In-person November Annual Meeting 2025 Program Book

The current political moment, with its renewed debates about school choice and the Department of Education, offers an opportunity for Christian ethicists to contribute to discussions about the purpose and value of public education. Traditionally, discourse about religion and schools revolves around a narrow set of topics, like school prayer or state funding for religious schools. However, religion plays a much broader role, from the moral values expressed implicitly or explicitly in curricula and disciplinary codes to issues of justice raised by vast funding disparities. I argue that Christian ethicists can respond to today’s movement to divest from public education by offering a moral alternative distinct from the neoliberal paradigm that has dominated educational reform efforts. I then briefly make a case for an abolitionist vision of public education grounded in the concept of imago dei and an understanding of collective liberation with deep roots in Christian ethical traditions.

The "Dear Colleague Letter" published by the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights sent educational institutions scrambling to remove forward-facing language about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and restructure race-specific programming. Understandably, these institutions--public and private alike--are concerned to protect their students, who depend on the Department for federal financial aid. However, I argue that Catholic institutions should defend their commitment to DEI as grounded in Catholic Social Teaching and as thereby protected by the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause. I offer a reading of the USCCB's 2018 document "Open Wide Our Hearts: A Pastoral Letter Against Racism" which denounces racism as a structural evil that violates the imago dei, and calls on all Catholic educational institutions to actively combat racism. Conservative Catholics have partnered with Republicans for years in successfully claiming religious exemptions from federal laws. This approach could also be useful to defend DEI.

Drawing from four semesters teaching religious studies inside two Florida-state prisons, this paper explores academic freedom within prison and the role that religious studies can play within the carcel system. By investigating the intersection of religion and freedom of thought in such restricted spaces, I ask: can knowledge set us free? Those who teach in (Dubler, 2014; Gellman, 2022) and write about these spaces (Erzan, 2017; Sullivan, 2009; Stoddard, 2021) recognize the challenges of working in a constrained world—one with misconceptions and limited resources for teachers and students. However, when engaged appropriately, knowledge can expose new narratives thereby opening new worlds, possibilities, and opportunities for those who pursue it. Religion, both in a personal sense and as an academic framework, may offer freedom for students behind bars.

This paper argues that, under what I call "obsessive liberalism," religious practices will be protected in proportion to their perceived similarity to those of the mainstream.  Obsessive liberalism, I argue, imagines a universal liberal subject, from whom all rights of the individual and group derive and who ought to hold rights exactly equal to all other liberal subjects.  Under obsessive liberalism, moreover, the solution to liberalism's problems is, always, more liberalism.  Identifying examples of obsessive liberalism in the extant literature, this paper seeks after a framework based in dual values of equity and, in some cases, of rights springing from peoples, not from the individual liberal subjects that make them up.  In either case, such a framework holds the potential to make possible the cognizability of non-protestantized religious practices and beliefs under the law, leaning in particular upon the example of Native peoples living under US settler law.

In contemporary Ladakh, becoming a monk extends beyond ritual mastery or preserving tradition—it now includes higher education, engagement with global Buddhist discourse, and career possibilities beyond the monastery. This paper, based on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and surveys, examines how monks at the Central Institute of Buddhist Studies (CIBS) navigate the dual demands of scholastic training and ritual obligations, balancing academic study with responsibilities as ritual specialists in their home monasteries. This paper argues that monastic education at CIBS is a dialogical process, shaped by the interplay of ritual expertise and transnational Buddhist movements.

Monastic rituals in Ladakh are accompanied by sacred music, enshrined in the ritual text known as dbyangs-yig. In Ladakhi monasteries (gonpas), monks perform these rituals with musical precision and religious sanctity, preserving centuries-old traditions. While these practices have historically remained intact, recent shifts have led to degradation in ritual performance, particularly due to the absence of standardized musical notation and the evolving role of monastic education. Around Leh, the capital of Ladakh, four major Gelukpa monasteries exert a strong musical influence, shaping the ritual practices of more remote monastic communities. Increased interaction between monks from these monasteries has further contributed to shifts in ritual transmission and pedagogy. This paper examines historical and social transformations in monastic music and ritual performance, situating these changes within broader discussions on Buddhist education, vocational training, and the evolving role of ritual expertise in contemporary monasticism.

Vow-making is a fundamental yet often overlooked ritual in Buddhist monastic training, shaping both individual practice and communal ethics. This paper examines vow-making as a living ritual that structures monastic discipline, moral cultivation, and the path of awakening. Drawing on Buddhist hermeneutics of practice, it explores how vows are studied, embodied, and ritually renewed in monastic education, focusing on Chapter 40 of the Flower Adornment Sutra and Samantabhadra’s ten vows.

Engaging both scriptural analysis and personal monastic experience, this paper interrogates authenticity, authority, and agency in vow-making, demonstrating how these commitments serve as a dynamic practice of ethical formation and spiritual development. By examining vow-making as a repetitive yet evolving ritual, this study highlights its continued relevance in contemporary monastic education, where monks and nuns negotiate the tensions between tradition, modernity, and the pursuit of awakening.

Sera Jey, one of the major colleges of Sera Monastic University, was founded in Tibet in 1419 as a premier center for Gelug monastic scholarship, emphasizing sūtra study within the Nālandā tradition. However, despite this strong scholastic orientation, Most Secret Hayagrīva (rta mgrin yang sangs)—an explicitly tantric deity in yab-yum form—remains central to monastic life at the re-established Sera Monastery in India. His image is found not only in temples but also in hostels, restaurants, and offices, reflecting his institutional significance.

This paper examines the monastic rituals associated with Hayagrīva, particularly the annual serviceability retreat (las rung) and fire puja (sbyin sreg), both attended by the entire sangha. These rituals reinforce communal identity, forge ritual bonds, and negotiate the role of Vajrayāna within a monastic curriculum traditionally centered on scholasticism, highlighting the continued importance of esoteric practices in contemporary Gelug monasticism.
 

As an unbroken fully-ordained Buddhist nun's lineage, Chinese bhikṣuṇī has not only continued but also thrived throughout Buddhist history. Among its prosperous status, Chinese Bhiksuni in Taiwan serves as an exceptional case. Having a conducive environment and versatile characteristics, Taiwanese Bhiksuni is called the “Infinite Sky of Bhikṣuṇīs”. They take on the roles as torchbearers in Buddhism and religious professionals in society, illuminating themselves by practicing Buddha’s teaching personally and illuminating others by actualizing the teaching in society. Taiwanese bhikṣuṇīs’ accomplishments reflect their fruitful education systems and pedagogy. 

This paper aims to investigate contemporary pedagogy and its outcomes of Chinese bhiksuni education in Taiwan by taking a representative Bhiksuni Sangha, the Luminary International Buddhist Society香光尼僧團(LIBS), as a case study. Based on the case study, the dissertation mirrors the general condition of contemporary Chinese bhikṣuṇī education in Taiwan, and will envision the future trajectory and contribution of Chinese bhikṣuṇī education.

The concept of ḥikmah (wisdom) appears twenty times in nineteen different verses across twelve chapters in the Qur’an, yet its interpretation has undergone significant evolution over the centuries. Classical exegetes such as al-Ṭabarī (d. 923) and Ibn Kathīr (d. 1373) viewed wisdom primarily through a prophetic and theological lens, linking it to divine revelation and religious instruction. Their interpretations emphasize ḥikmah as a form of guidance granted to prophets, with a strong focus on legalistic and doctrinal teachings. In contrast, the rationalist theologian Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1209) expanded the meaning of wisdom beyond prophecy to include intellectual discernment, ethical reasoning, and philosophical inquiry. This rationalist shift is further developed in modern exegesis, particularly in the works of Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā (d. 1935) and al-Ṭāhir Ibn ʿĀshūr (d. 1973), who reframe ḥikmah as an essential ethical and social principle applicable to all believers. By tracing these exegetical shifts, this paper explores the broader transformation of Islamic thought, from a strictly theological understanding of wisdom to a more human-centered, rational, and ethical perspective.

In this paper, I use Paul Ricœur's philosophical framework to explore how the Śyāma Jātaka and its cultural adaptations establish filial piety as the basis for moral development. Comparing narratives from India to China, I show how Ricœur's concepts of moral indebtedness, narrative identity, and the pursuit of the good for and with others help explain the ethical message of these Buddhist tales. This paper explores how the evolution from the nameless ascetic in the Rāmāyaṇa to the eponymous Śyāma or Sanzi in Buddhist texts embodies the transition from subject to moral actor, with what Ricœur calls “ipseity” – selfhood formed through narrative. I claim that Ricœur's concept of the truth invocation scenes where filial piety triumphs over death represents “pietas” that “joins the living and the dead,” and how narrative concordant discordance fosters moral change across cultural divides.

The ethical frameworks derived from classical Islamic sources such as the ḥadīth may not always exhibit a consistent resource for ethical guidance. One example of such inconsistency can be observed by the examination of early texts like the Kitāb al-Jihād (Chapter on Jihād) extracted from an eighth century ḥadīth collection called Musannaf of ‘Abd al-Razzāq al-Sanʿānī (d.827). Notably, the pragmatism demonstrated by ḥadīth transmitters concerned with the spoils of war complicates the ethical assumptions associated with the ḥadīth corpus. This essay proceeds in three parts: First, I focus on five sections of the chapter titled Kitāb al-Jihād. Second, I reconstruct the way early Muslims perceived war. Third, I underscore the textual problems faced by scholars in recovering ethical arguments of war from classical Islamic sources like the ḥadīths of Kitab al-Jihād. 

This paper proposes Paul DeHart’s Unspeakable Cults: An Essay in Christology as a launching point for a renewed Schleiermacherian Christology in the twenty-first century. DeHart’s theology offers a key correction of Schleiermacher’s thought, which I analyze through consideration of the incisive and underappreciated critique leveled against Schleiermacher by his Roman Catholic contemporary Johann Adam Möhler. On Möhler,’s account, Schleiermacher’s desire in the Glaubenslehre to avoid theological speculation leaves Schleiermacher with no principled reason to pass beyond postulating an activity of God in relation to the world-system to an activity of God in se. DeHart’s broadly Thomist correction of Schleiermacher preserves the distinctive features of Schleiermacher’s Christology, bringing together a modern historical and scientific consciousness with a consistent Chalcedonianism. DeHart’s theology shows how a contemporary Schleiermacherian Christology offers perhaps unparalleled resources for integrating historical theology, contextual theologies, and key interlocutors in Biblical studies and the critical study of religion.

In this paper, I will argue that Ernst Troeltsch’s Glaubenslehre represents a major development within the Schleiermachian tradition. To do so, I will first demonstrate how Troeltsch acts both as a bridge into the dialectical turn away from the lingering remnants of Ritschlianism, as well as its own alternative route that attempts to take up the Schleiermachian tradition in a new direction. Second, I will establish how Troeltsch’s constructive theological project is framed by his critical appropriation of Schleiermacher. Third, I will turn to Schleiermacher’s concept of the Spirit in order to show how it functions as the crucial hinge for Troeltsch’s understanding of his project as both a continuation and extension of Schleiermacher’s Gluabenslehre. Lastly, I will conclude with some suggestions about the constructive promise that a Troeltschian reading of Schleiermacher might bring to contemporary attempts at pursuing the project of Glaubenslehre today.

This paper considers an underexamined aspect of Karl Barth's interpretation of Friedrich Schleiermacher: Barth's positive reception of his social ethics. In his 1923/24 lectures, Barth goes so far as to suggest that Schleiermacher surpassed the social ethics of early socialist figures such as St. Simon and Charles Fourier. In particular, Barth highlights Schleiermacher’s critique of economic inequality and his call to reduce the workday. He argues emphatically that this social aspect of Schleiermacher’s thought “should never be forgotten” (Barth 1982, 39). These remarks challenge what Gary Dorrien has called the "founding narrative" of modern theology. From this, a potential point of convergence between Barth and Schleiermacher emerges around their respective politics, one that might open doors for a reassessment of their legacies. 

This paper reexamines hadith sciences in early modern Islam, arguing that beyond their conventional role in textual verification, they functioned as critical arenas for negotiating epistemic authority, historical authenticity, and spiritual legitimacy. Through close analysis of an eighteenth-century South Asian debate between Shāh Walī Allāh (d.1762) and Fakhr al-Dīn Dehlavī (d.1783), two prominent muḥaddithīn deeply embedded within Sufi traditions, the study reveals how hadith criticism served as an adaptable intellectual framework rather than a purely exclusionary discipline. While Walī Allāh deployed rigorous isnād scrutiny to challenge the widely claimed genealogical link between Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, Fakhr al-Dīn employed the same methodological rigor to reaffirm its historical plausibility, underscoring hadith scholarship's inherent interpretive flexibility. By foregrounding their nuanced engagements, this paper expands scholarly understandings of early modern Sufi historiography and demonstrates how hadith criticism mediated complex epistemological negotiations concerning inherited spiritual traditions, textual authenticity, and competing religious identities.

This paper explores the position of Sufism in Qanoon-e-Islam, or the Customs of the Moosulmans of India, an 1832 text authored by Ja’far Sharif, an Indian Muslim, under the direction of G. A. Herklots, a Dutch Surgeon in the East India Company. In 1921, a revised edition was published, which made significant changes, including inserting a dedicated section on “Sufi Mysticism.” This paper seeks to provide a step towards decolonizing the study of Sufism. By analyzing colonial documents that were co-created by European Orientalists and Indian Muslims, we can understand what new conditions of knowledge were being created about Muslims. Ultimately, the construction of Sufi practice as an anthropological object of study, as initiated through Qanoon-e-Islam, produces inherent contradictions as Sufism is forced to cohere in the secular grid of intelligibility. This has significant implications for understanding the role of Sufism within broader Islamic thought and practice.

Although scholarship in Islamic Studies has highlighted the contributions of women as religious scholars engaged in the transmission of ḥadīth and in jurisprudence, or as ascetics in the mystical traditions of Sufism, their roles in and contributions to the history of Islamic philosophy remain unexplored. The fourth paper examines the philosophical contributions of Sitt al-ʿAjam bint al-Nafīs, a thirteenth-century philosopher, who is known for her commentary on Ibn ʿArabi’s Mashāhid al-asrār al-qudsiyya as well as authoring two additional works. In addition to being an important text in the reception history of Ibn ʿArabi, the commentary is also important for a central aim in modern scholarship: understanding the ways in which philosophers of the Islamic world engaged with various traditions of Greek thought and Islamic mysticism. The paper also raises methodological challenges and questions concerning the retrieval of women’s philosophical works in the Islamic context, raising larger questions on what constitutes a canon and what counts as philosophy.

The legacy of Shihāb al-Dīn Yaḥyā ibn Ḥabash al-Suhrawardī (549/1155-587/1191) is often remembered in light of his philosophical innovation in formulating the Philosophy of Illumination (Hikmat al-ishrāq). His mystical ontology and epistemology allow for an elaborate role of dreams and vision quests as avenues of knowledge. Among such dreams, scholars of Suhrawardī have extensively analyzed, albeit with varying approaches, the ones elaborating his mystical and philosophical teachings. However, in historical accounts of Suhrawardī, there are a number of other dreams attributed to the shaykh and to other figures that flesh out the making and the reception of the political aspect of his philosophy. My paper will provide an outline of Suhrawardī’s political philosophy by historical contextualization of one of such dream accounts and, in the bigger picture, relating it to a specific motif in dream accounts by ‘ulamā aspiring for political power in the same historical period and geographical region.

Before the concept of the Anthropocene was even proposed, environmental scientists, activists, and ethicists (among others) have poured a great deal of attention to exploring how to undo the harms humans have done to the earth. What is presupposed in this hopeful pursuit?  Are there limits to and/or consequences of it? And are there different ways of thinking environmental ethics? This paper explores these questions, turning to both queer theories of negativity and contemporary eco-theologies as a resource. Building on Christian ethicist Kyle Lambelet’s proposal for apocalypse as a spiritual practice, this paper explores what the antisocial turn in queer theory might offer and considers eco-theological corollaries. In doing so, it explores what it might mean not to try to save the planet, but rather to critically examine and ethically undo our malformed relation to it. 

This paper examines the resources that Arthur Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy, reframed as a “subtractive religion,” provides for ethical life in the Anthropocene. I argue that his metaphysics of suffering offers durable consolation without relying on compensatory goods. Rather than minimizing the climate catastrophe or deferring solutions to the future, his ethics of compassion reveals meaning in alleviating present suffering even without hope for an ultimate resolution. This approach helps us navigate ecological disruptions without guarantees of historical progress or divine intervention. My subtractive framework fosters moral action and emotional resilience in an era when climate impacts exceed our capacity for mitigation and adaptation. It presents a philosophical foundation that neither relies on the instrumental value of nature for human flourishing nor requires the sacralization of the natural world. Instead, it recognizes a shared essence that makes all suffering morally significant.

Since life has affected Earth for eons, the Anthropocene is distinguished by moral agency’s planetary influence.  Accordingly, insofar as the Anthropocene’s intensification undermines that agency, the Anthropocene becomes less unique.  I argue that this irony discloses a moral duty to preserve the Holocene.  However, the Anthropocene is ironic and not simply immoral because not all human activity disturbing the Holocene is immoral.  Instead, much of that activity is necessary to fulfill other moral duties.  I contend this moral tension reflects a link between value and disvalue that is endemic to life.  Yet because not all human activity disturbing the Holocene is due to such bivalence, the Anthropocene also manifests immorality.  Indeed, the Anthropocene is ironic rather than tragic because its disvalue is suffused with immorality.  Still, given that the Anthropocene is bivalent, this tension between moral duties cannot be entirely resolved and thus morality mandates living responsibly amidst it.