Online Program Book

This is the preliminary program for the 2024 in-person Annual Meeting, hosted with the Society for Biblical Literature in San Diego, CA - November 23-26. Pre-conference workshops and many committee meetings will be held November 22. If you have questions about the program, contact annualmeeting@aarweb.org. All times are listed in local/Pacific Time.


	A23-335 Sociology of Religion Unit Theme: Atheist Influencers, Non-Religious Scientists, and Unaffiliated Environmentalists: Making Meaning across Global Contexts Saturday, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM Convention Center-30A (Upper Level East) Amidu Elabo, Princeton Theological Seminary, Presiding This panel examines how religiously unaffiliated people create meaning and community online, in scientific work, and in nature. The first paper draws on interviews with atheist, agnostic, and secular humanist social media influencers to explore how they curate self-expression, community engagement, and authenticity. The second paper utilizes interviews with non-religious scientists in India, Italy, the U.K., and the U.S. to explore how they think and talk about spiritual experiences, including how such experiences can give rise to attitudinal changes. The third paper uses ethnographic research amongst Australian community gardeners and bush regeneration groups to explore how environmental movements are ripe sites to study lived nonreligion, finding that grassroots environmentalists cultivate enchantment, moral visions, and political commitments. Di Di, Santa Clara University Esther Chan, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee The Platform Imaginaries of Atheist Social Media Influencers: Meaning, Community, and Money Abstract Celebrity atheists are usually represented by the “four horsemen” who emerged in the new atheism movement. Atheist social media influencers, however, may challenge the simplified understandings of celebrity atheists. Drawing on fifty-four interviews with atheist, agnostic, and secular humanist SMIs on YouTube and TikTok, we have identified three platform imaginaries adopted by atheist SMIs. First, rather than thinking of a concrete audience, some atheist SMIs perceive social media platform as a space for self-expression. Second, perceiving their deconversions as lonely, some atheist SMIs sought to create space for others to know they were not alone. Finally, SMIs often eschewed the idea of creating content to make money and sometimes disagreed with the label SMI itself because of its association with selling products. We argue that atheist SMIs’ platform imaginary needs to be understood in the context of secularization and stigmatization, commodification and consumerism, and the debates over religious authority. Bridget Ritz, University of Notre Dame Brandon Vaidyanathan, Catholic University of America Categories, Contexts, and Consequences of Spirituality Among Non-Religious Scientists Abstract Today’s waning of traditional religion runs parallel with a waxing of popular interest in matters “spiritual.” While a growing body of qualitative research provides rich insights into the spiritual lives of the non-religious, we do not sufficiently understand the varieties and significance of spiritual experiences among the non-religious in the professional realm, particularly in domains like science. This paper reports findings from a study involving 100 qualitative interviews with non-religious physicists and biologists in various national contexts, designed to shed light on the categories, contexts, and consequences of spirituality among non-religious scientists. We find that non-religious scientists’ spiritual experiences fall into three distinct categories: aesthetic, immersive, and transcendent; which are occasioned by four types of contexts: nature, music or art, grief or loss, and science itself; and in turn can give rise to attitudinal changes requiring such cognitive accommodations as the selective suspension of disbelief and toleration of cognitive dissonance. Rosemary Hancock, The University of Notre Dame Australia Lived Environmentalism: Nonreligion, Nature, and Politics in Urban Sydney Abstract This paper explores the interweaving of politics, nature, and nonreligion in urban Sydney, Australia, responding to a call from sociologists to better understand ‘lived’ nonreligion, especially in the context of ‘world-repairing activities'. It reports on preliminary findings of an ethnographic project with urban community gardens and bush regeneration groups, and argues that social movements like environmentalism are rich sites for the study of lived nonreligion, as they offer their participants space for the cultivation, expression, and embodiment of ‘moral visions.’ The project focuses upon the relational and material dynamics of grassroots environmental groups in Sydney, and seeks to tease out the role of politics, enchantment, and nature in the creation of ethico-political subjectivities.
	A24-229 Religion and the Social Sciences Unit and Sociology of Religion Unit Theme: Challenging Modernity and Its Contradictions: Religion in the 21st Century Sunday, 12:30 PM - 2:30 PM Convention Center-6D (Upper Level West) Anna Sun, Duke University, Presiding This roundtable panel is inspired by the late work of Rebert Bellah, especially through engaging with the new edited volume Challenging Modernity (Columbia UP, 2024), in which social theorists and scholars of religion debate the question of religion in modernity, which has been central to Bellah’s work. The theme of the panel is the seeming contradictions between the transcendent aspirations of religion and the social and political perils we now face in the global 21st century. How to deal with the tension between the transcendental, universalizing ambitions of democracy and the restricting exigences of time, place, and function? What does transcendence mean when it is nurtured by for-profit capitalism? What is the relationship between political, religious, economic, and intellectual classes in the global Muslim communities? The panel includes two original members of the “Habits of the Heart” group as well as three leading sociologists of religion. Panelists Ann Swidler, Graduate School, University of California, Berkeley Richard Madsen, University of California, San Diego Carolyn Chen, University of California, Berkeley Jeff Alexander, Yale University Ahmet Kuru, San Diego State University Business Meeting Dusty Hoesly, University of California, Santa Barbara, Presiding Di Di, Santa Clara University, Presiding
	A25-131 Religions in the Latina/o Americas Unit and Sociology of Religion Unit Theme: Shifts in Latinx/a/o Religiosity Monday, 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM Convention Center-25A (Upper Level East) Israel Dominguez, University of North Carolina At Chapel Hill, Presiding Latinx religion in the world is shifting in response to the proliferation of what Ann Swidler once called "unsettled lives." In this co-sponsored session of the Sociology of Religion and Religion in the Latina/o Americas, panelists will explore the dimensions of this unsettling of Latinx religion across the U.S., its borderlands, Latin America and Europe. Panelists will interrogate the literary tradition of Santa Muerte, how faith-based actors engage with Latin American queer refugees in Spain and the U.S., and how Latino Christians have integrated into the New Apostolic Reformation and its Christian nationalist support for Donald Trump. Zachary Schwarze, Rice University YERBERÍA BOOKS: THE LITERARY TRADITION OF THE RELIGION OF SANTA MUERTE Abstract This paper will examine a genre of literature which I term “yerbería books,” with respect to the growing religion of Santa Muerte. I define the genre as a type of book sold in metaphysical shops of Latine communities (yerberías). They usually contain (1) biographical information on divinities, (2) prayers, and (3) ritual procedures. I will argue that this body of literature has been historically underexamined in scholarship despite being a fixture among devotees. In Section I, I will show how the yerbería literature produces specialized biographies of Santa Muerte which cater to the needs of devotees. In Section II, I will examine continuities in prayers derived from Roman Catholic models. In Section III, I will examine common ritual procedures, which usually take the form of hechizos (spells). In the conclusion, I will show how these elements document the religion’s historical and practical concerns over the past thirty years. Ernesto Fiocchetto, Florida International University Faith Actors and Latin American Queer Refugees in Spain and the US: Sociological Conceptual Categories to Analyze their Role in Forced Migration Contexts Abstract How do FAs act in the reception and integration of Latin American queer refugees in Spain and the US? This presentation focuses on how the intersections of forced migration, religion, and SOGIESC can be addressed from a sociological perspective to understand FAs’ role comprehensively. The paper elaborates on conceptual categories that make a sociological approach to FAs’ agency feasible. It discusses how they enable and constrain diverse aspects of the reception and integration of Latin American queer forced migrants by (in)visibilizing SOGIESC and religion in their narratives about their agency. Matthew D. Taylor, Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies Pressing Beyond the “White Christian Nationalism” Framework: Latinx Christian Trump Advisers and Apostolic Christian Internationalism Abstract The predominant academic framework for understanding Donald Trump’s Christian support (and the Christian manifestations during the January 6th Capitol Riot) is “white Christian nationalism.” But what about non-white Christians who were closely involved in the Trump administration and January 6th? This paper highlights a particular set of Latino/a Christian leaders who were advisers to the Trump administration and many of whom helped mobilize Christians for the Capitol Riot. Strikingly, nearly all of the Latino/a Christian leaders in Trump’s orbit came from a particular strand of modern Christianity sometimes labeled the Apostolic and Prophetic Movement. This diffuse neo-charismatic movement forms transnational apostolic networks of nondenominational churches intent upon “discipling nations” through evangelizing/collaborating with like-minded national leaders. Though not directly part of white Christian nationalism, we can understand these leaders as participating in an aggressive form of Christian internationalism, which sometimes dovetails with American white Christian nationalist interests.
	A25-200 Afro-American Religious History Unit and Sociology of Religion Unit Theme: *The Long and Shifting Shadow of ‘Negro’ Religion: A Critical Reappraisal of E. Franklin Frazier’s The Negro Church in America* on Its 60th Anniversary** Monday, 12:30 PM - 2:30 PM Convention Center-3 (Upper Level West) Nicole Turner, Princeton University, Presiding E. Franklin Frazier’s The Negro Church in America is a foundational text in African American religious studies, examining the intersection of religion, sociality, and politics. Published in 1964 amid the Civil Rights Movement, it analyzes the historical trajectory of African Americans, from the transatlantic slave trade to the Great Migration. This roundtable reevaluates Frazier’s work, assessing its enduring significance and offering contemporary insights. Presenters delve into specific chapters, discussing themes such as the impact of slavery on religious practices, the development of independent Black churches, and their roles post-Emancipation. Panelists critique Frazier’s theories on assimilation and gender dynamics, reflecting on their implications today. With diverse perspectives from scholars of various backgrounds, the roundtable aims to deepen our understanding of African American religious history. The discussion seeks to engage multiple audiences, highlighting Frazier's enduring legacy and the ongoing relevance of his scholarship in contemporary discourse. Panelists Juan Floyd-Thomas, Vanderbilt University Cori Tucker-Price, University of Southern California Kera Street, Brown University Ahmad Greene-Hayes, Harvard University Charrise Barron, Harvard University Responding Nicole Turner, Princeton University Business Meeting Vaughn Booker, University of Pennsylvania, Presiding Nicole Turner, Princeton University, Presiding
	A25-320 Religion and Migration Unit Theme: Religion, Migration, and Resistance to Oppression Monday, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM Convention Center-6D (Upper Level West) Nanette Spina, University of Georgia, Presiding This session explores contexts and practices regarding resistance and the oppression of people on the move across diverse countries. The cases examine a spectrum of circumstances including resistance against deportation, countering hate crimes, and the decolonialization of refugee relief. Throughout these contexts, the theological agency of people on the move is presented, including their choice to change religions through conversion. The papers in this session highlight theological agency as a core concern for ethics, politics, and the study of religion. Iiris Nikanne, University of Helsinki Empirical approach to religious conversion as a process: Follow-up study revisiting the experiences of Iraqi refugees in Finland who have converted from Islam to Christianity Abstract Although the current academic discussion on religious conversion predominantly considers conversion as a process, the number of empirical studies that explore the same converts in different points in time remains limited. Also, there is still little research on the asylum seekers’ conversions from Islam to Christianity following the so-called 2015 refugee crisis. This article provides a longitudinal perspective through revisiting the experiences of Iraqi forced migrants in Finland, first interviewed in 2017–2018 and then six years later in 2023–2024. While religious conversion has been defined in various ways in different academic fields, faith traditions and societal contexts, this study takes a data-driven approach and analyzes what conversion means in these data. The results show that conversion can signify different things to different individuals, as well as the same individuals at different times, providing perspectives useful to academia and societal actors dealing with religion and forced migration. Fadime Apaydin, University of California, Riverside Facing the Hate: A Comprehensive Overview of Religious and Racially Motivated Hate Crimes in the United States Abstract This paper investigates the intersection of immigration and hate crimes within the United States, focusing on the analysis of hate crime incidents motivated by race and religion across 32 gateway cities from 2015 to 2019. It aims to illuminate the patterns of hate crimes in areas with high immigrant populations using data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reporting Program. By examining these incidents in metropolitan areas known for their significant immigrant populations, the research provides insights into the prevalence of hate crimes targeting immigrants, offering a crucial contribution to the discourse on hate crimes and immigration in the U.S. This exploration, underpinned by a quantitative methodology, not only highlights the significance of scrutinizing hate crimes in the context of rising diversity and immigration but also serves as a crucial resource for policymakers and community organizations striving to create a more equitable society. Leonard McMahon, Graduate Theological Union Over and Against: Violence, Honor, and Satisfaction in Immigration Discourse Abstract Deportation today can be deadly. Since 2016 there have been dozens of cases where migrants have been killed shortly after being deported from the United States, and for some citizens this is an appropriate punishment and payment for the sin and “dishonor” of violating borders. However, I argue we have the mandate to change what we cannot accept by standing in for the migrant; we are called to interrupt immigration violence existentially as the new focus of punishment; politically as voices for those unable to speak; and viscerally by interjecting via loving protest and spiritual care. In this paper, I use Anselm’s theory of satisfaction to offer a necessary alternative to the theory of penal substitution that predominates our immigration discourse today, and I call on K. Anthony Appiah’s discussion of honor to explain how this need of society is very present yet often unacknowledged in immigration discourse. Janna Hunter-Bowman, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary popular movements on the move: Latin American immigrant-led struggles and decolonial peacebuilding Abstract Popular movements in the United States that center undocumented migrants from Latin America invite us to challenge wisdom received from some Christian religious traditions, retrieve knowledge that is confined to the margins of elsewhen and elsewhere, and reason in ways that contribute to struggles that disrupt and transform. This presentation outlines several key insights emergent from engaged research with a nonviolent movement fighting for dignity and respect for immigrants in the United States, Movimiento Cosecha. It is a part of a broader project focusing on people in popular processes in the United States as agents under duress. In keeping with 2021 collaborative research agreement, the project aims to articulate an alternative to approaches to immigrants oriented by the helper/helped logic, an alternative that is rooted in immigrant lives and movements for justice. Business Meeting Nanette Spina, University of Georgia, Presiding Ulrich Schmiedel, Lund University, Presiding
	A25-425 Sociology of Religion Unit Theme: Gender and Religion in Global and Local Contexts: Exploring Women’s Participation, Sexual Misconduct, and Reproductive Trauma Monday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM Hilton Bayfront-Aqua 314 (Third Level) Simranjit Steel, University of Memphis, Presiding This panel explores gender and religion in a variety of contexts using diverse methods. The first paper relies on a global survey of Christian churches to explore women’s participation and gendered dynamics in church life, with comparisons across countries. The second paper uses a field experiment to explore whether an applicant’s acknowledgement of past sexual misconduct affects opportunities for pastoral employment in Protestant churches, with surprising findings. Using qualitative interviews, the third paper examines how religious involvement can be a potent resource for Black mothers embedded in a rural, predominantly Black community as they navigate a fragmented maternal health care system and reproductive trauma. The fourth paper employs ethnographic fieldwork in India, Canada, and the U.S. among Hindu Adhiparasakthi communities to investigate the role of women’s leadership in sustaining religious communities locally in a transnational context. Gina Zurlo, Harvard University Where Can Women Do What? A Quantitative Analysis of the Gender Gap in World Christianity Abstract This paper presents preliminary findings from a new project, “Women in World Christianity: Global Perspectives on Christian Participation,” which measures the gendered gap between membership and participation in churches worldwide. The project’s Christian Participation Index allows for comparison at the country level of differences between men and women in church attendance, prayer, importance of religion, supernatural beliefs, pastoral leadership, and other forms of church leadership. Such information can be applied contextually to address the gendered dynamics of church life and interrogate unequal social norms that perpetuate women’s overlooked status in churches worldwide. This paper will present the assumptions and theories undergirding this project, methods and sources used to create this dataset, preliminary findings, and areas for future potential sociological and quantitative research on women in World Christianity. Nanette Spina, University of Georgia Women’s Leadership and Transnational Belonging in the Global Hindu Adhiparasakthi Tradition Abstract Scholars in the social sciences have long observed that migration has been a central concern of ethnographers across disciplines. For ethnographers today research interests continue to expand focusing analysis on how the global intersects with the local in communities across borders. When theoretical analysis is employed alongside ethnographic fieldwork, the links between the global and the local come into sharper focus and we are able to make further connections across multiple locations in the lives of individual agents. Based on fieldwork in India and North American immigrant communities within the Hindu Adhiparasakthi tradition, this paper investigates the role of women’s leadership and ritual authority, community-building, and how religious communities are sustained locally in a transnational context. These components illustrate networks of people working transnationally to achieve a greater expression of community across borders, one that places devotion, service, and a sense of interconnectedness at the heart of everyday life. Carolina Seigler, Princeton University Better the Devil You Know: The Effect of Sexual Misconduct Disclosure on Future Pastoral Employment Abstract Evidence of sexual violence has been notably visible within large religious organizations like the Catholic Church, but observational data highlight patterns of lenience towards perpetrators in other faith settings as well. Many spiritual leaders who violate their parishioners are recidivists, serially committing sexual crimes in multiple congregations. What remains unclear, however, is whether pastoral search committees are knowingly hiring spiritual leaders with histories of sexual misconduct. A field experiment run from Sept 2023-Sept 2024 explored whether an applicant’s acknowledgement of past professional misconduct affected opportunities for pastoral employment. Applicants to pastoral jobs who disclosed sexual misconduct were almost twice as likely to receive callbacks than those who did not. This study successfully applies a long-tested sociological experimental method to a setting where it has not yet been utilized, thus contributing novel causal evidence concerning a phenomenon that is just as socially important as it is empirically understudied. Rose Archer, Iris Manburg, University of Chicago The Long-Term Impacts of Reproductive Trauma in Rural Black Birthing Communities and the Role of Religious Involvement Abstract This paper examines how religious involvement may be a particularly potent yet understudied resource for Black mothers embedded in a rural, predominantly Black community as they navigate a fragmented maternal health care system and cultivate strategies of healing and recovery in light of reproductive trauma. By drawing on 29 qualitative interviews with Black mothers, this study engages a life course perspective through a Womanist sociological lens to demonstrate how Black mothers navigate the long-term impacts of reproductive trauma through four key social processes: delaying individual responses to reproductive trauma, managing heightened grief across the life course, reevaluating healthcare utilization, and extending the “long arm” of religion through (non)organizational religious practices. We conclude by providing recommendations to guide future research examining the intersections of religious involvement and reproductive trauma in Black birthing communities.
	A26-109 Sociology of Religion Unit Theme: What Christians Talk About When They Talk About Marriage: A Roundtable on Courtney Ann Irby’s Guiding God’s Marriage Tuesday, 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM Convention Center-24A (Upper Level East) Tazeen Ali, Washington University, Saint Louis, Presiding How do Christians understand the question, “What makes a good marriage?” How do evangelicals and Catholics alike frame this question and how do they answer it in our contemporary moment, when Christians are concerned that the institution of marriage is on life support? And, what does studying these questions reveal about how Christians navigate gender, sexuality, and intimacy as they practice their lived religion? Courtney Ann Irby’s insightful new book Guiding God’s Marriage: Faith and Social Change in Premarital Counseling (New York University Press, May 2024) answers these questions and more through rich qualitative analysis. This roundtable panel gathers sociologists of religion and historians of religion, gender, and sexuality to amplify its important contributions to the sociology of religion specifically and the study of religion more broadly. Panelists Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada, Kalamazoo College Kristy Slominski, University of Arizona Jeffrey Guhin, University of California, Los Angeles Sara Moslener, Central Michigan University Amy DeRogatis, Michigan State University Responding Courtney Ann Irby, Illinois Wesleyan University

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