In-person November Annual Meeting 2025 Program Book

Religious freedom laws are intended to support religious practitioners but often reinforce Christian-influenced models of religiosity. This particularly affects practitioners in the psychedelic renaissance, who seek legal protection but who also must conform to court-defined models of religiosity. Attorneys guide practitioners in replicating these frameworks, pressuring them to adapt Indigenous practices. This paper examines the arbitrary nature of these laws and their impact on practitioners. It compares U.S. religious freedom laws with South American regulations that protect psychoactive substance use outside religious paradigms. Ethnographic research contrasts Indigenous ayahuasca use in Peru with U.S. church-based models, revealing how American laws shape religious expression. Ultimately, these laws compel practitioners to adjust to Christian-centric frameworks, perpetuating neocolonial influences under the guise of religious freedom.

In this paper I focus on how transpersonal psychology and law affected individual and collective post-ceremony integration at Soul Quest Ayahuasca Church and inform the current integration approach and engagement with the DEA by Sacred Sanctuary (a new ayahuasca church that emerged from the bankruptcy of Soul Quest in 2024). I look specifically at how Soul Quests’ syncretic approach to ayahuasca integration was made sense of by church members and was situated in the philosophy and ethics of a secular psychedelic integration training program called Being True to You. Being True to you is an integration program which employs a transpersonal psychotherapeutic approach to psychedelic health and healing. I argue that Sacred Sanctuary, who is currently seeking religious exemption from the DEA to use ayahuasca for religious purposes, draws from Soul Quest’s oeuvre as well as nuances their approach based on Soul Quest’s bankruptcy and denial for religious exemption.

This paper examines the complex history and legal status of the Church of Ambrosia, with special attention to the role of the scholar in the legal process. Founded in the Bay area by David Hodges in 2019, the Church identifies Cannabis and Psilocybe mushrooms as its primary sacraments and now claims over 100,000 members. In the eyes of many critics, the church operates largely as an illegal dispensary and was the target of a massive raid by Oakland police in 2020. In turn, the church has sought advice and expert testimony from religious studies scholars (including this author) to try to make the case that it is a bona fide religious organization whose rights to use psychedelics should be legally protected. As such, this case raises profound questions of religious freedom and scholarly ethics that will become increasingly important as ever more psychedelic churches emerge in the twenty-first century.

This paper explores the intersection of psychedelic-assisted therapy, religious freedom, and the legal recognition of place as central to meaning-making. Drawing on Vine Deloria Jr.’s critique of Western legal frameworks, it highlights how U.S. law has historically marginalized the significance of place in Native American religious practices. While the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) has provided protections for some religious uses of psychoactive substances, it often fails to fully address the communal and spatial dimensions of Indigenous traditions. Furthermore, contemporary research on “emplacement” and extended mind theory underscores the importance of culturally meaningful environments in shaping cognitive and emotional experiences. This paper critiques the limitations of standardized therapeutic environments, or “non-places,” and advocates for integrating emplacement as a core design principle in psychedelic-assisted therapy. By bridging religious, legal, and therapeutic contexts, this research highlights how meaningful environments can foster spiritual transformation and inform discussions on religious freedom and healing practices.

This study critically examines how religion is represented in U.S. high school social studies standards, focusing on the dynamics of power, particularly the dominance of Christianity. Building on Critical Religious Pluralism Theory (CRPT), which challenges hegemonic Christian narratives in higher education, this study explores how different religious groups and events are included in state standards and analyzes how power structures are reinforced or contested. Using a qualitative approach and grounded theory methodology, the study codes state social studies standards to identify instances where religion intersects with systems of power—such as consolidation, legitimization, or resistance. Preliminary findings indicate a continuing privileging of Christian perspectives, often in the form of historicized or anachronistic portrayals of non-Christian religions. This research aims to inform broader discussions about equity in religious education and curriculum development at the secondary level.

This paper argues for a revised account of religious literacy and reveals its implications for teaching in the public school system. I begin by exploring religious pluralism to show that 21st century students are learning in a diverse, multi-religious society. I highlight religion's role in conflicts to stress the need for cross-cultural literacy. Section 2 defines the term ‘covenantal pluralism’. Section 3 reviews previous approaches to religious literacy, focusing on the knowledge-based approach, the analytic-based approach, and the skills-based approach. In Section 4, I highlight the shortcomings of these accounts and in Section 5, I offer a revised approach to religious literacy. Specifically, I argue for an attentiveness-based approach to religious literacy. Ultimately, I argue that combining my revised account of religious literacy with key virtues can enable covenantal pluralism. Achieving this, however, requires rethinking how we cultivate religious literacy in students.

This paper explores how Danish teachers deal with controversial issues in religious education (RE). The study uses a mixed-methods approach, incorporating both survey data and observational data collected from workshops with teachers across eight public schools. The analysis will examine which issues teachers consider controversial in RE and the specific challenges they face when addressing these topics in the classroom. Furthermore, it will explore characteristics with the student talks on controversial issues in two RE-classes.

The findings of this study underscore the importance of recognizing contextual factors, related to societal, school, and classroom contexts, when dealing with controversial issues in RE. It illustrates how national and transnational discourses on controversies can manifest within the classroom setting and influence students' attitudes toward particular religions or religious practices. 

Finally, the paper will explore teaching strategies that create an environment in which the classroom can function as a “community of disagreement”.

This paper examines the role of religious sensitivity as an educational resource in migrant societies, focusing on pedagogical professionalism in multi-faith schools. Schools are central social spaces for negotiating migration-related pluralism, in which teachers must navigate religious and cultural diversity. Based on a qualitative study in German schools, the necessary skills for religiously and culturally sensitive teaching are analyzed. The study shows that religious affiliation is often perceived as a marker of difference that influences participation in education and identity formation. It also highlights the tension between individual religious freedom and school neutrality. The paper argues that religious sensitivity is a key competence for contemporary education, enabling teachers to use religious plurality as an opportunity for intercultural learning. The findings contribute to current debates about the role of religion in democratic societies and educational policy in increasingly diverse school environments.

This presentation focuses on Yiddish and Black press coverage of white Christian fascism in the NYPD at the outbreak of World War Two. The Christian Front was a nominally ecumenical, but mostly Catholic, political formation inspired by celebrity right-wing “radio priest” Father Coughlin. This presentation returns to the history of Christian Front influence within the NYPD in the ‘40s and ‘50s in order to argue that 1) Yiddish and African American media sources offer more perceptive analyses of Christianity and politics in this period than the white-dominanted English language press, and 2) Catholic fascism endures both through and beyond the Christian Front, facilitated by multifaceted ties between the police and the Church. The white Christian nationalist paramilitaries of the mid-century may have ceased to exist as specific organizations, but the alignments they reinforced between police, far-right politics, and white Christianity have been far more durable than any individual group.

Description forthcoming

This paper examines the Hindu nationalist rhetoric of Yogī Naraharināth (1913/15–2003), a key proponent of Nepal’s identity as the world’s last Hindu kingdom. Naraharināth reinterpreted Nepalese history to align with Hindutva ideology, casting Prithvi Narayan Shah as an anti-colonial defender of dharma and the Gorkhas as symbols of Hindu martial valor. His text Jaya Gorkhā reframes Nepal’s military conquests as religious victories, positioning the khukri (the traditional knife of the Gorkhali warriors) as an emblem of Hindu militancy and highlighting the protection of the cow as central to the ethos of the kingdom. Unlike India’s Hindutva discourse, which justifies its calls for violence as a reaction to a past of colonial subjugation that has defiled the nation, Nepal’s nationalist rhetoric proposed a narrative of invincibility and religious purity. This paper explores how Naraharināth’s vision adapts Hindutva to Nepal’s historical context, reinforcing a legitimization of Hindu violence in a nationalist perspective.

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the intricate dynamics surrounding female involvement in jihadism in Bangladesh. Drawing on expert interviews and surveys, the study uncovers a multifaceted picture of this phenomenon. Three distinct categories of factors – push, pull, and facilitating – emerge as central in explaining the surge in female participation within militant groups in the region. Push factors, which encompass grievances and vulnerabilities arising from personal crises, poverty, and family breakdown, as well as the narratives of global Muslim victimization create an environment ripe for radicalization. Pull factors reveal that ideological allure, the pursuit of glory, adventure, and the evolving gender roles offered by groups like the Islamic State play a significant role in attracting women to extremist ideologies. Facilitating factors, such as influential family members and online platforms, are pivotal in shaping female radicalization. The internet acts as a powerful tool, facilitating exposure to radical ideologies and creating virtual group bonding that reinforce extremist beliefs. 

This paper examines the way Nana Kwame Adeji-Brenyah's novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars, asks us to redefine our concepts of freedom and annihilation. Set in a dystopian world where prisoners are able to obtain 'freedom' if they fight in gladiator style death matches, the novel constantly twists how we wish freedom or annihilation are experienced. Both in this setting, and his many factual footnotes on mass incarceration, the novel reminds us of Katie Cannon's foundational work on understanding the dignity reclaimed by enslaved peoples. In this paper, I argue that these redefinitions are also calling those in privilege to practice annihilation, in seeking a more true freedom and empowerment of all people.

Do the united discourses of freedom and secularity function in a singular way across the contexts of coercive colonial control in which they are deployed? Can the ideological union between secularity and freedom really be analyzed singularly, or is it more accurately understood as a cluster of related but ultimately discrete phenomena? In this paper, I will use the case study of freedom and secularity in Sydney Owenson’s 1806 novel The Wild Irish Girl as an example of the idiosyncrasy with which these interrelated discourses can function in comparison with frequently circulated theories. Through this analysis, I will come to a methodological suggestion that it may be useful to build on theories of secularization and colonialism with contextually specific analysis, greater descriptive accuracy to general theoretical characterizations. What could we gain from moving from speaking of “secularism” as such to a discussion of related but discrete “secularisms?”

This presentation attends to Silko’s artistic expression as an Indigenous storyteller, honoring the stories she weaves from her Indigenous traditions in pursuit of sovereignty and freedom--two different yet related terms. In the act of listening to Silko’s stories, questions are posed: What is the connection between storytelling and having sources of sovereignty and freedom, especially in times of oppression and despair? The presentation starts by exploring the liberating power of Indigenous storytelling. It then focuses on nuclear storied landscapes in Silko’s novels, Ceremony and Almanac of the Dead. We discover artistic storytelling for achieving two kinds of freedom: Sovereignty to enable accountability to the land and its people; and freedom from environmental racism and other forms of settler oppression. The presentation concludes with the curative role of artistic storytelling, assisting humans to survive and even flourish as they seek freedom and justice in the face of the catastrophic.

This paper offers a reading of Edward Elgar’s setting of Saint John Henry Newman’s poem, The Dream of Gerontius, and argues that the work reveals Elgar’s ambivalence about his Catholic faith at the same time as he celebrates it. 125 years after its premiere, Gerontius remains one of Elgar’s most highly regarded and most performed works, but its current canonical status disguises both the contentiousness of Elgar’s choice of text and the mixed critical reception the work initially received. Informed not only by research into Elgar’s religious faith and compositional practice but also by insights gained from conducting Gerontius, this paper will demonstrate how musical choices can convey theological concerns just as eloquently as words. In Gerontius, Elgar asserted his freedom both to be a Catholic in a society in which that identity disadvantaged him, and to question the tenets of the faith in which he was raised.

This paper explores how the Black prophetic tradition manifests in the current Black Lives Matter era through a consideration of Angela Harrelson’s memoir, Lift Your Voice: How My Nephew George Floyd's Murder Changed the World. I argue that Harrelson’s autobiographical appeal demonstrates a shift in the source and scope of Black prophetic literature and orations in the current political moment. Artistic expertise, oratorical ability, political fame, or academic pedigree are no longer the sole qualifications for Black prophecy-making. Everyday aunts can render prophetic thought by virtue of their proximity to police brutality’s latest victim. Analyzing Harrelson’s prophetic intonations demonstrates how Harrelson is one among other Black maternal figures that challenge existing conversations around the scope and source of Black prophetic tradition, demonstrating a shift from “exceptional prophets” to “everyday prophets” in the Black Lives Matter era. 

In this paper, I critically analyze the only two films ever made about Saint Augustine—Agostino d’Ippona (1972) and Restless Heart (2012)—in light of what James K. A. Smith calls an Augustinian, “incarnational” account of film as part of a broader Christian aesthetic. With help from Smith, I first demonstrate how film can, despite Augustine’s critique of theater, move the minds and hearts of viewers to God. I then comparatively evaluate Restless Heart and Agostino d’Ippona with an eye toward this normative standard for “good” cinema. While I conclude that both films fail to reflect this Augustinian vision, their shortcomings reveal an inherent tension in any “biopic” featuring a Christian hero. By yielding to the cinematic temptation to glorify the protagonist as morally exceptional, these films risk idolizing their subjects, drawing the minds and hearts of viewers not toward God but toward the love of autonomous human achievement.

Not all students of religious ethics are film buffs and not all film buffs indulge heavily in theory. This paper introduces students of religious ethics to insights gleaned from film theory to (1) better untangle what is at stake in the depiction of theological thinkers and (2) better ground their critiques of those cultural products. Observing the tension between art and commerce is a crucial first step to our work. Real art, according to Andrei Tarkovsky, is produced by the artist’s pursuit of truth. It is thus dialogical like Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. But commercial interests also drive cinema as a vehicle for entertainment. “What do filmgoers want,” asked D. W. Griffith: “A girl and a gun.” This understanding of spectacle informs how Angel Studios flattened the movie originally titled God’s Spy into the far more digestible Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.

Movie depictions of Bonhoeffer, like 2024’s Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin. are problematic as they recreate certain events or snippets of dialog lending themselves to drama, excitement, or promotion of editorial biases. A “Bonhoeffer Moment” - where someone makes a decision at a crucial defining moment of life-changing and momentous importance – gets exaggerated. In the newest film, Bonhoeffer’s conspiratorial involvement is embellished with historical inaccuracies and exaggeration. The film portrays a Bonhoeffer enthusiastic about violence.  It is thus potentially dangerous as individuals or groups might be inclined to employ violence as they assign their “Bonhoeffer Moment” to present-day conflicts. A responsible portrait challenges the existence of any “Bonhoeffer Moment,” and tries to understand his conspiratorial activities more accurately by contextualizing them in terms of the theology-action dyad as his life progressed. Ultimately, Bonhoeffer’s heroism lies in the fact that his actions were consistent with his thought, not in any particular moment.