In-person November Annual Meeting 2025 Program Book

This paper seeks to critically weave three discourses together: Mary-Jane Rubenstein’s interrogation of deployments of pantheistic monsters, critical plant studies through Dawn Keetley’s “tentacular ecohorror” alongside recent discussions of plant consciousness (Zoe Schlanger), and the weird fiction of Algernon Blackwood’s “The Man Whom the Trees Loved” to think through how plant horror might also reveal some contours of a vegetal mysticism needed to take plants seriosuly the present. And it will ask if such an immanent plant mysticism might help to reclaim a more complicated view of pantheism (e.g., Roland Faber’s ‘transpantheism’), panpsychism (e.g., David Skrbina), or new materialism (e.g., Jane Bennett) in turn.

In this paper, I point to neglected esoteric currents informing and animating much of Aldo Leopold’s pioneering work in environmental ethics, especially currents relating to what we might call the legibility of the world. Building on  Ashley Pryor’s work which uncovered Leopold’s debt to P D Ouspensky’s Tertium Organum, I point to other elements of of Leopold’s resonance with Ouspensky and the esoteric tradition. In particular, I show how thoroughly Leopold and the Western esoteric tradition alike draw on a deeper tradition of reading the world’s hidden legibility. I suggest, moreover, that Leopold’s recapitulation of this esoteric tradition was also a work of democratization and emancipation, a making exoteric both of the world’s legibility and of a land ethic partially incubated in esoteric traditions but now brought into the great outdoors and offered to all.

This paper interprets the henotheism of Henry Cornelius Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1533) and subsequent occult grimoire's through Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) and Charles Peirce's Logic of the Signs. ANT emphasizes the role of material mediators in revealing overlooked actors within social and ecological assemblages. Just the same, occultists like Agrippa, emphasize the use of certain magical signs (natural and symbolic) to reveal and manipulate invisible supernatural actors. I join ANT with Peircean semiotics to describe how signs behave as mediating agents within social assemblages. This occult ontology of signs helps to attend to invisible agencies that become embodied only in their material signification. Such a fusion of ANT with occult metaphysics permits a broadly ecosystemic framework for religious semiosis that materializes the supernatural across ecological and cultural spheres. 

 The church must embrace radical inclusion of children with disabilities to address their spiritual needs. Historically marginalized, these children and their families often feel excluded. "Radical inclusion" calls for a reform of children’s programs, services, and ministries that moves beyond accommodation to valuing each child’s participation in the body of Christ. There is a gap in understanding the spirituality of children with disabilities. By understanding these children's unique gifts, capabilities, and spiritualities, the body of Christ can learn to see and value them as full members. By centering their experiences, the church can deepen its understanding and create a more inclusive and enriching spiritual community.

Keywords: Children with Disabilities, Children’s Spirituality, Radical Inclusion 

Abstract  

This study investigates how fostering practices within African diaspora communities, viewed through the framework of religious transnationalism, impact child migrants. It examines the severe consequences of cultural and spiritual conflicts through the tragic case studies of Victoria Climbié and Adam ‘Ikpomwosa’, whose torso was discovered in the River Thames, with a particular focus on esoteric beliefs and witchcraft. The study addresses a gap in existing literature by analysing how these beliefs affect child welfare and integration. Using a qualitative case study approach, the research gathers insights from diaspora parents and religious leaders in France and the UK. The findings aim to inform culturally sensitive policies that enhance child protection within migrant communities.

Among the many concepts associated with Hindu religious traditions are the central ones of maya (illusion) and moksha (freedom). Hindu practitioners seek freedom from illusion. How might we account for this? St. Ignatius of Loyola suggested that if one were to give him a child for seven years, then he would give them the man. This paper proposes that the explanation for illusion and freedom in the Hindu world reflects Hindu childrearing practices. Psychological anthropology characterizes these practices as pediatric. Pediatric childrearing practices reflect the reality of infectious disease ecologies, a reality consistent with the disease profile of South Asia. Pediatric childrearing practices nurture insecure-anxious attachment styles. These styles are conducive to adaptive, collectivist societies, themselves antipathogenic in nature. Psychologically, insecure-anxious attachment styles lead to a basic mistrust in the world. The Hindu concepts of freedom (moksha) from illusion (maya) reflect the adaptive realities of Hindu childrearing practices. 

Unlike other organs, the human brain has remained ontologically isolated—practically sacred as an embodied concept—within the value system of industrialized modern science. While manipulation of brain chemistry has been tested on model species, until recently, we have not dared to cross the biological boundary of merging synapses. However, with the creation of neural chimeroids, that is no longer the case. The human brain—the gold standard of cognition and the biological center of human supremacy—can now be integrated into nonhuman animals, and potentially, one day, vice versa. Neural chimeroids emphasize that we live in a field of evolutionary similarities and differences, reflective of many mythological contexts; they show that on a biological level, our brains are not exceptional. The choice to etymologically merge these intermediary lab subjects with the great chimeras of myth forces us to further interrogate the ontologies underpinning prevailing power dynamics between humans and our nonhuman kin. 

Description forthcoming

The defeat of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress in 2024 has accompanied renewed attention to the ways in which struggles for racial justice have long been mobilized through creolized religious formations. Focusing on “Colouredness” as a site not only for enacting and policing colonial white supremacy but also for phenomenological attentionality, trans-sociality, kinship and remembering, this paper explores the ways in which South Africans have used coffee – a plant, medicine, trade good, “tot-system” commodity, symbol and potential ethical resource – to facilitate indigenous forms of anticolonial resistance. Attending to Western Cape writers and religious reformers as well as cultural and political activists, I show the ways in which Islam, and Islamic secularity, provide critical leverage for realizing this resistance work. At the center of my paper is consideration of a short story and novel by Zoë Wicomb; I will also discuss related literary material as well as my own fieldwork.

Julius Evola, a key figure in modern fascist philosophy, claims Theravāda Buddhism as metaphysical support for his Aryan racial-spiritual hierarchy. Yet Evola neither refutes nor revises core Theravāda doctrines, including self-dissolution, non-attachment, and the universal accessibility of Nirvana. This paper uses symbolic logic, modal fictionalism, and paraconsistent reasoning to demonstrate that Evola’s system collapses under its own commitments when modeled within hypothetical worlds governed by Theravāda metaphysics. Building on recent research on dialetheism and Buddhist logic, I formalize four unavoidable contradictions that arise from Evola’s simultaneous affirmation of Theravāda metaphysics and racial essentialism. Rather than dismissing these contradictions as trivial, paraconsistent logic tracks and exposes the structural incoherence of Evola’s system on its own terms. Ultimately, Evola’s use of Theravāda Buddhism does not reinforce his self-described "metaphysics of war." Rather, it ensures its self-refutation. This analysis shows how symbolic logic and Buddhist philosophy together dismantle extremist thought from within.

This paper examines how their knowledge, agency, and martyr-like status have been memorialized and politicized within their traditions. Using a historical and comparative methodology, it will analyze primary sources—hadiths, sermons, poetry, and historical accounts—alongside secondary scholarship to explore their intellectual authority, modes of resistance, and how subsequent religious movements have mobilized their legacies.

By juxtaposing Fatima Zahra and Tahirih Baraghani, this study highlights the intersection of gender, power, and religious authority, questioning how memory and historiography shape contemporary understandings of female scholarship and activism in Islam and the Bahá’í Faith. This research contributes to broader discourses on women’s authority in religious traditions and the politics of historical remembrance.

This paper explores the writings of Bahá’u’lláh, the founder of the Bahá’í Faith, and their role in unveiling the religion. Written primarily in Arabic and Persian from 1852-1892, his massive collection of writings includes a wide spectrum of topics that are central to the study of religion. The central question of this paper is the dialectic of concealment and disclosure, in which Bahá’u’lláh gradually revealed his divine station and teachings, analogous to the rising sun. This study takes a historical and linguistic approach to understand why and how he concealed and disclosed his message. Focusing on his writings that were penned during the decade that he lived in Baghdád, this paper concludes that Bahá’u’lláh established himself as the spiritual leader of the Bábí community while outwardly concealing his divine station. This study contributes to religious studies scholarship by examining the interplay of the manifestation and hiddenness of the divine.

This presentation examines the ontology of justice through Bahá'í perspectives on law, being, and divine order, contrasting them with Greek, Roman, Islamic, and modern secular traditions. While classical Greek thought conceived of justice as a cosmic principle governing all existence, later traditions confined it to human affairs. The Bahá'í writings, however, go beyond merely restoring a tragic Greek conception of justice by introducing a fundamental insight: justice is ultimately articulated by the Divine Manifestations, whose laws express the deeper structure of reality, and the achievement of which requires resolution of the rights-versus-duties dichotomy. This talk explores how Bahá’í jurisprudence reframes justice (‘adl) as a multi-dimensional, ontological reality, linking divine revelation, moral order, and the laws that govern existence itself.

This paper analyzes the intellectual development of the Bahá'í principle of the harmony of science and religion through the works of Alimorad Davoudi, William Hatcher, Farzam Arbab, and Todd Smith. Over the last fifty years, these scholars have conceptualized the relationship between science and religion, evolving the discourse from Davoudi’s early delineation of their distinct yet complementary roles to Hatcher’s critique of materialism and emphasis on rational religious argumentation. Arbab and Smith build upon these foundations, integrating the philosophy of science and addressing key issues such as theory-ladenness and underdetermination. While affirming the complementarity of science and religion, they reject positivist limitations, proposing a dynamic, constructive interaction between the two systems. This paper traces the evolution of Bahá'í thought on this subject, highlighting its implications for both theoretical and practical applications in the understanding of knowledge.

This presentation will explore the multifaceted processes of extraction in the West Bank, examining the ways in which both natural resources and human lives are exploited under occupation. Drawing from the works of Shourideh C. Molavi and Manal Shaqair, as well as firsthand testimonies from Palestinian activists, farmers, and scientists, the paper will analyze how Israeli settler-colonialism functions not only through the physical extraction of land and resources, but also through the extraction of Palestinian agency and dignity. Through a combination of critical scholarship and personal narratives, this proposal will highlight the environmental, social, and political dimensions of extraction in the West Bank, and how Palestinian communities resist and challenge these processes.

This paper analyzes how Appalachian communities reliant on extractivist livelihoods structure narratives of religious life. It does so by drawing on Robert Orsi’s concept of lived religion,’ which argues that the daily activities of believers shape religious practice. By conducting inductive narrative analysis on oral histories of life in Appalachian coal camps and villages in the 20th century, the paper demonstrates how religion, place, and cultures of extractivism influence each other. I expect to find that religious practice acts as a divine justification for extractivist livelihoods, as protection for precarious and dangerous forms of labor, but also giving it religious significance. However, I expect that the role of land in religion is important as source of religious identification beyond extractivist practice. The oral histories analyzed in the paper are part of various projects of the University of Kentucky’s Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History. 

This paper examines the Tibetan Buddhist Treasure (gter ma) tradition as a model for ethical resource extraction in an era dominated by extractive capitalism. The tradition's linguistic and conceptual frameworks reveal a continuity between spiritual and material extraction: the term for Treasure (gter) originally referred to mineral resources, while indigenous spirits serve as guardians of both material wealth and spiritual teachings. Central to this tradition is the practice of offering treasure substitutes (gter tshab), establishing principles of reciprocity that acknowledge landscape agency and rights. Through a case study of Chokgyur Lingpa's 1866 revelation at Sengö Yumtso, this paper demonstrates how Treasure extraction operates through acknowledgment of more-than-human stakeholders, material reciprocity, temporal constraints, and commitment to communal benefit. These principles offer valuable insights for reimagining human relationships with resources in ways that honor the complex interdependencies that sustain all life.

Driven by the work of the now overlooked A. L. Morton and Dona Torr, the famed postwar British Marxist historians developed extensive research on the historic role of religious radicalism of peasants, artisans, middle-class dissenters, working class, etc. Their explanations of religion were its role in the transformation from feudalism to capitalism and how its progressive ideas were being absorbed into emergent socialism. After outlining the key ideas of the British Marxist historians, this paper looks at their legacy and reception. This discussion includes early receptions focused on expectations of the working class being able to realise the utopianism of historic religious radicalism. The paper then looks at how and why understanding the transformation of class relations was increasingly downplayed in the reception of the British Marxist historians over the twentieth century and why the emphasis shifted to a romanticised history of religion ‘from below.’      

Black women's clubs and organizations can be situated as extraecclesial sites that illustrate intersections of Black women’s labor advocacy and spiritual and moral praxes outside of church institutions. This project presents the Coming Street YWCA’s Training School for Domestic Workers (Charleston, SC) as a an extraecclesial site and case study of Black clubwomen’s efforts to have their students achieve higher paying domestic employment through merit while also acquiescing to the white gaze by subjecting their students to health examinations upon their completion. This case inserts the precarious role of class as clubwomen—mainly among the city’s Black middle and upper class monitored the health of their working-class counterparts in the name of economic uplift.

This paper addresses the question of labor, class and capitalist oriented systems by focusing on the social teaching of the preeminent 20th century theologians and social activists Archbishop William Temple (1881 -1944) and Dorothy Day (1897-1980). Temple and Day advocated for a restructuring of existing capitalist-oriented systems within the United Kingdom and United States respectively. The Great Depression highlighted gross exploitation which their distinct social teaching sought to address. This paper will argue that the doctrine of the Incarnation provides the Christian basis for a counter view of labor and class, focusing on Temple and Day’s incarnational theology. This incarnational theology promotes the equal dignity of humanity, based on Christ’s own embodiment of all humanity as a worker. The contemporary value of incarnationally centered social teaching advocates for a dissolution of capitalist-oriented structures which diminish humanity equality. 

As Kierkegaard deemed imprisonment to be an evil (et onde), this paper aims to begin a dialogue on Kierkegaard and prison reform in three ways: first, through a review of scholarship related to Kierkegaard and incarceration; second, by situating Kierkegaard in recent discussions on chaplaincy, pastoral care, and theological education in prisons; and thirdly, through a close reading of ideas on the demonic, the imprisoned self, and the crowd in Kierkegaard’s writings. Ultimately, I intend to show the contributions Kierkegaard can make to debates on prison reform in the United States and globally. Whereas religious scholars, philosophers, legalists, and ethicists have written extensively on punishment, prisons, and prison reform through the work of thinkers like Kant, Hegel, Marx, and certainly Foucault, the scholarship is less developed in the context of Kierkegaard’s ideas. This absence only increases the need to turn to Kierkegaard on a substantive moral concern.

How Kierkegaard’s view on the relationship between faith and reason should be interpreted remains a fertile question. Prominent interpretations have debated the relationship between faith and reason in terms of their greater or lesser conceptual compatibility or opposition. However, in this paper I argue that Kierkegaard should not be interpreted as laying claim to or landing in a rigid conceptual debate about faith and reason. If faith and reason implicate the ethical and existential commitment of the self, and the self is a dynamic synthesis that temporally strives to live out and relate to the good and the true. I argue that to understand faith and reason, the self must be examined. The self as a synthesis is tasked with reflecting on the true and good. Although the true and eternal offends, that is, outstrips her reason, she is tasked with appropriating and evincing a relation that truth existentially. 

In conversation with Friedrich Nietzsche and René Girard, this paper develops an account of Kierkegaard’s stages on life’s way and applies them to a reading of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and especially to the relationship between Alyosha and Ivan Karamazov.