2002 AAR Abstracts
A16
Panel: AAR, SBL, and ATS Grants Forum
Christopher Wilkins, Association of Theological Schools in the U.S. and Canada, Presiding
Barbara Ashbrook, National Endowment for the Humanities
Patrick Henry, Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research
James W. Lewis, Louisville Institute
Christine O'Brien, National Research Council
Michael Hawes, Canada-US Fulbright Program
Program officers from foundations and funding agencies will be available to answer questions and distribute materials. This session is an opportunity to learn more about the funding process and the many different kinds of resources available to scholars in religion. It is designed to be helpful for first-time applicants as well as those who have received grants in the past. There will be representatives from organizations that provide a wide variety of types of funding, including dissertation support, faculty leave grants, and project-level grants.
A18
Panel: Teaching Islam after September 11
Jonathan E. Brockopp, Bard College, Presiding
Frederick M. Denny, University of Colorado, Boulder
Anna M. Gade, University of Chicago
Zayn Kassam, Pomona College
Omid Safi, Colgate University
Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Georgetown University
In the aftermath of September 11th, 2001, many universities have sought to offer courses on the Islamic tradition, or at least substantially increase the coverage of Islam in other introductory or comparative courses. This development comes precisely at a time that most universities do not have a resident scholar of Islamic studies as a regular part of the faculty. As a result, this sudden impetus for new courses has posed a great challenge to many of the non-Islamic studies faculty members who may now be asked to engage Islam in their offerings. Even though most religious studies faculty attempt to go beyond journalistic accounts of Islam, they may be handicapped by a lack of great familiarity with the recent scholarly literature on Islam. This panel aims to create a dialogue in which some leading experts on Islamic studies may facilitate the pedagogical process of their non-Islamicist colleagues.
A19
The Experience of Loss and Grief as Illustrated through the Paintings of Edvard Munch, 1885 to 1900
Paul Myhre, Wabash College
Edvard Munch is often called the father of modern expressionism. He spent much of his artistic career painting images of his personal experience of loss, grief, death and mourning. He is most well known for his 1893 painting entitled, The Scream. This paper explores several of his paintings that were created between 1885 and 1900. Exemplars from his work are used to illustrate his efforts to explore his emotions of death, loss and grief. A visual hermeneutical method that considers late nineteenth-century Norwegian cultural perceptions of loss and grief, Munch’s religious experiences, contemporary perceptions of death and dying, Munch’s family’s means of dealing with loss and grief, and Munch’s personal writings are examined. The meaning of color, composition, human figure and symbols are also explored. Examples of Munch’s work that are considered include, Death in the Sick Room, the Sick Child, spring, Melancholy, and Ashes.
Towards an Ethics of Seeing: Sally Potter’s The Tango Lesson
Ulrike Vollmer, University of Sheffield
The paper will deal with the issue of what makes a film "religious." An alternative to theme-based, style-based and reference-based definitions of religious films will be sought by examining Sally Potter’s film The Tango Lesson in terms of different ways of looking inherent in it. Voyeuristic and fetishistic looks that objectify are contrasted with the look of a film director, who claims that her look through the camera is a look of love that helps the other to become visible as a subject. Following this analysis of The Tango Lesson, a fourth, new approach to defining the religious in films will be put forward. By focusing on the act of seeing, this approach can help to shift the emphasis from defining the religious in films through contents and style to defining it in terms of the relationship between a film and its viewers.
John Damascene’s On the Divine Images: Witness, Theosis, and Humanized Revelation
Elijah Mueller, Marquette University
John Damascene does not only defend images in his On the Divine Images. Nor does he only defend the incarnation. His defense proclaims the icon as an essential element of a spirituality of continuous access to the foundational witness canonized in revelation. His theology stems from both the claims of liturgy and ascetic teaching, and bolstered a community confronting new hostilities that could result in martyrdom. In this context the icon, and the spirituality inherent in its use, represented a sort of religious humanism: a deep theological respect for the human "image" which does not allow of diminishment of human faculties and potential.
Poetic Ecology as Spiritual Critique: Wright’s Guggenheim Museum and the Demands of Vision
Stephen T. Campagna-Pinto, Colgate University
Frank Lloyd Wright’s design for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City resulted in one of the world’s most famous buildings, and the greatest creation of the final period of Wright’s career. As critics have noted, Wright was steeped from an early age in the organic philosophy espoused by Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, among others. This paper will offer an interpretation of the Guggenheim Museum as a monument that takes account of the complexity of Emerson’s thought and the currents of both transcendentalism and classical pragmatism that run through it, and that are widely discussed and debated by scholars. The Guggenheim functions as an American expression of modern turriphilia that serves as both refuge from, and critique of, modern urban space, a poetic statement given form in order to reject the city’s box canyons and advance the priority of vision or imagination for a healthy society.
Task 46.97: Given
Hartwig Bischof, University of Vienna
A comparison between Duchamp and Marion can only be based on what Alain Badiou calls "in-esthetics." Both introduce themselves as important critics of the predominant mainstream and both leave a good portion of work for the recipient. Besides this the main-question will be whether Duchamp’s "Étant donnés" could be read and experienced as an example of Marion’s "saturated phenomenon" or not.
A20
Liberation from the Private Sphere: Arguing for Religious Voices in National Policy
Laura Kicklighter, University of Texas
This paper examines current attitudes and misconceptions about the appropriate role of religious perspectives in determining public policy. The author challenges traditional interpretations of the First Amendment that restrict religion to the private sphere. Instead, the constitutional disestablishment of religion opens the door for religion to play a unique and vital role in United States public discourse. The author advocates Michael Walzer’s prophetic model of social criticism as an effective way for religious groups and individuals to enter the national conversation on issues of national policy. This paper examines the National Bioethics Advisory Commission’s (NBAC) deliberations on the question of embryonic stem cell research. While the Commission solicited testimony from a variety of religious scholars, their report reflects the prevailing notion that religion should not inform public policy, which should instead be based on pragmatic or utilitarian methods. The author concludes with reflections on the new President’s Commission on Bioethics.
Panel: Religious Ethics and Public Discourse: Canadian and American Considerations of Stem Cells and Reproductive Technologies
Suzanne Holland, University of Puget Sound, Presiding
Ian Shugart, Health Canada, Ottawa, ON
John Berkman, Catholic University of America
Joseph Boyle, University of Toronto
In May 2001, then Canadian minister of health opened hearings for Canada’s first comprehensive laws on reproductive technology. A preliminary report argues that the legislation should affirm the status of human embryos as a "third category" deserving respect as "an early human entity" but not with the moral status of human persons. This panel will discuss and evaluate the Canadian Government’s proposed "third category" for embryos, examining how this might serve as a basis for justifying experimentation on pre-existing cryopreserved embryos, while prohibiting the creation of embryos for the purpose of harvesting stem cells.
A21
"Faith as a Moral Act": Nineteenth-Century Liberals on Religious Experience and Social Action
Christopher Glen White, Harvard University
This paper examines conceptions of salvation and social reform in late nineteenth-century American culture. It argues that liberal Protestants redefined salvation as a spiritual state created not in solitary worship but in efforts to reform and uplift others. In short, liberal Protestants believed that outer practices of social action created and sustained the inner emotions of faith. This way of thinking about piety dramatically changed the way Protestants during this time thought about relationships between their inner and outer lives, between the Church and the world, between the sacred and the secular. Their ideas set people to laboring in the secular world to foster the sacred in themselves. In this paper I narrate the history of the changing configuration of faith and practice in this period by looking at Social Gospel figures and early American social scientists.
Rufus Jones, Quaker Mysticism, and the Transformation of American Religion
Matthew Hedstrom, University of Texas, Austin
Rufus M. Jones (1863-1948) is remembered as a prominent professor of philosophy and psychology at Haverford College, a leading scholar of mysticism, and a founder of the American Friends Service Committee. Yet he was much more. Jones was also a spiritual leader, the foremost American mystic in the first half of the twentieth century, and a spiritual guide to vast numbers of Americans through his widely read autobiographies and inspirational books. In this paper I examine this other Rufus Jones. I contend that Jones, in his popular writings, synthesized various strands of mysticism, drawn from academic philosophy, psychology, and his own Quaker tradition, and translated them into an idiom that was broadly accessible to the American reading public. This task, accomplished both through the success of his writings and through his personal example as a leading mystic, had profound consequences for the shape of American religion in the twentieth century.
A Theological Basis of Nineteenth-Century Social Reform
Priscilla Eppinger, Graceland University
While most religion calls for some attention to social welfare, simply claiming religious faith does not necessarily lead one to engagement in social reform. Some would argue that social welfare and the reform of social systems are the purview of secular politics rather than of religion. I argue that for people of faith, religious beliefs are a significant and often the central motivating factor for their engagement in social issues. In this paper I will show that nineteenth-century reformer Lucretia Mott’s religious belief system, in particular the intersection of her christology, ecclesiology, and eschatology, required her to engage in systemic analysis and social reform. With Mott as a model, we may learn to take more seriously the theological underpinnings of those engaged in social welfare and reform work. The articulation of theological imperatives for people of faith would enrich current-day efforts to construct alternative models to existing social structures.
A22
Panel: Critical Psychology and Its Critics
Susan E. Henking, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Presiding
Naomi R. Goldenberg, University of Ottawa
Diane Jonte-Pace, Santa Clara University
James W. Jones, Rutgers University
H. John McDargh, Boston College
Jeremy R. Carrette, University of Stirling, Responding
Critical psychology, drawing on the writings of Foucault and other post-structuralist thinkers, offers a particular analysis of psychology and its relationships with religion. Such an analysis, foregrounding issues of power and privilege in the production and deployment of psychological and religious knowledge, has produced a significant body of theorizing. The time has come to subject this critical analysis to a critical analysis. Doing so will be the function of this panel. Professor Jeremy Carrette, who has written extensively from this standpoint and gave a well-received paper on critical psychology at last year’s annual meeting, will begin the discussion with a brief overview. The panelists will then offer their analyses and critiques and professor Carrette will respond. Issues raised will then be discussed among the panelists and with the audience.
A23
Panel: Delores Williams: The Womanist Who Went before Us in the Wilderness
Mary C. Churchill, University of Colorado, Boulder, Presiding
Hyun-Kyung Chung, Union Theological Seminary, New York
Michelle Gonzalez, Loyola Marymount University
Dwight N. Hopkins, University of Chicago
Andrea Smith, University of California, Santa Cruz
Judith Plaskow, Manhattan College
Frances E. Wood, Emory University
Delores S. Williams, Union Theological Seminary, New York, Responding
With the vision of a prophet and the insight of a poet, Delores Williams has helped shape Womanist theology since its inception. Her landmark work, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk, invites critical dialogue with white feminist and Black liberation theologians. Her challenge to each of these groups, and others as well, is to recognize and honor the "wilderness experience" as a critical mechanism for theological interpretation, particularly in the lives of poor and marginalized women. This panel, featuring theologians and scholars of religion from a variety of specializations, will discuss the important and far-reaching implications of Williams' contributions and will include Delores Williams' response to their remarks.
A24
Making the Unrespectable Respectable: Black Pentecostal Women and Identity
Anthea Butler, Princeton University
Much of the recent work on African American women and religion has employed the use of Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham’s thesis, "politics of respectability," to describe the religious work of African American women of the early twentieth century. However, the thesis does not hold for black women who embraced Pentecostal denominations such as the Church of God in Christ, Mt. Sinai Holy Church of America, and others that espoused ecstatic worship and women’s work, but did not meet the conditions of "racial respectability." Black Pentecostal women gained respect and authority through their unique focus on biblical beliefs, worship styles, and practices not filtered through the lens of racial uplift idealogy and renunciation of African worship styles. How Black Pentecostal women constructed their identity through employing the use of seemingly unrespectable behaviors to gain respectability is the locus of this paper.
Benjamin T. Tanner and the Creation of the AME Church Newspaper the Child’s Recorder, 1868-1884
Julius Bailey, University of Redlands
This paper examines the struggles of Benjamin T. Tanner, bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, to create the denominational children’s newspaper, the Child’s Recorder. As editor of the AME Christian Recorder from 1868 to 1884, Tanner employed editorials and printed articles in the newspaper to shape the public discourse in the church regarding the black family. In his efforts to stimulate support for the Child’s Recorder, he formulated a distinct application of evangelical domesticity that linked the spiritual nurture of children to the racial uplift of the AME Church and the African American race.
A25
Shame: The Basic Reality of Sin
Christina-Maria Franke, Humboldt University
Shame is more than a bodily experience of deficiency or a moral negative affect in response to unaccepted behavior. Speaking of shame lays the groundwork for statements concerning the fragility and contingency of human existence and concrete subjectivity; but it also refers us to that secret which is vitally necessary to every person in his or her relation to God and to the other. Making use of the interpretation of shame in the work of Kierkegaard’s concept of individuation, Bonhoeffer’s ethics, and Barth’s soteriology, we acquire a threefold description of the reality of sin in human life. This account of sin acknowledges at its heart (1) the origin of shame, (2) its enduring and fundamental role in every fragile human existence coram Deo as a dynamics of veiling and unveiling, as well as (3) its eschatological surmounting.
Suffering in the Wilderness: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Stellvertreter Meets Delores Williams' sister Hagar
Elaine Robinson, Texas Christian University
Bonhoeffer’s theological concept of Stellvertreter, vicarious representative action, is central to grasping the meaning of transformed "suffering" within the onto-theological reality of "being in Christ." The challenge of liberation theologies, however, forces us to rethink Bonhoeffer’s noble notion of suffering on behalf of others as central to discipleship. Guided in large part by Delores Williams' use of the Hagar story and her concept of the "wilderness experience," this paper asks whether Bonhoeffer’s Stellvertreter leads to continued exploitation of those whose lives lack genuine freedom of choice, or if the wilderness experience and the Womanist critique can lead us to reconstruct Bonhoeffer’s concept of suffering from a perspective of particularity and difference.
Suffering with Creation: Bonhoeffer’s Promise for an Ecological Soteriology
Hilda Koster, University of Chicago
Over the last two decades the environmental crisis has spurred theologians to articulate the integrity and intrinsic goodness of creation, and formulate alternative understandings of the traditional doctrines of sin, finitude and suffering within the context of an ecological theology of nature. Yet although ecological theologians are comfortable speaking about sin in ecological terms, they have a harder time coming to grasp with violence in nature. This paper argues that the failure to deal with nature’s violence leads to romanticism which is no viable alternative to the ambivalent or negative attitude towards nature and finitude which has troubled Christianity all along -- examining the work of Sallie McFague and Jürgen Moltmann. Subsequently, the paper explores Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s perception of finitude and suffering as a resource for an ecological soteriology. Bonhoeffer offers a reading of sin, finitude and suffering which reconciles us with our finite existence by suffering with it.
Religion between Imago Dei and Sin in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Kirsten Busch Nielsen, University of Copenhagen
In the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the notion of religion plays an important role (Act and Being, Creation and Fall, and Letters and Papers from Prison). The interdependence between the notion of religion and the understanding of sin has been developed though only to a certain degree. The hamartiological dimension of Bonhoeffer’s thinking must be taken into account if a complete interpretation of religion in Bonhoeffer is to be achieved. Suprisingly, Bonhoeffer’s notion of religion does not only involve criticism of religion and a theory of religionlessness. It also involves a positive evaluation of religion which must be explained systematically. This positive evaluation leads to the question of religion as a possibly "natural" dimension of humanity (cf. imago Dei) and even as a "natural" function of society (cf. imago Dei as a matter of relationality).
A26
Panel: Re-imagining the Nation-State: Religious Nationalisms in India and Israel
Barbara A. Holdrege, University of California, Santa Barbara, Presiding
Richard D. Hecht, University of California, Santa Barbara
Roger Friedland, University of California, Santa Barbara
Paul Morris, Victoria University
Ainslee T. Embree, Columbia University
Stanley J. Tambiah, Harvard University
Mark Juergensmeyer, University of California, Santa Barbara, Responding
India and Israel are both described as "secular" democracies, but they are also Hindu and Jewish nation-states. Religion was a powerful force in the creation of both of these nation-states, irrespective of how fervently the generation of founders sought to separate modern politics and the political order from religion. The panel will focus on how religious nationalists in India and Israel imagine the modern nation-state. The panel will include a consideration of (1) the religious visions of the Hindu and Jewish nation-states articulated by V. D. Savarkar and Abraham Isaac Kook; (2) the manner in which Hindu nationalists have invoked Israel as a paradigm of the religious nation-state; (3) ethnoreligious conflicts and constructions of the Muslim "Other"; and (4) issues of conflict resolution. The panel will conclude with a consideration of possible ways to re-imagine the nation-state in order to neutralize the mythological propensities of religious constructions of the state.
A27
The Ends of Memoir and Testimony
Amy Carr, Western Illinois University
Analyzing the contributions of Patricia Hampl, Carolyn Forché, and Rebecca Chopp to theorizing about memoir, poetry of witness, and a poetics of testimony, I will suggest that memoir and testimony are useful strategies for theological or philosophical reflection in a variety of ways. They extend the range of participants who claim the authority to speak, contribute to the creation of new concepts and the critique of older ones, and involve their authors in a practice of world-seeking or world-building which, in turn, evokes a sense of belonging to a purposeful universe-one in which human experience matters, much as biblical events matter in the ancient Christian practice of lectio divina. But precisely in doing all this, memoir and testimony do not displace so much as feed modern (and perhaps newly-appropriated premodern) practices of claiming authority and authorizing new claims to theological or philosophical knowledge.
Dangerous Memories: Autobiographical Strategy in the Religious Writings of James Carroll
Marian Ronan, Temple University
The literary turn to autobiography and memoir would seem to contribute to the construction of new social locations for the oppressed. Yet when does performative reiteration replicate existing social arrangements? This paper teases out critical differences between repetition and catachresis in the works of the Roman Catholic writer, James Carroll. Autobiographical strategies frame Carroll’s two nationally recognized publications, An American Requiem: God, My Father, and The War That Came between Us, and Constantine’s Sword: The Church and The Jews, A History. Using Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s feminist/queer theory I will display in these two works and in the series of novels that preceded them a pattern of competitive homosocial bonding between men that enables the domination of women, bonding that elicits and is reinforced by homophobia. In light of this reading I will assess Carroll’s contribution to the discursive reconfiguration of the Catholic social domain.
Writing the Female Body: Quaker Autobiography as Theological Disruption
Shannon Craigo-Snell, Yale University
In this paper I argue that autobiography was an important tactic used by Quaker women in the seventeenth century to expose and assault the place assigned to women in the masculine economy of language. Drawing on the work of Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler, and Jill Ker Conway, I examine how the autobiographical accounts of Quakers Margaret Fell, Mary Pennington, and Joan Vokins constituted an attack on the theological discourse of their day. Analyzing these historical texts in light of feminist theory reveals that the primary point of their disruption is located at the insertion of female embodiment into theological language. This interpretation and inscription of women’s embodied experience contests the unrivalled primacy of the word. I propose that the rhetorical use of autobiography to integrate women’s embodiment into religious discourse can be understood as both a precursor and challenge to contemporary incorporation of women’s experience into feminist theology.
Medieval Christian Women’s Writing and the Problem of Autobiography
Amy M. Hollywood, Dartmouth College
The paper will explore the relationship between medieval Christian women’s appeal to experience and authorization. First, I want to access the extent to which the authorizing role of medieval women’s appeals to experience may vitiate claims for the autobiographical status of their texts. Secondly, I will argue that recognition of the complex ways in which experience authorizes medieval women’s theological projects can help us understand why autobiography and memory are so often deployed within contemporary feminist thought. Finally, I will look at the book of one medieval woman religious writer who arguably rejects extraordinary experiences of the divine as the basis for her writing, the thirteenth and early fourteenth-century beguine Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, exploring the implications her eschewal of experience has for contemporary feminism’s rhetorical deployment of the autobiographical mode.
A28
The Flames of Namugongo: Postcoloniality Meets Queer on African Soil?
Ken Hamilton, The Union Institute & University
The story of the 1886 martyrdom of Charles Lwanga and his companions is at the interstice of queer theory and postcoloniality. It is the founding missionary narrative of Christianity in Uganda, East Africa that equates that founding with the uprooting of same sex practice on the "Dark Continent." It raises suspicions around the demonization of "darkness," which includes "Africa," African male same sex desire, African traditional religions and Islam, feminized African masculinity, and the feminized African land. Moreover, the sublimation of this narrative into Roman Catholic canonization further defines same sex desire (and, therefore, homoerotic mysticism) as that which is not Christian and not Ugandan. One wonders how this process might, for instance, have affected public attitudes and public policies in locating and treating AIDS in Africa.
Seeing How Things Really Are When in the Mythic Matrix Queerness Is All Around!
Christopher Lamb, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Hindu myths about Vishnu-Mohini loosen the constraints of sexual dimorphism, opening up possibilities for a religious understanding of same-sex desire. These legends are at the basis of two festivals celebrated in South India during January and April: at Sabarimala in Kerala, of Ayyappa who was born of Mohini and Shiva, and at Pillaiyarkuppam in Tamilnadu of Kuttandavar-Aravan where Mohini marries him. Pilgrims at Sabarimala vow to maintain celibacy in honour of the god who wishes to remain so. At Pillaiyarkuppam thousands of Alis (aka Hijras), "third sex" people, attend the festival where they marry the god like the gender-bending Mohini, whose actions are revered. During the festival the behaviour of the Alis is approved, but society still disapproves of people who do not conform to the married paradigm. Having no "texts of terror" Hinduism has the resources to become more inclusive and accepting of difference; critical in the post-AIDS era.
Life as a Gay Filipino: Perception, Identity, and Ethics
Jeffrey Mann, Muskingum College
The social construction of homosexuality that one finds in contemporary Roman Catholic Philippine society stands in stark contrast to what Westerners hold and believe to be "normal." At the same time, their social perceptions of homosexuality appear to be very progressive in a society otherwise known for conservative sexual ethics which many believe are repressive. The key to understanding the self-perception of gay Filipinos and their society’s moral analysis of them lies within the Filipino belief that gender identity only exists as masculine or feminine. In this way one may understand why two gay men, or two lesbians, will not become romantically involved with one another; they seek their sexual opposite. Similarly, when coupled with their strong belief in fate, the Filipino people believe that a person is born with a pre-ordained sexual identity which exists prior to and apart from any moral evaluation.
Out of Africa: African Myth, Ritual, Homoeroticism, and Homosexual Expression
Horace Leedolphus Griffin, Seabury-Western Theological Seminary
The long held claim made by many African and African American leaders that homosexuality is a "white aberration" imposed on black Africans lacks foundation. In light of this fact, there is a need to provide an academic discussion presenting African homosexuality. While there are cultural differences regarding sexuality in Africa, such differences should not be interpreted as the absence of same sex desire in African or eastern cultures. This paper points out the reasons why such myths about African sexuality exists and highlights African religious responses to African transgendered individuals, homoeroticism and homosexuality. It also identifies arguments against the fullness of African sexuality as racist in nature and calls for a revisioning of African sexuality.
A29
Panel: Sources of the Self: Charles Taylor and Søren Kierkegaard
David J. Gouwens, Brite Divinity School, Presiding
Edward F. Mooney, Sonoma State University
Stephen Crites, Wesleyan University
Marilyn Piety, Drexel University
Abrahim H. Khan, University of Toronto
Stephen N. Dunning, University of Pennsylvania, Responding
This session will feature an invited panel which will discuss the relation of Canadian scholar Charles Taylor’s analysis of the self to that of Søren Kierkegaard. The primary text forming the basis for comparison with Kierkegaard is Taylor’s book on The Sources of the Self.
A30
Self-Annihilation and Ecstasy: The Engine of Franciscan Sadhana
John R. Haule, C. G. Jung Institute, Boston
The medieval biographies of St. Francis of Assisi contain numerous hints, coherent with one another, concerning techniques of ecstasy discovered through a life of constant experimentation. Like saints of the East, Francis pursued a life of reversal worthy of an avatar of Shiva. Because his attempts to imitate the poverty of Jesus through gestures of relinquishment generated feelings of humiliation, disgust, shame, and grandiosity, he repeatedly found himself faced with narcissistic crisis. The essential elements of his sadhana closely resemble those of the Tantric tradition: (1) stirring up an impending sense of self-annihilation from the narcissistic sector of the psyche, (2) standing calm within the tension generated, and (3) reversing one’s attention from the disturbing object to consciousness itself. Francis used the interior scandal of his own unworthiness to carry him over the threshold from the profane cosmos to the sacred.
The Christological Basis for Self-Actualization and Self-Annihilation in the Works of Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Avila
Margaret E. Taylor-Ulizio, Marquette University
This paper presents a comparative analysis of the relationship between Christology and the interplay of self-actualization and self-annihilation in the works of two important mystics, Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Avila. Christology is an important factor in the analysis of the works of Teresa and Catherine as it reveals how each interpreted her experience of God in order to define her own humanity, her mission and role in the Church, and her path to redemption. The distinct appropriations of Christology in the life of these mystics resulted in conflicting, though related, paths to self-actualization in the Christian tradition.
Bodily Mysticism of the Annihilated Self
Sarah K. Pinnock, Trinity University
Mystical self-annihilation connotes abject humility and masochistic suffering that are seemingly contrary to empowerment. Thus, it is surprising that loss of self and political activism are closely intertwined in the work of prominent twentieth-century mystics, Simone Weil and Dorothee Soelle. Their political mysticisms revolve around suffering and emptiness of self that allows God into bodily space. However, from a critical phenomenological perspective, the selfless mystical body is overly inscribed by suffering that is celebrated as a means to encounter God. Drawing on feminist theories of the body, this paper pursues constructive reflection on mysticism that dislocates the individual self in order to emphasize the intersection of bodies. The selfless mystical body encounters others in enstasy (standing within), discovering responsibility in interconnection. Spurring political activism, mystical annihilation of the self empowers vulnerable, gendered bodies to transcend suffering and dwell in divine vulnerability.
The Numinous and Cessative as Dimensions of Indian Mysticism
Stuart R. Sarbacker, Loyola University, Chicago
The close relationship between Hindu and Buddhist meditation-theory has been observed by numerous scholars. A noteworthy aspect of this relationship is the role of dhyana (meditation) and samadhi (contemplation) in the respective traditions. This project will apply a new methodological approach to the study of meditation that integrates together psychological and sociological models into an expanded phenomenology. It will be argued that the development of samadhi in both Hinduism and Buddhism is characterized by both numinous and cessative qualities. These respectively refer to the attainment of the attributes of a deity and the attempt to break free of samsara (cyclic existence). These relate psychologically to mental functioning, philosophically to conceptions regarding the nature of the liberated individual, and sociologically to central versus peripheral status with respect to social norms. These dimensions, which approximate "self-actualization" and "self-annihilation," demonstrate both the complementary inner qualities of meditation and their concrete manifestation in culture.
A31
Panel: Indigenous Religious Identity in the Americas and the Politics of Blood Quantum
Justine Smith, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Presiding
Eva Garroutte, Boston College
Angela Gonzales, Cornell University
Kehaulani Kauanui, Wesleyan University
Audra Simpson, McGill University
John Mohawk, State University of New York, Buffalo, Responding
This session will explore the politics of blood quantum in the configurations of American Indian identity. We will look at the conflicts between how identity is constructed in indigenous communities through spiritually-based epistemologies and how identity is constructed through federal government regulations that often involve blood quantum requirements. In addition, we will explore how tribal communities adopt blood quantum requirements for membership and how these requirements are assimilated or not into their spiritually-based understandings of identity. Specific issues to be explored include the repercussions of these identity politics within the human genome diversity project, university admissions, notions of genetic memory, and alternative proposals for constructing tribal membership.
A32
God’s Dominion and New Religious Movements
James A. Beverley, Tyndale Seminary
This paper will assess the diversity and shape of new religious movements in Canada by mapping out their emergence in Canada, their geographical and cultural setting across the nation, and their numerical and social power in the context of Canada’s older religious traditions. The research is based on data gathered in my role as Senior Editor of The HarperCollins' Encyclopedia of Religions in Canada.
Cooperation and Lingji Performance on Taiwan
Alison R. Marshall, Brandon University
Based on recent fieldwork, the paper examines how lingji or diviners of the spirit are actively involved in constructing their own identities as new types of ecstatic functionaries on contemporary Taiwan-a subject that has received very little scholarly attention in the English language and only superficial attention in non-academic books and magazines in Mandarin Chinese. Any day of the week all over Taiwan, lingji may be found in temples, praying, meditating, burping, singing, and dancing in praise of any number of deities in order to help people who are suffering. Most of the lingji on Taiwan practice independent of any organization or institution, refuse money for their work and occasionally attend public lectures on religion. These altruistic lingji aver that they only become inspired to meditate, burp, dance or sing when they cooperate with others, feeding off of the synergy generated by team-work.
"Deprogramming" around the World: Still a Problem?
James Richardson, University of Nevada, Reno
The paper examines "deprogramming," a popular method of extracting young people from controversial NRMs in the 1970s in the U.S., but one which waned after court decisions critical of such procedures. The paper will examine the diffusion of deprogramming around the world, and focus particularly on societies, such as Japan, where deprogramming has flourished for decades, with thousands of deprogrammings having occurred. Also, a recent European Court of Human Rights case from Spain is examined in which the Court ruled unanimously in favor of seven Spanish national adult plaintiffs seeking damages from the state for involvement in their deprogramming. An assessment of whether deprogramming represents a serious threat to religious freedom in some areas of the globe is offered, as well.
A33
Socrates’ Last Words
Mark Mcpheran, University of Maine, Farmington
The import of Socrates’ last words at Phaedo 118a has been much discussed ever since he allegedly uttered them (I document twenty-two discrete interpretations at present). In this paper I argue for the superiority of two original interpretations according to which Socrates owes a cock to Asclepius in thanks for (1) his philosophy encouraging dreams (see, e.g., Apology 33c, Crito 44a-b, and Phaedo 60d-61b); and (2) for Crito and himself having survived the plague of 430-429.
Sight and Insight: The Body as an Instrument of the Soul in Plato and Plotinus
Twyla Gibson, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Statements in Plato establish the "eye of the body" as an analogy for the "eye of the soul" and correlate parallel concepts with each of them. I use these equations to establish a connection between Plato and Plotinus. The method combines philological techniques with philosophical analysis and the findings derived from the theory of oral traditions. I employ this approach to develop an outline of a sequence of classifications presented in the Platonic dialogues and to show that this series manifests the features that characterize oral traditional patterns of communication. Recognizing principles of the traditional definitions described and explained in Plato makes it possible to distinguish identical structural patterns in Plotinus. I use this homology to establish the consonance of Plato and Plotinus and to argue for the continuity of the tradition.
The "Perverted Imp": Plotinus and the Metaphysics of Shame
Wendy Wiseman, University of California, Santa Barbara
In Porphyry’s "On the Life of Plotinus and his Work," he recounts one of the few biographical details Plotinus deems worthy of revelation: "thus he told us how, at the age of eight, when he was already going to school, he still clung to his nurse and loved to bare her breasts and take suck; one day he was told he was a "perverted imp", and so was shamed out of the trick." Through examination of selected Enneads and with the help of feminist theorists Luce Irigary and Hélène Cixous, I will argue that Plotinus' conception of the body as temptress of the soul, and of Matter as privation, can be linked to the shame and resentment experienced upon being deprived of the motherly breast.
"Glorified Body": Resurrection and the Secular Political Order in the Thought of Richard Hooker
Torrance Kirby, McGill University
In his famous defense of the Elizabethan Settlement, Richard Hooker elaborates a Christian neoplatonic concept of a "bodily participation (methexis) of christ". "The mixture of his bodilie substance with oures is a thinge which the ancient Fathers disclaime. Yet the mixture of his flesh with ours they speake of, to signifie what oure verie bodies through mysticall conjunction receive from that vitall efficacie which we knowe to be in his,... to declare the truth then the maner of coherence betwene his sacred and the sanctified bodies of Sainctes", this "coherence" provides the theological ground for his subsequent argument in support of the union of the Church and the Commonwealth in a "single politique bodie." The aim of the proposed essay is to explore the argument whereby this Renaissance neoplatonist derives an account of early-modern institutions from a reflection upon patristic discourse concerning the participation of resurrected body.
Cambridge, Platonism, and the Body
Alison Teply, Cambridge University
The topic of the winged soul has a crucial position within Platonism because of the importance of the Phaedrus in neoplatonist thought, particularly in the Renaissance. In my paper I wish to consider the way in which the winged chariot of the Phaedrus is taken up by certain of the seventeenth-century Cambridge Platonists in partial answer to the Cartesian soul/body dichotomy, and with conscious reference to the neoplatonist tradition of the "spiritual" vehicle. Approaching the subject from the standpoint of the history of ideas, in my paper I shall be sketching the relative significance of the spiritual body for three thinkers within Cambridge Platonism-Henry More, John Smith and Anne Conway. I aim to draw some conclusions about the relative significance, or otherwise, of the employment
A34
American Environmentalism: Science or Religion?
James Proctor, University of California, Santa Barbara
The paper will summarize, and derive philosophical and theoretical implications from, empirical research performed to date on a three-year NSF-funded project on the role and relative influence of science and religion in contemporary American environmentalism. According to a recent Gallup poll slightly over half of all Americans consider themselves to be environmentalists, suggesting a diverse movement that is a major feature of cultural identity among Americans. Yet the ideological diversity of environmentalism has yet to be empirically characterized, in particular the ways people ground their environmental concerns in major domains of authority such as scientific knowledge, religion/spirituality, and/or personal experience. The research aims to address this empirical need by means of a sample survey of 1500 American adults, with followup interviews of selected participants. In-progress results from the survey and interviews, plus a complete analysis of a pilot survey of over 200 participants, will be discussed.
The Precautionary Principle and the Biblical Wisdom Literature: Toward an Ethic of Ecological Prudence in Ocean Management
Susan Power Bratton, Baylor University
Recent catastrophes in environmental management, such as population collapses in oceanic fisheries, have led environmental activists and scholars to invoke the precautionary principle (PP). PP demands that no human-initiated change in an ecosystem be permitted unless it is certain it will do no harm. Implementing PP, however, presents epistemological, logical and practical difficulties. This paper replaces PP with a Christian ethic of ecological prudence, guided by the Biblical Wisdom Literature, and applies the ethic to fisheries management cases involving ecological uncertainty, inaccurate projections of scientific population models, scale-issues in large ecosystems, over-capitalization of fishing fleets, and displacement of folk fisheries. From the perspective of Biblical Wisdom, these cases concern the limits of knowledge, wisdom versus foolishness, greed, imprudent or speedy initiation of resource utilization, and disregard for community by ignoring the needs of poorer members.
>From Theory to Pedagogy: Engaging Science, Religion, and Ecosocial Location
Beth Blissman, Oberlin College
This paper explores one pathway through the creation of a theoretical stance incorporating both social and ecological location into a worldview consonant with systems theory. I then take this theoretical stance, which I call a liberation feminist ecological ethic, into the classroom in two multidisciplinary undergraduate courses. One of the tools created as part of this ethic, namely that of ecosocial location, is highlighted because of its potential to aid in the development of constructive postmodernist thought. The efficacy of this tool will need to continue to be tested, and enter into conversation with womanist, mujerista and other liberationist ethical models. However, it supports one ethical stance containing constructive resources for transformation of our ecosocial context from patterns of death and destruction to life and creative passion.
Spaceship Epiphanies and Cosmologies
Lee W. Bailey, Ithaca College
Outer space has become a frontier of spiritual seeking, full of mythic, ritual, and ontological quests. What will be the shape of the new cosmology emerging from the age of space travel? An entire genre of films heavily laden with myth portray everything from "space Cowboy" astronauts to ethereal aliens descending in UFOs, bringing affirmations of cosmic meaning, thinly concealed below technological wonder. UFO mythology, and science fiction films revel in quests for new cosmologies, exploring questions of evil, death and immortality. Real astronauts went up hard-nosed engineers and came back with accounts of a transformed consciousness like a conversion to a sense of the holiness of earth’s precious ecology and the sacred oneness of the universe’s ontological ground. Religion scholars need to bring out this spiritual quest, distinguish it from baser urges for dominion, and explore the new spirituality of outer space.
A35
Spiritualities of Liberation in the Americas: Gregory Baum, Frantz Fanon, and Guillermo Gómez-Peña
Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Duke University
This paper explores the relevance of the decolonization of spirituality for a progressive and liberating ethico-political project. I first articulate the idea of a decolonization of spirituality by elucidating Canadian theologian Gregory Baum’s account of the "New Social Gospel" in Canada. Baum relates the commitment with social justice to a spirituality of openness, compassion, and solidarity. I intend to trace similar themes in two radical secular thinkers: the Afro-Caribbean Frantz Fanon, and the Mexican/Chicano Guillermo Gómez-Peña. I will first analyze the themes of crying, giving, and praying in Fanon. Then I will turn to examine the implications of Gomez-Peña’s performance in "the Temple of Confessions." I will argue that by different and distinctive means, both Fanon and Gómez-Peña’s work offer important elements for the decolonizaton of spirituality in the Americas. They both invite us, along with Baum, to rethink the meaning of radical political praxis.
The Principle of Mercy: Jon Sobrino and the Spirituality of Decolonization
David Tombs, Trinity College, Dublin
Jon Sobrino offers valuable insights into a decolonised Catholic spirituality. As a Basque Jesuit who has spent his working life in El Salvador, Sobrino stands in solidarity with the victims of colonial/neo-colonial power and articulates his spirituality from this perspective. This paper examines the development of Sobrino’s thought from the early 1970s to the present with particular reference to Spirituality of Liberation (1985) and the Principle of Mercy (1992). It highlights Sobrino’s own spiritual sense of "awakening from the sleep of inhumanity" and examines the social and theological influences on his spirituality of liberation in a country ruled by the idols of death
The Spirits Are Dancing within Us
Shelley C. Wiley, Concordia College, Moorhead
This paper will demonstrate the decolonizing spirituality of Haitian Vodou, a spirituality that denounced the colonizers, or colons, and provided a sustaining worldview of survival. During the colonial period, the brutal slavery that was practiced in Haiti meant that the African peoples and their descendants either had to accept that they were not fully human, or they had to keep alive their own traditions that said a loud "no" to the colonizers. This no took the form of resisting the spiritual demoralizaton of slavery while at the same time developing an ethos of hospitality. Contemporary Haitian Vodou is a voice of resistance to racism, economic oppression, and to the political and ecclesiastical injustice that would silence the voices of the majority people. It is this combination of resistance and hospitality that makes it a decolonizing spirituality.
Decolonizing Spiritualities: Discourse and Symbols
Mark Lewis Taylor, Princeton University
This paper argues why "decolonizing spirituality" needs discourse and symbols to focus struggle on and against present U.S. hegemony of global force and influence. A constellation of places and dynamics, including Haiti, Chiapas and Philadelphia are proposed as "sacred sites of struggle."
Pedagogical Uses of Feature Films for Religion Courses
Randal Cummings, California Sate University, Northridge
This paper explores the use of a wide variety of feature films and their specific pedagogical payoffs in the study of themes and paradigms within the World Religions. Specific references to a variety of films available in video stores from Quest for Fire to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon illustrate the engaging value of these films and their relevance in fleshing out the structure of often obscure motifs in the study of religion.
A36
Perceptions and Realities: Hollywood Films Tackle Religion
John Schultes, Iowa State University
Hollywood and popular film in America have a profound power to influence and inform, as well as entertain on a myriad of subjects. Recent films such as Chocolat, Stigmata, The Siege, the Star Trek series, and the Star Wars series address religious issues both in allegorical and overt manners. Sometimes the filmmaker’s agenda when it comes to dealing with religious themes as the centerpiece for a film may appear controversial. Films such as Stigmata and The Siege, are good examples. These two films, in addition to their critiques of religion, also give predictions about their effects on society that may not be very realistic. However shortsighted the predictions and assumptions made by Hollywood filmmakers about religion may be at times, their work helps exemplify the profound effect that religion has on the collection consciousness, and the role it plays in shaping the way people view themselves.
Passionate about Joan: New Approaches in Religion and Film
Melanie Jane Wright, Cambridge University
This paper uses a study of Carl-Theodor Dreyer’s, The Passion of Joan of Arc (La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, 1928) as a vehicle to explore the current modus vivendi of religion and film studies, and to suggest ways in which the field might develop in the future. It highlights the strengths and limitations of much current writing in religion and film (especially its problematic relation with secular film studies) and gives some positive suggestions on how to solve them. It argues that the territory of cultural studies (into which film studies has been shifting) offers a new kind of space, one in which the much touted dialogue between religious (or theological) studies and film studies (or between religion and film) might finally be possible.
Popcorn for Prasadam: Contemporary Cinema as a Ritual Space for Penetrating Maya
Stephen Jenkins, Humboldt State University
This paper explores how Indian traditions about illusion, and techniques of teaching it, might inform our understanding of imaginative processes at work in the cinematic experience and how cinema might be used in teaching Indian traditions about illusion. Many new films, The Matrix, Existenz, Thirteenth Floor, Pleasantville, Open Your Eyes etc., offer pedagogical opportunities, both in terms of their content and in terms of the way they provoke analysis of the processes of imagination involved in the film experience itself. A second dimension of using film in teaching conceptions of illusion is to make use of participant observation in the ritual and creative aspects of the film viewer’s response. The paper will examine how literary techniques of Indian storytelling relate to the content of recent films on illusion and how meditative visualization techniques might be compared to the use of film in teaching illusion.
Paul Ricoeur’s Mythology of Evil as Religion and Film Hermeneutic
Ken Derry, University of Toronto
One of the primary interests of religion and film scholars continues to be the identification of "Christ figures" in movies. If nothing else, the combined effect of this activity has been to demonstrate that a huge variety of Western films - including ostensibly non-religious productions - are deeply indebted to biblical myths. Drawing on the work of Paul Ricoeur, I propose to expand this critical activity by considering the ways in which three contemporary films (The Sweet Hereafter, The Truman Show, and Memento) function as mythic statements about the origins of suffering, or "evil," in modern life.
A37
Tibetan Prophetic Literature in the Notizie Istoriche of Ippolito Desideri, S.J.
Trent Pomplun, Loyola College, Maryland
In this paper, I will trace the influence of Tibetan prophetic literature in the Notizie Istoriche of the Jesuit Father Ippolito Desideri, who witnessed the Dzungar invasion of 1717 and the establishment of the Manchu Protectorate in 1720. After showing how both the Padma lung-bstan and Padma bka"-thang genres influenced Desideri’s interpretation of the political events that shook central Tibet in the early eighteenth century, I will offer some tentative suggestions concerning Desideri’s sources of this literature and their implications for future studies on Desideri and early eighteenth-century politics in Tibet.
Rnying-ma Politics in the Seventeenth Century
Jacob Dalton, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
It is often assumed that followers of the Rnying-ma school remained outside large-scale Tibetan politics, but the dramatic events of the seventeenth century paint a different picture. This paper takes as its starting point the biographical collection on the bla-ma-s of the mdo-dbang lineage by Padma "Phrin-las (1641-1717), the second throne-holder of Rdo-rje "Brag. With this collection, Padma "Phrin-las created a brand new mdo-dbang lineage, in an effort to establish his new monastery as a major institution on the Tibetan religious landscape. Padma "Phrin-las touted his new lineage over and against the two already in existence. An examination of his motivations and their historical roots reveals a Rnying-ma school deeply involved in the politics of the day. While Mongol and Tibetan armies battled on the field, another war was being waged in the parallel realm of prophecy and black magic, between the great masters of the Rnying-ma school.
Controlling Time and Space in Lhasa: The New Year and City Pilgrimage Routes under the Fifth Dalai Lama
Kurtis R. Schaeffer, Harvard University
Sangye Gyatso (1653-1705), the fourth and most important Regent of the Tibetan government founded in 1642 by the Fifth Dalai, sought to assert control in various areas of public religious life. In two minor works, the Story of the New Year’s Fest and the Circumference and Extent of Lhasa and the Potala, Sangye Gyatso hoped to change both the time of the New Year’s Festival in Lhasa and the pilgrimage routes around Lhasa. By controlling time and space in Lhasa, so to speak, Sangye Gyatso sought to subsume public religious life in Lhasa under the growing power of the Ganden government, the Dalai Lama, and under the Potala palace, which symbolized this power. This essay will describe Sangye Gyatso’s aims and set them in the context of his position as Regent.
Religious Life in a Seventeenth-Century Tibetan Monastery
Bryan Cuevas, Florida State University
It is not possible to comprehend the complexities of religion, politics, and social life in premodern Tibet without a thorough understanding of the nature and organization of the monastic institution. In this paper I consider the structure and principles of operation of Mindroling monastery as outlined in its first monastic constitution written in 1689 by the institution’s founder, the esteemed treasure revealer Terdak Lingpa (1646-1714). My main objectives will be to demonstrate the value of Mindroling’s monastic constitution as an illuminating social-historical document and to offer a few insights into the nature of religious life and polity of one of the most influential Nyingmapa monasteries in central Tibet at the dawn of Gelukpa supremacy.
A38
Defining Historical Consciousness
Charles J.T. Talar, University of St. Thomas
This paper will build on the seminar’s panel discussion last year to propose a working definition of historical consciousness.
Historical Consciousness and the Jesus Seminar
Marcus J. Borg, Oregon State University
A set of reflections on the Jesus Seminar, highlighting the way both its work and its reception by the public reflect our current cultural mind-set or "Zeitgeist": living on the border and in the transition from modern to post-modern historical consciousness.
Historical Consciousness and Baptists in the South: Owning and Disowning a Tradition
Bill J. Leonard, Wake Forest University
Baptists in the American South owned and disowned their history variously. Colonial Baptists viewed themselves within the church’s dissenting tradition, over against religious establishments from Constantine to the Puritans. Old Landmarkism fabricated an historical consciousness that traced Baptists through dissenters-Donatists, Cathari-back to Jesus, Jordan and the "First Baptist Church" of Jerusalem. Popular Landmarkism contributed to an a-historical consciousness implicit in the idea that Baptists were an extension of the New Testament community, duplicating the true church in every age. Twentieth-century white Southern Baptists often softened their slavery-related origins with the euphemistic "sectionalism." African American Baptists formed a certain historical consciousness as an "Exodus people" moving from slavery to deliverance on history’s "long march." A contemporary generation, white and black, has replaced interest in Baptist consciousness with a concern for generic Christianity.
A39
The "Indian Sphinx": Conceiving South Asian Religion in A. W. von Schlegel’s Indische Bibliothek
Bradley L. Herling, Boston University
A.W. von Schlegel’s shadow looms large in the history of German literature, but he is less known for contributions to the study of the South Asian religion. But in 1818 Schlegel assumed the first chair of Indology in Germany and from 1820-1830 oversaw the publication of the Indische Bibliothek, one of the first journals of its kind in Europe. In this paper I explore the significance of this publication in the history of the study of religion. I argue that Schlegel wrestles with the tension between the Romantic image of South Asian religion and study of Indian religion as the object of an academic discipline. Consideration of the journal leads to reflection on contemporary riddles: What is the proper role for the written text in the study of religion? How do disciplinary myths and models draw the scholar to positing a pure origin for religious traditions?
Religion at the 1883 Colonial and Export Trade Exhibition in Amsterdam
Arie L. Molendijk, University of Groningen
The paper focuses on the representation of religion at the Amsterdam Colonial and Export Trade Exhibition in 1883, which was the first of its kind in the Netherlands. First, I will discuss the various ways religions were represented at the exhibition. Secondly, I will examine the interplay between the economic and colonial project on the one hand and scholarship in general and the study of religion in particular on the other, which is evident from the many conferences which were held simultaneously. I will conclude with some remarks on the international ramifications of the study of religion (the organizers tried in vain to obtain items from the collections of Pitt-Rivers in Oxford and Emile Guimet in Paris) and the museological conservation of ethnographical and religious objects.
Exhibiting Buddhism: Religion, Nationalism, and Japanese Agency at the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions
John Harding, University of Pennsylvania
The Japanese delegates who represented Buddhism at the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago were active agents whose motivations, strategies, and interpretations of events reveal complementary religious and nationalist ambitions. The delegates described Buddhism as both authentically ancient and uniquely vital in the modern era. This portrayal depicted Buddhism as rational, modern, universal, consistent with science and equal to or better than competing traditions. Their roles in "exhibiting religion" participated in the hierarchical dynamics of global politics, cultural prestige and the underlying assumptions of social evolutionism that informed the biases of their hosts. Through their representation of Buddhism, the Japanese delegates promoted both Buddhism and the Japanese nation abroad, and they cultivated a supportive relationship between Buddhism and the nation at home. Their presentations echoed and informed religious and political dynamics in Meiji Japan, the formation of modern Buddhism, and the complex cross-cultural influences of modern religious encounter.
A40
Human Rights Atrocities and the Ambiguities of the "Missionary Position": The Case of the Disciples of Christ Congo Mission (DCCM) in the Congo Free State, 1897-1908
Paul Allen Williams, University of Nebraska, Omaha
The history of the Congo Free State (1885-1908) includes atrocities against African peoples committed by agents of the colonial state and opposition to atrocities on the part of Africans, Europeans, and Americans. These state-sponsored acts stimulated an organized international human rights campaign at the beginning of the twentieth century, intended to end the human rights abuses and to force King Leopold II to abdicate his rights to administer the state. Baptist and Presbyterian activities in the campaign have been well documented, however my research uncovered evidence that the Disciples of Christ Congo Mission (DCCM) also participated in the reform campaign.
Never without Shame: Intersubjectivity, the Holocaust, and Ethical Responsibility
Robert Erlewine, Rice University
The events of September 11 make manifest the radical need to reassess the relationship between religion and ethics. As the dust settled on a world shocked by an unexpected tragedy of momentous proportion, the only theme many scholars could agree upon was the almost complete polarization of North American and Middle-Eastern, Islamic cultures. Questions arise: How can two disparate cultures bridge such wide gaps? How can we develop a language of shared responsibility that seeks to avoid future tragedies? In revisiting this tragedy it seems helpful to remember the paradigmatic tragedy of the twentieth century, the Holocaust, which claimed the lives of millions of Jews, Gypsies, gays and lesbians, and other marginalized peoples. It would seem prudent to also revisit the ethical reflections of two prominent Jewish thinkers and camp survivors, Primo Levi and Emmanuel Levinas.
Anatomy of Religious Terrorism in the United States
Melissa Fennewald, Florida State University
This paper will develop a typology of crimes that are commited as a result of religious convictions. Religious, criminological, and sociopathological literature will be reviewed in an attempt to explain such aberrant behavior. Distinguishing differences and similarities between religious/social groups and delineating the intersections of belief and motivation for criminal behavior will be its main goal. The units of analysis for this paper will be case studies of religiously motivated groups in the United States such as the anti-abortion movement, the militia or Patriot movement, and the "extreme right" who have used terrorist violence in connection with their faith. Historically, these groups have murdered, bombed, harassed, and beat their way into the public consciousness in order to advance their version of religious truth. The purpose of this paper will be to explore the contradiction between religion and commiting crimes in the name of religion.
Radical Islam, Human Rights, and Terrorism
Thomas A. Idinopulos, Miami University
This paper begins by surveying the condition of human rights within Muslim countries today, with particular attention to Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. The important development here is the lead taken by the regimes of these countries to mount what has come to be called a "human rights jihad," namely a campaign to divert attention from what is recognized in the West as human rights and replace them with what is now called "Islamic human rights." This paper focuses of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. In this context we deal with terrorism. Here we take up modern Egypt and the rise of the religion-political group called the Muslim Brothers (Ikhwan).
Blasphemy, Religious Hatred, and Free Speech: Exploring a Dilemma for Contemporary Human Rights Discourse
Anna Doswell, University of Derby
In the post-September 11 era, Islamaphobia in the United Kingdom has reached new heights with British Muslims experiencing increasing levels of offence, hostility and violence from the media and often, their neighbors. The aim of this paper is to explore the interaction of law and human rights in protecting religious adherents from hostility, violence or offence and the impact of any such protection on expressive freedom. Is the state under a duty to enact and enforce law to protect these individuals' rights to freedom of religion and non-discrimination? If so, what should be its content? How might this law impact on others' right to freedom of religion.
A41
Panel: Status of Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession Committee - The Public Role of Racial and Ethnic Scholars
Daisy L. Machado, Texas Christian University, Presiding
Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, Drew University
Chris Jocks, Dartmouth College
Sheema Khan, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Ottawa, ON
Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, Graduate Theological Union
Jung Ha Kim, Georgia State University
It is generally known that the aim of racial and ethnic scholarship is to generate new knowledge, challenge old stereotypes, correct wrong interpretations, and re-educate the dominant society about the minority communities. A growing cadre of racial and ethnic public intellectuals is gradually emerging for the purpose of taking their scholarly findings beyond the halls of academe onto the public stage where their lectures and debates aim at influencing public policies and empowering their respective communities. This special topic forum provides an opportunity for a diverse panel of scholars to assess critically the emerging public role of racial and ethnic scholars. The following panelists will share their experiences: Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Drew University; Chris Jocks, Dartmouth College; Sheema Khan, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Canada; Jung Ha Kim, Georgia State University; and Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, Graduate Theological Union. Michael Eric Dyson, University of Pennsylvania, will respond.
A42
Academically-Based Community Service: A Liberation Feminist Pedagogy for Non-Violence and Justice-Making
Beth Blissman, Oberlin College
This project explores possibilities for individual and communal change related to the pedagogy of Academically-Based Community Service (ABCS), also known as Service Learning. I argue that this approach to education, when combined with the tool of ecosocial location, not only demonstrates pedagogical creativity and analysis, but also supports a larger effort to address our current ecosocial context. This paper lifts up the concept of ecosocial location as grounding for a liberation feminist ecological ethic embracing values of justice-making and solidarity. The efficacy of this particular (and particularist) tool will need to continue to be tested, and enter into conversation with womanist, mujerista and other liberationist theological and ethical models. However, it provides grounding for one ethical stance containing constructive resources for transformation of our ecosocial context from patterns of death and destruction to life and creative passion.
Teaching Religion and Hate: The Crucible for a "Pedagogy of Emergence/y"
Fran Grace, University of Redlands
Teaching a course called "Religion and Hate" rewired me as a teacher. When I first offered this course to address the connection between religion and hatred/violence/social injustices, I assumed that multi-culturalizing my content was enough. But as the semester unfolded and religious hate and prejudices emerged to dominate the class dynamics, I realized that I had to transform my process and challenge my then-Freirean pedagogical assumption that a liberatory outcome had to be the class goal. In this presentation, I will address how the teaching of this extremely difficult and tense class became the crucible for developing an "Emergence/y pedagogy."
A Mockery of Justice: Using Role-Playing to Teach Intercultural Ethics
Glenn Whitehouse, Florida Gulf Coast University
In this presentation, I will discuss two of my attempts to create active learning environments for the purpose of teaching about cultural interactions within societies and between religious groups - the Mock Society Project and the Mock Religion Project. In both of these activities, groups of students developed imaginary cultural and religious groups with their own customs, norms and values. I then used an on-going role-playing situation in order to place the groups in the position of having to make concrete decisions about intercultural justice for themselves. One benefit of this method is that it provides vivid experiential examples of some of the main ethical concepts taught in the course. The method also tends to reduce the tendency of ethical discourse to get lost in insoluble ethical dilemmas, focusing instead on the resources of cooperation and ingenuity that can collectively be brought to bear on a practical problem.
An Interdisciplinary Investigation of Environmental Justice in the Borderlands
Laura Hobgood-Oster, Southwestern University
This presentation analyzes an interdisciplinary project focusing on ecojustice issues in Humanos Derechos, a colonia in Matamoras, Mexico. Borderland colonias are notorious for their dangerous environmental and social conditions. The project brings together three disciplines -- religion, chemistry and anthropology --integrating chemical analysis of waterways and water supplies in the colonia, investigation of colonia residents, perceptions of and concerns about their environment, and the religious-based organizations working to improve colonia conditions.
The project establishes a model for intensive, unique interdisciplinary work, focuses on issues of ecojustice and examines the application research outcomes. It is anticipated that the results will have practical implications and, in collaboration with colonia residents and relevant organizations and governmental bodies, could work towards sustained improvement of colonia conditions. The results might also provide insight to religious organizations as they attempt to formulate community-based programs that work towards justice in areas facing complex environmental degradation.
Teaching toward Justice: Dilemmas of Pedagogical Activism
Melissa M. Wilcox, University of California, Santa Barbara
This presentation considers the dilemmas involved in teaching for social justice, and explores possible solutions. It begins with several pedagogical challenges: How does one create a classroom environment that respects all points of view when the students (and the teacher) hold mutually exclusive worldviews? To what extent should social power structures affect the attention granted to differing viewpoints in the activist classroom? How does one teach about diversity and intolerance among a relatively homogeneous group of students? And how does a teacher’s disempowered social status, as a member of a marginalized group, interact with the power she holds in the classroom? Questions of power are especially difficult for new teachers, who are relatively low-status as faculty, yet wield far more institutional power than they did as graduate students. The presentation considers solutions based in both the author’s experiences and the ideas of radical educators such as hooks and Freire.
A43
The Faustian Hermeneutic: Biblical Interpretation and Goethe’s Poetics of Allegory
David L. Simmons, University of Chicago
Critical discourse on allegory has been kept alive in the late twentieth century in two sectors of the academy: as a poetic mode, by literary and critical theorists; as a method of scriptural exegesis, by biblical scholars. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is the first modern critical thinker to differentiate between allegory and symbol. This paper reexamines Goethe’s contributions to an aesthetic and poetic theory of allegory, with two goals in mind: to address a prevalent misprision of Goethe’s evaluation of allegory, and to suggest a different way of positing the problem of allegory in biblical studies. After surveying the modern origins of allegory as a critical concept and its discussion among Bible scholars, this paper suggests that a new appreciation for Goethe’s theory of allegory responds to questions raised about allegorical interpretation of the Bible.
Re-hearing Qur’an in Open Translation: Ta"wil, Postmodern Inquiry, and Poetic Hermeneutics
Neil Douglas-Klotz, Edinburgh Institute for Advanced Learning
This paper uses hermeneutical and comparative methods to explore the similarities between an esoteric Qur’anic interpretative tradition, modern attempts to render the Qur’an in open poetic forms, and post-modern inquiry strategies. Classical Ismaili and Sufi scholars posited an "inner" hermeneutic called ta"wil, which allowed for multi-valent, non-literal interpretations of the Qur’anic text (Schimmel 1994, Daftary 1999). Parallels to both ta"wil and recent attempts to render the Qur’an through Western poetic forms can be found in the postmodern "new paradigm'social science research models of Torbert, Reason and Rowan (1981). The dialogue between ancient hermeneutics and postmodern inquiry suggests the development of a poetic "hermeneutics of indeterminacy" when dealing with Qur’anic texts in Western language translation. Such a hermeneutics would explore the boundaries of text, receptor-hearer, and the inter-subjective phenomenology of interpretation in order to see and hear Islam with Western eyes and ears in a more complex way.
"Literature and Theology" and the Re-sourcing of Kant
Andrew Hass, University of Houston
This paper will look at the theoretical grounds of the discipline of "literature and theology," broadly defined, as it has been sought in Kant’s critique. Here Kant’s understanding of imagination will be explored as it is found in the Transcendental Deductions of his first Critique, where the role of imagination becomes the dividing point of the two versions offered. The groundless nature of this imagination, as later pointed out in Heidegger’s reading of Kant, and in Zizek’s reading of Heidegger’s reading, gives literature and theology its starting point, as it brings imagination before an abyss whose negotiation can only be managed through the merging of the creative space of art with the theological space of the "groundless" or unknown. This new open-ended "discipline" then returns to Kant what Kant shrinks away from: the intractable nature of imaginative power that grants us the will and the courage to face the unknown.
Harrowing Hermeneutics: Caputo’s Radical Hermeneutics "In the Penal Colony"
Gitte Butin, University of Virginia
Having harrowed objectifying, methodological textual approaches since its Gadamerian transformation, one may ask whether hermeneutics in its turn needs harrowing. Taking its point of departure from John Caputo’s affirmative answer to this question in his recent book More Radical Hermeneutics, the present paper raises the same question to Caputo: Radical enough? If not, then how much more does it take? The present paper lets Caputo’s deconstructively inspired hermeneutics encounter the horizon of Paul de Man’s work on the blindness and insight at play between a text’s hermeneutical/representational reading and its rhetorical reading. After outlining the theoretical underpinnings of these two stances, we visit the Penal Colony: by offering both a more radical hermeneutical reading as well as a rhetorical reading of Kafka’s text the present paper invites the reader to submit to inscription.
On the Death of the Pilgrim: The Postcolonial Hermeneutics of J. L. Mehta
Thomas B. Ellis, University of Pennsylvania
In the work of J. L. Mehta, we find tropic representations of loss and death. Perhaps thwarting expectation, these images (e.g., the Pilgrim) bespeak not of mourning for such loss, but rather an embrace of and reconciliation to death. Recently we have seen the use of specific literary tropes as representations of certain types of subjectivity. In the work of E. Levinas in particular, we find "ethnotropes" characterizing transcendental subjectivity and ethical subjectivity, e.g., the Greek Hero/Ulysses and the Jewish Nomad/Abraham. While the Hero always recuperates himself in the centripetal return to his homeland, and the Nomad always anxiously awaits the coming to presence of the other, Mehta’s Hindu Pilgrim recognizes that the other always withdraws, thereby dashing any hopes for the plenitude of being, a certain postcolonial emphasis. Embracing its death predicated on the withdrawn other, the Pilgrim mourns not but adoringly loves the present absence of the other.
Sanctified Violence in Ritual and in War: Homeric Oath-Sacrifice and Ritual Performance as Metaphorical Transformation
Margo Kitts, Merrimack College
This paper approaches Homeric oath-sacrificing narratives from the perspective of Fernandez, Tambiah, and Ricouer, collectively enlisted to support the ritual-performance-as-metaphorical-transformation theory usually associated with Fernandez. Unlike commensal sacrifices in the Iliad, oath-sacrifices emphasize, rather than camouflage, the death of the victim, and their ominous texture is disseminated into subsequent narrative events. Explicit textual evidence will support the metaphorical transformation of oath-making witnesses to holy defenders of oaths, of perjurers to sacrificial victims, and of other casualties of war to casualties of sacrifice. As a foundational western war text, the Iliad’s themes shape our own sensibilities and the way we respond to the Iliad, but the fossilized nature of oath-making rituals and the semantic associations affixed to their stiff sequence of acts, allows us to speculate on Homeric imagination, as well.
A44
Modern Chinese Buddhist Perspectives on Japanese Buddhism
Fumihiko Sueki, University of Tokyo
Chinese intellectuals in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century had complex attitudes towards Japan; on the one hand, Japan was a model of modernization and, on the other hand, it was an aggressive power that threatened China. In the case of Buddhism, the situation was quite similar. These complex attitudes continued during the China-Japan war in the 1930s and 1940s. Even those who resisted the Japanese invasion initially had friendly feelings towards Japanese Buddhists and intended to use Japanese Buddhism as a model for the reform of Chinese Buddhism. In this paper, I would like to examine the activities and ideas of Yang Wenhui, Leguan, and Taixu in order to demonstrate the complexity of Chinese Buddhist attitudes towards modern Japanese Buddhism.
Modern Japanese Buddhist Proselytization in East Asia: Societal Reform and the Doctrine of Memorializing Enemies and Compatriots with Equal Compassion
Akeshi Kiba, Otani University
In this paper, I examine how, under the guise of proselytization aimed at helping East Asian Buddhists achieve modernization on a par with Japan’s, Japanese Buddhists attempted to reform Buddhism on the continent. The Japanese thereby hoped to create a bulwark against Western colonialism in Asia. Japanese Buddhist attitudes toward continental Buddhists were ambivalent, vacillating between cooperation and contempt. In my examination of Japanese proselytization efforts in East Asia, I will concentrate on sermons concerning the doctrine of onshin byodo, that is, memorializing enemies and friends with absolute equality. These sermons aimed to console and pacify the victims of aggression, while further confirming among the Japanese their own sense of superiority. Concentrating on Buddhist social reform efforts and the doctrine of onshin byodo, I will consider the nature of Japanese Buddhist proselytization efforts in East Asia and, more broadly, the intertwining broader topics of modernity, Buddhism, and East Asia.
Rethinking "Pro-Japanese" Korean Buddhism
Micah L. Auerback, Princeton University
Between 1877 and 1945, Korean Buddhists showed a variety of responses to the enticements of Japanese Buddhist missionaries and later, to the political domination of the Japanese colonial government. Contemporary historians generally classify Buddhists of the time as either "pro-Japanese" collaborators or "anti-Japanese" patriots. My paper builds on Pori Park’s initial insight into the limits of this binary classification and offers a more sustained critique of it. First, I critically trace the historiography of the category of "pro-Japanese" Buddhism. Second, I use the writings of selected "pro-Japanese" figures to develop an alternative classification, demonstrating that common motives could underlie both resistance and collaboration. I conclude by contending that instead of simply decrying the fact and extent of collaboration, we should examine how Buddhists acted subjectively during this era, and interrogate the historical conditions for the production and exercise of that subjectivity even under a repressive colonial environment.
The Intersection of Politics and Religion: The Japanese Buddhist Presence in Korea
Pori Park, University of Colorado, Boulder
This paper examines the process by which Japanese Buddhist orders began their missionary work on the Korean peninsula in the late-nineteenth century. It sheds light on the political implications of the Japanese overseas mission activities by investigating the relationship between the government and the Buddhist orders. It then presents the ramifications of the political subjugation of the religion for both Japanese and Korean Buddhism. It also presents an analysis of the responses of Korean Buddhists to the influx of Japanese Buddhism and colonial rule. The author argues that the naiveté of Korean Buddhists toward colonial politics produced the confused reactions of the Korean order vis-à-vis the Japanese regime. The paper also presents the religious relevance of the Buddhist responses of both nations to the "new" circumstances and addresses whether these Buddhist interpretations of the political situation reflect Buddhist worldviews and promote Buddhist fellowship between the two nations.
A45
Lectio Divina and the Perfection of the Soul: The Physiological Process of Memoria and the Transformation of the Individual in Medieval Western Christian Monasticism
Shawn Madison Krahmer, St Josephs University
Using the work of Mary Carruthers, I intend to argue that the Aristotelian somatic understanding of memory and the function of memory in the moral transformation of the individual informs, however implicitly, the high medieval monastic traditions of the Christian west, and makes possible not only the turning away from the world required of novices, but the face to face meeting with God that is the signature of mature contemplatives. By controlling the content of text, and thereby controlling the formation of memory, the monastic community forms and reforms the person into a citizen of the monastic and Christian communities on earth. At the same time, and through the same process, the person is formed in the image of God until the mystical transfiguration of the soul occurs and the individual is able to meet God face to face.
Semiotics, Kinetics, and Mnemonic Strategies in Rabbinic Judaism
Michael D. Swartz, Ohio State University
On the one hand, the concept of the Oral Torah implies that the memorization and recitation of traditions constitutes a sacred activity; on the other hand, recent research has shown that the importance of memorization in Rabbinic Judaism is consonant with its importance in the larger Greco-Roman world. This paper will be an exploration of mnemonic and learning strategies in Rabbinic civilization, focusing on the semiotics of mnemonic formulae developed in the talmudic period and on such physical dimensions of mnemonics as chanting, physiological theories of memory, and patterns of Rabbinic discipleship designed to reinforce memory. Recent work by Mary Carruthers, Martin Jaffee and others will be used to place these strategies into cultural context.
Empty Texts/Sacred Meaning: Reading as Spiritual Practice in Chinese Buddhism
Dale S. Wright, Occidental College
This paper attempts to articulate the ways in which reading functioned as spiritual practice in Chinese Buddhism. It traces the history of reading in Chinese Buddhism up to its culmination in the Chan tradition, and focuses there on the critique of reading that played so formative a role in the sense of identity that this school had developed. There we find the Taoist inspired anti-textual text in a variety of forms playing a central part in spiritual practice. These texts were stories that valorized iconoclastic acts against the sacred texts of Buddhism, or that described audacious acts in which texts and reading were submitted to devastating critique. These new texts not only failed to diminish the role of reading in Chan Buddhism, they heightened it, and in the process invented new modes of reading that became closely linked to the distinct forms of subjectivity for which Chan is well-known.
(Trans)Formation through the Veda: The Case of the Indian Svadhyāyā
David Carpenter, St Josephs University
The ancient Indian textual practice of svadhyāyā, or the personal recitation of the Veda, was an essential practice in the reproduction of ancient Brahmanical society. At an early date, however, it also became a spiritual practice that went beyond the goal of the preservation of the Brahmanical ritual and social order and was adapted to the goal of the spiritual transformation of the individual. This paper will examine the relationship between what we think of as ritual practice, aimed at the reproduction of social formations, and spiritual practice aimed at individual transformation. The focus will be on the practices of memorization and recitation, and traditional spiritual psychology that underlay these practices in ancient India. Use will be made of Mary Carruther’s extensive work on the importance of memory and memorization in the culture of the Western Middle Ages and of studies on the psychophysiology of ritual.
A46
God’s "Uuord" and the Conversion of Saxony
Rachel Fulton, University of Chicago
This paper argues on the basis of the Old Saxon "Heliand: and Paschasius Radbertus' "De corpore et sanguine Domini" that the development of the doctrine of God’s bodily, "historical" presence in the bread and wine of the Mass was itself an artifact of the Carolingian effort to convert the pagans of Saxony. Its argument is 1) that the success of this effort depended on the Christian missionaries' ability to "translate" the Savior heliand Christ into a god recognizable as such by Saxon pagans for whom words of power (such as the words spoken by the priest at the Mass to consecrate the elements) were things written (runes), not spoken (liturgical formulas), and Fate, not the gods, governed the destinies of humankind, and 2) that the missionaries (like Paschasius and the author of the Heliand) were both conscious of and responsive to this necessity in their writings for the converts.
Medieval Franciscan Hebraists: Constructing a Historical Jesus
Deeana Klepper, Boston University
Franciscan friars were the driving force behind the incorporation of Hebrew learning into the Christian study of the Bible in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Focusing on the work of Nicholas of Lyra (1270-1349), whose Postilla Llitteralis Super Vetus et Novum Testamentum was one of the most important Bible commentaries in the medieval Latin tradition as well as the most heavily dependent upon Hebrew and rabbinic interpretation, I connect this interest with distinctive aspects of medieval Franciscan spirituality. I suggest that, influenced by a Franciscan emphasis on imitatio christi and a tendency toward historicizing biblical exegesis, they turned to the hebraica veritas and Jewish exegetical traditions as a way to draw closer to a historical Jesus. By illuminating the Jewish world in which Jesus walked, the Franciscan Hebraist also provided a strong interpretive continuity between Israel before the incarnation and Christendom as versus Israel after the incarnation.
"To Be Brought Up in a Christian Home": The WMS Work among Chinese and Aboriginal Girls in British Columbia
Kerry Fast, University of Toronto
In the late nineteenth century, The Canadian Women’s Missionary Society of the Methodist Church (WMS) supported missionaries in two areas in British Columbia: educational work among girls in remote Aboriginal communities, and rescue work of Chinese girls in Victoria. In both contexts the WMS established residential homes for girls. Through a comparative study of the letters WMS missionaries wrote in the WMS’s circular The Monthly Leaflet, describing their work, this paper examines how WMS missionaries constructed the "body" as it pertained to Aboriginal and Chinese girls, as a site of disease and sexuality, and how this was inextricably linked to their self-perception of mothers establishing Christian homes for their students. This paper also probes into the complexity of the missionaries'self-perception as their own middle class values and attitudes intersected with the deepening connections that developed with their students.
Converting Slaves: The Place of Work in Catholic and Quaker Evangelization in Nineteenth-Century East Africa
Paul V. Kollman, University of Notre Dame
In their evangelization of slaves in nineteenth-century East Africa, both English Quakers and Catholic members of the Spiritan Congregation relied on work to effect the conversion and civilizing they sought. Both of their missions grew famous as sites of civilizing through work. Yet their ideologies of work differed, and comparing the place of work in the two missionary strategies reveals the differing notions of selfhood and communal life upon which they relied in their efforts at conversion. The Spiritans sought to form members of a church. Thus work, though its role changed as the mission developed, always had a theological cast within a larger evangelizing strategy. The Quakers, on the other hand, saw rationally remunerated work as the key to remaking slaves' characters. By learning to work for a wage the former slaves would perfect their freedom and achieve self-policing personhood more like prototypical modern selfhood.
The Devil in the Topknot: Conflicting Definitions of Conversion in Colonial South India
Eliza Kent, Chicago, IL
The history of Protestant Christianity in South India is punctuated by conflicts among missionaries and between missionaries and converts over the degree to which different cultural practices conflicted with adherence to Christianity. Such arguments frequently provided occasions for explicit theorizing as to what constituted genuine conversion. Some missionaries insisted on a model of conversion as a sudden, mysterious and supernatural transformation of the individual through grace, others regarded the moment of graceful transformation as but an initiatory first step, which could be reversed, and which needed to be completed and fulfilled through a progressive program of changes in lifestyle. By combining analyses of missionary texts with an examination of legal definitions of conversion, I hope to show that it was the latter understanding of conversion that had the most influence in colonial India.
Dalit Christian Conversion, Resistance, and Salvation in Northern India
Mathew N. Schmalz, College of the Holy Cross
This paper will examine the experience of Dalit converts to Catholicism in a North Indian village. The paper first examines the history of a North Indian Catholic mission, established by French-Canandian Capuchins and then entrusted to an indigenous Indian religious order. As material goods from abroad flood the mission, conversions from Dalit (Untouchable) castes increase. But as the debate grows over what kind of "conversions'such aid is fostering, the mission stops the distribution of material goods and the number of Catholics radically declines. The paper then examines the case study of an Untouchable convert to Catholicism named John Masih who became an outspoken critic of the Catholic Church. Masih’s multiple conversions show that the logic of dissent embodied by conversion does not "end" with the conversion itself. Instead, conversion can carry the logic of dissent though the tactical deployment of a variety of multiple religious and social identities.
A47
Being There: The Role of Presence in Ritual Reconstructions of September 11
Carolyn Marvin, Universitiy of Pennsylvania
The success of commemorative ritual depends partly on making what is commemorated present and compelling to participants. Paradoxically, the absence of any distance from commemorated events would do away with ritual understanding altogether. Resolving presence is thus key to the process by which commemorative forms are constructed. I will examine the discourse of distance and presence around September 11 as an occasion for thinking about the vacillating relationship between presence and ritual form and to show how such discourse is part of rendering this group crisis morally graspable.
No Novenas for the Dead: Public Rites of Mourning and the Burning Man Festival
Sarah Pike, California State University, Chico
"Mom, you need no novenas to be in my heart," read one of the hundreds of messages penciled on the Mausoleum at the 2001 Burning Man festival. Ritual action around the Temple was a kind of anti-rite of passage. "No novenas suggests festival-goers' dissatisfaction with available religious options for mourning their dead and the ways in which mourning was extended beyond the festival space. Private stories of loss became collective memories at sites of ritual action around the Mausoleum, in cyberspace and through national news coverage. What are some issues raised by significant rites of mourning that take place in public rather than in private settings? What does it mean for this moment in American cultural history that the family of mourners is redefined to include websites and Chronicle readers in the San Francisco Bay Area?
Rituals of Crisis and Commemoration in the Mediated Experience: The Cultural Wake of September 11
Stewart M. Hoover and Anna Maria Russo, University of Colorado, Boulder
This paper focuses on the mediation of the World Trade Center attacks as an inquiry into the nature and status of rituals of crisis and commemoration in contemporary life. The concept of ritual, traditionally thought of in relation to a sacred religious sphere, has moved out into more secular or non-religious domains in recent scholarship. Media studies literature has sought to integrate the idea of ritual into considerations of the role of media and mediated experience in contemporary life. The purpose of this paper is to enrich the conversation and available theoretical framework on the relationship between ritual and media. What we think of as "media events," (crises and commemorations such as state funerals, royal weddings, etc.) are one framework through which to look at this relationship.
The Construction of an Imagined Bereaved Community: Oklahoma City and the Media
Edward Tabor Linenthal, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh
This illustrated presentation will examine the complex interaction between family members, survivors, and media representatives that led to the creation of a media-generated imagined bereaved community that responded to the presentation of the impact of mass murder in a variety of ways. The presentation will pay particular attention to the impact of the famous photograph of the "fireman and the baby," tracing its transformation into art and memorial ideas.
A48
Scriptural Authority in Ramanuja’s Sri-Bhasya
Sucharita Adluri, University of Pennsylvania
Ramanuja in his Sri-Bhasya, a commentary on Badarayana’s Vedanta Sutras, accords particular scriptures authority based on his analysis of verbal or scriptural testimony (sabda). In Visistadvaita epistemology sabda or verbal testimony is the most authoritative way of gaining knowledge of Brahman. For Ramanuja, all scriptural texts that do not contradict the Vedas, such as the Visnu Purana are authoritative whereas, some of the orthodox schools of philosophy (darsanas) such as Samkhya are found to be un-Vedic. This paper examines sections in the Sri Bhasya that explicitly deal with the issue of scriptural authority by addressing the convenience of the category of verbal testimony (sabda).
"Like Oil in Sesame Seeds": Upanishadic Views of the Vedanta within the Veda
Signe Cohen, University of Pennsylvania
This paper examines the usage of the terms "Veda" and "Vedanta" in the Upanishads. After exploring the Upanishadic views of the Vedic canon both as a textual and cosmogonic entity, I will discuss how the Upanishads position themselves in relation to this established Vedic canon. The usage of the term "Vedanta" both in the classical Upanishads and in later sectarian Upanishads will be analyzed. I will demonstrate that the term "Vedanta" is employed in the Upanishads to create a new canonicity that simultaneously draws upon and supersedes the Vedic canon.
The Veda in American Vedanta
Laurie Louise Patton, Emory University
What does it mean to introduce an ancient religious canon to a new culture, only to claim in the next sentence that the canon has been superceded? This paper will argue that such is the rhetorical fate of the Veda in American Vedanta. I present a survey of the informal publications (sermons, pamphlets, newsletters, and interviews) of several American Vedanta societies (roughly 1923-present) in Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, and New York. I will examine three different aspects of this complexity of the American Veda: 1) the accounts of the Veda in Vivekananda’s imagination; 2) American accounts of the flaws as well as the prestige of the early Vedic world view; and 3) American accounts of the superiority of the Vedantic perspective.
Madhva and the Veda: Defining Sarvavidya
Valerie Stoker, University of Pennsylvania
This paper examines the way in which Madhva (1238-1317), the founder of the Dvaita Vedanta system of Hindu philosophy, conceptualized the parameters of the Brahminical canon using the construct of sarvavidya or "all sacred lore." In his commentary on the Rgvedic hymns, the Rgbhasya, Madhva’s definition of sarvavidya is deliberately vague so that he can include other texts besides the Veda in his definition of a valid source of religious truth. These extra-Vedic sources include the Vaisnava Puranas and a body of unknown srutis which fourteenth-century critics accused Madhva of fabricating. Simultaneously, Madhva specifically delimits the parameters of the sacred corpus by excluding the Saivagamas. By exploring the manner in which Madhva’s sarvavidya expands and delimits the Brahminical canon, this paper presents an unknown yet critical aspect of Madhva’s Vedanta and contributes to the broader discussion of canonicity in Brahminical thought.
A49
Prohibited Acts and Forbidden Partners: The Consequences of Unlawful Sexual Activity in Ninth-Century Sunni Legal Texts
Kecia Ali, Duke University
Improper sexual relationships in Islamic law have long been recognized to carry strong punishment. The category of proscribed sexual activity that jurists sought to regulate, however, was much broader than illicit intercourse (zina) and encompassed consequences beyond the application of the hadd penalties of flogging or stoning. Though they did not oppose hadd punishments, the jurists' main concern when dealing with illicit sexual activity -- fornication, adultery, rape, and sodomy (even between spouses) -- was to regulate its effects just as they would those stemming from "proper" intercourse between licit partners. The jurists were generally most concerned with determining whether a sexual act obliged dower payment and whether barriers to marriage with certain kin of the illicit partner were created. Exploring the jurists' treatment of these issues can help us to have a more nuanced understanding of the legal regulation of sex and sexuality in the first Muslim centuries.
Shah Hussayn’s Sexual-Spiritual Play: Homoerotic Acts and Public Morality in the Mughal Era
Scott A. Kugle, Swarthmore College
This paper explores Shah Hussayn’s life as a Sufi and saint, examining symbolic meaning of "sex acts" outside of assumptions about hetero-normative "sexuality." Hussayn was a patron saint of sixteenth-century Lahore. His public displays of ecstatic, antinomian piety earned him patronage among the Mughals. A hagiography presents Hussayn breaking norms of marriage, sexual expression and orientation. Hussayn realigned "sexual deviance" into "sacred difference." This paper presents this hagiography to reflect on the relationship between Hussayn and his companion, Madho. It portrays them as lover/beloved and saint/disciple, implying an intersection of sexual acts and spiritual growth. It presents them as older/younger man and as Muslim/Hindu, public roles that brought them under scrutiny and even persecution by Brahmin elites and Muslim police. Did Islamic law inform perceptions of public morality? Or did common patriarchy have more effect? This paper suggests that Hussayn’s "spirituality of play" negotiated sexuality and public morality.
"Your Wives Are a Tilth for You…" Interpretations of Qur’an 2:223
Khaleel Mohammed, Brandeis University
The classical exegetes state that the above verse was revealed in response to Rabbinic discussions on the allowable type of sexual intercourse between a man and his wife. The Talmud contains such a discussion; but if the verse was to answer the Rabbis, the exegetes expanded the matter way beyond its scope. Based on various interpretations of two terms, harth and annaa, they extended the discourse from vaginal sex to debating the permissibility of anal intercourse and of coitus interruptus. This study analyses the exegetical literature from the early classical period (al-Tabari, al Tusi) to the modern (Rida, Tabataba’i), dealing with works from both the Sunni and Shia madhabs. It seeks to find if the different viewpoints can be attributed to specific schools of thought, and if there has been any substantial change in the debate in the modern times.
Excising the Other: Islamic Visions of Male Circumcision
Kathryn M. Kueny, Lawrence University
All three Abrahamic traditions explore the issue of male circumcision in their sacred, exegetical, and legal texts. In Judaism, circumcision is justified by divine command through a covenantal promise to a favored line of male descendants; as such it is inextricably tied with one’s identity as a Jew. In Christianity, it was excised from covenantal demand and restrictive identity, and replaced with a nebulous but inclusive notion of faith. In the formative period of Islam, male circumcision persists, but without the marks of divine mandate or covenantal, patrilineal defense. This paper will demonstrate how a non-Qur’anic, normative custom elicited acceptable forms of rhetoric that confirmed its legitimacy as a distinctively Islamic practice. This rhetoric only gradually evolved in such a way as to privilege circumcised males (over and against their female counterparts) as the righteous inheritors of a pure form of monotheism embraced by Abraham and realized through Muhammad.
A50
Panel: Prayers at a Different Altar
Victoria Rue, St. Lawrence University, Presiding
Miri Hunter Haruach, New College of California
Arisika Razak, California Institute of Intergral Studies
Michelle D. Herrera, California Institute of Intergral Studies
Carol P. Christ, Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual, Athens, Greece
Spirituality among African Americans and other oppressed people of color in the United States serves as a potential site of resistance to the forces of oppression. Among contemporary women of color in the United States, womanist, earth-based, female-centered, non-Christian spiritualities are helping to create culturally appropriate and empowered identities. Miri Hunter Harauch will present research on the Queen of Sheba and th