In-person November Annual Meeting 2025 Program Book

Abstract

This paper examines Ephrem the Syrian’s reimagining of space and salvation in the context of the siege of Nisibis in 363 CE. Focusing on the Nisibene Hymns, it explores how Ephrem portrays Nisibis as a paradoxical space—both a site of suffering and a gateway to paradise. Employing Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia and Gaston Bachelard’s phenomenology of space, this study demonstrates how Ephrem reconfigures the perception of confinement and liberation. By likening Nisibis to Noah’s Ark, he transforms its besieged walls into thresholds of divine favor, where enclosure signifies protection rather than captivity. The analysis reveals how Ephrem’s theological vision frames suffering as a means of spiritual ascent, aligning the fate of his city with the eschatological promise of paradise. Through poetic imagery and biblical typology, Ephrem invites his audience to see themselves as truly free, while casting their oppressors as those spiritually imprisoned.

The Archangel Michael’s characterization in Coptic and early Islamic Egypt extended beyond his traditional role as a healer and protector to that of patron of the Nile inundation. Coptic texts from the 6th to 12th centuries CE, which mostly include apocalypses, encomia, and various homilies, describe Michael’s role in bringing about a sufficient flood. The annual inundation was crucial for agricultural prosperity throughout the Nile Valley. Liturgical rituals associated with Michael’s feast days, on the 12th of Ba’ūna (June 6) and the 12th of Hatūr (November 8), coordinate with key moments in the river’s flood cycle. Such traditions, preserved in Coptic and later Arabic sources, show how Michaelic veneration in pre-modern Egypt intersected with local ecological sensibilities. By analyzing a variety of Coptic literary sources, this paper will explore how Egyptian Christians mythologized the inundation through ritual, literature, and devotion, revealing the connections between ecology and liturgy in pre-modern Egypt.

This paper is an exploration of the Coptic Orthodox Eucharistic liturgy, framed through the lens of Liberation Theology. It emphasizes the role of the liturgy as a means for spiritual and social liberation, focusing particularly on its relevance for the poor, oppressed, and marginalized and its transformative potential for both individuals and the broader world. The analysis explores how the liturgy reflects and responds to issues of injustice, and how it becomes a transformative tool for liberation in a social and theological context. This analysis explores both the liberation realized through the liturgy and the liturgy’s capacity to embody this liberation. It is a dual examination: assessing how the liturgy addresses social and cultural oppression, while also examining how its elements and internal dynamics are themselves liberating, in light of the people’s social context and cultural heritage.

This paper examines how the artistic program of Fanousian Coptic Churches in America reconfigures traditional liturgical spaces to reflect the evolving identities of diaspora communities. By analyzing both the aesthetic and architectural dimensions of worship spaces, the study explores the interplay between indigenous Coptic art forms and contemporary design practices. Fanous-inspired elements, a hallmark of cultural heritage, are reinterpreted to resonate with modern diaspora narratives, fostering communal identity and spiritual continuity. Drawing on site visits, interviews with church designers, and architectural analysis, the paper highlights the adaptive nature of Coptic liturgical art and its capacity to articulate historical memory, religious symbolism, and cultural belonging. The findings illustrate how material culture and artistic expression serve as pivotal markers in constructing a hybrid liturgical space, thereby offering new insights into the dynamic relationship between tradition and modernity in the American religious landscape. The study also reveals creative strategies that empower community voices.

This paper analyses Luther’s theological and political outcomes in 1525 with a focus on his responses to the violence and devastations of the Peasants' War. In addition, the paper provides an analysis of how Luther’s emphasis had changed from his earlier writings promoting universal priesthood to promote a more authoritative and hierarchical approach to biblical interpretation. The paper aims to present an overview of the events and Luther’s writings to analyze the development and premises behind Luther’s often polemic and controversial argumentation with long-lasting consequences.  By clarifying Luther’s theological premises his societal thought is built on, the paper argues that by placing justifying grace and society based on reliable, just, and fair government as directive premises to conduct theologically sound life as a Christian, Lutheran theology can promote theologically grounded peace and oppose violence in the variety of contexts 500 years later in contemporary societies and times to come.

This paper brings The Freedom of a Christian in dialogue with Martin Luther's later socio-political works, Martin Luther's Warning to His Dear German People (1531) and the Circular Disputation on the Right of Resistance against the Emperor (1539), to establish a clear path unfolding within Luther’s socio-political treatises. Luther's highly nuanced position advocating for Christian resistance against temporal authority adheres to the paradox of Christian existence, “A Christian person is a free lord above everything and subject to no one; a Christian person is a devoted-peer servant of everything and subject to everyone,” and is wedded to the concept of “counter-insurrection" in defense of the divinely gifted Tribus Hierarchiis. In this way, Luther's conception of Christian freedom and responsibility does not betray his characteristic concern about chaos and disorder and allows for Christian socio-political resistance while staying within the confines of faith working itself out in the “law of love.” 

2025 is both the 500th anniversary of the Peasant's War and Luther's marriage to Katharina von Bora.  How do Luther's views help us think about discipline and order in society and in our families?  What type of faith will help us imagine relationships grounded in love rather than violence?

As Wang Changzhi (1899-1960), a Jesuit priest from Shanghai’s Catholic mission in Xujiahui, was preparing to leave France to return to China in December 1936, he entrusted the promotion of his newly published book, La philosophie morale de Wang Yangming (Geuthner, 1936) to Gaston Fessard (1897-1978), a longtime friend from the Jesuit Theologate in Lyon-Fourvière, then associate editor of the Jesuit journal Recherches de sciences religieuses and author of Pax Nostra (1936).  From that time until Wang’s death on December 28, 1960, Wang Changzhi and Gaston Fessard maintained their brotherly connection as Wang lived through war and exile a continent away. Their correspondence, partly lost or misplaced, nevertheless sheds light on the ways Chinese Catholic theologians interacted with their counterparts in Europe. This paper complements and enriches previous research on Wang Changzhi (Translingual Catholics, 2025) and analyzes the letters that Wang wrote to Fessard which have recently become accessible.

This paper analyses the monthly Chinese Anglican periodical, Sheng Kung Hui Bao (SKHB), from its first issue in January 1908 to 1913, the year after Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui (CHSKH) was established. These publications are unique primary sources for Chinese Christianity and Anglicanism in the early twentieth century. Few, if any, studies have been devoted to these primary texts. This study was made possible by the access granted by Hong Kong SKH Archives.

.

This paper focuses on the Chinese Anglican voices reflected in SKHB in 1908-1913, making three arguments. First, the local Anglicans displayed a cautious confidence in Anglicanism – “confident” of its historical and theological root yet “cautious” of intra-Anglican and inter-denominational conflicts. Second, the Chinese voice for an independent Chinese church was amplified by a shockingly harsh rhetoric against “immature” Chinese Anglicans. Third, the Boxer Uprising and the enthusiasm towards Constitutionalism unmistakably shaped the development of CHSKH.

In 1958, a campaign known as the "Unification of Worship" echo to the “Great Leap Forward”, abruptly became a central task for regional Three-Self Patriotic Movement committees committees. During this movement, churches were closed, denominations were abolished, and the organizational functions of denominational institutions were swiftly absorbed by regional Three-Self Patriotic Movement committees, which was regarded as a way of "decolonization." During this campaign, nearly 90% of churches were removed. This study seeks to provide a comprehensive quantitative assessment of “the Unification of Worship” across different city types and denominational backgrounds, and evaluate its long-term impact on Chinese Christianity, offering new insights into the relationship between religious policy and church distribution.

Music is one of the most dominant artistic media in evangelicalism. Today, prominent theological resources of Chinese Christianity come from evangelicalism. Singing gospel songs together in the weekly Sunday congregation is a common religious practice in evangelical communities worldwide and in protestant church communities in the Chinese sphere and Chinese diaspora. This paper discusses this religious practice, looking into the case of the Netherlands. The author explores the transnational aspect of the Sinicization and dissemination of CCM, and its effect on community building in a culturally and linguistically new environment. Building on a mixed methodology the study seeks to answer the following: What is the role of music in the social cohesion of these church communitas? How do linguistic differences within the community affect the role of hymns singing as a religious practice? How does CCM with Chinese characteristics play a part in the dynamic of “homemaking” for Dutch Chinese? 

In contrast to literature on religion and migration that has often recently emphasized Muslims (with metaphors of “tides” or prevailing “Muslim questions”), this paper takes up a contrasting case to theorize the ease experienced by nonreligious white migrants. Specifically, we consider post-2016 white French nonreligious immigrants, the most important immigrant group to Québec and among the most important to Ontario, Canada. Methodologically, we draw upon: (1) literature addressing the privilege and banality of the nonreligious (Le Renard 2019; Oliphant 2021) and intersecting whiteness (Ahmed 2007; Beaman 2019; Lépinard 2020); (2) fieldwork and interviews with French immigrants in Montreal and Toronto; and (3) critical discourse analyses of immigration policies and bilateral agreements. We consider how intersections of whiteness and nonreligion individualize and mainstream them, while prevailing narratives of cosmopolitanism, economic need, shared culture, and the perceived absence of religiosity invisibilize them. 

            After the results of the 2024 presidential election, violent anti-immigrant rhetoric and media depictions of “militarized mass deportations” increased. Response to the threats of mass deportation were varied. Human rights organizations and grass-roots immigration advocates were not derailed by the 2024 presidential election outcome. Organizations such as the Detention Watch Network avidly held Know Your Rights campaigns and Family Preparedness Plans to meet the moment. While organizations and advocates responded with preparation, some Christian churches responded with silence and others responded with practical resistance tactics. This paper will summarize key observations about local, regional, and national responses to the threat of mass deportations championed by Trumpian politics. Based on an emic ethnography, this paper engages three predominant responses to the Mass Deportation Rhetoric: preparation, silence, and resistance. 

Familiarity with the discourse around U.S. immigration policy seems to suggest a tension bordering on a paradox, which is heralded by the two iron giants of the U.S. border: the Statue of Liberty, with its beacon-promise of welcome, and the borderwall, with its death-dealing rebuff. But historians of immigration policy have challenged this reading by revealing how practices of inclusion and exclusion are not a paradox but a production, working in tandem to constitute legal and symbolic Americanness. In this paper, I build on such historical work by arguing that the production of Americanness is driven by a theo-logic, which seeks to construct a chosen nation against a heathen other using policies of inclusion and exclusion. To illustrate my argument, I read two key moments in U.S. immigration policy—the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act creating the national origin quota system and the 1965 Hart-Celler Act ending it—through this theo-logic.

During the Cold War, hundreds of West African students flocked to the United States in search of higher educational opportunities that would equip them to usher in a new Africa free from colonial rule. Meanwhile, U.S. religious, educational, and political leaders grew concerned that students’ perceptions of the U.S. might harm the nation’s image abroad. Given that many of these students previously attended missionary schools in their homelands, they were often referred to as “products of missions” in popular U.S. media—that is, forever indebted to U.S. missionary contributions. In this presentation, I consider how West African students complicated and countered this religious rhetoric. Through a rhetorical analysis of U.S. newspapers and West African student writings, I explore how religious metaphors surrounding African student migration contributed to the formation of affective bonds between West African students and U.S. Christians—bonds that were often tested as students encountered U.S. racism firsthand.

Building on recent archaeological discoveries of Buddhist burial sites, including stupas and burial caves from the Luoyang area during the Tang dynasty, this study aims to reconstruct their original contexts and associated rituals while uncovering the intricate and uneven process of adopting Buddhist teachings on death and body into funerary practices in Tang society. 

This study is structured in three stages: First, by analyzing data collected from the archaeological excavations and utilizing advanced digital technologies, it will restore the initial conditions of two selected examples, illustrating the dynamic process of their constructions. Second, through an examination of relevant Buddhist scriptures and epigraphic sources, it will reconstruct the burial rituals performed at these sites and clarify the functions of different spaces. Finally, it will explore the Buddhist beliefs upheld by practitioners and their role in mediating and negotiating discrepancies between Buddhist doctrines and actual funerary practices. 

Jiaobei (筊杯, monoblocks), a divinatory implement composed of two symmetrical halves—the convex yin (陰) side and the planar yang (陽) side—is extensively utilized across southern China. It functions as a medium through which divine responses are ascertained: a combination of one yin and one yang side typically denotes an affirmative response, whereas two yang or two yin sides indicate either a negative or indeterminate outcome. This study, drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted in an ordination ritual in Guizhou Province (貴州省) and Daoist ritual contexts in central Hunan Province (湖南省), contends that Jiaobei serves as an instrument of ritual mediation, fostering connections among diverse actors and integrating individual and collective religious experiences. Furthermore, it posits that orthopraxy, or the notion of correct practice, emerges through iterative negotiations among multiple participants rather than as an inflexible paradigm unilaterally imposed by a singular authority.

This study examines the discrepancies between the theoretical framework of Northern Song fengshui principles and their actual application in burial practices, using archaeological evidence and historical texts. While previous research has primarily attempted to interpret burial layouts through fengshui guidelines, few tombs strictly adhered to these normative principles, and the reasons for such deviations remain underexplored. Focusing on the Chao family of Chan County, a politically and culturally influential lineage, this paper investigates how family members selectively applied fengshui to serve their own strategic interests. By analyzing cemetery planning and written records, it reveals how elite families manipulated theoretical frameworks to secure burial sites and maintain lineage dominance. The study further categorizes common deviations in Northern Song burial practices, attributing them to local geomorphological constraints and kinship structures. Ultimately, it provides new insights into the interaction between ideology, social organization, and spatial planning in medieval China.

Wang Yangming’s (1472–1529) early hagiographical reception sought to reconcile his philosophical teachings with the expectations of a Confucian sage. Following his death, his disciples worked to position him within the official Confucian lineage amid political struggles, balancing historical facts with ideological construction. One such effort was Geng Dingxiang’s (1524–1596) Hereditary House of Earl Xinjian, Master Wang Wencheng 新建侯文成王先生世家, a quasi-Shiji 史記 biography that imitated the Shiji narrative. By modeling Wang’s biography after that of Confucius, Geng granted him comparable historical significance. This work not only defended Wang’s intellectual legacy but also integrated his earlier chronicles, recorded sayings, and essays into a cohesive narrative. In doing so, Geng leveraged Wang’s newly conferred official title to legitimize him further, elevating his status and solidifying his place within the orthodox tradition, ultimately shaping Wang’s posthumous image as a Confucian sage. 

This paper asks why Eero Saarinen, in designing the MIT Chapel (1955), was successful in creating an interfaith chapel that diverse groups found welcoming when earlier attempts to do so had failed.  It asserts that Eero’s success was due to his architectural articulation of Theosophical and Transcendental ideas that emphasized spirituality’s universal character and accessibility through nature-based experience.  Eero absorbed these ideas from his father Eliel Saarinen, who wrote about Theosophical and Transcendental ideas and incorporated them into his design for Christ Church Lutheran (1949) in Minneapolis.  Features of these iconic buildings were imitated by congregations across the U.S., thus normalizing the universalist aesthetic of nature-based spirituality embedded in their design.  Exploring this material evidence of the integration of esoteric ideas about nature-based spirituality into American religion and society, this paper demonstrates the efficacy of religious architecture as a methodological starting point for studying esoteric religion and nature-based spirituality. 

Aleister Crowley founded Thelema, a religion blending ceremonial magic, Yoga, Tarot, Kabbalah, and sex magic, which became influential in the 1960s counterculture. If Crowley’s ideas regarding morality, sexual experimentation, drugs, and individuality were revolutionary in the 20th century, they are no longer shocking today; rather, they have become part of mainstream Western culture. This ethnographic study, based on fieldwork with the O.T.O. in Salem, Massachusetts, examines the social dimensions of Thelema. It reveals that, contrary to its image of hyper-individualism and antinomianism, Thelema today emphasizes the importance of community, spiritual purification, art, intellectual engagement, and a shared morality. While Thelema was once associated with rebellion and transgression, it has become institutionalized, focusing on inclusivity and progressive values. The paper explores how Thelema has evolved into a structured religious movement with a sense of belonging and shared values.

This paper offers a fresh ethnographic perspective on the role of esoteric texts in contemporary Caribbean religion by exploring the Trinidadian Spiritual Baptist community’s involvement in a creolized form of occult spiritism referred to locally as “Kabbalah.” Seemingly unrelated to the Jewish mystical tradition of the same name, these closed-door ritual practices are supplemental to the faith and are heavily influenced by demonological and occult literatures. Delving into the esoteric reaches of Baptist biblical exegesis and the private unorthodox engagements of my interlocutors, this paper considers the adoption, adaptation, and application of mystical seals and conjurations derived from Waite’s The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts and looks to contribute novel ethnographic insights into the diffuse, albeit unappreciated, influence of occult philosophies and literatures on Spiritual Baptist and other Afro-Caribbean religions.

According to the Sāṃkhyakārikā, each individual puruṣa (self) is joined with prakṛti (material nature) for many lifetimes before attaining liberation. These various incarnations, taking form from Brahmā to a blade of grass, are categorized as divine, animal, or human. The animal (“horizontal”) creation is fivefold, elaborated in the Gauḍapādabhāṣya as domesticated animals, wild animals, birds, reptiles, and inanimate objects. In all forms of creation, suffering exists through inherent nature. While a human birth is precious in our ability to seek liberation from the cycle of rebirth, we are also uniquely positioned to extend compassion to all beings, as strongly advocated in Jainism. As the 22nd Jina Neminātha profoundly witnessed on his wedding day, compelling him towards renunciation, our pain is reflected in the cries of animals. However, as this paper will explore, in our interconnected karmic web this relationship is reciprocal—the animal creation can teach and support us too.

This paper analyzes lived Buddhist relationships with nonhuman animals to extend and complicate existing notions of collective karma. It begins by unpacking how individualized notions of karma function to both justify both exploitation and liberation of animals in canonical Buddhism. Then, it analyzes a selection of historical and contemporary accounts of Buddhist relationships with animals to show how these narratives often departed from these canonical ideas in favor of more collective understandings of karma. Drawing from these examples, it then theorizes how a more-than-human collective karma can inform present day justice initiatives. It develops the idea of “more-than-human collective karma” as a potential tool for social and animal justice, and argues that the kinds of collective karma we find in the lived expressions of Mahāyāna Buddhism can be used to articulate a unique Buddhist approach to ethics, justice, and freedom inclusive of human and nonhuman animals alike. 

This paper examines two passages from the Unimpeded Sound Tantra (Sgra thal ‘gyur)—a key Great Perfection (Rdzogs chen) Buddhist text—and one of its earliest known 12th-century commentaries. These passages describe a distinctive Buddhist practice of sky divination, in which practitioners interpret signs in the elements (earth, water, fire, and wind) manifesting as omens in the sky. These practices are said to reveal insights into a community’s collective karma, understood as its reservoirs of virtue and likelihood of positive or negative destinies.

The theme of community emerges through multiple interwoven examples: in a narrative describing the interdependence between human and more-than-human beings; in human engagements with elemental ecologies; and in the relational role of the contemplative practitioner who performs divinations for others. This paper reflects on how these materials conceptualize shared karma across human, non-human, and more-than-human relationships, presenting contemplative life as embedded in overlapping social domains.

The COVID-19 pandemic involved the simultaneous outbreak of fever, pneumonia, and other related manifestations of disease in human communities throughout the world. Human agency must have contributed to its spread, but karma alone is also insufficient for explaining this and other widespread disease outbreaks. Indeed, early Buddhist scriptures explain that karma is just one among many other factors that contribute to the emergence of disease, and karmic acts such as violence and the persecution of the Buddhist order are both causes of and caused by disasters like famine and widespread disease. Building upon these precedents, the Four Tantras describes a degenerate age in Tibet, during which perverse human actions will disturb pathogenic beings. Rather than simply trace widespread disease to culpable humans and the karma of spillover events, however, this paper highlights the interlinked agency of human and non-human beings featured in the pandemic discourses of Tibet.

Nazi discourse was rife with internal ambivalences concerning both masculinity and tradition. Scholars have identified a martial, violent yet caring comradeship (Kühne) and a simultaneous embrace of perceived ancestral past and orientation toward a novel future (Griffin, Mosse, Steigmann-Gall). Bringing together recent scholarship on Nazi masculinity and on Nazi relationships to tradition, this paper contends that Nazi ideals of masculinity and pursuit of tradition co-constituted and shaped each other. Drawing on published Hitler Youth primary material, I analyze the portrayal of the eighth-century pagan leader Widukind as a role model for his defense of the Saxons against the Frankish army. I argue that the Hitler Youth narrative inscribes a masculinity based on the protection of an abstract traditionalism in the face of existential struggle. This intervention illustrates the necessity of putting Nazi masculinities and traditionalisms in conversation in order to better understand both.

Derek Guy (also known as the Menswear Guy) has amassed 1.2 million followers on Twitter posting about menswear aesthetics and criticizing celebrities and politicians for their poor taste. What separates Guy from other menswear accounts, and what makes him an interesting comparison to many participants in religious discourse, is his self-conscious relationship to tradition and his frequent uses of traditionalism to outflank “trads” in online battles. He chides those who “performatively worship tradition but know very little about tradition” and yet “use the superficial symbols of masculinity and tradition to impress people.” He has also called certain of his fashion choices a “true retvrn to tradition.” His sustained comparison between fashion and language (reminiscent of Judith Butler’s application of citationality to gender) allows Guy to have a flexible, open-ended, and performative use of tradition that can be compared with uses of tradition common to religious neo-traditionalists.

This paper highlights how two Christian Reconstructionists, Joel Webbon and Eric Conn, use Instagram to mainstream their extremist ideology by embedding it within widely recognizable and aspirational masculine aesthetics and making their radical vision appear palatable and even desirable to mainstream conservative evangelicals. Rather than presenting themselves as fringe extremists, Conn and Webbon leverage masculine archetypes—the rugged frontiersman and intellectual patriarch—to attract followers, establish credibility, and reinforce patriarchal authority. In doing so, they demonstrate how militant masculinities are not monolithic but instead draw from multiple scripts to reach different audiences. This paper contributes to scholarship on evangelical masculinity, social media, and far-right digital culture by showing how ideological movements thrive and attract new followers in the digital age, not merely through explicit political messaging but through aesthetic and performative strategies that shape how power and authority are understood.