Educational prophet bell hooks long asserted that education is a practice of freedom. But education is not inevitably so. Education that imagines and invites freedom must be made to do so by educators and students alike. Where might we turn for wisdom, dreams, strategies, and stories about the nature and shape of teaching that rehearses freedom? According to practical theologians and religious educators Rachelle Green and Almeda Wright, we should look at Prisons and Archives. In this session, Green and Wright will put their recent scholarship into conversation with one another: Learning to Live: Prisons, Pedagogy, and Theological Education (2024) and Teaching to Live: Black Religion, Activist-Educators, and Radical Social Change (2024). This conversation will explore how teaching and learning in prison and during times of social change can help us wrestle with the question of how and why we teach when freedoms are threatened. The future of education depends on our ability to imagine futures beyond the present and shape them in and through our teaching.
In-person November Annual Meeting 2025 Program Book
All time are listed in Eastern Time Zone.
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Ecclesial Practices Unit invites four scholars using creative qualitative research methods to consider what freedom and unfreedom feel like, what it feels like to be free from, for, and with, and how feelings of freedom relate to feelings of other concepts such as power, justice, mercy, constraint, resistance, movement, and liberty. Specifically, this dynamic session explores cultural and gendered dynamics of expressing freedom and unfreedom and their relationship to the making and unmaking of church and religious community.
Papers
I offer a textual analysis of the digital presence of Progressive Asian American Christians (PAAC)—their Facebook group, website, online magazine, podcasts, and news media, and supplement this with ethnographic research from IRB-approved interviews with key participants including leadership and “lay” members in the community. I argue the relationship between race and religion for Asians in the U.S. diaspora materializes as a particular mode of resistance rooted in notions of citizenship and freedom, indeed, for participants of PAAC. Here, I theorize the ways in which this group of Asian American Christians as specifically “progressive” is an example of formation and transformation through their adversarial position in relationship to Asian American religious identities that are conservative and evangelical Protestant. In this analysis I highlight the following themes: a spiritual homelessness, the theo-political language of affirmation, the inverted identity of religious-but-not-spiritual, and the significance of the formation of a (digital) sanctuary movement.
The growing prevalence of anti-feminist and misogynistic ideologies among young men, both in the U.S. and globally, reflects their perceived sense of unfreedom in contemporary gender discourse. In South Korea, the emergence of idaenam(men in their twenties) exemplifies this trend, as many perceive themselves as victims of gendered restrictions. Despite extensive sociological analysis, theological engagement with their self-alienation remains scarce, particularly within ecclesial contexts. This paper employs digital ethnography to examine online spaces that shape harmful gender narratives and explores how pastoral theology can provide interventions that foster self-reflection, relational healing, and gender justice. By integrating theological reflection with ecclesial practice, this study reimagines freedom as a path toward gender equality, challenges the unfreedom imposed by restrictive gender norms, and proposes concrete pastoral strategies to restore self-cohesion, promote gender equity, and cultivate inclusive faith communities where young men can engage in transformative relationships by transgressing entrenched gender boundaries.
My qualitative research explores the experiences of Korean women ministers leading predominantly white congregations in North America. These women transition into white-dominant churches as a quest for freedom from the constraints of Korean churches, where women’s roles in ministry are limited. Their experiences resonate with Sang Hyun Lee’s concept of freedom in From a Liminal Place, where Asian American women feel liberated from patriarchal norms in their home countries.
While they find greater autonomy in North America, these ministers face challenges related to their racial, cultural, and immigrant status. They are often seen as “strangers,” and the language and cultural barriers complicate their sense of freedom. Despite these challenges, they use their cultural differences as a source of preaching authority, resisting colonial norms and offering a decolonial, justice-oriented theological vision. This research advocates for a new homiletical model that embraces the voices of marginalized preachers and enhances their ministries.
This presentation examines the relationship between complementarian theology, purity culture, and responses to sexual abuse within the Biblical Mennonite Alliance (BMA). I first analyze two BMA publications influenced by the conservative Evangelical Danvers Statement, exploring how gender roles shape views on sexuality, modesty, and culpability in sexual violence. I then examine how this framework informs church responses to abuse, drawing on a 2024 GRACE investigation of a BMA church that uncovered multiple perpetrators and leadership failures. The report highlights how gendered power dynamics silence victims and prioritize male authority. Ultimately, I argue that purity culture constrains freedom, fosters silence, and perpetuates violence, while exposing its abuses can help ecclesial bodies counter marginalization and empower women and abuse survivors with the freedom to speak.
This roundtable will feature the work of six theologians who have engaged in a three-year long Templeton-funded Cross-Training grant with psychological scientists. Each theologian chosen to participate is committed to the flourishing of minority groups in their local context. The theologians were specifically trained in three critical areas: (1) education in and engagement with psychological literature, (2) mentor-training in labs, and (3) interdisciplinary collaboration with psychological scientists. Together with their psychological mentors, each theologian on this roundtable has proposed and carried out a theologically informed empirical project related to one of three areas: suffering, virtue development, or aesthetics. For these theologians, team-based projects were a new way to conduct and engage in interdisciplinary research. We believe this cross-training pedagogy provides a model for how theologians can collaborate both within and outside their field as interdisciplinarity becomes more integral to humanities researchers.