Online Meeting 2024 Program Book

This paper aims to critically engage with the narrative surrounding the tragic killing of Sr. Valsa John Malamel, a Thomas Christian nun, as explored in the 2013 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) publication *Crimes against Women.* This narrative dissects the brutal killing of Sr. Valsa John Malamel, a Thomas Christian nun, in Pachhwara village, Jharkhand, India, on November 15, 2011. The paper undertakes three objectives: introducing the incident, reviewing the decolonial discourse on “religious conversion,” and re-evaluating the event, focusing on illegal mining and the nun’s leadership against it. Emphasizing Sr. Valsa John's Thomas Christian identity, rooted in pre-colonial Eastern Christian heritage, challenges narratives conflating Christianity with colonialism. This study exposes the flaws in decolonial methods targeting Indian Christians as remnants of colonialism, advocating for an Eastern perspective and a focus on gender in the study of Christianity to decolonize misguided approaches.

During the mid-20th century, Methodism underwent a transformative period as women challenged traditional roles within the church. Jeanne Audrey Powers emerged as a pioneering figure, advocating for women's equality and redefining boundaries as a clergywoman. Powers spearheaded strategies and programs to address systemic injustices and promote women's leadership through multiple venues of the denomination. Through gendered initiatives, Powers empowered women and fostered greater representation. Her advocacy extended beyond gender equality, as she publicly identified as a lesbian clergywoman in 1995, challenging discrimination against sexuality fashioned out of theological fundamentalism and igniting a new wave of advocacy toward changing denominational polity around human sexuality. Powers's leadership reshaped Methodism, paving the way for historic milestones and advancing inclusivity within the church.

Creationist and complementarian positions assert that God’s vision of humanity has two distinct forms of personhood: male and female. Within this binary model, male and female may be created, but they are not necessarily created equal. However, the impact of such constructions of gender on identities which do not fit within the ’biological’ categories of male and female has received considerably less attention. How, then, do such theologies respond to identities which resist or transgress these dualistic boundaries?

Examining the dramatic rise in anti-trans legislation in the United States, this paper considers how theological applications of gender, language, and scripture can be shown to underpin political and social ideologies which relegate trans*persons, particularly trans*women, into positions of precarity. Considering the trans*misogyny evident in the positioning of trans*women as dangerous, deviant, and amoral, this paper explores how theological language might operate in creating and perpetuating gender-based violence.

This paper explores theological education as a methodological approach and academic discipline within practical theology, emphasizing its role in understanding and catalyzing transformation lived experiences and faith. Drawing from practical theology focuses on reflexive praxis, the research focuses on the teaching-learning environment of a theological school in Madagascar, contextualized within socio-political complexities. Employing critical qualitative research methodologies, practical feminist theology, and liberative transformative paradigms, the study assesses religious education’s alignment with a vision of justice and the efficacy of its practices. The paper advocates integrating theological inquiry with social scientific research methods, promoting dialogue, critical listening, and collective action toward justice within the theological school community. By bridging theory and practice in religious education, this research aims to foster positive societal change, with implications extending beyond geographical boundaries to address cultural and structural violence and advance justice globally.

This paper treats passages of the martyrdom account of Perpetua in conversation with the late work of Michel Foucault, in particular the History of Sexuality volume 4:Confessions of the Flesh and the lectures at the College de France (1978 - 2084). The reading parses mechanics of truth-telling and modes of subject formation in the account through its attentions to the practices of truth-telling demonstrated by Perpetua and the rhetorical elements of the martyrdom account itself. In addition, the reading raises a tension in using the Foucauldian frameworks to read the martyrdom account. By driving towards these sites of tension, the discussion aims to address what Foucault's late work can contribute to the study of early Christian martyrdom accounts and what early Christian martyrdom accounts can contribute to the study of Foucault. 

Michel Foucault never focuses too directly—not theologically, not even genealogically—on anything circumscribing “Satan,” but, as a figure, the Devil is a lurking and constructive presence in various aspects of his theoretical work.  Foucault’s scholastic dealings with the Devil begin conceptually with the historical transition from witchcraft and the persecution of witches to the birth of “medical knowledge” through the medicalization of possession; they somehow culminate a dozen or so centuries earlier as Foucault remarks on a separate evolution: that which relates baptism in the second century with confession by the fifth.  In some ways, “the Devil” is an empty signifier for Foucault, but one that traverses the necessary space to get him where he needs to go.  Ultimately, the Devil serves as a subtle, discursive mark in a Foucauldian matrix that interweaves techniques of power, regimes of truth, forms of knowledge, and technologies of the self. 

In this paper, I argue for reading Foucault’s notion of political spirituality through the lens of Ali Shariati’s re-interpretation of (Shi’a) Islam. Considering Foucault’s engagement with Iranian (Shi’a) Islam—mostly through Corbin and Shariati—prior to his travels to revolutionary Iran, bringing Shariati into conversation with Foucault contributes to a more nuanced understanding of political spirituality. To make this conversation possible, I review key aspects of Shariati’s critical theory, present his complex conception of religion (for which he often uses the term irfān), and briefly introduce his re-depictions of prominent Islamic figures from a political perspective. Then, I read Foucault’s key arguments in his 1977–1978 lectures (Security, Territory, Population) at the College de France in conjunction with Shariati’s radical criticisms of institutionalized religion and what he articulates as “religion versus religion”.

Foucault's archives are vast; yet the largest collections are situated in Paris at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF). Since 2019, I have been working through Foucault's archived drafts, reading notes, and correspondances, in order to tell the story of his last decade. Part of that story is the central role that Christianity places in his History of Sexuality series and the developing genealogy of modern subjectivity.

In this talk, I'll give a breakdown of (1) what we find in the six different parts of the massive BnF archives and (2) how we can start to make sense of the role of "religion" (typically isomorophic with Christianity, lamentably). One of the few people to consult all six parts (NAF 28730, 28284, 28803, 28804, 29005, and 29070) of the archives, I want to share how the disciplinary strategies in religious studies are particularly necessary for analyzing Foucault's historiographical and conceptual moves. 

Foucault develops “political spirituality” out of the specific conjunction of place, time, knowledge (_savoir_) and practice that was the Iranian Revolution of 1978-1979. This paper offers a genealogy of political spirituality by disarticulating this conjunction and seeking the emergence of its specific facets through earlier terms within Foucault’s _œuvre_. Specifically, the paper traces a genealogy of “political spirituality” through a handful of concepts: life, the outside and unthought, experience, and the genealogical method.

Michel Foucault’s lectures on pastoral power demonstrate the historical origins of the modern state in the Christian pastorate’s distinct exercise of power over individuals. However, by focusing on the exercise of power over individuals, Foucault’s analysis was limited to the practice of pastoral power. In this paper, I argue that pastoral power’s success during the Patristic period was due to its employment of popular rhetorical strategies that transformed the bishops and presbyters of late Roman antiquity into figures of moral continuity, connecting the Christian pastorate with the traditional Roman morality of the household of pre-Christian Rome. The analysis of pastoral power’s rhetorical strategies illustrates the conditions that justified the necessity of pastoral power to steer institutionalized Christianity within the culture of late Roman antiquity.

Dharmakīrti’s Sambandhaparīkṣā [SP] (Analysis of Relation) and its principal vṛtti (Sambandhaparīkṣavṛtti) are not considered ‘Yogācāra’ texts. However, subsequent Yogācāra thinkers like Śaṅkaranandana interpreted the relational eliminativism of the SP to chiefly entail that cognition is devoid of subject-object duality, and hence ultimately implies a mind-only doctrine. This paper argues that, although the SP does not explicitly endorse any Yogācāra ideas,  Śaṅkaranandana’s commentary identifies important conceptual roots of Dharmakīrti’s rhetorical ‘slide’ from external realism to epistemic idealism. Namely, Dharmakīrti believes that the reality of both causal and conceptual relations is similarly vitiated due to the inherent incapacity of particular moments to instantiate any dyadic forms of necessary dependence. In this way, Dharmakīrti treats existential and semantic relations according to a univocal conception of ‘internal relatedness’—a potentially major error for later Hindu realists.

This paper examines Kuiji's (632–682) reinterpretation of Amitabha Buddha within Yogācāra Buddhism, exploring its implications for Pure Land thought. Kuiji, a seminal figure in the Faxiang School, diverges from traditional views by conceptualizing Amitabha as sambhogakāya, accessible only through advanced meditative states. Utilizing a comparative textual analysis of Kuiji's "Forest of Meaning of the Three Bodies" and relevant Yogācāra and Pure Land texts, this study contrasts Kuiji's approach with mainstream Pure Land interpretations, particularly regarding the manifestation and accessibility of Amitabha Buddha. The paper aims to assess how Kuiji's unique perspective enriches understanding of Yogācāra and Pure Land traditions, offering a fresh lens on Mahāyāna Buddhist soteriology and cosmology. By bridging doctrinal gaps and challenging conventional narratives, this research contributes to broader discussions in contemporary Buddhist studies, highlighting Kuiji's role in shaping the philosophical landscape of East Asian Buddhism.

This paper aims to present an analysis of the concepts of bimba and pratibimba – central to the philosophical system of Yogâcāra Buddhism – as understood by Ryōhen (1194-1252), a monk of the Japanese Hossō tradition known for his reformatory tendencies. My research is centered around two volumes by the aforementioned author, the Hossō nikan shō and the Kanjin kakumu shō, and aims to answer the following questions:

• How does Ryōhen’s explanation of bimba and pratibimba differ from those offered by other Yogâcāra scholars, if at all?
• Is his commentary of this complex topic aimed at a less advanced student of the doctrine, as is the case with many other concepts he explains in his works?
• Does he draw on the influence of other Buddhist schools of thought in his understanding of bimba and pratibimba?

This paper provides a first-hand analysis of the challenges and obstacles involved in establishing community partnerships with curanderos, botánicos, and traditional healers and integrating traditional healing modalities into a medical humanities curriculum at a Hispanic Serving Institution. Religion scholar Ellen Idler has been particularly adamant about the benefits of integrating the study of religion into health education and advocated for a more comprehensive and dynamic understanding of the religious and historical dimensions of health systems. More specifically, Idler argues that religion should be recognized as a social determinant of health, since religious beliefs, practices, and institutional structures significantly influence health decisions and behaviors. In this paper, I explain how I was able to effectively draw upon Idler's framework and develop an experiential learning course for pre-med and nursing students that enabled them to gain first-hand exposure of Hispanic communities’ diverse religious cultures and health practices.

This presentation examines the need for interreligious literacy for health care professionals, given the desire on the part of patients to discuss such matters with their healthcare providers, and presents the development of a course for undergraduate Nursing students to develop skills to engage in that discussion.

In a course that focuses on the Abrahamic religious traditions and that engages the intersection of religion identity with gender, ethnicity, etc., attention is also given to the importance of developing health care providers who care for the whole person. Through guest speakers, case studies, and role playing, students are encouraged to learn about the complex personal experiences and needs that future patients will bring, in the hope that the students may begin to become comfortable raising questions and engaging in conversations that will allow them to serve the needs of their patients and will encourage them to care for their own needs.

Teaching the history of spiritual care in the United States is a genealogical journey into white American Protestantism. This assumption of a shared lineage contributes to increasing calls for standardization in teaching methods and curricula for chaplaincy and clinical spiritual care. This assumption also hinders a liberative healing call for those outside of white America to embrace their collective memory and return to ancestral healing methodologies (Page and Woodland, 2023; Riley, 2023; Riley, 2024). This paper constructs a genealogical pedagogical methodology for spiritual care students to trace their lineages of spiritual care to and beyond white American Protestantism. This methodology, inspired by African American spiritual care practitioners inside African Diasporic Traditions, engages storytelling of rootedness inside traditions of practice; explores religious-ancestrally derived artifacts and technologies used in contemporary care practices; and investigates archives retaining relgious-ancestral insight.

It can be difficult to enroll health sciences students in courses on religion, health, and medicine. Often this is accomplished by offering to meet general education requirements. Seeking to expand this engagement I am designing a first-year writing seminar around the theme “world religions and global health.” At Boston University all first-year students are required to take a two-semester seminar sequence through the writing program. Health sciences students may be particularly interested in a seminar on global health. A challenge is that the seminar must balance the topical material and discussion with writing instruction and practice. To address this students write memos to a fictional global health practitioner about the religious background of a community being engaged in a health promotion intervention. Doing so students gain practice writing in a new genre and must contextualize how the tradition shapes world views and health seeking behaviors.

Jonathan Edwards, among several churchmen between 1680 and 1760, expressed views against the slave trade, colonial slavery, or masters’ abuse of slaves (Sallient). While very little has been written on the regional development of anti-slavery in the American colonies before and leading into the mid-eighteenth century, exploring Edward’s involvement in and treatment of slavery illuminates changes in Afro-Protestant conversion. The emergence of evangelical revivalism and the Great Awakening gave enslaved people new religious choices while underlining commitments to maintaining proper patterns of subordination (Glasson). Rose Binney Salter is owned by Jonathan Edwards and brought to Stockbridge with the family in 1751, and becomes a full member of the Stockbridge church and no longer a slave by 1771. Attention to Jonathan Edwards’ shifting thinking on slavery and the slave trade forces us to rethink the traditional timelines for the development of antislavery thought in New England and Rose’s confession of spiritual freedom (conversion) following her baptism and church membership, suggests new and different ceremonial connections to Christianity and freedom within the period.

            This paper examines Frederick Llewellyn Hovey Willis’s Spiritualist theology. Abandoning his family’s Calvinism over his belief in free will, Willis created a personal religion that fused Unitarianism, Bronson Alcott’s Transcendentalism, séance Spiritualism, mind cures, and possibly Theosophy. He consistently identified as a Christian Spiritualist—even after he was dismissed from Harvard for leading séances. Drawn to Spiritualism’s combination of metaphysical religion and liberal seeking, Willis found a supportive community and a compelling alternative to orthodox Protestantism. Yet Willis’s career challenges our understanding of Spiritualism as esoteric. Willis lectured and preached widely on Spiritualism and ran a Spiritualist church for several years. He wrote in liberal religious periodicals for decades. His private séances were not secret. His allies defended him publicly during the Harvard scandal. Ultimately, Willis’s Spiritualist ministry was counter-esoteric: Although it dealt with abstract ideas, it was never a hidden tradition of religious knowledge.

Originally known as the Kuki-Chin-Mizu, or Shinlong and most commonly referred to today as the Bene Menashe (sons of Menashe), originating from the Eastern Indian states of Mizuram and Manipur. Based on fieldwork conducted primarily among the Bene Menashe community Israel, this lecture  deals with the ways in which the group's history of culture loss and social marginalization are reflected in their assimilation into mainstream Jewish and Israeli society. In particular I examine the ways in which the  Bene Menashe's background as recent coverts to Judaism from East Asia, play a central role in the ongoing negotiation between cultural preservation and assimilation. Thus, efforts to integrate into contemporary Israeli society and strategies of culutral preservation contrast with the drive of Israeli cultural agents to emphasize the group's lost tribal heritage, simultaneously emphasizing and discarding their previous ethnic identity. 

Environmental ministry/chaplaincy, sometimes called eco-chaplaincy, is an emerging practice discipline that has not been systematically explored. This paper describes a beginning exploratory process using two data streams: information gleaned from the Web, and an online survey and interview of eco-chaplains. For the survey, eco-chaplaincy was broadly defined as “those working at the spiritual interface of humans and Nature/the environment.” Results reveal a still-emerging discipline with the potential to develop into an ecospiritual subspecialty. Both the online group and the survey cohort come to the practice of eco-chaplaincy from varied spiritual and experiential backgrounds. They are drawn to the work through recognition of a broad societal spiritual crisis and the urgency of the resulting environmental, social justice, economic, and political crises. Descriptions, practices and activities, and organization of eco-chaplaincy are evolving. The basic questions “What do eco-chaplains do?” and “How does one prepare to be an eco-chaplain?” are addressed.

This research explores the evolving role of chaplains in healthcare, from traditional Christian roots to inclusive spiritual care encompassing diverse traditions. Despite their integral role in addressing spiritual, emotional, and existential needs, chaplains face challenges navigating institutional pressures for profitability. Through qualitative case studies at a major trauma hospital, this study examines instances where chaplains inadvertently collude with institutional power, termed “capitalizing hope,” particularly prevalent in complex cases involving non-English speaking patients. Questions about billability, insurance coverage, and patient access emerge. This study aims to deepen understanding of chaplaincy practices, ethical implications of billable spiritual care interventions, and equip chaplains to advocate for patient-centered holistic care amidst evolving healthcare landscapes. Ultimately, I aim to contribute to discussions on chaplaincy training, in hopes of fostering healing, justice, and dignity in interdiscipinary healthcare settings.

The emergent field of Buddhist Chaplaincy remains in need of locating those narratives that can be theoretically framed and pedagogically utilized to further articulate uniquely Buddhist theory and praxis of spiritual care. This paper identifies which stories are most used today by individual faculty and chaplains, and unpacks stories of the Buddha’s compassionate and skillful responses to the sickness and grief that beset laypeople in his time, and what they have to offer us as Buddhist caregivers, chaplains, and ministers today.

The psychedelic dissociative ketamine has been recognized as an effective antidepressant for nearly twenty years. However, its effects typically do not last longer than a week without repeated administration. Research suggesting therapeutic interventions may extend patient relief and frequent patient reports of profound spiritual experiences arising during treatment motivated the development of a novel Ketamine Integration Chaplaincy (KIC) program at a Boston teaching hospital in concert with a local divinity school. The KIC program combines one-on-one spiritual care and group sessions for patients with treatment resistant depression aimed at addressing patients’ spiritual care needs and prolong symptom alleviation. In this paper, we present our training and treatment model, including student selection criteria and competencies, interdisciplinary approach, supervision and didactic models, and structure of patient care. The paper reviews preliminary outcomes from the KIC program’s first two years, pathways for program expansion, and emerging spiritual care opportunities within psychedelic assisted therapy.

The inter-ethnic and inter-religious conflicts of the 1990s and the subsequent Dayton Accords signed in 1995 led Bosnia and Herzegovina to a clear division in public space between Bosnian-Muslims, Serbian-Orthodox and Croatian-Catholics. Today, the country is governed by a tripartite structure and organized in a ‘separate school system’: students of different ethnic and religious groups have hardly any opportunities for confrontation about issues related to religious diversity. The paper aims to offer an overview on the evolution of religious education in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the adoption of the Vidovdan Constitution (1921) to the 2000s OECD experimentation of the subject  Religious culture. The contribution also aims to illustrate some projects and teachings about religions in Bosnia and Herzegovina proposed by some Catholic institutions as peacekeeping and reconciliation tools, but also as a means of strengthening the mediation role of the Catholic Church in the political dynamics of the territory.

The head teacher of Zanzibar’s largest Islamic school described his experience at the Islamic University of Medina: “We swallow the sweet and spit out the bitter,” Founded within an Indian Ocean Sufi order, his school mirrored East African cultural customs such as communal prayer and ancestor reverence. However, in Medina, he was taught that these practices were polytheistic and apostate in Islam. He returned home with conservative Salafi textbooks authored specifically for Africans which derided amulets, divination, and magic, considered stereotypical practices within “African Islam.” This paper analyzes the Arabic curriculum of Saudi’s program of Islamic propagation in Africa, alongside the Swahili teacher-talk that transforms it in the classroom. In contrast to narratives of “blanket radicalization” from study in Saudi Arabia that present African Muslims as passive recipients of the new orthodoxy, East African teachers engage in creative adaptations that “sweetens” Salafism for integration within communal Sufi ethical formations.

Hong Kong, a key Asian and global city, is academically recognized for its distinctive sociocultural and religious composition. Its entrenched religious education—apparent yet ambivalent, "Asian" yet "Western"—exemplifies this distinctiveness. "Ethics and Religious Studies" (ERS) is an elective subject in the three-year senior secondary curriculum. In its design, ERS comprises three parts: compulsory "Ethics," elective "Religious Traditions," which includes five specific modules (Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Islam, Taoism), and elective "Faiths in Action," consisting of two options, "Learning to serve and serving to learn," and "Learning from religious practices."

Three editions of the ERS guideline (2007, 2014, 2019) were examined to evaluate and interpret the curriculum, prioritizing the latest version. The study reveals "Ethics and Religious Studies" as an inherently secular subject, while numerous secular narratives permeate the reviewed documents. For example, there is a limited application of entire religious systems (specifically, Islam) despite its inclusion in the framework.