In-person November Annual Meeting 2025 Program Book

The paper emerges from my experience teaching biblical texts to undergraduate students across 2025. First, I report on a Gospels class, in which students analyze politicians’ use of the Gospels to support their political convictions and policy positions. Second, I share how my students in a Gender and Family in Genesis class wrestle with Genesis 1-3 in conversation with President Trump’s Executive Order declaring that the United States recognizes only two sexes, male and female, thereby “restoring biological truth.” Finally, we will explore the ethical concerns that accompany my own sense of urgency that students develop skills to read the Bible responsibly in this moment of a politics of certainty and throwing off all restraints. 

This paper will overview the conceptional and volitional resources the biblical ideal of commonwealth has to offer those pursuing public lands advocacy within Christian communities. It will also argue that the acknowledgment of conquest in both ancient Israel and colonial America, the misguided theology which legitimated it, and the tragic consequences surrounding it, must be engaged in order for a biblical theology of public lands to have integrity and to reach its potential as resource for Christian communities.

With South Korean President Yoon, Suk Yeol’s unsuccessful “emergency” martial law decree in December, coupled with the beginning of the Second Trump Administration in January we have witnessed deepening troubling trends towards global authoritarianism. The Yoon and Trump Administrations defended their policies are “creative” reinterpretations of established political “sacred texts” in each culture, namely the Confucian Five Relationships (五倫), especially the responsibility of the Ruler with his Ministers (君臣) to guide the nation and hold it safe from threats internal and external. Meanwhile President Trump has brought into his orbit a number of supportive religious leaders, and his Vice-President, J.D. Vance has lectured his Catholic bishops and fellow citizens on the “proper” and restrictive interpretation of ordo amoris (Order[ing] of Love) concept traced back to Augustine and Aquinas. A closer examination of each of these “sacred texts” and traditions reveals their usages to be quite misleading and woefully deficient.

This paper explores the connections between dependent arising (rten ‘brel) and ignorance (ma rig pa), particularly in the work of the 15th century philosopher Je Tsongkhapa. Three distinct philosophical claims are often made about dependent arising and ignorance: (1) dependent arising is a framework for explaining the connection between ignorance and suffering, (2) dependent arising is an object of ignorance, and (3) dependent arising is a remedy for ignorance. I will draw on the work of Tsongkhapa, particularly in his “In Praise of Dependent Arising” and The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, to work out how these three claims about dependent arising and ignorance hang together. I conclude with some reflections on the deceiving simplicity of dependent arising: why is dependent arising so predictably ignored even as it is so seemingly obvious?

The ways of recognizing, witnessing, and celebrating moments of dendrel in Tibetan everyday life can be understood as a process of Land education, which entails active engagement with the natural world and being deeply informed by systems of intergenerational place-based relationships and knowledge. The natural or the more- than-human world, including animals, plants, stars, and rainbows, participates in delivering the signs of dendrel, while Indigenous knowledge teaches us the ways to attend to and understand such moments of tendrel alignment. In this paper, I explore examples of everyday Tibetan practices (songs and ceremonies) of dendrel to argue how such ways make for a process of critical Indigenous education. This can refocus Tibetan attention to their Land and traditions as active and dynamic encounters with the living world. I understand such ways of observing dendrel and living by its logics as contributing to educational freedom and community empowerment. 

The hyper-individualism and ecocidal anthropocentrism that have characterized dominant strains of modernity are rapidly becoming failed epistemologies according to a broad swath of contemporary academic disciplines. New Materialists, multispecies ethnographers, and others inspired by “the ontological turn” in anthropology have coined new vocabularies to articulate their insights into interdependence, featuring words like symbiosis, assemblage, kinship, relatedness, entanglement, co-presence, and more. For all the critical and creative dynamism of these varied inquiries into interdependence, few Euro-American critical theorists seem to realize the overlap of their ideas with elements of Buddhist philosophy, most notably dependent origination (Skt. pratītyasamutpāda; Tib. tendrelརྟེན་འབྲེལ།). This paper proposes that we rectify that omission by inviting the full range of meanings of tendrel into the English language in hopes that we can reconsider human freedom as interdependent, generated through the tendrel of auspicious connections between the human and more-than-human facets of our world.

This paper illustrates the concept of dendrel (rten ‘brel) in Tibetan ecological thought, broadly construed.  It will focus on the role of dendrel in native astrology and geomancy.  I will argue that dendrel is understood as a bridge between objects and consciousness, and facilitates mind-matter mutual influence and transformation.  The paper also explores how a sense of dendrel is deliberately cultivated for worldly purposes by applying a “substance” said to be derived from the “secret bodies” of holy mountains and rivers. Finally, I investigate instances where human consciousness seems to change physical objects or nature itself, particularly through the dendrel-connected Buddhist concepts of “the force of merit”  and “waves of blessing”. I draw on both Indian Buddhist writings and their adaptation in Tibetan folk texts on astrology and geomancy.

This paper will show how the key skill for good dendrel to confer freedom is the capacity to spot moments and circumstances where auspicious factors are beginning to converge, and can be encouraged to converge further.    In order for an auspicious dendrel to come together, one needs to cultivate a creative and in many ways artistic skill first of all to recognize that auspicious ingredients are available, and then to act to nudge them to “click”  (sgrig) together.   A  classic example in Tibetan society would be the offering of a pure white scarf (kha btags) at the exact right moment. This paper will explore a few cases of this phenomenon, ranging from philosophical accounts of “pure dendrel,” an innovative category in Tibetan Buddhism, to narratives where dendrel is essential in order for an elevated revelation to occur, to personal experiences and conversations on a recent visit to the Tibetan plateau.

This paper examines the contested categorization of Mexican spiritual practices, particularly in relation to the term Brujería, within both academic discourse and lived experience. By analyzing the historical, epistemological, and social forces that shape these classifications, this study explores the ways in which Western religious frameworks  classify these traditions as “folk religion" rather than an entire religious system in and of itself. Drawing from decolonial theory and Religious Rtudies, the paper interrogates how Brujería has been both a stigmatizing label and a reclaimed identity, reflecting broader tensions in religious hybridity and cultural identity. This study highlights how these traditions embody a syncretic spirituality that defies rigid religious binaries. By situating these practices within the broader shifts in religious affiliation, identity, and interfaith engagement, this paper challenges the necessity of categorization itself and calls for a more nuanced, decolonial approach to understanding Mexican spiritualities.

At a rally in Ferguson, Missouri six months after the killing of Michael Brown, a seminarian took the bullhorn. Offering a twist on the then-popular chant, “Show me what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like!” she called out: “Show me what theology looks like.” And the crowd responded, “This is what theology looks like!”

This paper looks at the ways in which the public-facing work of one broad-based, interfaith community organizing project in Philadelphia, POWER Interfaith, functions to not only “show us what theology looks like,” but suggests two things. First, that race-centered, interfaith organizing can be seen not only as a religious practice, but as a form of public theology. Second, in a departure from traditional faith-based organizing practice, being differently-religious together in urban space is not just a means to the end of winning organizing campaigns, but can also be an end in itself. 

In 1967, Saul Colbi wrote that “the mere existence and operation of a Ministry of Religious Affairs [in Israel] underlies the importance which the state attaches to the spiritual aspect of the life in the land that is called Holy.” While non-Jewish religious communities had to adapt to this new framework of governance, the ‘Missionary Question’—whether Christians could continue proselytization efforts in the Jewish State—became a central concern.

Using the controversy surrounding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints’ (LDS) establishment of a campus in Jerusalem in the 1980s as a case study, this paper explores Israeli efforts to legislate against Christian missionary activities. It will focus on the legal, religious, and political justifications used to enforce such restrictions, and examine how the concept of ‘religious liberty’ can be mobilized as a political tool of governance to both protect religious identity and limit individual freedoms.

In response to the seminar’s call on the theme of “Remember Amalek,” this paper offers a critical analysis of the ways that religion is used on African American Christian Zionist tours of the State of Israel towards the goal of bringing African American Christians and Black churches into the religious/political project of Christian Zionism. It draws on participant observation and interview data from two trips to Israel and Palestine with groups of Black clergy and lay leaders to show how a range of stakeholders invoke, deploy, and weaponize religion in the service of Christian Zionism. These stakeholders include Jewish and Christians trip coordinators, clergy, denominational leaders, tour guides, and others. More broadly, the paper considers the implications how race and religion overlap for African American Christians who get involved in Israel and Palestine and how the stakes of position-taking on that issue have changed since October 7, 2023.

This presentation explores the intersections of Holocaust memory, trauma, and teshuva—the Jewish concept of return and repair—focusing on the impact of Holocaust memory in the context of Israeli settler-colonialism. Drawing on the works of Marianne Hirsch, Naomi Klein, Abdaljawad Omar, and Maimonides, the presentation examines how Holocaust memory has been weaponized to justify violence against Palestinians, perpetuating cycles of trauma rather than facilitating healing. Hirsch’s concept of postmemory shows how the trauma of the Holocaust is transmitted through generations, distorting collective identity and preventing growth. Klein highlights how re-traumatization traps communities in perpetual victimhood, hindering transformation. Omar’s work on settler-colonialism demonstrates how Palestinian suffering is erasure within global narratives, further entrenching injustice. Teshuva—as a process of self-reflection, return, and repair—offers a framework for Jewish communities to confront the weaponization of Holocaust memory and engage in ethical solidarity with Palestinians, creating space for justice, empathy, and healing.

The state of Israel was purportedly founded to ensure the safety of Jews whose lives had become precarious in Diaspora. Zionism claims that the state’s establishment signals the end of Jewish exile. How, then, do we explain the increasing numbers of Israeli Jews leaving the country? Some of them speak about being abandoned by the state and choose instead a form of self-exile. Jewish emigration rose following recent Israeli elections of a far-right governing coalition and the extreme violence of October 7, 2023 and its aftermath. Their departures mirror the state’s withdrawal of support from historically secular ways of being Jewish and the imaginary of a negotiated peace, in favor of alliances with political factions which envision the continued ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The paper builds on preliminary fieldwork in conversation with the extensive scholarship on exile to consider the limits of nationalist ideology and the precarity of national sovereignty.

This paper examines the rise of contemporary public discourse in the English-speaking world that makes claims about ‘Jewish indigeneity’ to Palestine. Focusing on online sources, such as newspapers, articles, blogs, materials published by organizations, and social media content, this paper analyzes how authors define indigeneity, the evidence they use to support claims of ‘Jewish indigeneity,’ and whether these claims intersect with other articulations of indigeneity. Ultimately, this paper investigates how the category of indigeneity and the language of universal indigenous rights are appropriated to justify the existence and actions of the settler-colonial nation-state of Israel and deployed to legitimize the possession of Palestine. It analyzes how Zionist ideas of indigeneity reproduce settler ideas about land as possession and function within the framework of the nation-state that fundamentally conflict with critical Indigenous approaches to land as relational, an interconnected web of obligations and responsibilities, in opposition to colonialism and the nation-state.

This paper explores sadomasochism as a methodological entry point for studying trans/queer life and religion under its present oppressive policing by the United States government. Namely, it seeks to reposition the “more-than-human” turn away from “queer ecology” and the inherent queerness of the body towards, instead, the religious sensations of rendering and being rendered into meat. Centering BDSM and kink as methods exposes the pleasure in the pain of studying that which hurts, especially as a trans woman studying my own subjugation. If BDSM explores the perforated boundaries between pain and pleasure, a safe avenue for embracing pain and trauma felt as uncontrollable sexual ecstasy, I similarly position religious studies as a sensational reenactment of my own control by the state, my rendering as meat, and the economies of un/freedom that both harm me and make up the genuine pleasure I feel from studying religion. 

This paper interrogates self-subjugation and the putative dichotomy of freedom/unfreedom in works by Dominique Aury, Emily Dickinson, and Chris Kraus, opening the door to new considerations of relations between the erotic and the mystical. Histoire d’O (1954) has frequently been compared to works of Christian mysticism, predicated on the assumption that both the subjected erotic heroine and the mystic abnegates her ‘self’ in relation to an all-powerful Other. Drawing from Kant, Hegel, and Lacan, I argue that the relation between the protagonists of these erotic texts and Christian writers such as Teresa of Avila is rather that both assume the role of the bride in the Song of Songs: by addressing themselves entirely to absent masters, they fragment hierarchized distinctions of self/Other and freedom/unfreedom, thus laying bare the inextricability of lover and beloved, and standing in hungry, desirous relationality to artmaking, to others, and to language itself.

Being promiscuous lovers and praying to an irreducible God can be talked about more, and especially as theology itself. The work of Rowan Williams on theological integrity, the anti-capitalist theology of Marcella Althaus-Reid, and the vast, eclectic, transdisciplinary archive of psychosocial and critical religious theorists can bring together compelling evidence of this hopeful turn in theological anthropology. This paper will reflect on the merging of queer and subversive sexuality and holiness by speaking to the experience of spiritual strippers and sex workers. This paper hopes to contribute to the furthering of a queer and sapphic theology unapologetic and radically committed to the work strippers do at the pole to bring irreducible objects of desire and forms of healing into theirs and others' lives.

This paper discusses potentially negative consequences of the Lutheran principle of Sola Scriptura in light of three theoretical approaches: Reichel's understanding of theology as affordances, hermeneutical conditions for understanding, and psychological theory that points to the negative consequences of the neglect of experience/feeling, with the concomitant effect of insecurity, lack of self-reliance, and immature dependence on authorities.  Thereby, it shows the potential of this doctrine for supplying a theology that creates pathologies. Against the backdrop of a discussion of such pathologies, which includes an analysis of an empirical example, the paper also moves on to suggest what elements in Lutheran doctrine that can contribute to the avoidance of such pathologies. 

This paper argues that the Confession of Sin can create shame for queer Lutherans who participate in church bodies (both local and national) that do not affirm their sexual orientation.  I use Reichel's notion of an "Affordance" as a resistance strategy for queer Lutherans who choose to remain in such Lutheran bodies. Furthermore, I argue for a a renewed process for how one comes to understand oneself and one's sin that can help the Confession of Sin and doctrine of justification by faith can be liberating and transformative for those who seek the Holy Spirit's action in the transformation and sanctification of queer lives and loves. 

Drawing on a qualitative study of how young people in Christian youth ministries theologize about existential dilemmas related to sin and shame, this paper explores the affordances and dis-affordances (Reichel, 2023) of the Lutheran doctrine of sin. The study discloses an unresolved ambiguity: the liberating force of the doctrine of sin, as theologized by the young people, is not connected to what they describe as their primary existential dilemma – a profound sense of shame. Taking the approach of theology as design (Reichel, 2023), the paper points to how the doctrine of sin could be made more relevant to the young people’s lived experiences if it were to integrate the language of shame more explicitly. To make such a move we draw on Hartmut Rosa’s theory of resonance (Rosa, 2019) and particularly the concept of categorial inadequacy related to the Lutheran understanding of sin as being curved in on oneself.

This paper examines the Abhidharma Buddhist debates, preserved within the translation corpus of Xuanzang 玄奘 (602?-664 C.E.), the Sinitic scholar-monk of the Tang Dynasty, regarding whether the “intermediate being” (Skt.: antarābhava) has the capacity to generate new karma. Furthermore, if an intermediate being, the “extremely subtle” (Skt.: accha) embodied form that persists throughout the “intermediate state” (Skt.: antarābhava), the interstitial space and time between the biological death and the gross corporeal rebirth of an “individual sentient being” (Skt.: ātmabhāva; Chi: ziti自體), has the capacity to generate new karma, when and how are its consequences realized? 

How does Buddhism conceptualize human agency and subjecthood? Buddhist ontology critiques the notion of a permanent self (ātman), advocating instead the doctrine of non-self (anātman). It upholds karma as the governing force behind human actions and conventional phenomena. This raises a critical question: How can anātman be reconciled with the soteriological goal of liberating all sentient beings—a task requiring a volitional, compassionate agent? A metaphor in Buddhist sūtra—mechanical wooden figure (jiguanmuren 機關木人, Skt. vetāla-yantra)—symbolizes the constructed nature of human existence and dependent origination in a karmic reality. By analyzing this metaphor in Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra and Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra, alongside Chinese commentaries, this paper argues that its interpretive diversity reflects ongoing efforts to reconcile the deterministic nature of karma with the conditions necessary for a subjecthood for compassion. This discourse gained prominence during the late imperial period as Buddhists increasingly engaged with the phenomenological aspects of reality and the intersubjective nature of mind.

The “karmic” worldview stands at once larger and smaller than a “Buddhist” or “religious” worldview. This study demonstrates how the idea of collective karma came to the fore in an array of Buddhist discourses on nation building in late Qing China. It features three case studies: (1) Yan Fu’s invention of the term, zhongye, literally “seeds-karma,” in Tianyan lun, the Chinese translation of British biologist Thomas Henry Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics and the single most influential book in initiating Chinese readers into social Darwinism; (2) Liang Qichao’s postulation of an undying “karmic totality” as the essence of the Chinese national “spirit”; (3) Zhang Taiyan’s critique of evolutionism based on Yogācāra teachings of karmic seeds. As these cases show, at a time when “karma” assumed the other name of “heredity,” discourses of collective karma played a critical role in the conceptualization of nationhood at the inception of the modern Chinese revolution.

The Tzu Chi Foundation, established by Dharma Master Cheng Yen證嚴 in 1966, is the world’s largest Buddhist charity. From its headquarters in Taiwan, Tzu Chi oversees a vast global volunteer network that provides disaster and poverty relief, medical assistance, educational resources and more. For volunteers of the foundation, a doctrinal emphasis on karmic connections serves to orient their everyday practice toward the need to establish positive relationships in the human realm. Volunteers draw on their affective experiences of karmic entanglements to help them form new affinities or transform negative relationships. This paper analyzes narratives volunteers have offered from their own life experiences of how they interpret their actions through a karmic worldview.