In-person November Annual Meeting 2025 Program Book

Residents of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, sometimes recount a familiar postcolonial experience of being “independent but not free”. Within this context, a group of Baptist Christians in the city are engaged in their own debates about the nature of freedom as a spiritual and ethical reality. Their religious account challenges a reigning liberal and Eurocentric view of freedom in some scholarship and public discourse, which presumes that freedom is the capacity to choose between alternatives.  

Drawing on 15 months of fieldwork with a network of middle-class Baptist Christians, I show how Zimbabwean Baptists develop alternative visions of freedom through the urgency of their daily moral deliberations as religious practitioners. Adhering to a normative, relational freedom, their accounts enliven critiques of freedom as individual choice. By invoking both Augustinian theology and an ethic of ubuntu, their religious visions of freedom shed critical light on current discourses about the nature of postcolonial freedoms. 

This paper examines how young Muslim women in Delhi create ethical responses to Hindu majoritarian politics through Islamic healing sessions, challenging liberal anthropological understanding of freedom. Drawing on fourteen months of ethnography, I analyze how participants of these sessions cultivate religious and affective practices that both acknowledge their marginalization and challenge its exclusionary logic. Extending Mbembe's "entangled temporalities," I introduce "affective temporality" to theorize how women create alternative experiences of temporal belongingness by invoking metaphysical sameness through expressions like "kyā farq hai?" (what's the difference?). Through collective spiritual practices, these women momentarily suspend the Hindu nationalist temporal order that positions them as perpetual outsiders. This study reconceptualizes freedom not as linear progression toward secular liberalism but as a temporal practice of interruption that generates what Elizabeth Povinelli terms "otherwise temporalities," revealing how subaltern subjects can destabilize the politics of difference through religious self-formation.

This paper examines one key aspect of liberal freedom—intellectual autonomy—by exploring how members of an evangelical church in Tennessee responded to a doctrinal shift allowing women in leadership. The debate over women’s leadership exacerbated tensions between competing epistemic virtues, forcing members to confront the limits of their own interpretive authority and the role of social influences in shaping their beliefs. Their tradition emphasizes strict adherence to a divinely ordained pattern for church governance, which they believe can be objectively determined through logical biblical analysis. This means that women who feel called to leadership must challenge not only patriarchal cultural norms but also a long-standing skepticism toward personal religious experiences that contradict verses considered to be "facts of the Bible." This case shows that ideas about freedom are not just political or moral debates—they are also deeply tied to how people decide what counts as true knowledge.

Scattered throughout the urban landscape of Athens, Greece, church-run neighborhood soup kitchens offer pious Orthodox Athenians a place to care for their community and self. In these spaces, the work of cooking for and serving the needy is seen as both a deeply obligatory act of mutual care and a free practice that brings about a loving kingdom of God. The ways that individual practitioners conceived of their carework thus did not align with Western liberal principles of individualism, autonomy, or freedom. Based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork and critical attention to theology, I argue that this distinction is the direct result of Orthodox theological ethics which claim that true freedom occurs when one recognizes and acts on the essential relatedness of God and all creation. 

In 1981, Jean Humez published the first widely available volume of the life writing of Rebecca Jackson, a 19th-century Black Shaker Eldress. Since then, public and academic scholars have written thoughtfully on Jackson’s visionary writing on race and gender. All (that I found) use Humez’s edited volume for their analysis; almost none attend to Humez’s editorial process. Surely this lack of attention to editing indicates a commitment to increasing public knowledge of Black religious women, without getting distracted by publication history. But Humez’s editing fundamentally changed Jackson’s work, changing spelling and punctuation, adding section breaks, and arranging disparate works in a single volume. In this talk, I ask how the editing of archival materials impacts our understanding of Black religious figures. Further, I ask how the reception and use of Humez’s volume reveals contemporary desires for cohesive historical narratives, and the stakes of this for histories of Black religious women. 

This paper offers an intellectual history of Black Muslim thought that centers the distinctly feminist epistemologies of Black nationalist organizers Louise Little (1894-1989), Betty Shabazz (1934-1997), and Safiya Bukhari (1950-2003). Through archival research and close reading of posthumously published works, I trace the psychic, intuitive knowledge that Grenadian-born Garveyite activist Louise Little seeded in her son, Malcolm X; Betty Shabazz's use of channeling to refuse the secularization of Black nationalist thought post-1965 and frame Islam as a spiritual turn toward African indigeneity; and Safiya Bukhari’s reliance on co-conspiracy with the divine to liberate herself and her fellow Black Panther comrades from U.S. prisons. I argue that adding self-centered, felt, sensed, and intuited knowledge—alongside the read, ritualized, and revealed—complicates the standard narrative of Black Islam and Black Nationalism, as popularized by Malcolm X, and its equation with masculinist, top-down notions of religious authority and knowledge.

Drawing on newspaper archives and court records, this paper explores how (representations of) hypnotist and publisher Lauron William De Laurence (1868-1936) challenged and reinforced normative constructions of whiteness. De Laurence was the founder of De Laurence, Scott, and Co., an influential occult publishing house. De Laurence’s books are used in many Black religions and religious practices, including the Nation of Islam and hoodoo. This paper will first demonstrate that De Laurence had an immensely complex and ambiguous relationship to dominant US racial schemas, categories, and boundaries. Subsequently, this relationship will serve as “case study” to challenge and probe the often-held assumption—in academic and public domains—that occult praxis is by definition subversive, deviant, or rejected. This paper shows, in contrast, that (representations of) occult praxis can also form a locus for dominant norms, specifically normative constructs of whiteness.

This paper offers a critical reading of Bonhoeffer’s 1932 lecture “Right to Self-Assertion” by arguing that his otherwise laudable attempt to make sense of the violence underpinning modern Euro-American society is nonetheless limited by his problematically orientalist understanding of “the East.” Though his analysis of the modern Euro-American struggle to assert one’s (white settler) life over and against the life of others remains incisive, I argue that there is a fundamental gap in Bonhoeffer’s wider political and theological imagination of the actually-existing lives of those living in the Majority World. I argue that this gap is mirrored in the ongoing erasure of actually-existing Palestinian life by Christian theologians otherwise committed to freedom and justice in Palestine, suggesting a dire need for alternative theological approaches that decentre the Western liberal tradition whose limits have been laid bare in Gaza and beyond. 

This study examines Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theological anthropology in response to the modern prioritization of biological life over human freedom, a phenomenon Giorgio Agamben describes as “bare life.” It argues that Bonhoeffer, through his contemplation of God’s condescension in Christ, uncovers a new foundation for divine preservation, offering a renewed vision of humanity. The study is structured into three parts. Part I explores Bonhoeffer’s critique of human existence through a Christological interpretation of creation and fall, tracing his reflections on divine preservation from Creation and Fall to Ethics. Part II examines how Bonhoeffer connects God and fallen humanity through the motif of God’s condescension in Christ, forming the basis for preservation. Part III analyzes his vision of preserved humanity in Ethics, emphasizing natural life, divine mandates, and the flow of life. The study concludes with a critical engagement with Hannah Arendt, reflecting on Bonhoeffer’s insights in light of her political thought.

This paper argues for the practice of community organizing as a contemporary model of Bonhoeffer’s ethics and political theology. It analyzes connections between Bonhoeffer’s ethics and the model of community organizing practiced by Ella Baker, an organizer for racial justice during the civil rights struggle. It concludes by suggesting ways that Baker's model of community organizing amends for shortcomings in Bonhoeffer’s own engagements with politics and race.

This paper examines Bonhoeffer’s theology of shame, and the practice of confession as a means through which shame becomes a basis for community solidarity, and resistance against an unjust system. Unlike contemporary shame theorists who narrowly define shame as a toxic experience that erodes individual and community esteem, or a primitive state that must be overcome, Bonhoeffer describes shame as a complex and relational affect, both as the sense of estrangement from God and fellow creatures, but also as a goad meant to push the Confessing Church and German Christians toward resistance against the Reich. It examines how Bonhoeffer developed this theology of shame, in the context of political oppression and genocide, in order to better understand how the Christian practice of confession through shame builds the solidarity necessary for resisting oppressive orders.  

Catholicism predominates urban life in Timor-Leste. From education to healthcare to the built environment, the Catholic Church pervades the social, political, and economic infrastructures of the world’s most Catholic nation. This influence gained international attention in 2024 when half of the country’s citizens–over 600,000 people–attended Pope Francis’ open air Mass as a part of his apostolic journey. This paper examines the overlooked displacement of over 1,000 Timorese families to make way for capital building projects associated with the papal journey. It uncovers the capital partnerships between the State of Timor-Leste and the Church as they co-constitutively make claims to Timorese land over and against informal settlements by indigenous communities. An ethnographic exploration, this paper brings together interviews, event observations, and site analyses to argue that the monumental architectures of the papal visitation both obscure and stridently declare the Church’s imbrication in financial and real estate monopolies in Timor-Leste.

This study explores whether Catholic chapels in shopping malls serve as exceptions or extensions of commercial spaces. While malls are often seen as non-places characterized by transience and anonymity (Augé, 1995), the presence of chapels within them presents a paradox. Through ethnographic research in Manila and Surabaya, this study examines how these chapels mediate between the sacred and the profane.

Findings suggest that while mall chapels share features of non-places, they also foster communal religious experiences, accommodating a mobile urban population. Their accessibility and convenience make them unique spaces where commercial and sacred realms overlap. Rather than existing outside modern consumer environments, these chapels integrate spiritual engagement into everyday urban life. This research contributes to broader discussions on the evolving nature of sacredness and how Catholicism in Southeast Asia adapts to contemporary urban landscapes.

Christianity plays a central role in the political identity of the Kadazan-Dusun community in Sabah, Malaysia, tracing back to the arrival of Mill Hill missionaries in 1881. These missionaries established Catholicism in Papar and Penampang, near the urban center of Jesselton, granting Kadazan Catholics access to administrative, media, and political networks. This facilitated the rise of a Kadazan political consciousness intertwined with Catholicism, particularly among the literate Kadazan intelligentsia in the 1950s and 1960s.

Given the agricultural roots of most Kadazan-Dusun communities, ancestral rice-related rituals were integrated into Catholic practice. A key moment was the first official Kaamatan (Harvest Festival) in 1960, aligned with Corpus Christi and held at St. Michael’s Church in Penampang. This paper examines how the Kadazan intelligentsia shaped Catholic practice within agricultural traditions and used mass media and political platforms to spread this religious-political consciousness throughout rural Sabah.

This paper explores missionary outreach in Shenzhen, China, focusing on inculturation—the adaptation of Catholicism to Chinese cultural contexts—through ethnographic research at Saint Anthony’s Church in Futian. Led by Fr. Francis Xavier Zhang, the church integrates Chinese cultural elements into religious practices, inspired by St. Francis Xavier and Matteo Ricci. Central to this approach is fengxian (“offering”), a dedication of one’s life and labor to evangelization.

Amid Xi Jinping’s religious sinicization policies, Fr. Zhang incorporates Chinese symbols into church architecture, artwork, and liturgical practices, including a Marian icon with Southern Chinese features. Parishioners practice fengxian through service, discipline, and evangelistic engagement, seeing their actions as both communal support and spiritual devotion. The paper examines inculturation as both an evangelization strategy and a form of religious subjectivity, contributing to discussions on the localization of global religions, state-religion dynamics, and contemporary Catholicism in urban China.

This paper examines Jain sculptures, performing arts, and festivals in ancient India, focusing on the role of abhinaya, as codified in Bharata’s Nāṭyaśāstra, in Jain culture. Using a sculpture of a dancer performing in the presence of Jina Ṛṣabhanātha from Kaṅkālī Ṭīlā, Mathura (c. 100 BCE) as a case study, the paper examines it with reference to epigraphical sources and to contemporary Buddhist and Jain representations of performances from Mathura and Bharhut. This analysis highlights the importance of performers and performances in the religious life of ancient India and shows that sculptors skillfully integrated the technical language of dance into their works, thus imbuing sculptures with layered meanings, including religious concepts and the expression of emotions. The paper demonstrates how examining sculptures of performances can enhance our understanding of ancient performing artists, their arts, and the cultural significance of festivals and celebrations in ancient India. 

What do Jain monks look like in paintings of the narratives linked to Jain festivals? This presentation will address this question by looking at 20th-and 21st-century temple wall paintings and sculptures, from Delhi, Hastinapur, Rajasthan, and Gujarat. It will focus on the narratives linked to two Jain festivals: Akṣaya Tṛtīyā, which commemorates the first fast-breaking of the first Jina, Ṛṣabha, and Rakhi, or Rakṣā Bandhan, which commemorates the Jain monk Viṣṇukumāra’s rescue of 700 Digambara monks from the fiery torments of a king’s minister-turned king, Bali. In the paintings and sculptures representing these narratives, Jain monks look like brahmins. The Śvetāmbara sculptures related to Akṣaya Tṛtīyā portray Ṛṣabha with a śikhā, or a tuft of hair required of brahmins initiated into the Vedic sacrifice. Digambara paintings of the Rakhi narrative also have a monks wearing a śikhā, and they even portray Digambara monks as wearing clothes: a white dhoti and upper garment. This material culture, when put in conversation with the written narratives of these festivals, from the medieval period to the present day, shows how these festivals emerged as a way to argue that Jain monks are the true brahmins.  

The Shalibhadra Chaupai is a 17th century Shvetambara Jain narrative tale that extolls the benefits of alms giving and is directed at the merchant community. It celebrates merchant culture using visual tropes that refer to the traditional depiction in paintings of celebratory events in the lives of Jinas. This presentation examines two identical Shalibhadra Chaupai manuscripts set a hundred years apart, both painted in Jaisalmer. Keeping patronage and viewer reception in mind, it discusses the role of Jain monks not just as scribes but as artists as well. What types of visual interpolations take place when the artist is also a monk? How might that affect the reception and circulation of the painted manuscript? The latter are some of the questions and issues the presentation seeks to examine. 

While much has been made of the New Apostolic Reformation and its dominionist theology of the Seven Mountain Mandate, the actual policies of the second Trump administration are better understood through the lens of postliberalism—a family of ideologies that share a commitment to the belief that the manifest flaws of liberal society are the result of liberalism itself, and thus the goal should be the replacement of the modern liberal state with a new postliberal society. Key proponents of political postliberalism include Patrick Deneen, Gladden Pappin, Sohrab Ahmari, and Adrian Vermeule, but not enough attention has been given to the theological postliberals of the 1980s and 1990s—George Lindbeck, Stanley Hauerwas, Richard John Neuhaus, among others—who helped lay the groundwork through the principles of (1) antipluralist intratextualism and (2) ecclesiocentrism. The “resident aliens” of Hauerwas’s youth have become the “resident arsonists” of today.

Scholars of religion have worked with the connections between conspiracy theories (and their accompanying conspiracist epistemologies) and religiosity, with various framing phrases from conspiracy theories about religions, to conspiracy theories in religions, to conspiracy theories as religions. But the critical paradigm of political theology has yet to be used – in detail – to analyze conspiracism and its structures and persuasive techniques. This presentation begins such a task by using Project 2025 as a case study in conspiracist political theology. Beginning from the premise that the intentional and ordered world posited by conspiracy theorists bears family resemblances to the teleological orders of Jewish and Christian messianisms and eschatologies, this presentation analyses the self-conscious rejection of conspiracism in Project 2025, treating its approach to trust-building as indicative of wider ecclesial-social conjugations in American society. 

In 17th-century Japan, after the expulsion of Catholic missionaries, the Shogunate enforced the ritual of efumi (image-trampling) to suppress Christianity. All citizens were required to register with Buddhist temples, and Christian practice seemingly disappeared on the surface level. However, some Christians maintained their faith in secret while publicly conforming to state mandates. This paper examines how hidden Christians navigated religious oppression by performing efumi and practicing Christianity clandestinely. Forced apostasy through torture and trampling on sacred images inflicted deep psychological and spiritual trauma. Hidden Christians, at the same time, however, venerated  a statuette of the bodhisattva Kannon as a figure of Mary, adapting Buddhist imagery to sustain their beliefs. The use of Maria Kannon statuettes illustrates how these communities exercised agency, blending cultural familiarity with covert devotion. Despite persecution, hidden Christians preserved their faith through adaptation and resilience, demonstrating how religious identity endured under suppression in early modern Japan.

Pope Francis has repeatedly insisted that "the Synod is not a parliament." The Synod on Synodality, however, recently concluded with a magisterial document approved by a two-thirds voting majority of an ostensibly-representative voting body. If this is not a parliament, then what is?

Drawing on analyses of the global Synod and the German Synodal Path, this paper argues for a qualified form of "synodal parliamentarianism": synodality develops an ongoing dialogue in the Vatican II-era between Catholic ecclesiology and liberal-democratic society, increasingly operationalized by deliberative structures that resemble parliamentary democracies. This transformation has tangible impacts both for Lumen gentium's proto-democratic theology of the laity and the Church's treatment of marginalized people, particularly LGBTQ+ Catholics. In future Synods, and in the synodal project more generally, the Church stands to learn that clear, binding, and even "democratic" structures are necessary to "journey together" in a contemporary context.

Holocaust survivors have long held a unique moral and cultural space in western societies, constructed by a combination of Holocaust remembrance institutions, media, policymakers, and the public, serving as both living witnesses to history and ethical figures. As their numbers decline, the reverence and authority associated with their testimony become increasingly transferred to digital forms. This paper seeks to explore the conceptualisation of Holocaust survivors as sacred or holy figures, and the challenges of preserving their moral authority in an era where direct testimony is no longer possible. By conceptualising Holocaust survivors in this way, it could be argued that eternalising their memory in digital formats reinforces their status as sacred, characterising survivors as moral exemplars in western society rather than mere historical witnesses. However, this paper critically examines the potential dangers to this sacralisation of survivors. 

One way Jewish survivors of the Holocaust sought to reclaim their lives and memories was by collaboratively authoring yizker bikher, memorial books, devoted to the lives and deaths of the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. There are over 1,000 of these place-based volumes, written to memorialize the hometowns of the writers and to pass collective community memory to descendants of both the victims and the survivors. 

Created not as objective monographs but as portable containers of memory, yizker bikher are both books and objects, and contain text and images that work in tandem. They are comprised of rich descriptions of everyday life before the war and – only towards the very end of any given volume – individual and communal experiences during the Nazi era. Equally present in the books are hand-drawn maps, sketches, religious iconography, photographs, and documents from daily life.

Editors of, and contributors to, yizker bikher commonly asserted that the books were intended as matzeyve, gravestones. Through an examination of the narrative, visual, and material structures of the volumes, my paper considers yizker bikher as sacred objects, and explores the implications of that claim on the critical examination of the material they contain.

This presentation examines the complicated status of perpetrator materials at Holocaust museums and archival collections -- specifically, the manner in which they tend to be perceived by students, donors, and visitors as "disgraceful" or unsettling. Nazi-related materials are often described as standing in stark contrast to the sacred artifacts, documents, and photos of Holocaust survivors or victims. Drawing from research conducted at two sites (a college archive and a Holocaust museum), the author unpacks questions such as: Is there space for perpetrator materials at sites that seek to preserve the sacred memory of survivors and victims? What specific emotions and reactions do these artifacts evoke for donors, students, and others? Are efforts made at these sites to contain or limit the power of Nazi flags and other symbols of hatred? And what, if anything, might such objects teach us about the realities of war and genocide?

The Shi‘i Islamic tradition of Nazri—votive food offered during religious ceremonies, particularly in Muharram—has long been an expression of devotion to the martyred Imams, commemorated through communal meals. During the COVID-19 pandemic, restrictions on gatherings led many Shi‘i organizations to shift their Nazri practices online. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews, this paper examines the emergence of the digital votive in pandemic-era Shi‘i Iran, where meaning-making, meal consumption, and prayer intertwined with virtual space.

This study explores how digital platforms, particularly social media and interactive apps, both constrained and redefined communal sacred eating, fostering an ephemeral online religious community of mourning. It also examines supplemental eating, where one devotee symbolically eats on behalf of another, replicating votive consumption across digital and physical realms. Ultimately, this paper argues that while digital votive practices lack physical immediacy, they extend and reimagine the votive meal, shaping new forms of participation in religious remembrance.

In the contemporary digital landscape, Muslim artists are increasingly utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) to reclaim narratives, challenge Islamophobia, and reshape religious healing discourses. This paper examines how digital art functions as a form of spiritual and collective healing in response to structural violence, algorithmic bias, and the socio-political trauma experienced by Muslim communities. Through a case study of Muslim artists using AI software such as MidJourney, I explore how digital art not only shifts public perceptions of Islam but also integrates lived religious identities into digital spaces. Drawing on Gary Bunt’s (2024) concept of Islamic algorithms and Heidi Campbell’s (2012) framework of lived religion, this study investigates how AI-driven Islamic artistic expressions create digital sanctuaries that reinforce resilience, belonging, and new modes of religious engagement.

This paper examines the online content of Isabella Ma, known as Steakandbuttergal on TikTok. This paper brings analysis of far-right wellness rhetoric into conversation with Catherine Albanese’s concept of the “enlightened body-self,” the tradition within American metaphysical religion that values “the physical as a route to the transcendent.” Like the Liver King, Raw Egg Nationalist, and other carnivores examined by Marek, Rooney, and Cerja in “Long Live the Liver King,” Ma invokes a mythologized, primal, past where men and women lived true to their nature. And like the women in Catherine Tebaldi’s “Granola Nazis and the Great Reset,” Ma’s embodiment of normative feminine beauty is her source of authority on healing and salvation. But Ma also reveals the contested nature of far-right gender traditionalism, placing her feminine beauty in juxtaposition to her masculine-coded meals, contesting traditional gender expectations, and laying her own claim to the head of the table.

The War on Drugs has recently been overshadowed in the headlines by the “psychedelic renaissance,” a renewed interest in psychedelics as therapeutic medicines and spiritual tools. Despite the growing popularity of psychedelics, harsh penalties for drug possession have continued to threaten psychedelic users around the world. The rise of internet forums in the 1990s gave psychonauts a newfound freedom to share information, experiences, and recipes with likeminded individuals. Along with this freedom came the implicit requirement of anonymity, embodied by the acronym SWIM (“someone who isn’t me”), which is commonly used on forums. This paper analyzes the role of trip reports and drug forums in online psychonautic communities. I argue that online psychedelic forums developed in tandem with the rise of the public forum as a source of informational authority for the general population, representing a shift in spiritual authority from traditional religious institutions to the anonymous psychonautic collective.

This paper introduces the concept of meme rituals—digitized religious practices that utilize online platforms to reproduce and disseminate in a memetic fashion, often manifesting as emojis, images, or interactive applications. Focusing on the Chinese cyberspace, the study employs a multidisciplinary approach integrating material culture studies and historiography to critically analyze the affordances of meme rituals within the unique historical and social context of contemporary China. I argue that the reinvention of rituals in Chinese cyberspace not only changes the format and medium of religious practices but also fundamentally transforms how individuals engage with deeply meaningful cultural and social experiences. By building the framework of meme rituals and analyzing its broader implication, this paper seeks to contribute to the late-blooming field of religion in Chinese cyberspace and the general understanding of technologization of everyday religious rituals.

Alternate Reality Games, or ARGs, are a form of internet based interactive storytelling that blurs the lines between fiction and reality. ARGs present their narrative as true through what is called an “aesthetic of authenticity,” sometimes creating confusion over what is an ARG or genuine. Given that some ARGs present themselves as internet based religions, this can make it difficult for scholars to tell whether what they are observing is “real.” I will illustrate this difficulty with the case of the TSUKI Project, whose followers were split over whether they were following a real religion or playing an ARG. In bringing together the digitality of new religions and invented religions, I argue that whether the TSUKI Project originated as an ARG does not determine its authenticity as a religion. Rather, if its followers believe it to be real, what we are observing is authentic religious practice.