Online Program Book

Christianity is big business. This session explores the well-established partnership between American evangelical identity, capitalism, and the corporate institutional logic of growth, recruitment, leadership formation, and development. Each author offers a unique entry point into the business of evangelicalism. This session includes papers that address American evangelicalism’s staunch commitment to Western capitalism, the ways in which this position is driven by anti-communist sentiment, and the implications for evangelical attitudes toward racial justice and conservative politics. It also includes papers that approach the theme from the corporate side. They examine the evangelical logic governing the subject formation and organizational practices that are not only present within the church but also outside of ecclesial space, in this case, at the heart of one of the largest tech companies in the world.

This panel explores the importance of Platonic and Neoplatonic thought in the mystical thought of various Muslim thinkers. Towards this end, the papers that make up this panel address a number of questions with regard to the nature, scope, audience, and context of Platonic texts that were translated during the Arabic translation movement that occurred in ninth-century Baghdad, Iraq from Greek into Arabic. This panel seeks to show how the translations of the Dialogues of Plato, the ontology of Plotinus, and the theurgical practices of Iamblichus and Proclus became part-and-parcel of Islamic mystical thought after the ninth century. The ideas in these original Greek works were also often misattributed and even heavily redacted to conform to the monotheistic worldviews of their Muslim and Christian readers. The papers in the panel examine the use of these translations in the thought of various mystics and philosophers during the Medieval period.

Emerging research on questions of doctrine, metaphor, violence, licensed evil, and care among Japanese religious actors across a range of historical periods.  Individual papers in this omnibus session explore the discourse of “licensed evil” in the writings of Hōnen’s (1133-1212) followers, with special attention to their concern with salvation through the practice of the nembutsu; the metaphors of violence and their relation to Buddhist doctrinal concerns in the writings of Takuan Sōhō (1573-1645); the Maruyamakō movement, which spread rapidly through eastern Japan beginning in 1870, and whose transformation from movement to sect is explained through the concept of "doctrinalization"; and the eldercare activities of Kōdō Kyōdan, a Tendai Buddhist group founded in 1936, with attention to how interactions between religious and secular institutions shape this Buddhist program's vision of faith as a medium between care and caring in a time of crisis. This papers session will be followed by a business meeting for the Japanese Religions Unit.

Since the inception of what can be considered “comparative mysticism,” the field has largely privileged mystics and mystical traditions whose examples have been culled primarily from the “major world religions” – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as representing “theistic” mystics, and Hinduism and Buddhism as either “monistic” or “non-theistic” mystics. While this early-mid 20th century typology has been contested, definitions of “who counts” as a mystic have mostly been the purvey of 21st century scholars who have begun to question the boundaries of the field including the very definitions applied to its subjects. This panel questions the qualifications one must possess in order to be considered a mystic, and presses how far beyond the categories of traditional “world religions” might the term apply. In doing so, this panel “troubles” the category of the mystic, particularly who counts as one, and where one might locate – or re-imagine – a comparative study of mysticism today.

This panel includes papers from a range of perspectives on translating and interpreting the Qur'an.

Papers in this session will explore spirituality and morality as it emerges from specific disability locations and contexts: 1) Humanistic Deaf spirituality emerges in fiction and role playing games, and Deaf players create meaning in the midst of the struggle for self-determination and autonomy in the face of continued encroachment on Deaf communities, languages, identities, and bodies. 2) Black disabled men bring wisdom to the struggle towards thriving, esp. in the spirituality arising in the lives of Black disabled men, spirituality that is a profound source of strength and inspiration marked by softness and an ethics of care. 3) Nineteenth-century epileptic colonies highlight how epileptics were positioned on the borderline between madness and sanity, and how religious ideals and practices linked with medical authority, valorizing eugenic biopolitics and positioning religion as a moral good and disciplinary strategy.