The two papers in this session consider issues in translation and retelling in the tradition of the _Mahābhārata_. Shankar Ramaswami’s paper compares the account in the _Mahābhārata_ of the snake sacrifice by Janamejaya with the retelling of it in Arun Kolatkar’s English poem “Sarpa Satra.” He argues that while Kolatkar’s poem suggests the contours of a non-anthropocentric vision of dharma (as that which sustains and promotes all life and the earth), this ideal is actually more fully developed in the critical edition of the _Mahābhārata_. Fred Smith’s paper approaches the ongoing project of translating the critical edition of the _Mahābhārata_ as an effort of retranslation, and describes the current publication plan. He compares examples from earlier efforts at translating segments of the text. Advances in translation methodology and cultural understanding can give greater focus to the meaning, intent, and comprehensibility of a received text.
The ELCA’s “Declaration of Inter-religious Commitment,” addresses how Lutheran thought calls Christians to be in relationship with their neighbors who adhere to a variety of different religious traditions as well as no religion at all. In his response, Hindu scholar Anant Rambachan commends the ELCA’s call for interreligious cooperation that exemplifies “a shared commitment to justice, peace, and the common good.” At the same time, Rambachan also expresses disappointment that the Declaration remains theologically neutral regarding what Lutheran theology and practice might learn from people of other religions and no religion. As one who writes and speaks extensively about how his interactions with Christians and others impact his Hindu self-understanding, Rambachan asks, “Is theological neutrality the final word on inter-religious dialogue?” This panel of Lutheran theologians will go beyond theological neutrality in engaging with Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists as well as religious nones.
This papers session for the June Online Meeting focuses on recent and emergent scholarship. From baptismal practices under transformation in Scandinavia to new perspectives on comparative theology and indigeneity, from deep histories of colonialism to the urgent challenges of responding to White Christian Nationalism, the papers in this session point to cutting-edge questions and offer new directions for scholarship on Global Lutheranisms and society.
The Lutheran tradition is not without its own history of colonialism and of working with governments to settle people on colonized lands around the world. Papers in this session engage historical, theological, and other perspectives that critically address the complexity of past or present relationships between Lutheran theology, land appropriation, indigenous rights and settler colonialism. This session also reflects towards future possibilities for action and scholarship.
This panel will examine the connections between materiality and masculinity as broadly understood across multiple contexts and methodologies within the field of Religious Studies. Materials are often components of both the construction of masculinity and religious lives, yet are less often analyzed as a point of connection. By analyzing not only materials that signify masculine expression such as hair and clothing but also artistic expressions of idealized beings, this panel examines a broad spectrum of masculinity and materiality in cultural, and subcultural, constructions. In addition, this panel will also examine how the materials of the archive are not inert, but rather are an active participant involved in these constructions through the preservation of discourse around masculinity. This panel will demonstrate the fundamental materiality within religious preservation and subversion of masculinity and masculine identity with important implications for masculinity studies within many fields beyond the foci of these papers.
The central question for this roundtable discussion is, How do we, as scholars of religion, teach about the Middle East? This question recalls the deep historical roots of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions in the region and the contemporary diversity of those communities. This question is also pressing in light of the current events and the requests for information that many of us are receiving from other scholars, students, and members of our broader communities. What pedagogical approaches should we consider for courses focusing specifically on the Middle East, for courses that can only touch briefly on the region, or for other venues in which we may be asked to teach about the Middle East? What resources are available – including textbooks, audio/visual sources, and digital tools – for teaching and understanding the region and its religious communities?
This panel explores the politics of materiality and material culture in the context of Middle Eastern Christianity, including the dynamics of violence and destructive acts on material culture in the context of manuscripts, the manuscript trade, cultural heritage management, and archaeology. The papers delve into historical, sociopolitical, and theological perspectives, offering critical insights into how these elements intersect with the preservation and destruction of cultural heritage.
This panel will look at the different ways that chaplains face moral injury - both in terms of the factors that are morally injurious in the course of chaplaincy work, as well as morally injurious aspects of military life that chaplains should prepare to encounter.
This session will explore the capacity and limits of the concept of moral injury to describe particular kinds of harm suffered in wartime and in situations of racist discrimination and violence. Papers offer examinations of the language and concepts that undergird understandings of violence, guilt and morally injurious circumstances in the contexts of Anti-Asian hatred in the US during the COVID pandemic and its aftermath, the Colombian civil war, and the current US defense posture and its philosophical frameworks.
This session will explore the relationship between trauma, moral injury and meaning-making through engagement with the work of psychiatrist Judith Herman. The papers range from a theoretical examination of these relationships in a theological sense, an exploration of visions of commual repair in the aftermath of moral injury, and an exploration of the challenges to conceptualizations of harm, punishment and justice offered through Herman's work for those imprisoned and facing execution in the US criminal justice system.
Matthew Harris, Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Oxford University Press, 2024).
Farina King, Diné dóó Gáamalii: Navajo Latter-day Saint Experiences in the Twentieth Century (University Press of Kansas, 2023).
Ben Parks, American Zion: A New History of Mormonism (Liveright, 2024).
Originally published in 2001, Jeffrey J. Kripal’s Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism opened doors into the hidden lives of scholars of comparative mysticism. By way of his own “secret talks” – vulnerable, first-person reflections, interwoven between historical case studies – Kripal demonstrated a methodology with the potential to redefine insider-outsider debates through rigorous, transparent, and participatory self-reflexivity. This panel invites papers that challenge the norms of objectivity and subjectivity in scholarship, extend first-person narratives into academic discourse, and interrogate the borders and boundaries between self and other, human and more-than-human, and the intimate intersections of eros and the body as sites of mystical transformation and transgression.
Engaging with this year’s conference theme, “Violence, Non-Violence, and the Margin,” this panel interrogates representations of violence and bodily mortification in mystical writing and art. We invite papers that consider what happens when we refuse to separate the injury, pain, and mortification found in mystical texts from the concept or category of violence. While attending to the spiritualization and narrativization of bodily pain, we ask how violence is imagined and described by the art and literature produced in traditions and communities understood as mystical. Furthermore, how do we understand the difference between representations of violence and embodied experiences of violence, especially in mystical texts that blur the line between representation and reality? We also invite papers that consider how violence and nonviolence affect our understanding of the category of mysticism. And how reconfiguring the nature of violence and nonviolence might shift the relationship between the margin and the center.
This roundtable asks two primary questions: how can we nurture greater respect, more nuanced understanding, more care-full critical thought, and deeper community engagement in teaching on Native American and Indigenous religious traditions? Secondly, how can theories and methods from Native American and Indigenous studies offer critical interventions to responsible pedagogy, making any course in religious studies more responsive to questions of social justice? We seek to shift the focus from probing Indigenous religious traditions themselves, to critically understanding the relationship between Indigenous religions, power, and justice. This involves reassessing misguided colonial attempts to categorize Indigenous religious practices and considering Indigenous contestations and engagements with these approaches. In other words, how might teaching with Native American religious traditions, rather than just about them, be an occasion for better understanding the history and formation of settler colonial societies, and for imagining and enacting more respectful relationships with Indigenous peoples, places, and knowledges?
This session centers the history and perspectives of Kumeyaay peoples, the Indigenous peoples of San Diego. In 1769, The Mission San Diego de Alcalá, became the first Spanish Colonial Mission that sought to colonize California Native peoples. The Kumeyaay fought to dismantle the Spanish mission, the Mexican government, and later, the American colonial system. They continue to steward their ancestral homelands. Contemporary Kumeyaay include tribal members and their descendants from multiple Kumeyaay Bands in San Diego County and northwestern Mexico. This session focuses on the intricacies of Kumeyaay Spirituality and Religious intersections in cities, reservation communities, and beyond. Highlighting historical moments within Kumeyaay history, we will explore how “Spirituality,” prior to the settler colonial encroachment, laid the foundational understanding of relationality and reciprocity of all things. Lastly, we will consider how Kumeyaay Spirituality and Religion has changed over time, influencing how tribal communities relate to “tradition” through a contemporary lens.
Kant and Nineteenth-Century Theology
2024 marks the 300th anniversary of Immanuel Kant's birth. To commemorate this anniversary, the Nineteenth Century Theology Unit holds a panel exploring Immanuel Kant's legacy and influence on modern theology. Kant’s critique of rationalist metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics and his quest for a new foundation of "science" (Wissenschaft) had a major impact on theologians in the late 18th and especially in the long 19th century. The panel presents research on nineteenth-century academic theology, exploring the intersection between Kant's work and post-Kantian idealism and the theologies it influenced. While one paper examines Immanuel Kant's theological commitments, others explore his influence on the theologies of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Isaak Dorner, Albrecht Ritschl, and Wilhelm Herrmann.
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.
