Online Meeting 2024 Program Book

What kind of alternative political economy can liberate us from the contemporary violent, dehumanizing, and totalizing capitalistic world? I argue that Mohammad Hatta's vision for humanizing cooperatives might be one of the most efficacious models. Like Franz Fanon, Hatta was a postcolonial thinker in the post-World War 2. Being a key political economist in the Indonesian independence movement, he served as the Indonesian first vice president. Like Fanon, Hatta sees the sociogenic psychological contortion that colonized subjects endured in their humanity. However, unlike Fanon, Hatta sees socio-economic relationships in cooperatives as the most effective humanizing agent in postcolonial nation-building projects. Addressing both communal and individual dignity, active membership in cooperatives heals dehumanized victims of the violent extractive colonial world. This presentation will argue for the importance of Hatta's vision in the contemporary global political economy. 

This paper analyzes Robert Frost's canonical poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" in relation to two competing forces: capitalism and the sacred. Frost's poetry criticizes the destructive rituals of capitalism, both for workers and ecologies, and moreover, explores how moments of radical possibility emerge unexpectedly in the form of the sacred, a sacred I specify as the "working-class sacred." This paper reads Frost's poem in dialogue with Heidegger's contemporaneous Being and Time and the theology of Simone Weil. As these disparate thinkers disclose, the sacred becomes an important force and form in revealing class inequalities and moreover, in gesturing towards futures delinked from such class-based violences.

This paper examines communion, as reflected, described, and enacted in the early church, through two prominent theoretical perspectives: the cognitive science of religion and anthropologically informed conceptions of agential relationality and ritual entailments. Arguing this second body of thought superior, a move is then made to develop ritual relationality through consideration of ritual practice as one among many modes through which we do more than generate relations among people, objects, places and idea, but also to describe, encounter, articulate, and disclose truth. 

The Eucharist table is open to the whole cosmos through the creative interplay of the memories, hopes, and relationships of the meal itself. Meals always ground the societies who eat them in the planetary processes of life, identifying our relatives at the table and disclosing opportunities for gratitude and humility in response to the beloved dignity of all our kin. This imperative is grounded in the organic claim that every eater is fundamentally related to everyone who is eaten. Meal memories, hopes, and relationships have been, are, and must continue to be critically important events that disclose restorative and life-giving ecological solidarities that include and transcend the Church.

Since at least the second century CE, Christian communities have erected fences around their eucharistic tables, offering a less than hospitable vision of Christian community, especially when it comes to reflecting Jesus’ practices of table fellowship. For adherents of Open and Relational theology, which presupposes that God is by nature love, following Jesus’ practice of dining with marginalized members of Jewish society (sinners and tax collectors), it is appropriate to remove the fences and offer unfettered hospitality to everyone, such that divine encounters at the table at which Jesus presides and where the Holy Spirit is at work transforming relationships with God and with all who gather, including strangers and persons living outside the Christian faith, the church, following Open and Relational perspectives can be a welcoming place for the marginalized and contribute to a less violent and more welcoming world.     

The Orthodox Youth Movement (OYM) was established in 1942 with the mission of reviving the Orthodox Church of Antioch. Liberation theology and the Medellin 1968 documents on peace and justice found strong echos in the catholic clergy circles in Lebanon. The Document “On the Commitment to the issues of the Earth” was adopted by OYM general convention held 26-29 December, 1970. This paper will argue that liberation theology has resonated strongly in the conscience of the leaders of OYM and was instrumental in shaping the commitment of the movement to social justice, condemning Lebanese confessional political system as well as its views on Palestine. It will highlight also its impact on the internal life of the movement and the broader orthodox church and ecumenical involvement.

After the Six Day War, French Left Christians were many to side with “Arab refugees”, by contrast with the majority of Catholics and Protestants in France. In May 1970, these Christian progressives, either lay or clergy, Western Catholics, Western Protestants and members of Eastern diasporas, represented a third of the 400 attendees to the First World Conference of Christians for Palestine, held in Beirut. The organization committee was even divided between Paris and Beirut, its general secretary being (Roman Catholic) George Montaron, editor-in-chief of Témoignage Chrétien, at odds with the Catholic hierarchy in France. The second conference was equally Western, in London (1972). To what extent can these forgotten French Left Christians really be considered as temporary links and connections in the global, decades-long history of Palestinian Liberation? or were they rather just a local expression of dissent, displaying support for Palestine while addressing mostly national, European-based issues?

Recently, there have been instances of women being appointed as pastors in Evangelical churches in certain Middle Eastern countries, such as Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Jordan. Although the initial call for women's ordination originated from Egypt, the Synod of the Nile (the Presbyterian Church in Egypt) has decided to postpone the discussion on this matter for a period of 10 years. The debate within the synod and the wider Evangelical community has focused on the issue of women's ordination from both biblical and ecumenical pastoral perspectives. This paper seeks to discern the most significant barrier confronting women in Egypt, which is fundamentally grounded in Islamic principles and the Islamic perception of masculinity. To achieve this goal, the author intends to employ The Gospel of Mark as an indispensable resource for constructing a comprehensive understanding of the historical Jesus and for reinterpreting the meaning of manhood in the region.

In this paper, I bring together the indecent theology of Marcella Althaus-Reid and the annually celebrated story of Saint Barbara in Palestine. In this transformative encounter, I attempt to draw out one possible indecent decolonial option for Palestinian theology, one that is be able to reflect on Palestinian women’s experiences of gender violence sponsored by the state of Israel and by relating the Christian Palestinian tradition. Thus, I argue that the story of Saint Barbara is a story of a Palestinian woman martyr, murdered by her family under the accusation of tainting the family’s honor, carried out hand in hand with the state authorities. Moreover, I challenge the masculine view of martyrdom in Palestinian Liberation Theology as male heroic glorification by indecenting the tradition of Saint Barbara and uncovering female martyrdom as defiant and subversive, hence, confronting the gender and sexual oppression of Israeli society and Palestinian Christianity.

This paper employs the concept of heterotopia to investigate the pivotal role of Dalit music and alternative spaces in fostering resistance and empowerment within Dalit communities. Through an analysis of the Casteless Collective's provocative music and utilization of diverse platforms, including social media and live performances, this study delves into the intersection of caste, gender, class, and ecological perspectives within Dalit musical traditions. Drawing from Michel Foucault's notion of heterotopia as counter-sites that challenge societal norms, the paper examines how these spaces enable Dalit artists to subvert oppressive structures and amplify marginalized voices. By exploring the Dalit sonic liberation theology, the paper seeks to harness the power of sound and rhythm to dismantle caste, gender, class, and ecological injustices, offering new pathways for theological discourse. Through a feminist Dalit lens, this research illuminates the transformative potential of music and alternative spaces in envisioning an anti-caste society and amplifying the voices of the silenced.

What is the earth in the Qur’an? How have Muslims historically and conceptually interpreted it? What are contemporary Muslim eco-theological approaches to understanding the earth in relation to environmental violence, injustice, and the margins? The earth has always been humanity's home and return. It is at once our source of origin in material reality and our departure point for the Afterlife. Nevertheless, there is a dearth of scholarship on the earth concept in Islam from a systematic perspective. The environmentalist concept of the earth is still a nascent and emerging category in Islamic theology, law, and ecotheologies. This paper first introduces the historical and theoretical foundations of the earth concept in Islam by briefly examining its meaning in the Qur’an, Islamic law, theology and mysticism. However, the main aim of this paper is to argue for an ecoliberation theology reading of the earth.

In Bergson’s famous analysis of time, he critiqued what he saw as a spatialization of time and its transformation into divisible, measurable units. This, according to Bergson, was to impose our intellectual, quantitative thinking onto a fundamentally qualitative reality. Time, or what Bergson called duration (durée), is mobile and living rather than an aggregate of individual “moments.” Yet in this paper, we suggest that Bergson’s critique of spatialized time can equally and ironically be applied to his own concept of space and that Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist, offers a concept of space that escapes these objections. We further argue that Bergson’s account of durée cannot be understood from a purely immanent framework. Instead, it is most intelligible if one interprets it through a Platonic framework. Here, again, we suggest that More offers a historical corrective to Bergsonism and a path forward for studies in his philosophy.

Challenging the widespread view that Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-c. 215) juxtaposes desiring eros and dispassionate agape, this paper argues that the Platonic language and concept of eros remains throughout Clement’s conception of the Christian’s transformation of desire through assimilation to God. Rather than view eros as a stage to be overcome, Clement’s eros admits of a threefold ordering as mythical, philosophic, and divine, with divine eros being intimately associated with the Incarnation of the Logos. It is through association with Christ and in imitation of the pattern of Christ that eros becomes most divine, which in turn causes philanthropia and even agape to take on a distinctly erotic shape.

The traditional view of creation depicts an original Edenic state, free from death and predation, but contemporary evolutionary theory challenges this perspective. The existence of death, predation, and extinction long before humanity raises questions about the character of God and the origins of these phenomena. To reconcile the disparaging antimony between evolution’s violent history and a doctrine of the Fall, Sergei Bulgakov proposed a meta-historical Fall that transcends empirical history, involves both angelic and Edenic realms, and stands beyond the confines of scientific analysis. By incorporating evolutionary science into his sophiology, Bulgakov can situate both the Fall and evolutionary history in a wider cosmic scope in which evolution is perceived as the manifestation of a divine inner plan within the midst of fallen conditions. This paper concludes with a proposal for overcoming Bulgakov’s strong anthropocentric tendencies by emphasizing a stronger understanding of the world-soul with an appeal to contemporary panpsychism. 

What we can, have, and should do with our capacity for soul-craft are key questions this talk will explore by sketching the broad trajectory of participatory ritual, scripture, and rhetoric that can traced back to debates about theurgy in Neoplatonism and forward to the possibilities that have emerged within various strands of contemporary Ecopoetics. After briefly exploring Iamblichus’s theurgy and Boehme’s theosophy attention is placed on how Coleridge makes the category of Reflection central to theosis. Why he does so can be better understood by making connections to theoretical conversations surrounding cybernetics. I argue that understanding the technologies, techniques and mediations that can inform our experience of theosis benefits from a consideration of how cybernetics could help clarify our thinking.

This paper delves into the enduring practice of Confucian veneration ceremonies within the Chinese diaspora of San Francisco, sustained for over 40 years. It critically examines the ceremonies' dual role as both a cultural tradition and a stage for power dynamics within the diaspora's social organizations and in relation to broader society. Drawing on a published archive for the first ceremony in 1982, namely Chronology of the World Confucian Veneration Movement, supplemented by personal archives and oral histories collected in March 2023, and participant observations from September 2023, the study offers an in-depth exploration of the ceremony's transmission, influence and present situation. It commences with the cultural importance of Confucian rituals in immigrant communities and provides insight into how such rituals are leveraged by diasporic social groups to articulate and negotiate their internal and external power structures, presenting a unique perspective on cultural continuity and adaptation.

Presently, there are diverse interpretations and responses within academia concerning the concepts of "self-cultivation and realm" and "moral cultivation and spiritual exercise." Since the Islamic Confucian philosophical system lacks an internal transformation and adjustment mechanism of "Ontology-Cultivation-Realm", it can only be discussed within the content of Sufi practice. However, the Sufi approach does not meet the needs of all the modern Chinese Muslims although the relationship between the two is closely intertwined, the actions of a select few individuals may not entirely address the cognitive and emotional needs of the majority. Conversely, the ethical transformation in Chinese translated texts during the Ming and Qing Dynasty broadens its scope beyond mosque attendees to encompass a wider spectrum of believers. This shift has significant implications for the philosophy of self-cultivation.

This paper will attempt to translate East Asian thinking into a new cultural setting where feminist and pluralist discourses prevail by pointing out certain limitations of Western feminist discourse and comparatively reinventing femininity as an alternative concept. Firstly, Western mainstream epistemology and ontology will be critically reviewed from the gender perspective. The paper will argue Western mainstream thought operates through masculine discourse and that some feminism is actually a byproduct of and reinforces it. Next, it will examine East Asian gendered cosmology, systematically completed in Neo-Confucianism and discuss how the gender binary framework of yinyang can remove the charge of essentialism and modify Western masculine discourse and feminism. It will be argued that the Dao can offer a new feminist paradigm. Here, femininity is not an antithesis of masculinity in the confrontational male-female dichotomy, but an alternative discourse at a larger level that transcends and encompasses that dichotomy.

The paper is an overview of a project underway on the philosophy of desire as a prolegomena to a theological analysis. The thesis is that gay promiscuous desire and activity, rather than being some disordered or fruitless endeavor, is a witness to a missing aspect of our embodied human nature. The philosophical analysis of beauty and sensuality has a complicated history. I will show that from Plato, through Plotinus, the medieval thinkers, to Hume, Kant, and Heidegger, there is a recognition of desire as essentially bodily that has often been negated at the service of the immaterial, intellectual, spiritual. In this overview, i will focus on the two framing points of the tradition, Plato and Heidegger, to show that both have in their thought the potential for grounding a robust affirmation of physical erotic interaction.

This paper attempts to examine how White Christian nationalists understand heterosexuality and operationalize it within their nationalist ambitions. I focus on how White Christian nationalists imagine the sexual development of boys into straight men who, in White Christian nationalists' machinations, will father Christian children, head the household, and lead the nation. My source base primarily includes childrearing manuals from evangelical and White Christian nationalist authors. These manuals contain valuable - and often pseudoscientific - information instructing parents on how to raise their boys into straight men. I hope to apply the theories of Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Lee Edelman to demonstrate how families mediate a boy's sexual development, as parents surveil their son's sexual behavior, punish supposed homosexual tendencies, and guide him towards heterosexual adulthood. Ultimately, I aim to demonstrate that, while families are a microcosm of the Christian nation, building the Christian nation starts with the child.

Looking to the various sources of anti-gay and anti-MLM/MSM rhetoric, this paper explores the violence, both physical and non-physical, done on gay and queer men’s bodies and how that violence can lead to internal violence, external violence, and counterviolence. Utilizing M. Shawn Copeland’s notion of embodiment to ground the lived experience of gay and queer men with their own physicality and the physicality of those they come in contact with, a framework can be developed for reconciling violence, whether intentional or unintentional, while restoring healthier relationships with the self, others, and community.