In-person November Annual Meeting 2025 Program Book

This paper investigates internal debates within the U.S. evangelical community about how Christians should best relate to social media technologies and social media influencers.  While some argue that influencing is as old as Christianity itself and that Jesus was the first influencer, others critique the gathering of followers and likes as distracting and even idolatrous.  I show that in these spaces we can see evangelical influencers attempting to articulate new theological justifications and standards for proper self-regulation and engagement for themselves and their followers.

This presentation examines over 1,100 letters submitted by American employees in public and private sectors requesting religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine, obtained through public records requests. The thesis differentiates those that were based on truly religious reasons (objections to fetal stem cell lines) from those that were not (e.g., fears over the chemical contents of the vaccine). It has been widely reported that Evangelical Christians are the group most likely to believe in conspiracy theories and reject the vaccine, so the question is: to what extent are the ideas surfacing in COVID-19 vaccine exemption request letters Evangelical? How are these ideas disseminated via the internet and social media? These findings will be used to inform a new framework for evaluating religious exemptions to civil law that is fair to those who have religious beliefs and also does not threaten public health and safety.

American evangelist Billy Graham has conducted evangelistic meetings in Japan. Numerous Japanese Christians have demonstrated a significant interest in Graham's events. Although small, the Christian population in Japan exhibits heterogeneity. Denominations are diverse and there are two groups: mainstream and evangelical. Each group has its own organization: the mainstream National Christian Council in Japan (NCC) and Evangelical Japan Evangelical Association (JEA). 

This study aims to elucidate how mainstream Christianity and evangelicals in Japan evaluate Graham's mission to Japan. Specifically, it focuses on 1967 Graham's evangelistic meeting because the NCC rejected it and criticized Graham’s attitude toward the Vietnam War, while Japanese evangelicals sought a collaborative framework following the meeting. To achieve this objective, this research analyzes the publications of both mainstream and evangelical organizations. This study contributes to the understanding of the diversity of Christianity in Japan and the development of a global Christian network.

The Christian streaming and distribution service Angel Studios is a lightning rod of contemporary disputes about the place of Christian belief in mainstream media production and reception. The company's Mormon founders, the Harmon brothers, are overtly motivated by belief-based principles to “tell stories that amplify light.” Jeff Harmon says “truth should not be something that people look at subjectively.” Yet the studio has been mired in controversy since its inception. Sued by Disney, losing the series The Chosen in legal arbitration, and generating sharp contention about representation in Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Assassin (2024) and Sound of Freedom (2023), the company’s beliefs impact the way they do business. Although owned and run by Mormon brothers, Angel Studios has established itself as a darling of the far-right, attempting to appeal to a wide Christian viewership. Angel Studios serves as a contemporary gauge of disputes about what mainstream Christian media is, what it can do, and what it should do. 

The New Season Prophetic Prayers and Declarations (NSPPD), launched in 2020 by Nigerian Pastor Jerry Eze, redefines religious freedom through digital innovation. Rooted in African spirituality, NSPPD uses platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and WhatsApp to create inclusive spaces for worship, prayer, and community-building. This study argues that NSPPD transforms religious freedom into a networked, participatory, and culturally sovereign experience. It liberates participants from isolation, hierarchies, and Western norms. Grounded in Heidi Campbell’s Digital Religion Theory, Stuart Hall’s Diaspora Theory, and Manuel Castells’ Network Society Theory, the research employs digital ethnography, content analysis, and discourse analysis to examine NSPPD’s global impact from 2020 to 2025. Findings reveal that NSPPD empowers a pan-African identity, advances collective belonging, and challenges Eurocentric models. It offers a case for digital networks as tools of liberation. However, its sustainability depends on addressing challenges like exclusivity and tech disparities, rethinking freedom in a connected world.

In Ile-Ife, the city of 201 Gods, there is a power contestation between the chief priest (Chief Yekere), chief priestess (Chief Eri) and Amuru Moremi (Amuru) over who will emerge as the face and custodian of Moremi. Moremi is an Ife orisha-heroine who is honoured and celebrated in the annual Edi Festival, one of the major festivals in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. From September to November 2024, I conducted ethnographic research on Edi Festival in which I got to witness this power contestation and also interviewed Chief Yekere, Chief Eri and Amuru. Chief Eri has conceded the physical space of the shrine to an all-male priestly class led by Chief Yekere, which she acknowledges is due to patriarchy and the weaponisation of violence against her. On the other hand, a much younger, Amuru has turned to the digital space for religious performance, participation, influence and relevance. In this paper, I will critically engage with how Amuru is strategically and creatively utilising the social media space of Facebook and Youtube to expand and create new opportunities for gender equality, religious freedom, and innovation within Orisha ritual performances and practices.

Migration reshapes gender roles, religious practices, and family structures for Yoruba Muslim women in the U.S. diaspora. Social media often portrays them as liberated or rebellious, oversimplifying their lived experiences. This paper examines how these women negotiate freedom within their cultural and religious contexts through Islamic practices, digital faith networks, and communal spaces. Drawing on Saba Mahmood’s concept of ethical self-formation, I argue that they define freedom not by rejecting tradition but by engaging with religious devotion and moral agency. Talal Asad’s notion of discursive tradition shows how they reinterpret faith in response to migration. Birgit Meyer’s concept of religion as a mediated experience frames digital platforms—like Facebook and online Asalatu networks—as spaces of empowerment and reinforcement of patriarchal narratives. Using digital discourse analysis and ethnographic methods, this study highlights how Yoruba Muslim women actively shape their migration experiences, balancing autonomy, religious identity, and resisting digital stereotypes.

This paper examines the compounded trauma experienced by undocumented victim-survivors of clergy sexual abuse in the context of increasing anti-immigrant hostility. Drawing on recent data that shows declining rates of sexual assault reporting among immigrant populations, it explores how fear of deportation, distrust of authorities, and intensified anti-immigrant rhetoric further marginalize undocumented victim-survivors. The concept of cultural betrayal is introduced to highlight the additional harm experienced when abuse takes place within one’s own faith-based community—a space that ostensibly offers belonging and cultural affirmation. By analyzing the psychological and spiritual impact of cultural betrayal trauma, the paper underscores the importance of critically rethinking community values like unity and resilience. This paper aims to explore healing communities where pastoral caregivers foster mutual accountability and engage in inclusive theological reflection in pastoral care and counseling. In doing so, it calls on pastoral caregivers to stand in solidarity with undocumented victim-survivors, interrupting the silence and complicity that allow spiritual, cultural, and institutional betrayals to persist.

This paper explores the clerical sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic church. It proposes a re-reading of the crucifixion narrative, arguing that Jesus Christ was a victim of sexual abuse. Through the lens of power, violation, and humiliation, the crucifixion is examined to expose the sexual violence inflicted upon Jesus. This interpretation seeks to privilege the stories of those victimized by clerical abuse, offering a new theological framework for understanding their suffering and reclaiming their relationship with God and their faith communities. This theological framework is one in which the bodies of survivors are seen as sites of theological construction, theologizing from their bodies to make sense of their experience and their relationship with the divine in light of clerical abuse. By confronting the sexual dimensions of Jesus's suffering, this paper calls for the church to acknowledge and address the reality of clerical abuse, fostering a space of healing and belonging for survivors.

While the Spotlight investigation catalyzed global attention to clergy abuse of minors, the Catholic Church's institutional response has largely overlooked adult victims. This paper examines how church policies, First Amendment defenses, and institutional structures perpetuate this blind spot, impeding comprehensive healing. Analysis of diocesan websites reveals a troubling pattern: policies frequently restrict abuse acknowledgment to minors and narrowly-defined "vulnerable adults," denying the inherent power imbalance in clergy-congregant relationships. Unlike other professional contexts that explicitly prohibit sexual contact regardless of consent, Catholic institutions have failed to establish similar boundaries for clergy. The paper suggests essential reforms: comprehensive policies recognizing adult vulnerability, transparent reporting mechanisms, cooperation with accountability legislation, and education about power dynamics in pastoral relationships. The Church's healing journey remains incomplete as long as adult victims continue to be marginalized in institutional responses, undermining efforts to rebuild trust and establish meaningful accountability.

The paper analyses ‘Abd al-ʿAlī al-Lakhnawī’s (d.1810) defence of waḥdat al- wujūd (oneness of being) in his Risāla-i-wahdat al-wujūd wa shuhūd al- ḥaqq fī kull mawjūd (Treatise on the Oneness of Being and the Witness of the Truth in Everything That Exists). The fault line between the doctrines of waḥdat al- wujūd (oneness of being) and waḥdat al-shuhūd (oneness of witnessing) has often been described as the most pressing theological and philosophical debate among Indian Sufi intellectuals after the sixteenth century. My paper challenges this long-standing narrative by making three interventions: a) demonstrates that Lakhnawī’s primary interlocutors were not partisans of waḥdat al-shuhūd, but Ashari theologians; b) argues that Lakhnawī defense of waḥdat al- wujūd is in close conversation with the criticisms advanced of the doctrine by al-Taftāzānī (d. 793/1390); c) reconstructs philosophical and theological currents in 18th-century South Asia that cannot be explained by the wujūd-shūhūd polemic. 

This paper documents how non-dualist ontologies within Islamic mysticism were mobilized by twentieth century political critics of capitalism and empire in the Muslim world. The project centers the mystical doctrine of wahdat ul-wajud, the Unity of Being, which troubles the metaphysical separations between the human, natural, and cosmic and sees all creation as separate appearances of a divine unity. I explore how this cosmology of oneness was politicized in the writings of Indian theologian Ubaidullah Sindhi (d. 1944) and Iranian sociologist Ali Shariati (d. 1977). By offering English translations of Sindhi’s Urdu work, I put his political re-imagining of wahdat ul-wajud in pre-Partition India in conversation with Shariati’s translated writings on tawhid (the declaration of God’s Oneness) in pre-revolutionary Iran. I argue that both authors use the doctrine of metaphysical unity as a basis to render the political domination of the other ontologically incoherent. 

This paper takes up the decolonial and spiritual potential in the music of the iconic Umm Kulthum (d. 1975), the most popular Arab singer of the 20th century. I consider how a reorientation toward Umm Kalthum’s music, when put in creative dialogue with Sufi discourses on the torment of love, can offer fresh horizons of understanding regarding the painful struggles of faith and seeking God. The first half of the paper begins by framing the relevance of Umm Kalthum to Islamic political theology and spirituality, particularly in a context of diasporic exile in the 21st century. To illustrate this potential, the remainder of the paper draws out the connections between Umm Kalthum’s love songs and the tradition of Sufi love poetry, with their extensive focus on the torment and perplexity of the lover. I consider the relevance of this to the modern experience of religious doubt and disillusionment.

This paper examines the Sufi theodicy of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jazāʾirī (1808–1883), figure whose life and thought intertwine anti-colonial resistance, theological inquiry, and mystical philosophy. Focusing on his magnum opus, Kitāb al-Mawāqif ("The Book of Mystical Halting Stations"), this paper explores ʿAbd al-Qādir’s mystical theodicy – the  the problem of evil and divine benevolence. I frame his reflections on this topic within the context of Emmanuel Levinas’ critiques of its metaphysical assumptions. The arguments of ʿAbd al-Qādir will be examined in light of his commentary on Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī’s (d. 1111) assertion that "there is nothing in existence more perfect than what already is." Following al-Ghazālī’s lead, ʿAbd al-Qādir defends the view according to which God creates the most optimal world. This perspective is embedded in his Sufi ontology of inherent predisposition (istiʿdād) . What defines his perspective is the view that an optimal world is an order of existence where the predispositions of all beings are providentially actualized. 

This paper explores the transformation of dhikr in modern Egypt, moving beyond its traditional spiritual and communal significance to examine how it has been contested, reformed, and digitally mediated. Using Talal Asad’s concept of agency and Kathryn Gin Lum’s framework of heathenization, a process of racialized delegitimization, the study analyzes reformist critiques of Sufi dhikr during Egypt’s modernization in the 19th and 20th centuries. Reformists condemned certain dhikr rituals as backward, reinforcing colonial narratives that framed indigenous practices as primitive. Despite these challenges, Sufi orders adapted dhikr to maintain their relevance, asserting agency amid reformist and colonial pressures. In the digital age, dhikr is further reshaped as social media and online discourse redefine religious authority, making devotional practices more public and contested. This paper situates dhikr at the intersection of modernity, religious reform, racialized critique, and digital mediation, offering a fresh perspective on its evolving role in contemporary Islam.

Shang Yang and Han Feizi championed performance-based law and severe punishments, believing that strict accountability and harsh penalties would deter crime and ensure obedience. Their ideal was a crime-free utopian society where heavy punishments eliminated the need for further enforcement. However, historical evidence from Qin-Han legal statutes and cases reveals that this rigid legalism led to a distorted justice system. Administrative errors were excessively punished as crimes, subjecting diligent officials to the same severe penalties as violent offenders. The high standards and strict regulations created widespread legal violations, fostering resentment toward the law and sympathy for the punished. Despite ongoing criticism from scholars, officials, and even emperors, no significant legal reforms occurred. This study highlights the dangers of perfectionism in governance and explores its role in shaping Confucian opposition to strict legalism, offering a historical perspective on the challenges of balancing efficiency, justice, and human fallibility in legal systems.

Tao Yuanming’s poem “Time Moves On” is in close dialogue with Analects 11.26 where Kongzi asks his disciples about their aspirations. Of the four in attendance, the first three profess goals of statecraft. Only Zengxi speaks about his desire to escape from the situation and enjoy time with good company. After hearing all four disciples’ wishes Kongzi stated, “I’m with Zengxi.” Like Kongzi, Tao is with Zengxi. Utopias exist outside of time. They are imaginative reconceptualizations of the present. In “Time Moves On” there is a longing for a time that never was; a time Kongzi could only imagine. Tao Yuanming continually imagines alternatives to the present in his poetry to express his discontent with the present. This presentation will explore two of his imaginings in the context of the Analects and other early Chinese literature. I will also discuss interventions that Tao’s utopias make in utopian studies. 

Mainland Chinese society is often characterized as highly secularized. Organized religion has been the subject of continuous criticism by the state and its expressions are tightly controlled. Yet, scholars also agree that secularization has been accompanied by a parallel process of sacralization – a growing drive to depict the nation-state, its institutions, and its leaders as sacred. This paper will build on this argument to shed new light on the sacralization of tradition in contemporary Confucian utopianism. Focusing on the writings of Zhang Xianglong (1949-2022), it will demonstrate that his proposal to establish “Special Districts for Confucian Culture,” small autonomous intentional communities designed to preserve Confucian values and practices, is driven by a desire to designate traditional culture as sacred in order to save it from extinction in an increasingly profane society. Zhang’s utopian vision offers us a new insight into the revival of Confucian religiosity in contemporary Chinese society.

My paper makes a case for an ecological and democratic global political order based on and inspired by the relevant resources in the tradition of Confucian political thought. I will do so by putting into conversation two most prominent contemporary proponents of Confucian cosmopolitan thinking, Zhao Tingyang of People’s Republic of China and Na Jongseok of South Korea.  My thesis is that the concepts of tianxia (天下) and daedong (datong 大同), when reimagined through the lens of an ecologically grounded cosmopolitan democratic thinking, could offer a way to liberate the global commons from its enslavement to the reign of extractive neo-liberal global capitalism and the hegemonic/imperial nation-states.

The Muga No Ai (Selfless Love) movement, founded in Tokyo in 1905 by one-time Jōdo Shin Buddhist priest Itō Shōshin, blended teachings of Buddhism, Christianity, and Tolstoyan spirituality. While Shōshin’s life and thought have been well-studied, the remarkable lifestory of his wife, Itō Asako (1881-1956), remains largely unknown. As a child, Asako lost much of her hair due to alopecia areata. Social pressures led her to feel ashamed and live as a shut-in. Muga No Ai teachings emboldened her to take on a new persona, engage in religious training, wed Shōshin, and become a religious leader. She also became active in feminist politics, and her feminism influenced how she practiced her religious ideal of “selfless love,” most notably in the scandal of a public love affair with a younger man. Through a study of Itō Asako’s career, this paper will investigate the connections between religious liberation and political liberation.

This paper examines the public images of Okano Kimiko, the female founder of Kōdō Kyōdan—a lay Buddhist organization established in 1936 that is also categorized as a New Religious Movement—to explore how it positioned itself within the postwar Japanese religious landscape. While mass media have largely portrayed New Religious Movements and their female founders in a negative light since their emergence, the postwar media representations of Okano Kimiko and Kōdō Kyōdan present an anomaly, as they received neutral and even positive recognition. Through historical analysis of national, regional, and organizational print media, this paper argues that Okano Kimiko’s increasingly respectable media presence was shaped by the Kōdō Kyōdan leadership’s strategic relationships with social, political, and religious actors, which facilitated the organization’s integration into the traditional Buddhist community. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the agency of New Religious Movements in shaping their public images.

This research examines women's leadership in Japanese new Buddhist movements through case studies of Shinsō Itō (1942-) of Shinnyo-en and Kōshō Niwano (1968-) of Risshō Kōseikai. As daughter and granddaughter of their organizations' founders respectively, these women navigate the intersection of gender, lineage, and religious authority in traditionally male-dominated contexts. Through textual analysis of their published works and organizational materials, the study explores how they understand their leadership roles, how familial succession influences their approaches, and how gender shapes their leadership expression. Initial findings reveal that while both emphasize continuity as "torchbearers," they differ in addressing gender: Niwano reinforces traditional norms through family themes, while Itō explicitly frames her female leadership as reflecting societal change and her parents' inclusive vision. This research addresses significant gaps in Japanese Religious Studies by simultaneously examining women's contributions and new religious movements, offering fresh perspectives on evolving organizational leadership within contemporary Japanese Buddhism.