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http://www.aarweb.org/Meetings/Annual_Meeting/Past_and_Future_Meetings/2005/abstracts.asp

AAR Abstracts

November 19-22, 2005
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

    A18-1

Chairs Workshop - Enlarging the Pie: Strategies for Managing and Growing Departmental Resources

The workshop will include plenary sessions with invited panelists with expertise and experience in developing physical, financial, faculty and student resources. Also, there will be breakout sessions for participants seeking help with budgets and financial management, and with growing links to other departments.

    A18-3

Religion and Media Workshop - "Spinning" God: Teaching, Researching, and Reporting on Politics and Religion

This day-long workshop brings together prominent journalists and scholars of religion and media to the AAR who are concerned with the interrelation of politics and religion. The day’s events will include lectures, a film screening, and plenty of time for questions, answers, and further conversation. Topics covered include: Teaching about politics in the religious studies classroom; reporting on the religious dimension of politics; and up to date research on the field.

Questions about the workshop should be directed to S. Brent Plate, Texas Christian University, b.plate@tcu.edu.

    A18-4

Women’s Caucus Workshop - Using Feminist Pedagogies in the Classroom

The Women's Caucus is presenting a workshop on teaching feminist pedagogies.

Scholars including Vasudha Narayanan, Melissa C. Stewart, Karma Lekshe

Tsomo, Julie Kilmer, Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons, and Victoria Rue will

present on teaching their fields. Paula Trimble Familetti, Harriet Luckman,

and Laurie Wright Garry will preside.

    A18-101

Arts Series/Films: Peaceable Kingdom

In Peaceable Kingdom, we hear the riveting stories of people struggling with their conscience around some of our society’s most fundamental assumptions. An inspiring story of personal redemption, compassion, healing and hope, Peaceable Kingdom is described by many of its viewers as “a life changing experience.”

Directed by Jenny Stein, 2005, 70 minutes (color, USA).

    A18-102

EIS Center Orientation

The EIS Center orientation features a short presentation which includes an overview of the Center, an explanation of how best to utilize the Center, and a question and answer session. After the presentation, the Center will be open for use, with the exception of the Interview Hall. Employers will be able to review candidate credentials, leave messages for registered candidates, and make reservations for booth space. Candidates can pick up their copy of the Annual Meetings Special Edition of Openings, as well as leave messages for employers. The Center will also be accepting onsite registrations at this time. Employers and candidates are encouraged to participate in orientation but are not required to attend.

    A18-103

Arts Series/Films: Mana: Beyond Belief

The central idea behind the new motion picture Mana: Beyond Belief is that the way people behave in the presence of power objects reveals a process of the human mind which is fundamental and universal: belief. By filming power objects around the world--things that are precious because people believe they are--and revealing the myriad activities and behaviors that take place around them, this film presents an exciting new way of looking at what is happening all around us, all the time. Belief is not just religion; it drives the stock market, it determines how we deal with history and our personal memories, it underlies racism and war. Bringing together diverse cultures, characters, visual styles, music and fascinating objects, Mana helps us see the essential, invisible element underlying them all.

Directed by Peter Friedman and Roger Manley, 2004, 92 minutes (color, USA).

    A19-3

Status of Women in the Profession Committee: Conversation about Gender Issues with Program Unit Chairs

The Status of Women in the Profession of the AAR invites chairs, conveners, committee members and friends of AAR and SBL groups, sections, seminars, caucuses, and committees who do work on gender issues to take part in an early morning conversation to facilitate dialogue among our various groups and generate program ideas for future meetings.

    A19-6

Publications Committee Meeting

The Publications Committee will hold its usual business meeting on the Saturday morning of the annual meeting.

    A19-7

Barnes Museum Bus Tour

The Barnes Foundation art collection is unsurpassed in breadth, quality and depth in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. It is enhanced by Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquities, Chinese painting, African sculpture, retablos from New Mexico, Native American works, and American decorative arts. Juxtapositions of objects from different cultures, periods and media are intentional and provide exciting resources for teaching and viewing the world from a diverse perspective. Self-guided audio tours can be purchased upon arrival at the museum.

    A19-8

Special Topics Forum

Theme: Popularizing Our Scholarship: Its Pleasures and Pitfalls

According to the 2004 NEH study Reading at Risk, religion books are the healthiest segment of adult publishing. In this panel, we will discuss the pleasures and pitfalls of publishing religion and spirituality books for the larger marketplace, as well as the tensions that may arise when one tries to balance academic writing and teaching with "pop" publishing. All panelists have published books with trade houses, and each will consider how and why they got into trade publishing, as well as the response from academic colleagues and communities to these broader scholarly pursuits. The panel, comprising both senior and junior, tenure-track and nontenure-track scholars, who will address a variety of questions about the impact, good and bad, of writing popular books while remaining in academia. This panel will interest AAR members who seek to write for the broadest possible audience and who are also concerned with the professional consequences that accompany this choice.

    A19-9

Special Topics Forum

Theme: Quo Vadis Eastern Europe?

The session raises the question of the direction in which contemporary Eastern Europe (a term which we use to include former socialist countries of Europe, including the Soviet Union) is developing. Connecting the roots with the present, the presenters are exploring the relationship of nationalism, religion, and civil society as well as ecumenical and interreligious relationships.

The Basilian Monks of Grottaferrata and the Pursuit of Christian Unity
Ines A. Murzaku, Seton Hall University

The paper will articulate the intricate religious and political circumstances that gave rise to the movement of the Orthodox faithful of mid and southern Albania to unite with the Catholic Church during the last decade of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. This occurred at a time when the return or an exclusivist ecclesiology was ruling in the West. Special attention will be given to the Basilian missions to revive the country's Byzantine Catholic tradition.

Teaching about the Other: Inter-Church Dialogue for Russian/Ukrainian Christianity
Walter Sawatsky, Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary

The paper will examine the conflicts between Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant communities in Russia and Ukraine since 1988 in light of what the schools and press appear to be teaching about the other churches; comparing it with the rise of global Christian consciousness in the West.

Cordoba and Sarajevo: Contrasts in Religious Separation and Tolerance
N. Gerald Shenk, Eastern Mennonite Seminary

Recent studies of Medieval Spain (Menocal) and of contemporary Bosnia (Velikonja) invite comparisons between two very different chapters of strong Muslim influence in Europe. The interpretation of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity in various combinations, including both political power and disenfranchisement, suggest that conditions of toleration are more complex than merely external constraints of a strenuous secularism.

Turkish Millet, Religious Nationalism, and Civil Society
James R. Payton, Redeemer University College

The paper will examine the close interrelationship between nationality and religion, nurtured and fomented over centuries, in the southern regions of former Yugoslavia and the challenges faced in developing civil society in the present.

    A19-10

Academic Teaching and the Study of Religion Section and Hinduism Group

Theme: Teaching Hinduism in a Survey Course

The participants in this roundtable will present a range of approaches to the problem of how to cover “Hinduism” in an introductory survey course. Such a course involves us either in teaching a single “Hinduism,” or perhaps teaching Hinduism as a dialogue among a narrow range of alternate values. At the same time, research on religion in South Asia increasingly stresses the ways we need to view “Hinduisms” as multiple, contextualized and contested. The courses we teach range from multi-religion introductory surveys to more methodologically focused introductory courses that deal with Hinduism as one of one or two case studies. Our goal is not to try to “solve” the problem of how to address Hinduism in the introductory survey course. Rather, our goal by presenting a range of approaches is to open a conversation that will allow for collective reflection on the issue.

    A19-11

Christian Systematic Theology Section

Theme: Music and the Holy Spirit

This session will explore the Christian understanding of how the Holy Spirit shape the human experience of music, as well as how Christian pneumatology might be reformulated in light of that experience. Our expectation is that most presenters will offer audio or audio-visual examples of their subject-matter.

Messiaen, Meaning, and the Transmission of Tradition
Nicholas Adams, University of Edinburgh

An analysis of Messiaen's Messe de la Pentecôte (1951). This paper explores how meaning is constructed in music (the question of so-called 'absolute' music) and also the kinds of preparation required of the listener in order for the music to appear as theology, rather than merely as sound. The paper draws on Messiaen's own reflections in Traité de Rythme, de Couleur, et d’Ornithologie, Tome IV (1997) as well as topics in German philosophy that relate to music. The thesis presented here is that Messiaen's theology is best understood as a refraction of tradition of music, which is at the same time a model of the presentation of God's address and human response: heard as music.

Music as the Apocalyptic Transfiguration of History, with Special Reference to Adorno and the Fate of Spirit in the Viennese Tradition
J. David Franks, Boston College

The richness of the Viennese musical tradition seemed to shipwreck with Schoenberg, and yet the brilliant critical theorist Adorno insisted on defending him.

Why? I suggest the problem can be traced to the deficiencies of Hegel's pneumatology.

The spirit at work in music is not above the material, but works through it, incarnationally. Failing to understand the analogy of spirit, Hegel misses even the fullness of the properly human spirit, which seeks embodiment, to express life, to express the vitality of a culture.

The greatest music shows an unbounded fecundity due to the vertical downward irruption of beauty (the truth of the “spiritual” view of music), which intersects with the horizontal pursuit of a beauty to be found in fragments (the truth of the “materialist” view), gathering history up into the ever-greater vitality of the divine life whose glory shines forth in the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

Rhythmicity and the Eternal Creative Act of the Holy Spirit
Loye Ashton, Millsaps College

This paper outlines a theological interpretation of rhythm that offers a postmodern aesthetic approach for understanding how musical concepts of rhythm, particularly the character of pulse, can help identify the Holy Spirit as the eternal creative act that unites power and meaning in the actualization of life. Looking at medieval descriptions of the Holy Spirit (Abelard, Bernard, and Bonaventure), as well as more recent theologians (Tillich, Neville, Begbie), in light of a contemporary relational metaphysics known as “rhythmicity,” I will explore how rhythm, and especially the manifestation of rhythm in music, helps us to deeply appreciate, rather than destructively deny, the finite beauty of time as salvific. The rhythmic element of pulse allows us to know and feel the Holy Spirit as the unity of mystery and truth, power and meaning, whirlwind and wisdom, cognition and emotion, actualized under the conditions of existence as life.

    A19-12

Comparative Studies in Religion Section and Religion and the Social Sciences Section

Theme: Beyond Freud and Jung: New Psychological Approaches to Comparative Religious Studies

Our panel will present four new perspectives that afford insight into the psychological aspects of various religions. To understand better discourses of the self expressed in literature, ethics, mystical experience, and philosophy, we will draw upon social and self psychologies, concepts of discourse and the body, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience. As we discuss our approaches, we will cover a range of religious traditions (including Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity) and a variety of cultural contexts (i.e., ancient Greece and India, classical China, late antique Roman Palestine, and turn-of-the-twentieth-century Europe). We will thus demonstrate that psychological theories continue to be useful to scholars of comparative religion.

    A19-13

History of Christianity Section

Theme: Reviewing History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn, by Elizabeth A. Clark (Harvard University Press)

What does it mean to engage in the practice of history when studying the history of Christianity? How do we turn events and ideas of the past into history? In History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn (Harvard University Press, 2004), Elizabeth A. Clark has written a major study of how historians have grappled with the relationship between the past and the work of creating history, and in so doing, she challenges historians of Christianity to learn from and contribute to continuing debates informed by contemporary theory. This panel will feature four prominent scholars who will discuss the book, as well as a response by Professor Clark.

    A19-14

Philosophy of Religion Section

Theme: Technology, Religion, and the Human in Question

All "Dollied" Up: Why Bans on Human Cloning Are Dressed in the Garb of Human Dignity
Leslie Meltzer, University of Virginia

Public opinion polls demonstrate that the vast majority of people find the idea of human reproductive cloning abhorrent because they believe it will destroy the meaning of what it means to be a person. National and international regulations have banned such cloning on the ground that it threatens 'human dignity.' But just how does cloning endanger our personhood, and what does human dignity mean in this context? Can human dignity be diminshed by cloning, or is human dignity inviolable? This paper briefly examines the regulatory framework surrounding human cloning before exploring various meanings of 'human dignity' and their import in the cloning controversy.

Islamic Philosophy and the Challenge of Cloning
Mohammad Motahari Farimani, Regis College, University of Toronto

Recent advancements in cloning have, courtesy of modern mass media, come to wide public attention—raising some important questions about the role of God in creation. They have made some believers feel distrustful about their understanding of God's creation. Are these new advances and their underlying philosophy tantamount to a serious rival for creation by Divine decree? Or can they be easily brushed aside and explained away? According to Muslim philosophers, especially the followers of Mulla Sadra, this vacillation or feeling of doubt on the part of some believers is due to their failure in understanding the profound meaning of creation. This paper will put forth the argument that cloning is completely compatible with the notion of creation as it is expounded in rational and intellectual terms by traditional Islamic philosophy and shows that modern biological reproductive methods and God's creative act are of two totally different natures.

Exceeding the Eye: The Nodular Subject and the Dislocation of the Philosophy of Religion
Anais Spitzer, Pacifica Graduate Institute

Modern technology and science are transforming the human subject in two key ways. First, subjectivity is no longer discrete and self-contained; rather, it emerges within a distributed matrix, in a complex system wherein the rigid distinction between subject/object is undone. Secondly, this new technological network or cosmos exceeds the individual. To a greater degree, technology creates the subject even more than the subject creates technology. In this way there is always an unanticipatable aspect, a “non-foundational foundation” which cannot be accounted for by the system it founds, thus exposing an openness and incompleteness that is always already in the system itself. Such a “moment of complexity” where the boundaries have been unsettled, challenges philosophy itself by revealing that the calculating subject and the founding distinction between subject and object are untenable. Thinking now requires a new architecture through which to philosophize the irreducibly collective and distributed subject.

A Better Life through Information Technology? The Posthuman Person in Contemporary Speculative Science
Michael DeLashmutt, University of Aberdeen

The depiction of human identity in the pop-science futurology of engineer/inventor Ray Kurzweil, the speculative-robotics of Carnegie Mellon researcher Hans Moravec and the theories of Tulane University mathematics professor Frank Tipler reflect an implied reductionistic philosophical anthropology which regards identity as a system of patterns able to be decoded and re-embodied in whatever substrate technology provides. Although Moravec’s vision of intelligent robots, Kurzweil’s hope for immanent human immorality, and Tipler’s description of human-like von Neumann machines colonising the very material fabric of the universe,may all appear to be nothing more than science fictional musings, they raise genuine questions as to the relationship between science, technology, and religion as regards issues of personhood. In an attempt to correct what I see as the ‘cybernetic-totalism’ inherent in these ‘techno-theologies’, I will argue for a narrative understanding of identity explored under the rubric of a theology of technology.

    A19-15

Study of Islam Section

Theme: Women, Agency, and Islam

The panel explores a number of topics that place gender at the heart of any society. The papers of this panel deal specifically with reproduction, sexual prescriptions, polygyny, and Islamist gender constructions. The first two papers analyze gender issues from an Islamic historical perspective from both early Islamic literature and the life of Muhammad that still have relevance. The last two papers analyze how contemporary understandings of gender constructions are today dynamic and fluid constructions. The four papers demonstrate that much insight can be gained from studying Islamic discourses on women either via an analysis of the early period of Muslim community and literature or via an analysis of contemporary perspectives, both providing new light on the complex issues faced by women in Islamic societies.

Reproductive Discourse in Early Islamic Literature
Kathryn M. Kueny, Fordham University

This paper examines early Islamic discourses on female reproduction. Since females are critical agents in the production of new life, they stand at the crossroads of natural and divine law. Because God animates the inanimate in the womb, early Muslim physicians, scholars, and literati debate how to separate God’s role in the reproductive process from the mother’s. I will explore such debates over reproductive agency in early Muslim tibb, tafsir, hadith, and adab works. Through their elaborate discussions of female fertility, gestation, delivery, and postpartum health, I will suggest that while these works acknowledge divine control over reproductive events, they also portray women as having tremendous influence over their birthing outcomes. This influence, however, is only cast positively if the pregnancy turns out well. If not, a woman’s mind and body stand in violation of natural and divine law, and are subject to social, political, biological, and religious stigmatization.

Sexual Prescriptions and the Legacy of Mariyah the Copt
Aysha Hidayatullah, University of California, Santa Barbara

This paper traces the legacy of Muhammad’s umm walad Māriyah al-Qibtiyah in Muslim historical memory, with particular attention to its role in producing the discourses of sex in early Islam that continue to frame Muslim communal values and sexual mores today. A major concern is Māriyah’s status as consort of the Prophet, a designation on which historical literature is ambiguous, offering different treatments of Māriyah as milk al-yamīn or wife of the Prophet. Also of interest is the historical record of the Prophet’s overwhelming desire for Māriyah, an attraction which sparks bitter jealousy and grievances among his wives and incites the domestic crisis to which the Qur’an refers in Surah al-Tahrīm. That Māriyah gives birth to the Prophet’s son Ibrāhīm is also of crucial significance, both for the consequent elevation of her legal status, as well as the reverence she assumes as the mother of the Prophet’s potential male heir.

Polygyny in the Identity of African American Muslims
Debra Mubashshir Majeed, Beloit College

In both academic and popular attempts to “size up and then pare down” a more covenantal, and some say “honorable” form of Audrey Chapman’s man-sharing, scholars and others routinely overlook critical explorations of polygyny that take into account the subtle levels of complexity inherent in a phenomenon that has currency for an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 Americans in 30 states. Such an approach in regards to African American Muslims who practice this form of plural marriage means we fail to engage in discourse at the nexus between received and revealed “law” and communal identity and power. This paper seeks to encourage such dialogue. By considering specific and related claims that African American Muslims make in regards to the practice of polygyny in the U.S., I will demonstrate the relationship between praxis, identity, and interpretation as well as the power of personal experience with a polygynous husband and/or a “co-wife.”

An Islamist Gender Discourse
Roxanne D. Marcotte, University of Queensland

This paper will attempt to provide an analysis of the gender discourse that underlies the discourse of Islamists and argue that, contrary to common perceptions, modernity is influencing the Islamist discourse on gender. Ezzat’s gender discourse will be shown to be indebted to two different kinds of gender discourses, each with its own sets of principles: the traditional and patriarchal religious conception of women’s nature, role and rights and the new modern understanding of Muslim women’s social and political roles influenced by modernity. The Islamist discourse on gender is a modern construct that is constantly being redefined, as attempts are made to bridge the gap between tradition and modernity and to reconcile two sets of principles. This, however, may well account for tensions and inconsistencies that are found in Ezzat’s works that the Islamist discourse cannot easily dismiss.

    A19-16

Theology and Religious Reflection Section

Theme: Violence and God-Images, "After Girard"

The papers in this session explore resources for a discussion of violence and God-images, 'beyond Girard.'

Liberating Religion from Social Conflict: A Critical Examination of Three Evasive Strategies
Hugh Reynolds Nicholson, Coe College

This paper critically examines three strategies by which theologians have sought to dissociate their traditions from social conflict and violence. The first, characteristic of the liberal tradition in modern theology, appeals to a utopian, non-exclusionary form of community; the second, characteristic of orthodox and conservative models of theology, appeals to the concept of legitimate authority established on a metaphysical basis; the third seeks to minimize religious violence through a retrieval of localized, relationally (as opposed to ideologically) based forms of community. I shall argue that while none of these approaches succeeds in dissociating “religion” from social conflict, each offers valuable insights that can be incorporated into an effective theological and practical response to the problem of religious violence.

Honesty about God: God’s Violence/ Violence in God’s Name in Wink, Jung, and Luther
Charlene Burns, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire

Jill Carroll’s daring critique of all political theologies as doomed to failure unless and until they are “honest, and ever-vigilant against the temptation either to ascribe to nature traits...that are foreign to it, or to excise from it...violence and indifference to suffering—that do not suit our desires or political” goals sets the agenda for my paper (Carroll, 116). In an attempt to “reclaim violent models of God” and “be honest about the universe (Carroll, 116),” I bring Jung’s distinction between God-in-Godself / images of God and Wink’s (Jungian) writings on the “Domination System” into conversation with Luther’s God Hidden/God Revealed in order to suggest a more honest—albeit uncomfortable—appraisal of humanity’s plight.

The Non-Necessity of God’s Violence, or the Possibility of an Iconic Monotheism
Thomas E. Reynolds, St. Norbert College

Our fragile interreligious context requires that we come to terms with the ambiguous witness to violence in monotheistic traditions. Neither denying the prevalence of violent images of God in Abrahamic scriptures nor ceding the hope-filled prospect of non-violence and dialogue between religions, this paper seeks to move beyond Rene Girard’s theory of religious violence by exploring the iconic grammar of the monotheistic imagination. Drawing from the work of Leo Lefebure, Jean-Luc Marion and Paul Ricoeur, the paper develops a double-visioned hermeneutic of the icon that critiques and displaces the violence of idolatry. This has value in that it opens up the polyphonic character of Abrahamic scriptures and, further, engenders the moral disposition of hospitality. It makes it possible to read various images of God against themselves, resisting violence-of-God traditions by giving voice to the universal—and hence, interreligious—God of justice, compassion and mercy. Violence and monotheism are not necessary correlates.

Violence, Fear, and God: Eugen Drewermann's Interdisciplinary Analysis of Christian Violence
Matthias Beier, Drew University

Fear is the source of violence in the name of God. This is the thesis of Eugen Drewermann, who has been the single-most important theologian to bring the issue of religion and violence to the attention of the public in continental Europe. A key question he has addressed is why Christianity, against its professed will for peace, has again and again been used to commit atrocious violence in the name of God? This paper will explicate Drewermann's thesis, apply it to current instances of religio-political uses of 'God' to justify violence, and outline some methodological implications for theological reflection if theology wants to avoid fanning the flames of violence.

    A19-17

Anthropology of Religion Group

Theme: Transplanting Religion: Rethinking Authenticity

Transplanted Authenticity: The Jewishness of Eastern Europe and the Revival of Klezmer
Stuart Charme, Rutgers University

The image of the Eastern European shtetl Jew, which entered American popular culture in the musical Fiddler on the Roof, offered a model of Jewish authenticity to an increasingly assimilated and intermarried post-holocaust generation of American Jews. More recently, the revival of Klezmer, the musical folk tradition of Eastern European Jewish culture, has raised the issue of Jewish authenticity in a context apart from customary debates between Orthodox and non-Orthodox forms of Judaism. This paper will analyze several different approaches to understanding issues of Jewish authenticity in the revival of Klezmer. It will describe the implications of locating Klezmer’s authenticity in a reclamation of elements of Jewish folk culture in danger of being lost, in the celebration of on-going innovation and change, and in a focus on an experiential dimension to Jewish spirituality.

Macedonian-Bulgarian Diaspora in Toronto and the Orthodox Christian Church
Mariana Mastagar, Trinity College, University of Toronto

This paper is a study of the South Slavonic diaspora in Toronto with respect to the role of the Easter Orthodox Church. By comparing church functions in the new land with that of the homeland and the attitudes of Church attendees in both places the study will argue that the church role is transformed. The guiding questions are a) how do resettling immigrants perceive and for that matter make use of the Church? and b) what are the differences between the church’s role in the homeland and in the new land? The data collected shows that the church appears to be less of a sacramental space and more of a location for social and cultural activities, and hence is polyfunctional. Is this change a maker of secularization or modern expressions of religiosity and thus a reversal of secularization theory?

Becoming a New Religion the Old-Fashioned Way: Perspectives from a Transnational Hindu Movement
Hanna Kim, New York, NY

This paper looks at the efforts of the Bochasanwasi Shree Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (Swaminarayan), a Hindu devotional movement, to transform itself into and become recognised as a religion in dominantly non-Hindu places. In charting this transformation, from an indigenous devotional tradition originating in Western India into a diasporic socio-religious movement whose transnational activities now influence the shape of religious experience both within and beyond India, this paper suggests that Swaminarayan devotionalism is thriving in part to its interpretation of “religion”. This paper makes two connected arguments: that the dominant Western and American discourses on religion sustain a persistent epistemic framework, one that situates religion as sui generis and classifies other religions and behaviours according to given standards of morality and religious practice; and, that Swaminarayan leaders and followers are responding to this episteme in ways that appear to securely anchor their devotional tradition into the dominant discourses.

Place, Space, and the “Healing Dao": Practicing Popular Daoism in the U.S., Thailand, and China
Elijah Siegler, College of Charleston

The Healing Tao, founded in 1981 by a Thai-born Chinese named Mantak Chia is one of the largest Western Daoist groups, teaching a popularized form of Chinese internal alchemy as a series of modular practices . This papers examines, through participant observation, three sites where Healing Tao practices are taught: at weekend seminars in Asheville, N.C., at month-long retreats in Thailand, and as part of a three week guided tour of sacred sites of China. These locations for religious practice force us to reconsider the traditional religious categories of worship, retreat, and pilgrimage, respectively. Those categories involve bodies traveling to a place in order to experience “the sacred.” For bodies learning Healing Tao exercises, on the other hand, their own practices produce the sacred. Healing Tao practitioners have less interest in local religious “place” than they do an abstract Daoist/energetic field of “space.”

    A19-18

Bioethics and Religion Group

Theme: Religion, Ethics, and Access to Health Care

Conscientious Objection and Access to Reproductive Health Care Services: Gender, Justice, and Shame
Nancy Berlinger, The Hastings Center

This paper will examine the use of conscientious objection by health care professionals, with specific attention to its impact on access to reproductive health care services in the United States, and with some attention to U.S. policies that may restrict access to reproductive health care services globally. The paper will focus on the relationship between conscientious objection and professional ethics, exploring the extent to which a professional’s refusal to deliver a health care service may conflict with the ethical obligations and standards of that profession. The paper will explore recent cases involving conscientious objection, existing and evolving “conscience clause” legislation, and the tactical use of conscientious objection in grassroots activism. In focusing on access to reproductive health care services and the ways in which conscientious objection may be enacted, the paper will highlight the special implications of these political and cultural trends for women and for women’s health.

Christian Medical Sharing Plans: An Ethical Review
Charlene A. Galarneau, Wellesley College

Christian medical sharing plans have operated in the US for just over a decade. These health-insurance look-alike plans claim to offer a biblically principled alternative to conventional health care and health insurance. Motivated by inadequate financial access to health care and a desire to live according to particular Christian values, these non-profit, self-regulated ministries organize the voluntary sharing of medical expenses among certain Christian individuals and families. While attending to the spiritual and financial needs of a small and select group of Christians, these plans also replicate ethically problematic elements of current health care and the conventional health insurance system. This paper identifies and critically examines the theo-ethical values embodied in these plans: in particular, the nature and scope of Christian community, care, responsibility (individual and communal), stewardship, and justice (distributive and participatory).

A Theological Ethics of Solidarity: Toward Global Health Care Access
Marie J. Giblin, Xavier University

The first part of this paper examines the lack of access to health care that currently exists for so many people in the Two-Thirds World--using the east African nations of Kenya and Tanzania as examples. Despite efforts in practice to alleviate it, the lack of access has worsened and been made more enduring by policies exported from the U.S. and by corruption within these countries. The second part of the paper considers the concept and practice of religiously motivated “solidarity” as a constructive response to the problem of global health care access and as a means of resistance to the social and economic ideology that shrugs off responsibility for so much ill health and suffering. The roots of “solidarity” within Western Christianity, African Christianity, and African traditional religions will be mined to enrich the concept and make more viable its practice in a globalized world.

Access to Drugs in a New Global Environment: A New Challenge for the African Church
Elias Kifon Bongmba, Rice University

In this paper I argue that the church in Africa should scale up its fight against HIV/AIDS by joing the global campaign for access to drugs by people who are living with HIV/AIDS. I also argue that the church could play a mediating role in negotiationg ethical standards for trial of new drugs and therapies.

    A19-19

Eastern Orthodox Studies Group

Theme: Patristic and Byzantine Hymnography

The Feet That Eve Heard in Paradise and Was Afraid: The Christology of Byzantine Festal Hymns
Bogdan G. Bucur, Marquette University

The paper will focus on the Christology of a number Byzantine festal hymns that have taken over, virtually unmodified, older hymnographic material, going back to fifth-century Jerusalem, but which are still used in the services of the Eastern Orthodox Church. After a brief historical survey, the paper will propose a theological analysis of selected hymns [handouts provided], highlighting their Christological bearing. It seems that these hymns avoid the vocabulary of their contemporary dogmatic debates, and offer an alternative poetic theology deeply rooted in OT imagery, yet surprisingly precise and effective in conveying the very same message about Christ. This finding opens up the discussion of theological method, namely the question of how these hymns could be taken into account more seriously, as direct sources for theology, on par with the data provided by the ecumenical councils, and the subsequent patristic and medieval theology.

The Vindication of Eve: Romanus' Second Kontakion on Christ's Nativity
Verna E. F. Harrison, Saint Paul School of Theology

Romanus the Melodist’s second kontakion On the Nativity of Christ is less renowned than the first but holds considerable theological interest. It is structured as a dialogue among four persons, Adam, Eve, the Mother of God and her newborn Son. The main characters are the women, who take the initiative and move the conversation forward; Adam and Christ respond to them. The poem is not alone but is exemplary among early Christian texts in portraying Eve and women positively. It shows fallen Adam’s misogyny as overcome by Eve’s forthrightness, Mary’s compassion, and Christ’s saving work. Mary represents all human persons before God.

Romanus combines the narrative character of his native Syriac hymnography with the antinomical rhetoric and technical vocabulary of Greek patristic theology. His works epitomize the festal dimension of Byzantine theology and spirituality: anamnesis of past saving events, participation in the eschaton, and hope in God’s love and saving plan.

Cleansed by the Fire of a Mystic Vision
Elijah Mueller, Marquette University

The canons of John Damascene clearly represent a high form of speech. His poetry interprets not only the Feast-day remembrance of the saving works of Christ, but also wraps these events in a rich vestment of images from the Old Testament. In interpreting the Old Testament as a poet, the Damascene reflects on and often identifies with the experience of the inspired prophets whose odes lie behind his hymns. In this identification between poet and prophet, temple and Church, Old Testament and New Testament are fused. This paper will assert that the liturgical enactment of this poetry is an iconic transmission of Old Testament theophanic imagery which is mediated not by the language of Greek metaphysics, but rather by a common, continuing sense of temple liturgy which fuses Tabernacle, Temple, Church and heavenly liturgy. My focus will be primarily on The Damscene’s canons for Theophany, Pascha, Transfiguration and Dormition.

Tradition and Change - Liturgical Chant and Music in the Greek Orthodox Christian Experience in America: Early European Origins
Constantine J. Terss, Heathrow, FL

This paper presents part of the findings of research presently in progress on the traditional chant and music in the Greek Orthodox Churches in America. Specifically addressed in this paper are the early, European origins of the introduction of polyphony and instrumental accompaniment into some Greek Orthodox parishes followed by a discussion of the implications and challenges social change has had on the sacred music and worship in the Greek Orthodox inheritance within the American experience in a postmodern world.

    A19-20

Europe and the Mediterranean in Late Antiquity Group

Theme: Rituals of Reading

Making One's Mark: Writing, Reading, and the Authorization of Marginal Religious Practices in Ancient Greece
Sarah Iles Johnston, Ohio State University, Columbus

The religions of ancient Greece, in contrast to Judaism and Christianity, had no sacred texts. I will start by arguing that this is because the Greeks preferred not to ascribe their practices to specific human authorities—they chose not to have a Moses or a Paul—because 1) their religions were built on the assumption that all mortals were equally qualified (and expected) to carry on 'ta patria', the ancestral rites and 2) they liked to ponder, and ponder again, the origin of their rites, creating ever-changing mythic aitia for them. I will then observe that the few cases where Greek religions did incorporate reading and writing of what might be called sacred texts—including 'Orphic' gold tablets and 'magical' instances such as curse tablets—were associated with marginalized practitioners. These practitioners could not draw authority from 'ta patria'. Incorporating writing and reading into their rituals provided a different, literally tangible, authority.

Ritualizing the Book in Ancient Judaism
Michael D. Swartz, Ohio State University, Columbus

Reading and memorization are inseparable from ritual in Judaism in late antiquity. As a result of this, systems of ritual that lie outside the conventional practices for holy books have emerged around the margins of Rabbinic Judaism. In addition, David Frankfurter and others have shown that the written word has a special valence in magical systems. This significance complements the power of the spoken word in the same ritual systems. This paper will explore some of those ritual practices in Rabbinic culture, Hekhalot literature, and related corpora. Several manifestations of ritualization of the book will be explored. These include mantic practices involving scripture, such as bibliomancy and the practice of inquiring schoolchildren; and rituals for conjuration of angels and divine beings in which books are instrumental. These will be studied for their implications for the idea of rabbinic logocentrism.

Readers in Syriac Texts: Who, What, When, and Where
Catherine Burris, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

This paper will examine the role of readers and reading in Syriac texts. Hagiographic texts depict an assortment of readers and reading material, often implicitly linking holiness and literacy. Using an assortment of Syriac saints’ Lives, I will discuss the frequency of the association between holiness and literacy, and consider the ways that gender, location, and social status complicate the issue. Was a male saint more likely than a female saint to be portrayed as literate? When a female saint is shown reading, in what context does she read? Syriac texts depict both private, contemplative reading and public, didactic reading; the discussion of the relationship between gender and literacy in these texts will also consider whether gender determines the type and location of any reading in which a saint engages.

Miniature Books and Rituals of Private Reading in Late Antiquity
Kim Haines-Eitzen, Cornell University

To what extent can the form of ancient books tell us about rituals of reading? Or, to put it differently, what clues might the physical features of literary papyri tell us about how, where, and by whom texts were read? The questions are at the fore of this paper, which focuses on miniature codices and the use of books for private reading in late ancient Christianity. A preliminary listing of miniature codices from late antiquity offers physical some clues to reading practices; alongside this material evidence the literary evidence for private reading will be addressed. Although much attention has been given to the idea that all reading in antiquity was in some senses a public act, this paper will suggest that the form of miniature codices (their size, physical features, contents), particularly when read alongside literary evidence, may shed light on the ancient “solitary reader.”

    A19-21

Theology and Continental Philosophy Group and Feminist Theory and Religious Reflection Group

Theme: Gender, Politics, and the Return to Religion

The recent ‘return to religion’ in the humanities demarcates a vital theoretical space for re-examining constructions of gender and the political. For example, is it possible, within the matrix of the return to the religious (or theological), that constructions of gender can finally outflank the reductions and limitations of “identity politics”? Does Paul's radical assertion in Galatians that “there is no longer...male nor female” provide new possibilities for a trans-gendered political subject that transcends the religious? Or does this cry for the dissolution of sexual difference neutralize a real politic? This panel marks a rare moment in which gender is an explicit focus of discussion within this recent and influential debate of religion and the political.

    A19-22

Indigenous Religious Traditions Group and Latina/o Religion, Culture, and Society Group

Theme: The Works and Scholarship of David Carrasco

>Joint panel sponsored by Indigenous Religions

> >Group and Latin American Religions Group

> >AAR Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, November 2005

> >

> >

> >Panel on the work of Davíd Carrasco

> >

> >>>Commemorating the 15th anniversary of

> >>>Religions of Mesoamerica this panel will focus

> >>>on the work of Davíd Carrasco, the Historian

> >>>of Religion who has brought interpretive tools

> >>>from the academic study of religion into

> >>>Mesoamerican Studies through the development

> >>>of the Mesoamerican Archive and Research

> >>>Project.

    A19-23

Religion and Science Group

Theme: The Future of Emergence: Should Theology Mind Emergence?

This panel will explore the implications of the concept of emergence for theological thought, focusing on Philip Clayton’s book – Mind and Emergence. Clayton argues that emergence suggests a new approach to the problem of consciousness--and thus human agency--and that it is consistent with “emergentist panentheism.” In considering the viability of this position, and the theological future of emergence, we attempt to build on this work, suggesting correctives such as model of God as the body of the world, a greater emphasis on human agency, the work of Terrence Deacon and Timothy O’Conner, the limits of human distinctiveness and the overall value (or lack thereof) of evolutionary explanations. We will conclude with a response from Clayton, and a discussion of the future of emergence in theological discourse.

God Embodied in, God Bodying Forth the World: Emergence and Christian Theology
Steven D. Crain, University of St. Francis

Philip Clayton offers a theologically fruitful proposal in wedding the concept of emergent monism to a panentheistic model of God's relationship to the world. I affirm its fruitfulness especially for Christian anthropology. However, I argue that the pantentheistic model should be complemented by the notion that God is the body of the world as a way of sheding more light on the fact that the divine creative act empowers human free agency, and as a way of reminding the theologian that theological models are just that: models that only have some purchase on reality and which need to be combined according to rules that respect the 'grammar' of the doctrine of creation.

Finding Middle Ground: Clayton on Mind and Emergence
James Haag, Graduate Theological Union

Philip Clayton’s work on emergence is a valuable contribution to the fields of religion, science, and philosophy. Three topics will be explored: 1) Clayton differentiates between a number of supervenience theories, finally advocating what he calls emergentist supervenience. Can Clayton’s form of emergentist supervenience do the work of preventing the causal reduction of consciousness while preventing the ominous title of epiphenomenalism and Searleian causal reduction? 2) Clayton pays primary attention to ‘emergents’ in the world and emphasizes their irreducible novelty. Terrence Deacon focuses on the actual course of moving from different types of processes. Do so many types of ‘emergents’ reduce the meaning and utility of the term? Can Deacon provide Clayton a structure from which to work? 3) Like Clayton, philosopher Timothy O’Connor gives attention to agent causation and the emergence of the mind. What are the similarities and differences between the work of O’Connor and Clayton?

    A19-24

Womanist Approaches to Religion and Society Group

Theme: Loves Herself. Regardless: Womanist Discourse on the Black Woman's Body

The papers in this session lift up issues of misogyny and sexism in rap music and videos as well as issues of sexuality and the black woman while weaving together the common theme of the black woman's body.

Black Bodies Moving in Sacred Space: African American Liturgical Dance
Kimberleigh Jordan, New York University

In this paper, I examine liturgical dance as a church-based form of popular and concert dance at the intersection of Black arts, culture and religion and that the historical roots of liturgical dance are simultaneously Africanist, Pentecostal and American modern dance. While liturgical dance in African American faith communities has developed through the artistic and spiritual leadership of women, it is also as a crucial site for contemporary controversies regarding women’s bodies. The final section of the paper is a brief case study of the Allen Liturgical Dance Ministry, founded in 1978 in Jamaica, Queens, New York. It is a richly generative site for the analysis of contemporary women’s artistic and religious leadership and for liturgical dance production.

Black Woman's Drag
Gayle R. Baldwin, University of North Dakota

Although central to the mandate of the womanist is “to love women, both sexually or not,” and African American scholars in sociology and theology have taken note of the need to confront homophobia when discussing the continued oppression of the black body, the black lesbian religious experience has remained invisible. This paper examines and compares three varieties of black lesbian religious experience: the lesbian who remains closeted within the traditional black church, maintaining a peculiar kind of 'double consciousness,' acceptable only “in drag” in order to pass the strict black church dress code, the black lesbian who chooses a non-traditional black church where she can be herself; and the black lesbian who is in the process of creating her own “faith,” exercising a creative agency in response to black lesbian rejection and murder. The paper is the result of research on religious responses to the murder of Sakia Gunn.

Give Me Body! Black Female Body as Icon in Hip-Hop and Religious Culture
Melva L. Sampson, Spelman College

Give Me Body! Black Female Body as Icon in Hip-Hop and Religious Culture

This paper will address how both hip-hop and Black religious culture have inundated both the pews and global airwaves with negative iconolatry of the Black female body. The focus is on the Black church as a point of departure for Black women’s understanding of body as positive or negative iconography and/or iconolatry. The portrayal of women, most of them African American, as sex objects in rap videos continues to be one of the most contentious aspects of the hip-hop music industry. Spelman College is a case study for womanist approaches to activism and healthy acceptance of the Black female body. The Black church, hip-hop culture, or the rap music industry cannot continue to ignore what has been and is so devastating to Black life and well being.

Are There Any Hip-Hop Womanists in the House? Womanist Theology, Political Activism, and the Hip-Hop Generation
Pamela Y. Cook, University of Chicago

From the 1980’s protests of C. Delores Tucker to this year’s Essence magazine ”Take Back the Music” campaign, older generations of African American women are clearly critical of the prevalence of misogyny and sexism in hip hop lyrics and videos. However, is this womanist agenda relevant to the politics of the hip hop generation? While a few young activists consider themselves as hip hop feminists, many other young black women are still resistant to the label “feminist.” Instead, womanist may be a more appropriate moniker for rallying a new generation of women. Consequently, I will examine whether hip-hop generation black women possess a womanist identity with womanist principles and whether there is a relationship between their womanist theology and their political activism with special attention to activism and the treatment of black women’s bodies.

Icons of Injustice: Gendered and Hyper-Sexualized Black Women's Bodies in U.S. Culture
S'thembile West, Western Illinois University

Historical readings of African American bodies as icons provides a reflective look at intersections of ethnicity, gender, race and sexuality in the U.S. The market economy of enslavement profited as much from the

forced-labor and sale of black bodies as it did from institutionalized images and attitudes that framed discourse about race, skin color and gender. Gendered and hyper-sexualized assumptions and images of Black

women's bodies were critical not only to devaluation of black womanhood during the plantation economy of enslavement, but also sustains inequities among U.S. women. This presentation seeks to illuminate the critical

relationsips between hyper-sexualized assumptions and images, ineqality and the lives of contemporary African American women.

Alice Walker, The Color Purple, and a Womanist Gospel of Resistance
Sallie Cuffee, Medgar Evers College

“Alice Walker, The Color Purple and a Womanist Gospel of Resistance”

An increasing body of literature produced by such womanist scholars as Delores Williams, Katie Cannon, Emilie Townes, Clarice Martin, and Jacquelyn Grant has underscored the important womanist objective of valorizing the sacred in black women's ordinary lives as a critical introduction into any substantive discourses about God as it relates to producing life-affirming survival and quality of life theology or ethics. This paper focuses on how this body of literature recognized can be directly traced to the influence of Alice Walker and her book, The Color Purple. It also focuses on how Walker produced a cultural epistle that claimed the epistemological privilege of centering black women’s experience in talking about “Dear God.” Lastly, it seeks to underscore Walker's engagement in a womanist gospel of resistance, empowering black women to understand their role as co-creators in church and society.

    A19-26

Religion and Sexuality Consultation

Theme: Regulating Desire: Christian and Buddhist Sexuality Debates in America and Beyond

The Religion and Sexuality consultation, inaugurated this year, endeavors to advance a conversation about religion and sexuality in diverse religious contexts across time and place. This session's papers analyze sundry religious claims for regulating sexual desire and providing a justification, method, and praxis for such regulation. Presenters will explore systems of regulating identity formation, procedures of punishment/censure for failing to undertake such regulation, and the consequences of using religious discourse to regulate desire and sexuality. Papers will be posted online at http://www.as.ua.edu/rel (advance reading optional, not required), and each speaker will have 15 minutes to present. The respondent will expand upon and beyond the specific themes of the papers in order to generate a broader set of ideas pertaining to religion and sexuality. We will allow ample time for a full participatory discussion, and the business meeting will focus on topics suggested by the audience for future sessions.

Being Christian and Having Sex, Too: The Historical Context and Contemporary Application of the Regulation of Sexual Desire as Part of the Practice of Christian Faith
Wil Brant, Chicago Theological Seminary

Contemporary Christian discussions on sex (e.g. same-sex sexual desire and abstinence) are done in the framework of what it means “to be Christian”—a concept which involves a self-regulation of sexual desire. Early Christian writers negotiated a concept of being Christian in relation to a celibate model of spiritual purity and a monogamous model of procreative citizen. These models and negotiations between them can be seen in contemporary Christian discussions about sex. After briefly overviewing these writers and relating how their models of sexual regulation are still a part of contemporary Christian discussions about sex, this paper will conclude by proposing that for self-identified Christians in a context of a contemporary pluralistic society, the regulation of sexual desire might better be engaged in as a dynamic practice of Christian faith, akin to spiritual practices of Late Antiquity, rather than a static following of rules of what is it to be Christian.

Anthony Comstock, Free-Lovers, and the Censorship of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass: Defining the Terms of Protestant Toleration in Late Nineteenth-Century New England
Paul C. Kemeny, Grove City College

In the spring of 1882, the New England Society for the Suppression of Vice persuaded the Boston district attorney that the recently published seventh edition Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass violated the state’s obscenity law, which the Society had helped revise two years earlier. Wanting to avoid prosecution, the publisher withdrew the volume from circulation. In response, Whitman launched a campaign, with assistance from Free-Love advocates like Ezra Heywood, to discredit the anti-vice society. But when moral reformers prosecuted Heywood and his allies, Whitman refused to come to their defense. This study not only recovers a surprising incident in the history of late nineteenth-century censorship–Whitman’s silence–but also recovers how and why a mainline Protestant moral reform organization enjoyed the cultural power to enforce conventional Protestant attitudes toward sexuality, marriage, and literature. It also demonstrates that the dominant Protestant views were fiercely contested by advocates of Free-Love.

Finding Safe Harbor: Buddhist Sexual Ethics in America
Stephanie Kaza, University of Vermont

From a Buddhist perspective, working with sexuality is working with attachment and the inflation of egocentric views. The third Buddhist precept prohibits sexual misconduct because it can generate so much suffering. In the 1980s and 90s, the rash of sexual affairs and betrayals in modern American Buddhist centers raised concerns about organizational viability, catalyzing several important initiatives in sexual ethics policy. The paper analyzes the extensive work of Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and San Francisco Zen Center in establishing guidelines for responding to cases of inappropriate sexual behavior. This ethical effort reflects American Buddhism in evolution, going beyond the traditional submission to authoriarian power to helping the community learn to take ethical care of itself. By struggling through such a legal process, these Buddhist sanghas laid a useful foundation for future conflicts.

The Opposite of Gay: Ex-Gay Ministries, Identity, and Desire
Lynne Gerber, Graduate Theological Union

The current generation of ex-gay ministries attempt to navigate difficult waters. In response to increasing evidence of, and popular familiarity with happy, healthy homosexual people, these ministries are having to pay more precise attention to defining the moral problem of homosexuality and to claims about the possibility of change. This paper will look at the current state of the conversation in ex-gay ministries about these issues. Using content analysis, participant observation and interview data, I will demonstrate the various tensions in the ex-gay movement and how leaders attempt to resolve them. In conversation with Anthony Giddens’ work on modernity and self creation I will argue that ex-gay ministries are involved in a project of identity formation that both utilizes and challenges post-modern and other contemporary understandings of the body and the self in order to create obedient Christian agents.

    A19-30

Religion and Ecology Tour: Eco-Justice and Chester, Pennsylvania

Please join the Religion and Ecology Group for an on-site Eco-Justice discussion in the city of Chester, Pennsylvania. Eco-Justice or Environmental Justice analyzes how ecological ills are disproportionately shared based upon race, class, and the environment. Chester is an impoverished, predominantly African-American community just west of Philadelphia. Chester has the highest infant mortality rate and percentage of low-weight births in the state. Five waste treatment plants have been built on a concentrated site surrounded by homes and parks in a low-income, largely African-American neighborhood in Chester. One hundred percent of all municipal solid waste in Delaware County is burned at the American Ref-Fuel incinerator; 90% of all sewage is treated at the Delcora plant; and, until recently, close to a hundred tons of hospital waste from a half-dozen nearby states was being sterilized each day at the Thermal Pure plant.

    A19-29

Mother Bethel Church Bus Tour

Mother Bethel is the “mother church” of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and “stands on the oldest piece of land continuously owned by African Americans in the United States.” It is located on a section of Sixth Street renamed Richard Allen Avenue in tribute to the former slave and founding bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The present sanctuary was erected in 1889 and underwent major renovation in 1987. Of special note and significance are its stained glass windows. Located in the basement of Mother Bethel is the Richard Allen Museum Collection which holds numerous documents, photographs, paintings, and artifacts related to the history of Mother Bethel and the AME denomination. Additional information related to Mother Bethel and the Richard Allen Museum can be found at www.motherbethel.org.

    A19-27

Plenary Address

Theme: A Life Biography of Wolfhart Pannenberg

Born in 1928 in Stettin, Germany, Pannenberg began his theological studies at the University of Berlin after World War II and also studied at the University of Göttingen and the University of Basel. He completed his doctoral dissertation at the University of Heidleberg. He studied under theologians Karl Barth and Edmund Schlink, among others. Pannenberg has drawn together religion and science through much of his life. Wolfhart Pannenberg published his magnum opus, the three-volume Systematic Theology, in the 1990s. He has also contributed substantially to the philosophy of history and the philosophy of science. He has been called an “eschatological realist" and a great interdisciplinary thinker.

    A19-28

Special Topics Forum

Theme: AAR Student Luncheon and Panel Discussion: Career Alternatives for Doctoral Students in Religion and Theology

The skills and knowledge students acquire in doctoral studies in religion and theology prepare them for a wide array of career alternatives, not just the role of classroom professor. Today, PhDs in religion and theology are working in venues such as: nonprofit organizations; publishing and other media; theological libraries and archives; offices of campus life, both administrative and auxiliary; foundations specializing in religion; parish or diocesan ministry; providing programming for clergy and laity renewal or for retreat houses; religious high schools; nongovernmental organizations providing human and other services; institutes, religious think-tanks, centers of inquiry, etc.; government; and business. Work in these career alternatives often carries different, sometimes greater financial and psychological rewards than comparable academic positions, as well as different challenges and opportunities for personal development and for influencing others. Panelists will discuss some of these challenges and opportunities and share their own personal experiences in career alternatives. Separate registration is required.

    A19-50

Arts Series/Films: Alambrista

Robert M. Young's critically acclaimed 110-minute film Alambrista (1977) depicts the harsh realities of Mexican life on both sides of the border. Following the birth of his first child, a young Mexican slips across the border into the United States in search of the American dream for himself and his family. He finds heartbreak, exploitation, and disappointment, but also friendship, affection, and help along the way.

When first released, Alambrista received critical praise and a number of awards, including a Camera d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. For the University of New Mexico Press release, a distinguished group of scholars has packaged a new director's cut of the film with a book of essays devoted to immigration and the U.S.–Mexican borderlands.

Directed by Robert Young, 1977, 110 minutes (color, Mexico; Spanish with English subtitles).

    A19-51

Special Topics Forum

Theme: Imagining Religion in the Postcolony: Beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism

Postcolonial practices and ways of imagining religion challenge our existing notions and understanding of religion. Is the study of religion still trapped in the binary of occidentalist and orientalist notions of religion? This special topics forum will explore the multiple experiences and practices of religion in postcolonial contexts and scholarly responses to them.

    A19-52

Special Topics Forum

Theme: The Supreme Court and Religion

As Chief Justice Rehnquist's tenure on the Court draws to a close, this panel looks back on the legacy of the “Rehnquist Court” with respect to religion. We will also discuss some of the “hot topics” of the preceding term, including the religious rights of prisoners and the display of the Ten Commandments on government property.

    A19-53

Special Topics Forum

Theme: AAR Excellence in Teaching Forum: A Conversation about Teaching with the 2005 Excellence in Teaching Award Winner

This interactive session will focus on discussion of issues raised by the teaching materials posted by Professor Zayn Kassam at the AAR's Virtual Teaching and Learning Center. They can be accessed after October 15 at http://www.aarweb.org/teaching/default.asp.

    A19-54

Arts, Literature, and Religion Section

Theme: Angels in America: Theatre, Film, Literature

Shifting Contexts for Grief and Rage: Watching Angels in America, Then and Now
Kent Brintnall, Emory University

In Antigone’s Claim, Judith Butler poses the question of who owns the grief stemming from the AIDS epidemic. Using contemporary work on the politics of mourning, as well as reviews of HBO’s film Angels in America, this paper will explore what it means to watch a televised adaptation of Tony Kushner’s 1987 play in 2004. Given that Kushner’s play was about a very specific coalescence of historial circumstances and was written and presented in the midst of those events, what does the adaptation mean when wrenched from the historical context on which the work is based? Questions about the work of memory and mourning with respect to Angels in America will be related to larger questions about remembering and representing historical tragedies generally as well as the nature of religious rituals as tools for remembering.

co-presenter with Victoria Rue
Craig S. Strobel, ConSpiritu: A Center for Cultural Creativity

This presentation will examine the play Angels in America by means of performance. A selected scene will be enacted by two actor-scholars, with a mid-scene character switch. This gendered character switch will provide the impetus for participants in the session to reflect critically and creatively upon the nature of audience perceptions, culturally-constructed expectations concerning characterization and performance, as well as the nature of the performance event itself vis-à-vis the cultural embeddedness of any performance. All these themes are found in Tony Kushner’s work, and a performance presentation is particularly adept at opening these up for discussion and examination.

Angels in America: Performing Gender Construction
Victoria Rue, San Jose State University

This presentation will examine the play Angels in America by means of performance. A selected scene will be enacted by two actor-scholars, with a mid-scene character switch. This gendered character switch will provide the impetus for participants in the session to reflect critically and creatively upon the nature of audience perceptions, culturally-constructed expectations concerning characterization and performance, as well as the nature of the performance event itself vis-à-vis the cultural embeddedness of any performance. All these themes are found in Tony Kushner’s work, and a performance presentation is particularly adept at opening these up for discussion and examination.

Of Ghosts and Angels: Derrida and Kushner on the Impossibility of Forgiveness
Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Columbia University

In a number of essays and lectures written toward the end of his life, Jacques Derrida sets forth the controversial proposition that, insofar as forgiveness can only forgive the unforgivable, the very possibility of forgiveness lies in its impossibility. This paper will sketch the aporia of forgiveness in Derrida's work, offer a critique of his one sustained attempt to imagine a concrete “scene” of forgiveness as onto-economic, and finally re-imagine the problematic of conditional and unconditional forgiveness through two scenes toward the end of Tony Kushner's _Angels in America_. It will be suggested that something like the forgiveness of which Derrida “dreams”--an interruption refractory to all historical or subjective re-appropriation--might be glimpsed in a particularly haunting sequence in this play, in which temporality, identity, understanding, and forgiveness itself suddenly become utterly impossible.

Angels, Witches, and Goats, Oh My! Otherworldly Creatures on Broadway
Dugan McGinley, Temple University

Tony Kushner’s Angels in America is notable for its mystical sensibility. It is populated with creatures who do not quite fit in this world but also do not seem to fit into other worlds made available to them through traditional religion or even the human imagination; yet they ultimately possess a wisdom that is lacking both on earth and in the heavens. This paper will put Angels in America in conversation with other Broadway shows that appeared between its appearance as a play and as a film. I will discuss the overlapping strategies each of these dramas uses to critique the inability of religion and society to come to terms with difference and to identify the “real” enemies to human fulfillment as seen through the eyes of these playwrights.

    A19-55

Buddhism Section and Japanese Religions Group

Theme: Buddhism in the Southern Capital: Heian and Kamakura Developments of Nara Buddhism

During the Nara period (710-794), several Buddhist schools were transmitted from China and became established in the major temples of Nara, the capital of Japan. These schools, the so-called 'Six Schools of the Southern Capital,' were extremely important in introducing Buddhist thought to Japan. In recent years, under the influence of Kuroda Toshio's kenmitsu taisei theory (which holds that, along with the Tendai and Shingon schools, the Nara schools continued to dominate Japan until well into the Muromachi period), scholars have begun to emphasize that these schools continued to play an important role in the Japanese religious scene even after the capital was moved to Kyoto, ending the Nara period. This panel explores the ways in which the Nara Buddhist sects continued into the Heian (794-1185) and Kamakura (1185-1333) periods, changing in response to new conditions.

The Miraculous Jizos of Nara
Sarah Horton, Macalester College

Miraculous Jizos of Nara is a category mentioned by the Shasekishu, a late thirteenth-century collection of Buddhist stories. Numerous monks in Nara, the center of 'old Buddhism,' resisted the movement toward single-practice Buddhism by emphasizing a combination of practices. In doing so, they included a focus on Jizo, a figure of relatively new importance. I will briefly discuss several Nara Jizo images, three of which are listed in the Shasekishu. Two others, “naked Jizo” images, illustrate a desire to relate to Jizo in a highly realistic manner. My goal in this paper is to demonstrate the ways in which this bodhisattva that is generally considered to belong more to “folk religion” than to orthodox Buddhism played a crucial role in Nara.

Creating Bodhisattvas: Eison, Manjusri, and Kamakura-Period Buddhism Revisited
David Quinter, Stanford University

One of the most significant new Buddhist movements in the Kamakura period (1185-1333) was the Shingon Ritsu school founded by Eison (1201-90). This paper first examines historiographical issues in the study of Kamakura-period Buddhism that still inhibit balanced analysis of Shingon Ritsu and the other Nara schools, even in recent “revisionist” studies. I will then translate and analyze two devotional Manjusri texts that Eison authored in conjunction with the restoration of Hannyaji. These texts are rich for understanding Eison’s views on outcasts (hinin) as well as Manjusri’s role in the proliferation of Mahayana schools, an issue receiving little previous attention. I argue that to properly understand the Shingon Ritsu Manjusri cult, we must recognize the significance of the Shingon and Hossô transmissions portrayed here and Eison’s will both to make himself into a living bodhisattva and to create bodhisattvas out of his followers, including monastics, lay sponsors, and outcasts.

Zen and the Precepts in Medieval Nara Buddhism: As Seen in Ensho Shonin Gyojo
Kenryo Minowa, Aichi-gakuin University

The Ensho Shonin Gyojoki is a biography of Ensho (1221-1277), a Kamakura period monk who lived in Nara. From this text, we can learn much about the activities Ensho and the monks who had gathered around him. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that Ensho and his circle were interested in both the vinaya and meditation. In their study of the precepts, they were influenced by the monks of Sennyuji, a temple in Kyoto which transmitted a different school of Vinaya than that found in Nara. In the case of meditation, they were especially influenced by the new Zen teachings being propagated by Enni Ben'en at Tofukuji in Kyoto. Hence Ensho and his group were linked both to the Vinaya revival movement, which was one of the central concerns of the Nara monks, and the new Zen teachings.

Towards a New Understanding of the Formation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism
Susumu Uejima, Kyoto Prefectural University

The publication of Kuroda Toshio's 'Development of the Kenmitsu Taisei System in Medieval Japan' in 1975 was a major turning point in the study of medieval Japanese Buddhism. However, his 'kenmitsu taisei' theory is not without problems. In my paper, I will first discuss some problems with his theory. Then, I will critically appropriate Kuroda's theory to develop my own interpretation of medieval Buddhism, using examples taken from the Buddhist school of Nara. To be more specific, I will take up new developments in Buddhist rituals, new forms of shinbutsu shugo practices and the fusion of esoteric and exoteric forms of Buddhism, to illustrate what I see as distinctive features of medieval Japanese Buddhism.

    A19-56

Ethics Section

Theme: Spheres of (In)Justice: Terrorism, Turmoil, and the Resort to Torture

Ethical analyses of the conditions that give rise to, and the ethical arguments that give justification to, the restriction of human rights and the resort to torture.

When Disaster Looms: Terrorism and Supreme Emergency in the Arguments of Michael Walzer and Osama bin Ladin
Elizabeth Barre, Florida State University

In his 1977 classic _Just and Unjust Wars_, Michael Walzer argues that situations of “supreme emergency” may provide justification for terrorist acts. Nonetheless, he has condemned the terrorist attacks of September 11th, believing that these attacks were motivated by a desire for political advantage alone. In this essay, I show that this condemnation is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of Usama bin Ladin’s motivations. A careful analysis of his public statements reveals the extent to which bin Ladin believes Islamic civilization to be in a state of supreme emergency. Furthermore, I show that bin Ladin’s justification for terrorism is strikingly similar to the justification Walzer provides in his chapter on supreme emergency. In light of these similarities, it seems that Walzer is left with two options. He can either approve of Al-Qaeda’s tactics or disapprove of his own doctrine of supreme emergency. This essay argues for the latter.

When the Subject Is Torture(d): Torture, Terror, Religion, and Research Ethics
Nancy Berlinger, The Hastings Center

This paper will examine torture with reference to the ethics of human subjects research, through a discussion of a recently announced research project that will involve the deliberate infliction of pain on subjects to measure the effects of religious belief on pain responses. Media coverage of this British study has suggested such research may be of use in fighting religiously motivated terrorism. The paper will describe the characteristic goals of torture, and how, as a subject of research, it differs fundamentally from the study of pain. The paper will also explore the long association of religion and torture, with special attention to the ethical implications both of using the deliberate infliction of pain as a means of quantifying religious belief, and of approaching belief in terms of its utility in reducing pain. The paper will also include observations concerning the ethics of research involving survivors of torture and terrorism.

Walzer and Ignatieff on the Evils of the War on Terror
Bradley L. Herling, Boston University

Michael Walzer and Michael Ignatieff are two of our most reasonable commentators on the 'war on terror.' It may be surprising, then, to discern the prominence the discourse of evil in their ethical reflections. That many contemporary intellectuals have chosen to invoke this moral concept, often in order to contest its vague deployment in public, political discourse, is not a bad thing. But Walzer and Ignatieff both use the concept to construct terrorism as an extreme limit of moral deliberation and response, invoking a logic of justification that necessarily leads to a slippery slope, especially when it comes to the status of civil liberties. To this extent, the paper raises the possibility that contemporary ethical theory, as represented by these two prominent authorities, has little traction in response to dominant public and political forms of ideological justification for extreme measures within the war on terror.

When Is Torture Right?
Douglas McCready, Kutztown, PA

Practiced since the dawn of human history, torture remains a tool for interrogation, intimidation, and punishment. This is so despite international treaties and declarations prohibiting torture absolutely. Even many who abhor torture are willing to consider its use in emergency situations. Both the deontological prohibition of torture and the utilitarian acceptance of torture are inadequate ethics to address the issue. Dershowitz, Walzer, and Elshtain, among others, have attempted to redress the problem with more finely-tuned approaches. Confronting the practice of torture is also difficult because there is no generally accepted definition of what constitutes torture. Not all coercion is torture, and some coercion is both legal and ethical. Torture, however, remains a wrongful act.

    A19-57

History of Christianity Section

Theme: Silk Hoods, Deaconess Bonnets, and Nuns’ Habits: Debating Women’s Dress in American Christianity

Throughout American Christian history, what women wear and how they present themselves have been high-stakes issues, debated in civil courts, from the pulpit, in church periodicals, and among laywomen and men. Scholars have demonstrated that dress has long been invested with moral values, leading to prescriptions for proper attire that religious leaders have applied more often to women, historically associated with the body, vanity, and fashion, than to men. However, women have used fashion and dress to serve as nonverbal, often indirect but sometimes blatant, means to challenge authority and reconfigure personal and group identities. This session will address the contested meanings of women’s dress in three distinct time periods and communities. Each case reveals Protestant or Catholic American women playing on the ambiguities of prescribed dress to accomplish their own goals of religious self-expression.

“Between Two Extreams”: Female Self-Fashioning in Early New England
Martha L. Finch, Missouri State University

Female dress constellated critical theological and social concerns in early New England. Beginning in 1634 colonial General Courts periodically noted that there was “much complaint” about “excessive” apparel and developed elaborate regulations of dress and hairstyles according to social rank, economic status, and “godly modesty.” Although sumptuary legislation explicitly applied to both genders, women most often appeared in court accused of wearing extravagant fashions. After the final sumptuary laws of 1676 ministers continued to bemoan their female congregants’ “proud rayment” and explicate scriptural reasons for dressing oneself with sobriety. The “rules” for modest apparel lay within a hazy area between the two extremes of “affected plainness” and “worldly excess,” which allowed for personal discretion in one’s fashion choices. Thus, as court and church records and period portraits reveal, both upper- and lower-class women regularly wore clothing that challenged colonial male authority, eventually provoking the demise of sumptuary legislation.

Deaconess Garb: A Bad Habit or Good Fashion Sense?
Jenny Wiley Legath, Princeton University

At the end of the nineteenth century, while Easter bonnet sales burgeoned and Thorstein Veblen critiqued conspicuous consumption, a group of Protestant women called deaconesses created their own distinctive dress, naming it the garb. I argue that the garb lies at the nexus of deaconesses’ contested relationship with Catholicism and ideas of Protestant womanhood. Through a close examination of publicity materials and private writings, I argue that what deaconesses and their supporters said about the garb discloses their ambivalence toward Catholicism and the ideal of the Christian middle-class woman. In defending their garb against charges of “Romanism,” deaconesses reveal their participation in the popular prejudice against Roman Catholicism, but tempered with their own personal experiences of individual nuns and Catholics. In promoting their garb as “becoming” and “womanly,” deaconesses strove to fit the model of Christian femininity while also calling into question certain assumptions about woman’s role.

Hard Habit to Break: The Work of Mapping Postconciliar Catholicism on Nuns’ Bodies
Stephanie Stillman, University of California, Santa Barbara

As Catholics in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council were intentionally and creatively working to reconstruct Catholic identity, nuns' bodies became the landscape upon which Catholics in the United States mapped new and old identities. Images of the nun in full habit, secluded and bitter, represented a relic of a preconciliar world while images of nuns without veils, in everyday clothing, who were actively engaged in social and political movements were construed as emblematic of the postconciliar future of Catholicism. As Catholics laid claim to nuns' identities through the tailoring of habits they were more broadly engaged in the project of defining postconciliar Catholicism. This work is an attempt to explore the ways that both nuns and lay Catholics in the United States understood alterations of nuns' clothing in the 1960s in an attempt to unpack the underlying hopes and anxieties that were about far more than textiles.

    A19-58

North American Religions Section

Theme: Metaphysical/Occult Traditions and the Imagination of America: Critical and Historical Perspectives

This session will analyze modern American metaphysical/occult movements as the 'mimetic rivals' or 'doubles' of Anglo-Protestant national culture. Nineteenth-century Spiritualism is analyzed as both a model for and model of a burgeoning American imperial culture. Spirit mediums make visible the invisible bonds of 'sympathy' in antebellum society, articulate a polygenetic cosmogony in postbellum America, and regulate the freedoms of newly liberated Anglo-Protestant citizens. The classification of 'occultism' is further problematized as legitimizing the belief systems of hegemonic Enlightenment culture, and sanctioning the violence directed towards allegedly 'occultist' communities contesting the social origins of the American nation.

Marginalizing the Mainstream of Religion, the Occult, and the Otherworldly
D. Michael Quinn, Rancho Cucamonga, CA

Despite the complicating fact that marginalized, underprivileged groups have their own competing elites and opinion makers, a larger dynamic operates between a society's elites and non-elites. The belief systems of a society's elites and its non-elites can be seen as parallel, or as symbiotic, or as parasitic, or as antagonistic, or as competitive, or as complimentary, or as similar, or (occasionally) as identical. But the primary dynamic involves the power of a society's elites to privilege their belief systems against those of non-elites. Thus, irrespective of other denominators of social class, a person's beliefs become a litmus test for whether the person is mainstream or marginal, intelligent or unintelligent, rational or irrational, respectful or disreputable. In the western tradition of Enlightenment values, these patterns are particularly evident in beliefs in religion, the occult, and the otherworldly.

The Metaphysics of Empire and the Government of Souls
John H. Lardas, Haverford College

In 1854 the United States Congress received a petition with over fifteen thousand signatures seeking to convene an investigation into “the power and intelligence of departed spirits operating on and through the subtile [sic] and imponderable elements which pervade and permeate all material forms.” As Spiritualism spread across the country, leaders were confident that “spiritual science” might ascertain “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Congress, however, thought otherwise, rejecting the petition with the wry suggestion that “it be referred to the committee on foreign relations.” The question posed to the government went unanswered: what exactly was haunting antebellum America? This paper will explore this question by contextualizing Spiritualism in light of violent incursions into Mexico and Indian lands. It will analyze how spirits not only blurred the boundary between life and death but also enabled individuals to resolve the tensions of a burgeoning American empire.

Race, Nation, and the Topography of Spiritualist Emotion
Robert S. Cox, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

A reformer, Socialist, and satirist, William Denton was among the most widely read Spiritualist writers of the mid-nineteenth century, and one of the most interesting figures for understanding the roles of race and religion in the imaginary community called nation. In this talk, I will explore a new mental science, Psychometry, that Denton developed to explore the deep history of the planet and the races that inhabit it. Steeped in photographic theory and the culture of sympathy that informed Spiritualist praxis, Psychometry permitted the psychically sensitive individual to read the past directly from natural objects, just as one reads the visual past from a photograph. What Denton discovered about the (polygenetic) origins and history of relations of human races, I will suggest, is a bellwether for charting the trajectory of Spiritualist sympathy in the post-Civil War years, and more generally for understanding the transformation of American race relations.

The Dark Sublime: Occult Heresies and the American Nation
Darryl Victor Caterine, Grinnell College

This paper seeks to analyze the perennial struggle between evangelical Protestantism, modern science, and various metaphysical/occult traditions to define the social contours and sacred origins of the United States. Inspired by the scholarship on the witch trials, I will document the sensationalized and/or demonized 'otherness' of Freemasonry, Mormonism, and Ufology in American history. Guided by the theoretical insights of Michel Foucault and and Rene Girard, I will argue that the scandals surrounding the metaphysical/occult tradition reflect an oftentimes violent rivalry between closely related factions of Anglo-Protestant culture to articulate the nation's religious and social boundaries.

    A19-59

Theology and Religious Reflection Section

Theme: Evangelical Religion and Social Change

The four papers in this section examine resources in American evangelicalism for addressing contemporary social and cultural currents.

Honesty, Conflict, and a New Vision of the Reign of God as a Basis for Social Change among Latino/a Evangélicos/as
Nora Lozano, Baptist University of the Americas

This paper challenges traditional theological views that have slowed the process of social change among Latino/a evangélicos/as. First, many evangélicos/as promote a spiritualized theology that ignores/minimizes oppression. This position has generated a passivity that needs to be challenged with the idea that God’s Reign is present today on earth, and evangélicos/as need to act accordingly. Second, since Latino Protestantism was shaped over against Catholicism, since the beginning it has harbored an anti-Catholic feeling that pressure's evangélicos/as to hide their problems in order to be good witnesses of Jesus. The issue here is that a person cannot engage in social changes, if she/he does not acknowledge that there is a problem that needs to be changed. Third, there is a misconception about the term “conflict” that presents that it is always destructive/negative. This idea needs to be reevaluated because often a person/group must engage in healthy conflicts to generate social changes.

Asian-American Evangelicals and the Value of Diversity
Kathleen Garces-Foley, California State University, Northridge

Asian Americans have increasingly entered into the evangelical subculture through such organizations as InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Promise Keepers. As they move into the mainstream, they bring distinctive values, religious styles, and social concerns with them. This paper will explore how Asian Americans are changing the face of American evangelicalism in regard to race relations. It will present findings from a year-long study of Asian American pastors who are leading their congregations to become multiethnic. The goal of this study was to understand the racial attitudes of Asian American evangelicals whose “value for diversity” has compelled them to create multiethnic churches. Since the development of multiethnic churches has become a prominent cause for many evangelicals, this is an important arena in which to consider the influence of Asian Americans on evangelical ethics and values.

Cultivating the Affections, Lakewood Church Style: Insights for Contemporary Religious and Moral Reflection
Ki Joo Choi, Boston College

Lakewood Church, the largest church in the United States, has been the object of intense fascination and criticism in recent times. This paper provides a critical interpretation of the Lakewood phenomenon and the theology of Lakewood’s senior pastor Joel Osteen. While Osteen’s message is subject to a number of shortcomings, his emphasis on the theological and moral significance of the positive affections compliments a number of important thinkers within the Christian tradition. As such, Osteen’s theology or, more broadly, Lakewood’s message, can, if given serious consideration, provoke dialogue on the often neglected issue of the role of celebration in the religious and moral life.

"Thus Sayeth the Lord...": Prophetic Voice, Evangelical Theology, and Social Change
Chris Boesel, Drew University

Evangelical theology and preaching is fundamentally constituted by the prophetic. The implication for the question of Evangelicalism’s relationship to social change is that a prophetic understanding of the Word of God offers resistance to cooptation by the cultural status quo. The life and witness of Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt (1842-1919) provides a concrete example of an Evangelical witness that was both fundamentally prophetic and deeply counter-cultural. For Blumhardt, all forms of political action stand under the judgment of God’s Word and the inbreaking Kingdom of God. Simultaneously, Blumhardt remained committed to prophetic social change as a relative and limited witness or parable of the coming Kingdom of God. This commitment allowed for flexibility in dealing with issues of social and political change, retaining a revolutionary orientation, but all the while not allowing the Kingdom of God to be directly identified with any particular political program.

    A19-60

Women and Religion Section and Childhood Studies and Religion Consultation

Theme: Children, Women, War, and Politics

Child Soldiers, Militarism, and Theology: An Ethical Challenge
Kristin Herzog, Independent Scholars' Association

P. W. Singer's 'Children at War' (2005) provides a comprehensive study of child soldiering the world over. It describes almost unimaginable cruelties against and by child recruits. We often overlook, however, that the tendency to militarize children's lives is not limited to the 'Third World.' Child soldiers are a grotesque representation of an increasing global militarization. Cynthia Enloe has described this process in women's lives. There is a tendency to provide more U.S. recruits through children's programs like the 'Young Marines' and advertising on School TV. Recruiting videos are hardly distinguishable from violent video games. Only 2.8 cents of every federal dollar is spent on education, while the defense budget is increasing astronomically, also in other countries. Chris Hedges has written about the myths of war that fuel this development. Even a non-pacifist theology can resist the militarization of children's lives and thereby support the movement to abolish child soldiering.

“Slaughter of the Innocents”: Children in Ancient and Modern War
Honora Chapman, Stanford University

Do we share recognizable cultural values that condemn the murder of innocent women and children? Why? What makes a particular act “barbaric”? I shall show that since the beginning of western historiography in antiquity, authors such as Thucydides have used the reality of women and children dying during warfare—especially sieges— not only as a literary device for increasing pathos in their texts but also in order to comment on the very nature of “civilization” itself, its disintegration at key moments, and what attempts are made to avenge or rectify the wrong done. I shall examine King Herod’s supposed “slaughter of the innocents” as well as the activities of the Romans in Judea in the first century CE., including the siege of Jerusalem in 70. The literary interpretations of these events from two thousand years ago still influence reactions to events nowadays such as the massacre at Beslan.

Living and Partly Living: Childhood under Occupation
Raymond J. Webb, University of St. Mary of the Lake

This paper is based on interviews with ten Palestinian women – five Muslim and five Christian – now ages 16 to 23, who have spent significant parts of their childhood years under military occupation. Their religious understanding and patterns of religious practice are described. The possible effects of social location, opportunities for enrichment activities, success in school, experience of other family members, attitudes toward those who fled and those who resisted, attitudes toward the occupiers, nationalistic, religious, and family motivations, and perceptions about the future are examined. How the women have been strengthened, perceptions of loss, spiritual dimensions, inter-religious attitudes, and analogies to material in sacred texts are elaborated. The functioning of, assistance of, and possible difficulties caused by religion to persons under military occupation also are examined, leading to the exploration of theoretical implications and tentative prescriptions for persons in similar circumstances and for religious bodies so located.

    A19-61

Black Theology Group

Theme: The Nature of Black Religious Experience

What is black about black religious experience? And, what is religious about black religious experience? These questions, while seldom discussed in explicit terms, have theoretical importance for the study of black religion. In fact, the growth of black theology and other modes of academic inquiry is dependent on critical attention to such questions. This panel brings together various perspectives on these two queries.

The Nature of African American Religious Experience: A Postmodern/Post-structuralist Analysis
Torin Alexander, Rice University

It is my contention that contemporary black theology offers a rather anemic understanding of African American religious experience. Additionally, I maintain that this weakness stems from a lack of attention to theory and methodology within the discipline. Moreover, I believe that methodologies associated with postmodern social theory might be employed to great effect to the study of black religion and black religious experience. Specifically, I intend to show in this paper that the methodologies of Niklas Luhmann and Michel de Certeau demonstrate that African American religious experience is best understood as “oppositional.” By oppositional, I mean that which resistances, circumvents, evades, or opposes oppressive dimensions of power, particular in relation to the construction of society. Such an understanding subsumes while going beyond descriptions of African American religious experience as liberative, such as found in the work of James Hal Cone.

Theoretically Essential: Postmodernism and Approaches to Liberation
CL Nash, University of Edinburgh

Two of the most hotly debated theoretical paradigms in liberation theology are: postmodernism and postcolonialism. Postmodernism often succeeds in decentering the authority of liberationist scholars, while postcolonialism, among other things, cannot tell us when colonialism actually ended. Additionally, does complex theoretical jargon simply serve as a gatekeeper, maintaining the very hegemonic order it critiques?

Due to time constraints, I would like to identify and engage the following points: 1) postmodernism levies challenges of ahistoricism and essentialism – which often subverts the Black experience and allows groups to maintain fixity; 2) postcolonialism allows Black identity to become vulnerable, often subsumed in difference and instability; 3) the commodification of cultural production facilitates non-Blacks becoming the experts of our narratives and history; 4) this commodification simultaneously diminishes our authority to become experts of our own histories and narratives.

Toward a Tradition of African-American Pragmatic Religious Naturalism
Jonathon Samuel Kahn, Vassar College

What does it mean when writers who for the most part spend their careers rejecting normative religious commitments find their literary and political imaginations inhabited by relig