper gives a twist to the understanding of Ngugi as just a literary writer, and plausibly qualifies him as an ethnographic writer and the novel as an ethnographic novel. To achieve this, the paper will seek to respond to the questions: does Ngugi qualify as an ethnographic writer? Does the novel, qualify as an ethnographic novel? The paper argues that, by considering both historical function – symptom of the discontent generated by colonization – and imaginative function – future beyond which European conquest can be imagined or be revealed – the novel sets a good framework for analyzing imagination of indigenous puberty rites through Christian history. As a work of ethnographic imagination, Ngugi wa Thiong’o gives a creative account of his embodied experiences similar to other literary works of Chinua Achebe, Mongo Beti among others in the study of religion and literature.

Our study explores the role of temporary marriage (mutʿa) in the development of sectarian identities and the intersection of law and morality in early Islamic law. Through digital humanities techniques, we construct a corpus from hundreds of hadiths to examine the debate over mutʿa’s legitimacy. Analyzing the hadiths' geographic spread and the sectarian affiliations of their transmitters, we highlight mutʿa's influence on sectarian identity formation and the jurisprudential tensions between law and morality in early Islam. This research showcases the value of digital humanities in historical Islamic law and hadith analysis.

My paper argues that Shahzad Bashir’s new, all-digital book A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures offers an alternative to the typical timeline of Islam presented in undergraduate survey courses. Accessibly written, the book invites scholars and students to think of Islamic history as a web, through which different people along different paths which intersect through various thematic, narrative, and material “nodes.” In Fall 2023, I redesigned my introductory survey course, “Islamic Traditions” around Bashir’s A New Vision. The course follows a “choose-your-own-adventure” format in which students collectively select each section of the book that we read as a group. The paper draws on my experience as an instructor and student survey responses to demonstrate that it is possible to introduce students to the study of Islam without flattening the complexity of Islamic historical thinking and that doing so can increase student excitement about, and engagement in, our courses.

This paper mobilizes premodern textual artifacts relevant to the tradition Islamic sciences of Qur’an recitation (tajwid and the qira’at) as a means to theorize “sound media” from an Islamic perspective. It begins by noting the foreshadowing of modern recording technologies in the spiral shape of the late premodern Moroccan Sultan Sulayman’s sanad, or scholarly genealogy, in the recitational sciences. But it focuses, analytically, on the traditional teaching certificates, or ijazas, or Moroccan reciters in the generations leading up to Sulayman’s era. Such documents include increasingly detailed descriptions by the ijaza author of his student’s ijaza-earning recitational performance, known as a khatma, linked, textually, to a longer genealogy of practice represented by the sanad. I argue that such ijazas thus functioned as “sound media” that are both similar to, and more expansive than, modern technologies, preserving not just a “record” of a single performance but an entire history of practice.

Drawing on geographic approaches to urban consumption, this paper conceptualizes Muslim geographies of consumption in Philadelphia. Based on twelve months of ethnographic research and digital mapping of halal businesses, I make two central claims: (1) there are multiple concentrations of halal consumption in the city that are racially, socio-economically, and devotionally distinctive; (2) in addition to Islamic institutions, these concentrations of halal consumption take shape in relation to gentrification, infrastructure, and urban renewal. I focus on two geographies of consumption in Philadelphia—one in West Philadelphia and one in North Philadelphia—as case studies of infrastructure's and urban renewal's effects on halal consumption. Ultimately, this paper demonstrates that attention to the everyday urban process that shape Islamic tradition clarifies the anti-Black and capital-driven forces that constrain the enactment of Islamic tradition in Philadelphia, as well as the ways that Muslim sustain devotional practices and forge convivialities across difference.