The Political Theology Unit will be holding four panels this year at The American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature conference, held in San Diego, California, on November 23-26. If you are attending this year and are interested in attending these and other political theology related events, you may find this list to be a helpful guide. You will find that many of the panels this year address topics concerning the political and ethical dimensions of violence and non-violence. While this list is not exhaustive, we hope it points you in the direction where topics related to political theology are made explicit in the descriptions. We hope you find this year to be beneficial to your research interests, and please be sure to leave a comment if you find a helpful addition to this list.
Political Theology Unit Panels and Collaborations:
- A23-326
Political Theology Unit
Theme: Insecurities: Beyond Religious (Non)Violence
Saturday, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Convention Center-25A (Upper Level East)
Inese Radzins, California State University, Stanislaus, Presiding
This panel explores ways in which the intricate ties between law and violence play out in the sovereign figure of the state, particularly as questions of (in)security emerge at the center of modern political life. Panelists will analyze the underlying religious foundation that sanctions law/violence within the various domains of the state such as the secular civil disobedience movements, the U.S. elections, the counterinsurgent warfare against the Islamic communities in the U.S. and climate politics.
Isak Tranvik,
The Myth of Religious Nonviolence
Adam Kotsko, North Central College
The Katechōn, the Man of Lawlessness, and the Most Important Election of Our Lifetimes
Kyong-Jin Lee, Fuller Theological Seminary
The Violence of the State of Exception and Macrosecuritization in Climate Politics
Mohamad Marwan Jarada, University of California, Santa Barbara
Counterinsurgent Force: Islam and Speculative Violence
Responding
Christopher C. Brittain, Trinity College, Toronto
Business Meeting
An Yountae, California State University, Northridge, Presiding
Michelle Sanchez, Harvard University, Presiding
- A23-130
Philosophy of Religion Unit and Political Theology Unit
Theme: Economies of Violence: Race, Pathology, Capital, Reason
Saturday, 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Hilton Bayfront-Indigo D (Second Level)
Maureen Kelly, Bard HS Early College Manhattan, Presiding
This panel challenges the presuppositions that have underwritten the “return of the religious” as a historical and conceptual phenomenon. This return, we argue, is based on a tacit equation of religion and violence that has not only defined modern European philosophy but is also complicit with liberal forms of reason and governmentality. Against this equation, we strategically reinhabit the canons of modern philosophy and political theology. Considering the domains of pathology, capital, reason, and race, we offer a more capacious understanding of violence in both its negative and positive valences. On our readings, violence in its economic and transcendental instantiations is more insidious than often recognized. At the same time, it may be undervalued as a resource for critique and struggle. In all cases, we aim to think violence independently of its dialectical relationship to non-violence in order to face its perils and promises head on.
Zoe Anthony, University of Toronto
Nietzsche’s “War Praxis,” Violence, and the Instinct for Healing
William Underwood, Oberlin College and Conservatory
The Epoch of Annihilation: On the Formal Violence of Capital
Kirsten Collins, University of Chicago
Black Masks, White Masks: Structural Violence in Fanon and Genet
Matthew Peterson, University of Southern California
The Impossibility of Nonviolence: Metaphysics after Derrida
Responding
Daniel Schultz, Whitman College
- A23-221
Political Theology Unit and Global-Critical Philosophy of Religion Unit
Theme: Theodicies under suspicion
Saturday, 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Hilton Bayfront-Indigo 202B (Second Level)
Nathan R. B. Loewen, University of Alabama, Presiding
How might theodicies serve to mask and marginalize structural violence? (either tacitly or explicitly) “Theodicy” here works as a category for arguments that defend religious or metaphysical claims from contradictions based on events of the actual world. We have selected proposals that articulate a theodicy, and then critically analyze how it functions to justify structural conditions such as inequalities, civil violence, xenophobia, political structures, or disparities of health, education, etc. Proposals may work with typical sources (e.g. texts, scriptures) or less-conventional sources (e.g. oral traditions, social media, laws, etc.).
Thaddeus Robinson, Muhlenberg College
Spinoza on Theodicy as Foolish Wonder
Jack Bernardi, Virginia Tech
The Price of Providence: Central Banking and the Book of Job
Emily Theus, Yale University
The “Partial Theodicy” of Donna Haraway’s Chthulucene
Justin Tse, Singapore Management University
Xenia Chan, Augustana University
‘Transnationally Asian’ Theodicies: Troubling “Social Formations” in Transpacific Counterpoetics
Business Meeting
Marie-Helene Gorisse, University of Birmingham, Presiding
Nathan R. B. Loewen, University of Alabama, Presiding
- A24-325
Political Theology Unit and Religious Conversions Unit
Theme: Karma and Grace: Religious Difference in Millennial Sri Lanka – Author Meets Critics
Sunday, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Hilton Bayfront-Indigo 202B (Second Level)
Eliza Kent, Skidmore College, Presiding
This roundtable session features a conversation about Karma and Grace: Religious Difference in Millennial Sri Lanka (Columbia University Press, 2023), by Neena Mahadev. The anthropological and ethno-historical study examines Theravada Buddhist and Christian political-theological entanglements over conversion. While Sri Lankan Pentecostals and other Born-again Christians publicize “the Good News” (Sinhala, Subha Aranchiya), the work interrogates what happens to this “news” when it is propagated among subsets of a population that sharply resists it. Karma and Grace elucidates why questions of religious belonging became a revived source of conflict in a country that had been so long afflicted by ethnic war. The book proposes a “multicameral” methodological and theoretical approach to the study of pluralism. The author and three commentators will discuss how the book contributes to the anthropology of Christianity, the anthropology of Buddhism, religion and media, and debates on pluralism, political theologies, and the politics of religious freedom.
Panelists
Alicia Turner, York University
Devaka Premawardhana, Emory University
Matthew E. Engelke, Columbia University
Responding
Neena Mahadev, Yale-NUS College
5. M23-114
University of Divinity
Theme: Figuring the Maternal in Political Theology
Saturday, 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Omni-Gaslamp 3 (Fourth Floor)
Taking its cue from political and theological discourses, political theology has often taken recourse to paternity, sovereignty, inheritance, etc., in order to think its conceptual coordinates. Even as those coordinates are offered for critique, this session will explore the elision of the figure of the mother in political theology. What of the mother in the making of political theology? Papers will be presented by
Amaryah Shaye Armstrong
Miguel Vatter
Janice McRandal
Scott Kirkland
6. M24-112
University of Divinity
Theme: Figuring the Maternal in Political Theology: a round table with Richard Boothby
Sunday, 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Hilton Bayfront-Aqua 309 (Third Level)
Richard Boothby is a leading Lacanian theorist, who has recently published Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred (Northwestern University Press, 2022). This session will provide an opportunity to hear Prof. Boothby speak about this work and its relation to the question of the figure of the mother in the production of political order, a conversation adjunct to his “Notes on the Most Radical Possible Theology” in Embracing the Void.
- A23-121
History of Christianity Unit and North American Religions Unit
Theme: 1964 Civil Rights Act: Religion, Politics, and Aftermaths
Saturday, 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Convention Center-24B (Upper Level East)
Joseph Stuart, Brigham Young University, Presiding
The 1964 Civil Rights Act provided a historic breakthrough for the enshrinement of racial equality under the law in the United States on several levels. By some measures, it represents the legislative highpoint of the midcentury Black freedom movement, particularly the nonviolent wing of the international campaign’s activists. Those activists, predominantly Christians, often relied on their faith to persuade their fellow Americans to support the bill at local, state, and national levels. Fascinatingly, the reality that these activists had to persuade so many of their fellow Christians to support the Civil Rights Act reveals the many Christianities actively being practiced in the United States after World War II. Figures who used their moral authority and appeals to their Christian faith to fight for and against racial equality appealed to their religious identities and logics. Christianity has never been a monolith. Neither has the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Panelists
Cori Tucker-Price, University of Southern California
Andrea Johnson, California State University, Dominguez Hills
Felipe Hinojosa, Baylor University
Isaac Weiner, Ohio State University
Douglas Clark, Vanderbilt University
Alexia Williams, University of Illinois
Joseph Stuart, Brigham Young University
- A23-125
Law, Religion, and Culture Unit and Religion, Holocaust, and Genocide Unit
Theme: “Paperwork is Life: Legal Status, Necropolitics, and Sovereignties”
Saturday, 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Omni-Gaslamp 2 (Fourth Floor)
Benjamin Sax, Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies, Presiding
Lack of legal status renders peoples subject to direct violence by state actors. States and, to a large degree, to their populations, adopt categories such as “illegals” to justify, subtly or directly, implicitly or explicitly, disposability. Our interest in this panel is with the lived reality of those without legible legal status as “citizens” and the use of religious thought and practice to negotiate such status. This includes the investment in (or recognition of) metaphysical qualities to citizenship and its documents as well as the mobilization of religious traditions for prophetic critiques of the very notion of the nation-state and the idea of citizenship, and, ultimately, the imagination of alternative sovereignties above but also existing in tension with that of states.
Panelists
Spencer Dew, Ohio State University
William Calvo-Quiros, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Northwestern University
Atalia Omer, University of Notre Dame
Carlota McAllister, York University
Ronan Lee, Loughborough University London
Christopher Sheklian, Mississippi State University
- A23-135
Religion and Politics Unit
Theme: Religion and/or a State: Jewish, Islamic, and Buddhist Perspectives
Saturday, 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Hilton Bayfront-Sapphire 411B (Fourth Level)
Marie W. Dallam, University of Oklahoma, Presiding
This panel of five papers explores aspects of how religions or religious communities benefit or suffer from ties between religion and state, and/or the ramifications of such ties. The geographical range of the papers is wide, including Israel, the United States, the Arab world, India/Pakistan, Indonesia, and Japan. They cohere through investigating the nexus between religion and state as it relates to issues including “diasporism,” Zionism, the caliphate, the concepts of popular sovereignty and constituent power, religiously-sourced redefinitions of the religious and the political, and the ways in which religious doctrine, art, and ritual may reinforce political authority.
Shaul Magid, Dartmouth College
Jewish Nationality and Diaspora Nationalism: Reading Louis Brandeis through Daniel Boyarin
Simon Wood, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
A Religion and/or a State: Revisiting the Abolition of the Caliphate
Danielle Widmann Abraham, Ursinus College
Legible Solidarity: Women’s Politics in Conflict and Post-Conflict Aceh.
Andrew F. March,
The Discovery of Popular Sovereignty in Modern Islamic Thought: The Question of Constituent Power
Pamela D. Winfield, Elon University
Buddhism and the Imperial Body Politic of Japan
Responding
Curtis Hutt, University of Nebraska, Omaha
- A23-136
Ritual Studies Unit
Theme: Creating and Reshaping Rituals with Political Stakes
Saturday, 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Hilton Bayfront-Aqua 300 (Third Level)
Jone Salomonsen, University of Oslo, Presiding
The political instrumentalization of ritual performances is as old as ritual itself. The contributors to this panel present a variety of cases in which rituals are created or reshaped to propagate national ideologies and to rehabilitate those whom civil institutions have marginalized.
Soodeh Mansouri, University of California- Santa Barbara
Hajj as a Political Ritual
Lukey Ellsberg, Yale University
A New Nuclear Metaphysics: Civil Defense Rituals and the Reclamation of Possibility
Renee Cyr, University of Kansas
After Time Served: Utilizing Rituals to Transition Back Into Society Following War or Incarceration
Responding
Sarah M. Pike, California State University, Chico
- P23-110
Karl Barth Society of North America
Theme: Karl Barth — On nationalism, politics, and Christian witness
Saturday, 9:30 AM – 11:00 AM
Hilton Bayfront-Sapphire 410A (Fourth Level)
Paul Dafydd Jones, University of Virginia, Presiding
Karl Barth — On Nationalism, Politics, and Christian Witness
Sara Mannen , University of Aberdeen
The Intersection of Providence and Nothingness: Neighbors, Nations, and Nationalism
Breno Seabra,
Karl Barth and Christian Nationalisms in Brazil
Christopher Choi, University of Virginia
Theologizing Insurgent Grounds: An Experiment with Karl Barth
- A23-204
Bonhoeffer: Theology and Social Analysis Unit
Theme: Bonhoeffer and Politics
Saturday, 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Convention Center-26B (Upper Level East)
Karen V. Guth, College of the Holy Cross, Presiding
The papers in this session engage Bonhoeffer’s thought in relation to politics and various political theology discourses, including secularism and Christian nationalism; queer theory; global and racial capitalism; whiteness, fascism, anti-racism, and anti-Semitism; and retributive justice and violence.
Janel Kragt Bakker, Memphis Theological Seminary
“We Are Otherworldly or We Are Secularists:” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Josh Hawley, and the Politics of the Kingdom of God
Michael Mawson, University of Auckland
The Theological Art of Failure Reading Bonhoeffer’s Late Writings with Jack Halberstam
Benjamin Burkholder, La Roche University
Does Divine Retribution Generate Human Violence?—Bonhoeffer, Guilt, and Resistance
J. Kameron Carter, University of California, Irvine
Judeo-Christianity (and Palestine); or, Late Modernity’s Whiteness Project
- A23-234
Special Session
Theme: Politics and Black Religions: A History of Engagement
Saturday, 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Hilton Bayfront-Sapphire AEI (Fourth Level)
Nicole Turner, Princeton University, Presiding
Leonard McKinnis, University of Illinois, Presiding
2024 marks important anniversaries in Afro-American religious history, including Jessie Jackson’s historic first presidential campaign (40th, 1984), Freedom Summer and the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and Malcolm X’s establishment of the Muslim Mosque, Inc. (60th, 1964). These moments reflect important examples of the varied expressions and interactions between Black religions and the political sphere through electioneering, organizing, and critique. The Afro-American Religious History Unit will host a special session that reflects on these various iterations at the institutional, individual, social, and communal levels. Of special concern will be both the expansive and limiting ways that intersections of Black religions and politics have been considered as opening spheres of influence, as generating political critique, and as sites of gendered power and struggle. Featuring an interdisciplinary set of leading, public-facing scholars, this roundtable will engage the historical and contemporary significances of the intersections of religion and politics for African Americans.
Panelists
Edward Curtis, Indiana University, Indianapolis
Lerone Martin, Stanford University
Barbara D. Savage,
Ula Taylor, University of California, Berkeley
- A23-325
North American Religions Unit
Theme: Pedagogies of Racial Capitalism: Contesting Capitalist Subject Formation in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Institutions
Saturday, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Convention Center-29B (Upper Level East)
Isaac Weiner, Ohio State University, Presiding
This roundtable seeks to excavate pedagogies of racial capitalism – and challenges to those pedagogies – that animated the creation of a variety of institutions and institutional innovations in the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries. While capitalism is often considered in the abstract as economic philosophy or political ideology, the historical process it describes was lived or embodied in the religious ontologies of its mediating institutions. Contributors examine African-American repatriation companies, Protestant churches, Fordist factories, business schools, vocational training programs, and agricultural curricula at land-grant universities to show how religious logics of colonial conquest and resource extraction persisted in the secular expressions of education, reform, and management. While centering on the North American context, this roundtable traces these institutions’ engagement with global networks of missionaries, scholars, and businesspeople through which racialized thought and exploitative practices were both produced and challenged.
Panelists
Deonnie Moodie, University of Oklahoma
Heath Carter, Princeton Theological Seminary
Kati Curts, Sewanee: The University of the South
Timothy Rainey, St. Olaf College
Chad Seales, University of Texas, Austin
Daniel Vaca, Brown University
- A23-408
Christian Systematic Theology Unit
Theme: World-Making, Non-Violence, and the Transformation of the Political
Saturday, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM
Convention Center-9 (Upper Level West)
Andrea C. White, Union Theological Seminary, Presiding
Adam Beyt, St. Norbert College
Nonviolent Politics and the Force of Hope: Christian Eschatology and Judith Butler’s Political Philosophy
David Newheiser, Australian Catholic University
Political Theology and Populist Conflict: Against Quietism and Theocracy
Olivia Bustion, University of Chicago
Disidentification and/as Queer Theological Method
- A23-432
Religion and Politics Unit
Theme: Christian Nationalist Ideologies and Theology
Saturday, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM
Convention Center-30E (Upper Level East)
Scott Culpepper, Dordt University, Presiding
Christian Nationalism continues to pose challenges for everyone trying to understand and address its social, political, and religious influences. One ongoing debate about Christian Nationalism involves the degree to which actual theological content informs Christian Nationalist ideas. Are Christian Nationalist agendas primarily driven by cultural and political forces or are they based on theological understandings that undergird and amplify the cultural influences?
This panel addresses questions about the theological ideas and habits of mind that contribute to Christian Nationalist agendas. Bryan Ellrod examines the theodicy of Christian Nationalism in “Visions of the End at the Texas-Mexico Line: Crises of Sovereignty and Theodicy in Department of Homeland Security v. Texas.” Jared Stacey provides insight into rhetorical uses of hell as a place of violence in “Fight Like Hell: Generating A Praxis of Non-Violence By Contesting White Evangelical Doctrines of Hell As A Site of Violence on January 6.” Mutale Nkonde concludes the panel with a look at how online rhetoric frames theology and ideology in “Hate.com: How The Online Christian Identity Movement Inspires Offline Violence.”
Bryan Ellrod, Wake Forest University
Visions of the End at the Texas-Mexico Line: Crises of Sovereignty and Theodicy in Department of Homeland Security v. Texas
Jared Stacy,
Fight Like Hell: Generating A Praxis of Non-Violence By Contesting White Evangelical Doctrines of Hell As A Site of Violence on January 6
Mutale Nkonde, Columbia University
Hate.com: How The Online Christian Identity Movement Inspires Offline Violence
- A24-132
Special Session
Theme: Roundtable on the 2024 U.S. Election
Sunday, 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Hilton Bayfront-Sapphire AEI (Fourth Level)
Jeremy Posadas, Stetson University, Presiding
The 2024 US election has the potential to fundamentally alter domestic and global politics, regardless of who wins. This session gathers an intersectionally and methodologically diverse set of scholars to analyze the key forces shaping the election and its consequences. (Each co-sponsoring unit designated one panelist for this session. Panelists will be divided among the session’s several segments to allow for many voices to be in conversation.)
Panelists
Daniel Bannoura, University of Notre Dame
Jason C. Bivins, North Carolina State University
Scott Culpepper, Dordt University
Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Vanderbilt University
Ángel Gallardo, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary
Zareena Grewal, Yale University
Stewart M. Hoover, University of Colorado, Boulder
Amir Hussain, Loyola Marymount University
Khyati Joshi, Fairleigh Dickinson University
Boyung Lee, Iliff School of Theology
Shaul Magid, Dartmouth College
David Newheiser, Australian Catholic University
Minjung Noh, Lehigh University
Christophe D. Ringer, Chicago Theological Seminary
Santiago H. Slabodsky, Hofstra University
Chris Tirres, DePaul University
Candace M. Laughinghouse, Chicago Theological Seminary
Soong-Chan Rah, North Park Theological Seminary
- P24-105
Colloquium on Violence and Religion
Theme: Exploring Mimetic Theory: Theological and Political Dimensions
Sunday, 9:30 AM – 11:00 AM
Hilton Bayfront-Sapphire 402 (Fourth Level)
Chelsea King, Sacred Heart University, Presiding
The first paper revisits the concept of monotheism through Schelling’s philosophical lens, enriched by Girard’s insights into the nature of divine and human imitation. It presents an intriguing dialogue between biblical narratives and philosophical thought, shedding light on the evolution of religious consciousness.
The second paper expands the conversation into the realms of theology and social justice, exploring how the Cross shapes historical and contemporary political realities. By placing Girard and Lonergan in dialogue with Ellacuría’s political theology, it offers a pathway to a political praxis rooted in love and informed by a deep understanding of human tendencies towards victimization.
Chris Morrissey, Trinity Western University
Monotheism, Intolerance, and the Path to Pluralistic Politics: A Schellingian Review
Matthew Cuff, Boston College
The Politics of the Cross: Insights from Girard, Ellacuría, and Lonergan
- A24-211
Ethics Unit
Theme: Book Discussion on Necropolitics: The Religious Crisis of Mass Incarceration in America
Sunday, 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Convention Center-28B (Upper Level East)
Blair Wilner, University of Virginia, Presiding
In Necropolitics: The Religious Crisis of Mass Incarceration in America (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021), Christophe Ringer explores the pernicious and persistent presence of mass incarceration in American public life. He argues that mass incarceration endures largely due to the religious significance of animalizing and criminalizing black people in times of crisis. Ringer demonstrates how vilifying images of black people contribute to racism and political economy, creating a politics of death that uses jails and prisons to conceal social inequalities and political exclusion. This session assembles scholars of religion who also engage in abolitionist social, political, artistic, and ecclesial practices to reflect upon and respond to Ringer’s work.
Panelists
Traci C. West, Drew University
Jeremy V. Cruz, St. John’s University, New York
Ashon Crawley, University of Virginia
Responding
Christophe D. Ringer, Chicago Theological Seminary
- A24-212
Evangelical Studies Unit
Theme: Evangelicalism and Political Violence
Sunday, 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Convention Center-3 (Upper Level West)
Jessica Wong, Azusa Pacific University, Presiding
This session examines the dangerous intersection of evangelicalism, politics, and violence. Paper topics range from the wedding of evangelicalism with Christian nationalism and organized campaigns of spiritual violence culminating in January 6th to the explorations of the ideational logic of “conspiritualism” and the correlations of atonement theory and gender complementarianism to violence. Drawing on historical, theoretical, and theological resources, these papers promise to deepen our understanding of evangelicalism’s power to both foster and restrain violent political engagement.
Christina Littlefield, Pepperdine University
Adian Imbrogno, Pepperdine University
Dancing on the Knife’s Edge: Violence in the Christian Nationalist Rhetoric of Turning Point Faith’s Founder Charlie Kirk
Kenneth Paradis, Wilfrid Laurier University
Evangelical conspiritualism and Jordan Peterson as a bridge to “manosphere” violence.
Matthew D. Taylor, Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies
From the 10/40 Window to January 6th: How Evangelical Spiritual Warfare Violence Shaped the Capitol Riot
Kristen Hydinger, Boston University
Steven Sandage, Boston University
Peter Jankowski, Bethel University
Shelly Rambo, Boston University
When Atonement Theology Needs Atoning: Penal Substitution and the (lack of) Concern for Suffering
Business Meeting
Peter Choi, Graduate Theological Union, Presiding
Jessica Wong, Azusa Pacific University, Presiding
- A24-329
Religion and Politics Unit
Theme: Marginality, Solidarity, and Democratic Belonging
Sunday, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Hilton Bayfront-Aqua Salon AB (Third Level)
Ann Duncan, Goucher College, Presiding
In a time of cultural divide and stark polarization, this panel highlights case study of religiously motivated solidarity with the marginalized and the implications of such solidarity for paradigms of citizenship and democratic beloning. The first urges us to look again at the Azusa Revial through the lens of queer theology to illuminate the anti-normative perspective on democratic citizenship preached within. The second examines Jewish opinion magazines and how one in particular moved beyond its typical Jewish focus to embrace intersectional feminist activism. The third explores case studies of Christian solidarity with Palestine and the embodiment and risks of such action.
Kristyn Sessions, Villanova University
Normativity, Citizenship, and Political Imagination: Keri Day’s Azusa Reimagined in Conversation with Queer Thought
Olli Saukko, University of Helsinki
Jewish opinion magazines, intersectionality, and the Obama era culture wars
Destiny Magnett,
Elom Tettey-Tamaklo, Harvard Divinity School
Costly Solidarity: Case Studies in Global Christian Solidarity with Palestine
- A24-426
Religion and Cities Unit
Theme: Religious Practice in Public Spaces and Infrastructures
Sunday, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM
Hilton Bayfront-Cobalt 520 (Fifth Level)
Isaiah Ellis, University of Toronto, Presiding
This session explores how religious identities, communities, and politics inform the production and use of everyday public spaces and infrastructures. Papers include an exploration of the yearly Ashura procession in Karachi as a marking of public space in the face of religious violence, an examination of the STAR Performing Arts Centre in Singapore as a secular space that serves religious purposes, and a proposal for attention to categories of social sin and structural sin in theological engagements with the ethical problem of automobile dominance.
Fizza Joffrey, University of Oxford
Practicing Religion in a Religious City: Urban Transformation seen through Karachi’s Ashura Procession
Katja Rakow, Utrecht University
‘A STAR is born’ – Religious place making, architecture, and infrastructure in Singapore
Stephen Waldron, University of Notre Dame
Toward a Theology of Mass Transit
Responding
Ehsan Sheikholharam, University of North Carolina At Chapel Hill
Business Meeting
Fatimah Fanusie, Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies, Presiding
Lisa Beyeler-Yvarra, Yale University, Presiding
- A24-427
Religion and Memory Unit
Theme: Making Memories: The Politics and Practices of Religious Memories
Sunday, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM
Hilton Bayfront-Indigo 204A (Second Level)
Christopher Cantwell, Loyola University Chicago, Presiding
This panel addresses religion’s place in the politics of making memories and how memories shape religious communities and practices. One paper interrogates twentieth-century U.S. civil rights activist Rev. Dr. Murray’s use of memory in forming political and religious activism. A second paper examines the textual, ritual, and material practices of making and remaking the memory of a miracle in Coptic texts from the tenth through eighteenth centuries. A third considers how a guru’s devotees make his memory at his samadhi (burial site) through kinesthetic processes, spatial texts, and material relics. Together, these papers explore the dynamic and contested politics and practices of religious memories.
Ella Myer, Emory University
Pauli Murray’s “Past Associations”
Monica Mitri, University of Southern California
Moving Mountains and the Politics of Memory
Leena Taneja, Zayed University
Making Space: Everyday Remembering Practices at Rupa Goswami’s Memorial Site
Responding
Rachel Gross, San Francisco State University
Business Meeting
Christopher Cantwell, Loyola University Chicago, Presiding
Rachel Gross, San Francisco State University, Presiding
- A25-125
Nineteenth Century Theology Unit
Theme: Political Theology and the Nineteenth Century
Monday, 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Hilton Bayfront-Aqua 310B (Third Level)
Emily Dumler-Winckler, Saint Louis University, Presiding
This session includes papers that draw on nineteenth century thinkers and movements to shed light on recent debates in political theology, as well as offering new perspectives on how questions now associated with political theology were being formulated in the nineteenth century.
Marilyn Piety, Drexel University
Kierkegaard on the Paradox of Feminist Progress
Todd Gooch, Eastern Kentucky University
Pantheism, Personalism, and Popular Sovereignty: The Politico-Theological Significance of The Essence of Christianity
Matt Jantzen, Hope College
The Confederate in Political Theology’s Attic: Robert Lewis Dabney, the Lost Cause, and Nineteenth-Century Reformed Theology
Responding
Thomas A. Lewis, Brown University
Business Meeting
Annette G. Aubert, Westminster Theological Seminary, Presiding
Sheila Briggs, University of Southern California, Presiding
- A25-221
Religion and Politics Unit
Theme: On Helping One’s Neighbor: Severe Poverty and the Religious Ethics of Obligation by Bharat Ranganathan
Monday, 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Hilton Bayfront-Aqua Salon AB (Third Level)
Jamie Pitts, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Presiding
Severe poverty is arguably the most pervasive yet overlooked form of contemporary violence. The nearly one billion people who live under conditions of severe poverty are subject to widespread exploitation, chronic malnutrition, and lack of access to safe water, sanitation, adequate shelter, and basic preventive healthcare. For religious ethicists, severe poverty raises several pressing moral questions: what sorts of obligations (if any) do affluent people have to severely poor people? On which terms? And to what extent? Drawing from religious ethics and moral and political philosophy, Bharat Ranganathan’s On Helping One’s Neighbor answers these questions, arguing that affluent people have demanding institutional and interpersonal obligations to severely poor people. This Roundtable Session brings together scholars from across the methodological spectrum whose work focuses on different dimensions of human rights and religious ethics to assess Ranganathan’s argument and the contributions religious ethics makes to debates about severe poverty.
Panelists
Shannon Dunn, Gonzaga University
Nichole Flores, University of Virginia
Simeon O. Ilesanmi, Wake Forest University
Howard Pickett, Washington and Lee University
Responding
Bharat Ranganathan, Case Western Reserve University
- A25-333
Theology of Martin Luther King Jr. Unit
Theme: Social Change, Civil Rights, and the Human Condition: A Religious Approach to King’s Nonviolent Philosophy
Monday, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Convention Center-31B (Upper Level East)
Leonard McKinnis, University of Illinois, Presiding
For those who seek to grapple with violence, conflicts, wars, and conundrums across the globe, a timely religious and ethical consideration of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s nonviolent philosophy is timely. King’s critical response to the “three evils of society”–racism, militarism, and materialism (poverty)–represents a point of departure for considering the movement that emerged from his philosophical thinking. These three evils are sites of ethical inquiry and engagement where one can consider how social change, civil rights, and the human condition carry religious intonations in King’s nonviolent philosophy. How does King’s nonviolent philosophy empower displaced or dehumanized persons? How does his philosophy utilize religious elements (e.g., moral and ethical inquiry, sense of community, and Divine-centeredness) to pursue liberation?
Dr. Santha Jetty, Columbus State University
Satyagraha and the Dalits: King’s Nonviolent Philosophy and Civil Rights
Donnell Williamson, Brown University
Kingian Nonviolence and Prophetic Christianity
Anjana Dayal de Prewitt, American Red Cross
A Social Prophet, Nonviolence, and Women’s Health
AnneMarie Mingo, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
Dis-Entangling the Theo-Economic Ethos in King’s Moral Leadership Offerings to the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Business Meeting
Leonard McKinnis, University of Illinois, Presiding
Montague Williams, Point Loma Nazarene University, Presiding
- A25-419
Religion and Politics Unit
Theme: The Politics of Public Religious Speech
Monday, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM
Hilton Bayfront-Sapphire L (Fourth Level)
Jason Sexton, University of California, Los Angeles, Presiding
This panel examines the role of religious speech as a force in public discourse. Religious belief, by its very nature, encourages adherents to apply their theological and ethical perspectives to their lived experiences in civil societies. That reality raises universal and important questions about the proper deployment of religious speech in pluralistic societies. What role should religious speech play in pluralistic societies? Putting the shoe on the other foot, how can legitimate and informed critiques of religion be encouraged and protected as well? The panelists seek to address these questions through multiple lenses.
Sarah Greenwood’s paper, “Covenantal Authority and Civil Disobedience: Arendt, Heschel, and Non-violent Refusal of the Law,” explores the influence of Hannah Arendt and Abraham Heschel on using religious language to support civil disobedience. Eric Stephen examines the complex questions raised by proselytism in the public square in “‘You’re Either a Missionary or a Mission Field’: A Critical Examination of Contrasting American and European Approaches to Regulating Proselytism and Related Religious Speech.” Jason Blum shifts the focus to ask equally important questions about when and how religion can be critiqued in public discourse in “The Last Taboo: Ideology, Identity, and the Public Critique of Religion.”
Sarah Greenberg,
Covenantal Authority and Civil Disobedience: Arendt, Heschel, and Non-violent Refusal of the Law
Eric Stephen, Harvard University
“You’re Either a Missionary or a Mission Field”: A Critical Examination of Contrasting American and European Approaches to Regulating Proselytism and Related Religious Speech
Jason N. Blum, Davidson College
The Last Taboo: Ideology, Identity, and the Public Critique of Religion
- A26-111
Women and Religion Unit
Theme: Unveiling Women’s Resistance Movements: Intersections of Nonviolent Resistance, Religion, and Gender Justice
Tuesday, 8:30 AM – 10:00 AM
Convention Center-33A (Upper Level East)
Hadia Mubarak, Queens University, Charlotte, Presiding
This session delves into the complex intersections of gender, violence, and nonviolence within the sphere of religious and political conflicts across various cultural contexts. Exploring case studies from Nigeria, Myanmar, Africa broadly, and Java, the session explores how women and women-identifying people confront and navigate the challenges posed by religious extremism, military regimes, cultural norms, and historical narratives. It examines the roles that gender plays in both experiencing and resisting violence, highlighting efforts ranging from public discourse participation and the creative protest movements to philosophical reflections on relational autonomy and revisionist mythmaking. Through nuanced understandings of how women’s agency and resilience in the face of violence are intricately tied to their religious and cultural environments, the session offers innovative perspectives on fostering peace, justice, and gender equity.
Ruth Amwe, Princeton Theological Seminary
Engendering Religious Extremism and Violence: Nigerian Women and the Pursuit of Non-Violence
Sau Nam, University of Denver
Sarong Revolution: Myanmar Women’s Courageous and Creative Nonviolence Movement in Resisting the Violence of Military Regime
Telesia Musili, University of Nairobi
Violence and Nonviolence: The Double-edged Sword Effect of Relational Autonomy
Verena Meyer, Leiden University
The Woman at the Margins: Violence, Gendered Erasures, and Recoveries in Memories of Java’s Islamization
- A26-118
Religion and Politics Unit
Theme: The Theopolitics of Martyrdom
Tuesday, 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Convention Center-28B (Upper Level East)
Adam Stern, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Presiding
The figure of the martyr simultaneously inspires awe and reverence, anxiety and suspicion. Various religious traditions interpret and sanction the martyr as a divine model of witness, sacrifice, and love. In secular translations, the martyr is read as a sacrificial figure of social/political cause. In this way, martyrdom has a highly variegated grammar, with religious and secular iterations, but ultimately pertains to a question of relation to truth, in speech and at times, in dying. The martyr bears witness and testifies to truth, in preparation to struggle and give up one’s life for it. While the idea of martyrdom translates suffering and death into a particular grammar, it also holds within it affective frames of collective memory and movement. This roundtable seeks to think through the sociopolitical figure of the martyr between life/death by way of the theological and anthropological—using poetic, visual, and creative variations of language and grammar.
Panelists
Sarah Bakker Kellogg, San Francisco State University
Daniel Boyarin, University of California, Berkeley
Candace Lukasik, Mississippi State University
Basit Iqbal, University of California, Berkeley
Randeep Hothi, University of Michigan
Shahla Talebi, Arizona State University
- A26-124
Religion and Ecology Unit
Theme: The Religious Roots of Resistance: Exploring Ecological Violence and Non-Violent Resistance Movements
Tuesday, 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Convention Center-30A (Upper Level East)
Victoria Machado, University of Florida, Presiding
This panel presents three distinct case studies that explore the religious and spiritual dimensions of non-violent resistance to colonial, military, and ecological violence. Engaging questions about how violence is embedded in and perpetuated through institutions and colonial and capitalist systems, the panelists show how violence can be understood as both visible and active, and insidious and obscured. They underscore the importance of understanding the detrimental impacts of forms of slow violence, including transgenerational and evolutionary violence that impact human and non-human organisms and environmental systems. These contributions address questions about boundaries, including where we draw the line between violent and non-violent forms of activism and what counts as sacred and worthy of protections and why. Together, these panelists examine how religious and spiritual beliefs inform social and environmental justice concerns and inspire religious and ecological resistance in the form of direct action protest, civil disobedience, and regulation and policy reform.
Panelists
Jacques Linder, Villanova University
Lisa Sideris, University of California, Santa Barbara
Amanda Nichols, University of Florida
