In-person November Annual Meeting 2025 Program Book

In 2021, Harvard University undergraduates revived The Salient, a self-proclaimed “free speech” publication that has since become a vehicle for conservative and white Christian nationalist discourse. Originally founded in 1981, the magazine has a history of controversy, including past critiques for homophobic and Islamophobic content. The 2021 revival coincided with right-wing mobilization in the Trump era, reinforcing narratives of conservative victimhood, religious nationalism, and reactionary resistance to progressive campus politics. This paper analyzes how The Salient constructs itself through religious and political claims, drawing on an archive of Salient issues I have collected over time during my experience as a Harvard residential staff member (2021–2025). By tracing The Salient’s evolving rhetoric—from free speech claims to explicit anti-queer, anti-immigrant, and Christian nationalist messaging—this paper situates the publication within broader right-wing efforts to reshape campus discourse, challenge academic freedom, and frame elite universities as battlegrounds for ideological control.

According to scholars of higher education, campus protest is one of the foundational ways in which students exercise “student voice” whether the protest be self-advocacy for activism on behalf of others (Jerusha Conner, 2023). Protests have changed on college campuses from the 1960s protests over Vietnam to the 2015 protests over Black Lives Matter. This paper will seek to address the proposed topic of “Campus politics, activism, and practices of engaged scholarship.” I argue that schools with religious backgrounds or formerly religious backgrounds have a unique platform to teach their campuses’ history to demonstrate the dynamism of religion and its relationship to campus activism. These platforms offer the opportunity for student to participate in engaged scholarship through archival research that can shape their understanding of student voice and sense of place on campus. 

George Benson’s legacy looms large on the campus of Harding University. Students are required to attend a daily chapel in an auditorium named for him, and his legacy is seen in his statues, paintings, and programs that exist around campus. This paper will use primary documents from the Ann Cowan Dixon Archives & Special Collections at Harding University’s Brackett Library in Searcy, AR, and historical sources on the rise of conservatism and “new evangelicalism” after the second World War to argue that the conservative social and political values that characterize Harding today are the direct result of Benson’s careful positioning of the University as a defender of the faith—a faith that was deeply influenced by a white, free enterprise, Christian nationalist supremacy. George Benson’s innovative use of mass media, student engagement, and eschatological framing made Benson’s understanding of “American principles” in the 1950s and 60s precursors to and representative of the values of today’s modern Religious Right.

This paper details some of the ways that Afro-Brazilian religion inspires queer and trans activism. The last few decades has seen staggering rates of violence against queer and trans Brazilians and there persists a continuous flow of hate crimes against Afro-Brazilian religions. This climate has created particularly precarious lives for those who belong to both communities. Afro-Brazilian religions are known for being more hospitable to LGBTQ+ people, in part due to the ways the religions’ deities, the orixás, defy European notions of gender boundaries. Through ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that Afro-Brazilian religion inspires meaningful ways that queer and trans activists engage with in their social justice work such that it generates new pathways to freedom not obstructed by white supremacist heteropatriarchal epistemologies. I offer a reflection on the importance of non-European epistemologies in analyses of the sociopolitical milieu that creates such precarious lives for queer and trans Brazilians.

This paper reflects on Althaus-Reid as a (perhaps the) nascent “canonical” figure of queer theology, as her texts as required to be taught to beginners. What happens to the notion of a “canon” (or even minimally, a standard reading list) when Althaus-Reid is a cornerstone of it? And what happens to Althaus-Reid’s work when it is made canonical, however destabilized that notion might be? How does one teach her, and to beginners? Based on experiments in teaching and learning, this paper will considers various insights and challenges from the teaching of Althaus-Reid’s work.

In May 2024, a marketing campaign for the dating app Bumble took to billboards across America with a vicious jab against celibacy, commanding ‘THOU SHALT NOT GIVE UP ON DATING AND BECOME A NUN.’ In this paper, I examine the dynamic contours of religion, secularism, sexual freedom, and capitalism that underwrite Bumble’s anti-celibacy attitudes. This paper is oriented around two questions prompted by their campaign: First, what does Bumble’s choice to use explicitly religious language and imagery mean for hegemonic notions of sexual freedom? And second, why is celibacy—whether or not it’s understood as a religious commitment—posed as such a threat, and as incompatible with queer and feminist politics? I argue that in positioning itself in contradistinction to the perceived regulatory apparatus of religion, Bumble enacts its own regulatory protocol which mandates gendered and sexual self-governance and self-constitution through the pursuit of digitally-mediated sexual intimacy.

The transgender child is a highly contested figure in the politics and culture of the United States today. This paper demonstrates how both religious and secular narratives are deployed against childhood transition, analyzes their shared political theological commitments, and proposes an alternative framework. Religious arguments against childhood transition frame trans adults as both a sexual threat and religious outsiders, imagining them as an anti-Christian “cult” that preys on vulnerable youths. Secular arguments against childhood transition, meanwhile, presume the existence of a rational self buffered against undue outside influence. Both narratives share a commitment to cisness, as a structuring fantasy of normative development and repetition, as well as an understanding of transness as “bad religion” beyond the acceptable bounds of religious pluralism. We urgently need alternative theological and political narratives that affirmatively promote transition as a good for all who seek it, including children.

Recent works within trans studies in religion by Max Strassfeld and Colby Gordon have performed "bad" literal readings of sexed religious materials to resource trans possibilities within religious traditions. In addition, these thinkers have argued that contemporary critiques of such readings resonate with historical Christian polemics for allegorical, spiritual readings over material, literal readings. This paper develops this connection further with Saba Mahmood's description of the semiotic ideology of modern secularism in which "proper" religious reading practices must not collapse the arbitrary distinction between sign and signified. Therefore, current suspicions and critiques of trans literalism both as a reading practice and as an ongoing political commitment to the materialities of changing sex can be understood as one way in which transness (in current political parlance, "gender ideology") is marked as outside the bounds of proper secular rationality.

This paper compares liberal Protestant with evangelical Protestant attitudes toward contemporary art between 1960 and the mid-1980s. Following the fundamentalist-modernist split in the United States in the 1920s, theologically orthodox and liberal Protestants diverged on many cultural issues. A study comparing the diverging theological stances on visual art has yet to be done. I approach this topic through a case study comparing content about contemporary art published in the popular liberal publication The Christian Century (CC) with that in its evangelical counterpart, Christianity Today (CT), during the quarter century in question. I demonstrate that CC theologically embraces contemporary art by suggesting all art can contribute to Christian devotion, while CT critiques such art as pessimistic reflections of secularity. By exploring the rhetoric permeating the larger public through popular periodicals, this paper enhances our understanding of the beliefs and values making up liberal Protestant and evangelical communities in the U.S.

The first portion of the ninth century Bethu Brigte,(The Book of Brigit) climaxes in St. Brigit being ordained as a bishop. There has been little discussion of this topic in the scholarship. The editor and translator of the critical edition of Bethu Brigte, simply states, “This is obviously a scribal error,” pointing out that later portions of the text show St. Brigit refraining from performing the sacrament of baptism. However, the concept had meaning for several communities within early medieval Ireland; Brigit’s episcopal ordination also appears in the 9th century Martyrology of Oengus and is retained, with additional explanations, in the later Middle Irish Life of Brigit. How are we to understand this repeated assertion? This paper investigates contextual factors that might have served to make Brigit the Bishop culturally intelligible to certain populations in early medieval Ireland, particularly the factor of religious status and gender exceptionalism in Early Irish law texts   

This paper analyzes the transformation of U.S. Protestant missions in Latin America through the lens of Jim (1927-1956) and Elisabeth Elliott (1926-2015), two Christian Missions in Many Lands missionaries in Ecuador. Through analysis of missionary photography, particularly the image "Jim with a few of his schoolboys in Shandia," and related literary works, the paper demonstrates how the Elliotts represent the shift from fundamentalism to evangelicalism in 20th-century missionary work. Jim exemplifies the fundamentalist approach focused on Biblical exposition, while Elisabeth represents a new evangelicalism that, while still conservative and aligned with White supremacist and capitalist values, adopted a more development-oriented approach. The research examines four key elements in the photograph: the "jungle" setting, professional attires, schoolboy situation, and absence of women. Drawing from diverse sources related to "Operation Auca," including recent indigenous perspectives, the paper illuminates how this transformation reflected broader changes in post-World War II American Christianity and impacted indigenous communities.

Beginning with Het Offer des Heeren (1561), Dutch Anabaptists collected and circulated narratives describing the deaths of their martyrs in ever-expanding volumes, culminating in the Martyrs Mirror (1685). These martyrologies intersperse accounts of the martyrs' deaths with theological treatises and prison letters, as well as purported interrogation records and official court sentences. This paper examines the editorial decisions made by the compilers of martyrologies to advance their apologetic aims of presenting Anabaptist Christianity as both legitimate heir to the Apostolic church and non-threatening to the state. It identifies themes and literary tropes borrowed from early Christian martyr texts and medieval hagiography and demonstrates how Anabaptist martyrologists put these to use to establish their martyrs as true Christians—not heretics deserving execution.

Kendrick Lamar’s 2025 Super Bowl halftime performance subverted expectations, transforming hip-hop’s tradition of signifyin’ into an interactive video game. Through this performance, Lamar illuminated hip-hop’s negotiation with phallogocentrism—the privileging of masculine-coded lyrical dominance—and its transition toward pulscentrism, an emergent framework emphasizing rhythm, movement, and collective resonance over rigid textual authority. Drawing from Charles H. Long’s Significations, critical theory, and liberation theology, this paper examines how artists like Kendrick Lamar, Doechii, Megan Thee Stallion, and J Dilla disrupt logocentrism by privileging polyrhythmic structures, kinetic orality, and embodied knowledge. Furthermore, the rise of rhythm-driven genres like Afrobeats, reggaeton, and drill reflects hip-hop’s epistemic shift beyond masculinist lyrical consumption toward a more inclusive and transnational sonic framework. By theorizing a rhythmic hermeneutic of freedom, this paper argues that pulscentrism challenges colonialist knowledge structures, offering new articulations of identity, power, and resistance through hip-hop’s evolving soundscape.

This presentation analyzes Kendrick Lamar's spiritual transformation between DAMN. and Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, arguing that Lamar's incorporation of Eckhart Tolle's philosophy signals a conclusive dissatisfaction with the resources Christian theology offered him to deal with generational trauma.  The resulting shift away from concepts like sin, salvation, and final judgment, and new prioritization of healing and freedom through Ego-attentiveness and present-moment awareness offers a stark, yet valuable challenge to Christian theology. 

Attending to and analyzing Lamar's work in Mr. Morale (2022) and following--including the Drake feud and his Super Bowl LIX performance--aims to provoke reflective and cooperative conversation around Lamar's evolving spiritual perspective, its implications for theological discourse, and the resources American Christianity (and others) might offer (or fail to offer) in dealing with generational legacies of spiritual deformation, violence, neglect, and/or abuse. 

This paper examines the recent rap beef involving Kendrick Lamar and Drake as a case study that highlights the need for the development of critical mixed-race ethics within religious studies. This viral rap beef captivated North American pop culture, not just for the stinging lyrics and West Coast beats, but also because of the ways it unveiled dynamics of power, race, and identity in hip hop. The paper argues that such dynamics within hip hop reflect the presence of the same dynamics in broader North American culture. By analyzing the artists' lyrics, public personas, and the reception history surrounding their feud alongside scholarly writings on multiracial identity, this paper unveils how each artist’s involvement in the beef reflects or disrupts prevailing narratives about race, authenticity, and belonging in hip hop and beyond.

Tathagata Buddha songs refer to a set of singing practices, hymns, and other musical performative dimensions that is particularly dedicated to Buddha, his preaching, and the sense of emancipation that the emergence of Buddhism is rooted in. This paper aims to explore what constitutes Buddhist sonic, particularly for communities who have perceived Buddhism as a way of revival of cultural identity. Through ethnographies of anti-caste singers, the paper aims to engage with the forms, cultural practices, and meanings of Buddhist songs for Dalit-Bahujan communities. While acceptance to Buddhism, since Ambedkar’s conversion in 1956, has been a significant moment for oppressed caste cultural revival, the paper will specifically engage with the ways in which sonic culture is significant and how it reflects anti-caste cultural practices.

Keywords: Music, Buddhism, anti-caste movement, cultural practices, emancipation.

This paper explores the historicization of myths, legends, and folktales within the Ganda community of Kurul and Malgodampada, Balangir, Odisha. Challenging the dominant historiographical exclusion of caste-oppressed communities, it examines how myths are not merely remnants of the past but serve as mediums for reconstructing history. Drawing from Ambedkar’s call for imagination in exhuming history, Vico’s insights on myth as social history, Russell’s synthesis of logic and mysticism, Carr and White’s criticism of dominant forms of historiography, this study interrogates how myths undergo logical scrutiny within communities to be articulated as ‘probable pasts.’ Through ethnographic data and semiotic analysis, it engages in Asad’s view on power’s role in defining ‘true speech.’ By tracing the discourses and practices around Bhima Buddha, Saat Bahin, and Bastarain Mata, among others, across Buddhist Tantric and Hindu narratives, the paper highlights myth’s role in anti-caste cultural praxis, reclaiming lost histories beyond narratives of mere ‘loss.’

This study explores how Bengali migration, primarily of Muslim settlers, has transformed indigenous Buddhist social structures in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh. The demographic shift has intensified ethnic and religious tensions, affecting indigenous Buddhist communities such as the Chakma, Marma, and Tanchangya. This research examines how migration, religion, and caste-like hierarchies intersect, reshaping social relations and indigenous identity. While Buddhism in the CHT traditionally emphasizes inclusivity, local communities report that Bengali dominance has led to economic marginalization, land dispossession, and socio-political exclusion, reinforcing caste-like divisions. Using ethnographic interviews and historical analysis, this study highlights indigenous perspectives on religious coexistence, resistance, and adaptation in response to settler expansion. Findings suggest that migration has not only threatened indigenous autonomy but also altered Buddhist monastic and social structures, influencing perceptions of caste, identity, and intergroup relations. This research contributes to discourses on migration, religious pluralism, and indigenous resistance in South Asia.  

The decline of Buddhism in Pakistan began with the advent of Brahmin rule in the region in the 7th century before the Arab Muslims conquered it. Today, Pakistan is dominated by Ashrafiya caste Muslims with 96.35 percent identifying themselves as Muslims, and Islam is declared as an official religion. Hindus and Christians together constitute about 3.8 percent of the population. These Buddhist communities are scattered across Pakistan mostly living in small villages and towns. Using ethnographic methods, this paper attempts to explore the Buddhist lifeworld, and their lower caste status to find ways to create a Buddhist sub-culture, visibilise their lower caste existence  to secure their fundamental rights. It delves into the fears, anxieties, and apprehensions of the Pakistani Buddhists, their unwarranted absorption into the Hindu minority and Muslim majority, influences of ashrafisation and savarnisation, and suggests remedial measures for the change agents at the local, national, and global levels.

Homes of the Good Shepherd, run by the Catholic Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, reformed and incarcerated ‘fallen’ women and girls in the U.S. as early as 1843, making it the first institution in the nation to exclusive incarcerate women and girls. The Good Shepherds in the Western United States operated in collaboration with the state to incarcerate wayward girls before structures existed at the state level, showing an uncharacteristic willingness by western states to rely on Catholic institutions for state-building. This paper frames the construction of girls’ carceral institutions in the West as arising from the precarious collaboration of the Catholic church and of state governments, while placing the Sisters of the Good Shepherd within the larger context of the federal government’s reliance on Catholic sisters to run boarding schools for Native children. 

Against the background of the unsuccessful “emergency” military decree  by South Korean President Yoon, Suk Yeol December 3, 2024 this paper explores how popular culture social protests by college-age Koreans has developed from the 1980’s anti-authoritarian demonstrations against martial law dictatorships. The 2024-2025 protests saw newer formats of collective resistance and response using many of the dynamics popularized by the “soft power” associated with the Hallyu (“Korean cultural wave of K-Pop and K-Drama K-Pop and K-Drama). This presentation begins with a brief summary of the backgrounds of the Korean political protests in the 1980’s and in 2024-2025 . Next each genre type of protest demonstrations is outlined, highlighting both common elements, and performative differences, while lifting up key common denominators such as is the strong sense of collectivity found in both genres of protests. The paper concludes with a theological interpretation in line with the Convention theme of Freedom.

In late October 1841 some 500 members of a pious association of lay Catholics were killed in battle by Spanish forces in the colonial Philippines. When surviving members of the group were questioned as to the purpose of their uprising, they responded, “To pray.” This paper attempts to unpack this statement by placing the Cofradía in the broader history of the Church's response to expressions of popular piety. Under what circumstances are the devotional practices of the laity tolerated by or incorporated into the Church, and under what conditions are they suppressed? Why was the Cofradía's membership determined to pray, up to the point of violent confrontation and death, and what made this desire so threatening to Spanish authorities that the group had to be met with violence? What can this case tell us about the modern relationship between Church and State, or religion and politics?

In recent years, chaplains have wrestled with the perceived limits of their own profession in addressing systemic injustice and suffering. While spiritual care and accompaniment have been martialed by pastoral theologians and chaplains to confront personal suffering, these practices have begun to wander into zones of political contestation. In critically reviewing two models of chaplaincy operating in such zones, workplace and movement chaplaincy, I argue that the former illustrates the potential pacifying dimensions of spiritual care per se and the former exemplifies the limits of pastoral accompaniment. To effectively meet spaces of unfreedom, chaplaincy must deepen its identity within the intersections of other fields and discourses, specifically value-based community organizing. By deploying Dorthee Sölle’s work on suffering, this essay hopes to weaponize chaplaincy’s capacity to “allow suffering to speak” for the purposes of organizing for real power, turning private grief into an effective public witness.

This study explores how the Christian-rooted framework of chaplaincy shapes spiritual care in American hospitals and its challenges in meeting the diverse needs of Asian and migrant communities. It examines how ethnicity, belief systems, and cultural understandings of healing inform experiences of life and death, highlighting tensions between Western care models and non-Western spiritual traditions. Migration histories, ancestral ties, and ghost narratives shape how patients experience fear and grief, aspects that conventional psychological treatments often overlook. By examining hauntings, this research positions hospitals as liminal spaces where ghosts materialize—representing unresolved trauma, displacement, and structural exclusion that continue to influence clinical encounters. Additionally, it examines interracial and interreligious encounters in clinical settings, highlighting how different racial and ethnic groups navigate shared spaces of healing. Through ethnographic fieldwork, this study advocates for structurally competent, culturally responsive models of spiritual care beyond dominant biomedical and Christian paradigms.

This paper explores the challenges of end-of-life spiritual care with patients who have severe mental health challenges. I argue that chaplains can play an important role as an advocate for these patients. I also argue that chaplains can approach their work with greater skill and care when they are aware of a patient's medical diagnosis, and can advocate with the medical team for the continued possibility of sustaining religious experience even amid severe mental illness. In addition, I explore how mental health challenges make it complicated if not impossible to adapt some standard models of end-of-life care, but that ways of caring for patients with mental health challenges can be found. 

In Europe, a University chaplaincy is typically perceived as a solitary wizened tree in a desolate landscape providing meagre shelter for a few ‘adherents’. Such centres risk becoming ‘repositories of religion’ (Dinham, 2016), for a minority group at an otherwise secular institution, whether providing higher education, healthcare, penal or other services. Isolated chaplaincy professionals, themselves minoritised, serve people also institutionally minoritised.

This paper analyses the opposite perspective. 

Our work moved a multifaith chaplaincy from a religious repository, into an embedded whole-organisation change-agent. Our experience shows how a chaplaincy can be re-interpreted as a much-needed rhizome (Deleuze/Guattari: 1980) that produces and replicates caring resources on religion/belief to the organisation. 

What could be learned from these insights, in terms of innovations in liberatory edges, professional frontiers and, above all, perspectives? What is gained—and what challenges arise—when chaplaincies offer a fresh understanding of their role and practise listening, researching and responding? 

This paper examines the reinterpretation of Victorian womanhood in Korean Christianity, arguing that rather than serving solely as a tool of patriarchal subjugation, the ideal of the "good wife, good mother" has been transformed into a source of spiritual authority. Using Duranno Eomeoni Hakgyo (Mother School) as a case study, this research explores how Korean Christian women navigate traditional gender norms while asserting agency through prayer, family leadership, and religious devotion. Despite lacking institutional power of the women, their numerical dominance and engagement in spiritual practices have allowed them to exert significant influence within the church. By reframing Victorian femininity as a mechanism for theological and social agency, this study contributes to a broader discourse on gender and leadership in World Christianity. Therefore, this paper highlights the complexity of non-Western feminist expressions like Gina Zurlo emphasizes in her book, demonstrating how Korean Christian women craft their own models of empowerment.

This paper explores African women's historical and contemporary challenges in navigating systemic oppression within political, religious, and cultural contexts. Despite progresses, African women continue to confront deeply entrenched barriers rooted in patriarchy, classism, and imperialism, which hinder their participation in leadership roles and decision-making processes. The study investigates the intersectionality of women's oppression, particularly within the socio-political and religious spheres, and highlights how these forces impact women's flourishing. By examining the internalized effects of this oppression, the paper offers insights to challenge these structures and foster solidarity among women. The research aims to empower women through self-determination and collective actions toward liberation and transformation, ultimately enabling them to contribute fully in the church and the public sphere.

This paper attempts to recover women’s voices about their sexuality by tracing how women in medieval China might have strategically used religion to overcome the silencing of female sexual desire. This paper first examines a medieval litigation text judging a widow’s application for official recognition as a chaste woman on the grounds that she was rewarded by Heaven for pregnancy due to her commitment to her deceased husband. By turning the Confucian ideology – good acts elicit supernatural rewards – on its head, the widow sought to have sexual activities without having her reputation compromised. Foregrounding women’s sexual agency, this paper then offers an innovative reading of a type of tales about the seduction of women by deities. I propose to treat the invocation of deities as serving an exculpatory function for “illicit” sexual conduct. Overall, this paper aims to understand women’s sexual agency within the given oppressive cultural and historical contexts.

This paper explores the case of a Korean evangelical businesswoman who operates a global franchise, investigating the complexities of economic class and the shifting freedoms of evangelical women in the historical context following the 2008 Global Recession. In contemporary society, evangelical womanhood is no longer confined to domestic spheres. The expansion of women’s education and the economic downturn have increased female workforce participation, resulting in women shouldering dual responsibilities at home and in the workplace — a reality that extends to evangelical women as well. By analyzing this case study, this paper aims to contribute to the discussion on the interconnectedness of class, gender, and liberation.