In-person November Annual Meeting 2025 Program Book

The landscape of politics in the U.S. and around the globe is fraught with anxiety, distress, and suffering. What role can pastoral/spiritual care play in dealing with the resulting violence and political trauma? An important method to address these highly-activating times is a turn to embodiment. As Bessel Van der Kolk and other trauma theorists remind us, our bodies literally “keep the score” of the pains and traumas in our lives. Bodies are always communicating, even without conscious awareness. In pastoral/spiritual care, feminist, womanist and intercultural scholars of pastoral care have emphasized the importance of attention to embodiment in healing, notably in the healing from trauma. Yet embodied praxis requires more attention to be integrated in the field. This paper explores the components of a body-centered approach to pastoral/spiritual care, including attention to embodied compassion, body psychotherapy, and spiritual practices that center embodiment. 

In an era marked by political polarization and competing narratives of truth, this paper examines how humour in prophetic preaching cultivates cognitive virtues essential for critical engagement with unjust systems. In this paper I argue that Jesus’ use of hyperbole, irony, and satire in the Synoptic Gospels models cognitive virtues such as pattern recognition, error detection, and intellectual humility—skills that empower congregants to interrogate dominant narratives and envision transformative alternatives. Integrating Walter Brueggemann’s prophetic imagination and Steven Gimbel’s Cleverness Theory, this study demonstrates how humour disrupts oppressive ideologies and equips communities to evaluate political rhetoric and misinformation. Addressing the AAR’s 2025 theme of “Freedom,” this work offers a homiletic method grounded in biblical exegesis, positioning humour as a pedagogical tool for fostering cognitive agility and resistance to authoritarian epistemologies.

This paper will examine the limits and distortions of how preachers deal with political tensions and division circumstances in preaching, particularly in matters related to rising right-wing extremism and Christian nationalism in the South Korean context, and suggest a new homiletical method and direction to respond to the challenges and desire of justice, truth, reconciliation, and freedom.

This study analyzes the anti-democratic conflicts of South Korea, particularly focusing on the political injustice emerging from the alliance between conservative political forces and extreme right-wing Christianity. It examines the sermons of key pastors who lead and mobilize right-wing Christian groups, as well as those of major church pastors who are impotent in the current situation. Through this analysis, the study seeks to uncover the underlying problematic structures within these sermons. Finally, it explores the directions and theological discourse necessary for sermons that respond to political suffering and suggests practical structural forms for such preaching.

The recent landscape of politics in the United States has further marginalized communities that were already vulnerable based on their identities. One notable example is the significant increase in hate crimes targeting the Asian American community in the United States following the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper aims to explore the empirical question of how specifically Korean American women pastors approached preaching and providing pastoral care following such acts of hate crimes against Asian Americans. The research will draw from a range of seven to ten preliminary interviews with Korean American women pastors to investigate how having Korean American women leaders ultimately helps shape the theological and political subjectivities of their congregants. The new findings of this work will provide a deeper understanding of the dynamic between Korean American women pastors and their congregants, which then can help churches develop new strategies to empower and motivate their community towards civic action.

Title: Practical Theology in Politically Fraught Times: A Transformational Response to Christian Nationalism and White Nationalism

Abstract The contemporary political landscape, marked by increasing ideological polarization, Christian Nationalism, and the erosion of democratic institutions, necessitates a robust engagement from practical theology. This paper explores how practical theology can offer prophetic critiques of unjust political systems through the lens of Transformational Leadership. Using the Four I’s of Transformational Leadership—Idealized Influence, Inspirational Motivation, Intellectual Stimulation, and Individualized Consideration—this study examines the work of ecclesial leaders such as Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde and Human Rights activist Bishop William Barber as prophetic voices against the rise of Christian Nationalism and White Nationalism in America.

With the vast increase in the phenomenon of eco-anxiety (Hickman et al., 2021) as a result of human-induced climate change, many people are seeking to reconnect with the Earth in sustainable and loving ways. Rooting oneself in nature offers psychological and spiritual benefits, and a garden is a place where people can connect with one another, with nature, and with God. This paper offers practical theological insights from the praxis of spiritual gardening with kids as a transformative location for pastoral care. Drawing on a case study, and integrating multidisciplinary research from psychology, children’s spirituality, and religious education, this paper considers three concrete pastoral care practices that can take place in a garden to help children cope with eco-anxiety.

In this paper I take seriously the need, at times, for dissemblance, but argue that telling, or disclosing, is also an act profoundly concerned with black futures. I explore the relationship between disclosure and place-making through the lens of Black women's writing. I argue that being in diaspora requires reckoning with the idea of place, even when one has been sold, stolen, or fled from their original home. I draw on Jennifer Nash's characterization of Black feminist theory-voice as "affectively saturated," "deliberately revelatory," and grappling with the ethics of disclosure. Using these categories, I consider how the work of Audre Lorde, the Black lesbian feminist poet warrior, does the work of telling and making place. Ultimately, I suggest that tellings, or the act of speaking one's truth, are spiritual work that create the space for struggle and pave the way for future(s). 

This paper examines Brazilian artist Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro’s 2023 installation which combined bricks, eucalyptus trees, earth, tarp, and basins to create a “Fictitious Museum of Objects Stolen by the Police.” Drawing on Tavia Nyong’o’s theories of “afro-fabulation” and “queer and trans aesthetics,” I argue Brasileiro’s work is an afro-fabulation—invoking the technology of the museum to work both with and against it. The installation not only “fabricat[ed] new genres of the human out of the fabulous, formless darkness of an anti-black world.” It called into question the human altogether, drawing on Umbanda and other Afro-Brazilian religions to insist on the memory and soul of objects, invoking both the history and agency of Afro-Brazilian religious materials confiscated by police. Saturating her museum with Umbanda theology, Brasileiro responded to the secular force of the museum with counter-theology, pursuing cosmological alternatives to address historical violence, dissolve difference, and access spiraled forms of time.

At the heart of this essay lies a critique of the economy of salvation through the three-time sale and re-sale of a six-year-old Black enslaved girl in mid-1800s Tennessee. While her bill of sale conflates “sound” with her capacity to possess the mental and physical faculties needed to produce capital, each slave sales her in the discovery of her refusal to speak. This refusal unsettles the presumed transparency between Black flesh and its assigned economic and social value, revealing the limits of biological legibility under racial capitalism. The line of inquiry proceeding the conclusion that “she was absolutely an idiot and of no value” questions the function of speculative value and how the act of exchange, confirmed by ocular-centric fantasy, qualifies the public conversion of unsound flesh into speech. By further investigating why the forced translation of the commodity is salvific, this paper engages Black exchangeability as a ritual of perception that deifies gender as biologically sovereign. 

Who “owns” mosques in Türkiye is a layered question, particularly regarding women’s varied roles and experiences. While mosque architecture often reflects male-centered frameworks, women’s relationships with these spaces are not uniform. Some see mosques as central to worship and social engagement; others avoid them for cultural or personal reasons. KADEM’s “Camiler Hepimizin” (“Mosques Belong to All of Us”) project evaluates “women-friendly” features quantitatively but does not capture women’s subjective perceptions. This paper compares two contrasting examples in Istanbul—the Fatih Hafız Ahmet Paşa Mosque (low score) and the Üsküdar Valide Cedid Mosque (high score)—to explore how women negotiate mosque spaces in practice. Drawing on Michel de Certeau’s tactics, Edward Soja’s Thirdspace, and Doreen Massey’s power-geometry, I investigate how women engage, transform, or bypass these environments. Addressing the conference theme of “freedom,” this study reveals how “counter-hegemonic” spatial practices emerge, ultimately reshaping notions of worship, belonging, and spatial justice.

In the first three months of 2024, Kenya reported 97 femicide cases, adding to over 500 intimate partner femicides recorded between 2016 and 2023. This alarming trend has spurred the Kenyan feminist movement to demand action, leading to protests and the establishment of a 42-member government taskforce to address gender-based violence. Feminists are challenging religious and cultural norms that perpetuate patriarchal structures, often trapping women in cycles of abuse and denying them freedom. This paper explores the complex interplay between love, freedom, and systemic gender-based violence, analyzing femicide cases and feminist responses. It highlights how Kenyan women are resisting oppression, advocating for systemic change, and redefining love and freedom to prioritize safety, equality, and autonomy. Using a feminist lens, the paper critiques entrenched ideologies and calls for religious and cultural institutions to reinterpret freedom and love in ways that promote gender justice, emphasizing consent, autonomy, and mutual respect in relationships.

This paper explores how Jewish women in Harbin, China (1898–1950), negotiated freedom within a self-governing diaspora community on a multi-ethnic frontier. Preserving Jewish identity amid Russian, Chinese, and Japanese influences, they defied historical constraints—displacement from pogroms, Japanese occupation—often underexplored by scholars emphasizing men’s contributions to economic and public life. Drawing on local archival sources—diaries, memoirs, and pictures—and comparisons with other diaspora communities, this research underscores their negotiated freedom as a model with contemporary relevance for multi-ethnic religious contexts. I argue that Jewish women secured freedom through education and ritual, blending biblical traditions with local practices—schools merging Jewish and Russian learning, Passover seders with Chinese elements. This process, termed “diasporic midrash,” a lived reinterpretation of tradition, sustained Jewishness without rabbinic authority, shaping Harbin’s cultural fabric. Their pragmatic freedom anchored resilience, offering a regional feminist lens on gender and religious identity with lasting resonance.

Complementarianism, a Christian and post-Christian understanding of gender in which men and women are understood to have intrinsically different bodies and characteristics that “complement” one another, is generally understood by western feminists as a discourse of patriarchal oppression. However, in this paper, the authors drawn on an indigenous theory of gender proposed by a group of learned nuns in contemporary Tibet to argue that the association between patriarchy and complementarianism is not universal, and should not be mapped onto non-western and non-Christian contexts. Rather, the Tibetan nuns’ theory of complementarian gender roles, working in tandem with a shrewd interpretation of the lived identity of motherhood as sources of liberative compassion, serves as a localized argument for gender equality in contemporary Tibetan Buddhism. 

This study explores how Korean women experienced freedom and liberation during and after the Japanese colonial period through the poem 어머님 말씀 (Ŏmŏnim Malssŭm), meaning ‘Mother’s Words,’ by Korean poet Gunho Kim. Based on stories passed down from his mother, the poem is one of the earliest literary works to address the suffering of Korean comfort women. The poem not only emphasizes political liberation but also conveys a deeper longing for true freedom from oppression.

Based on the poem, this research interrogates whether political liberation led to genuine freedom or if oppression continued to manifest. It also examines how the historical experiences of Korean women shaped their identity, spirituality, and acts of resistance. This study offers fresh insights into the ongoing struggle for freedom and justice among Korean women, aiming to contribute to a broader understanding of women’s rights, resistance, and the enduring impact of historical trauma.

This paper evaluates contemporary Jain representations of capitalism and neoliberalism as expressed in interviews, Jain magazines, and biographies of Jain laymen, teases out continuities from Jainism’s mythic pasts to its contemporary religious practices. In communities such as the Jains where well-being and masculinity are publicly expressed through capital, much can be gained from examining the strategies deployed by men whose middle-class economic status limits their ability to participate in such material expressions of key values. The imperative of modern masculinity shapes how Jain laymen must negotiate the tensions between participating and winning at traditional Jain masculinity—the family man who is a generous religious donor—and integrating the economic pressures of neoliberal capitalism and its attendant individualism. Individuals have adapted modernist discourses, such as democratization, and the liberalization of the Indian economy, in order to open space for a new kind of Jain masculinity.

This paper considers Jain participation in discourses of “Dharmic capitalism,” surveying a spectrum of emic attitudes toward the relevance of principle tenants of Jain religion to navigating complexities of 21st century global free market commerce. Making use of interviews, popular media, and popular and academic publications advancing normative and prescriptive viewpoints, the author highlights Jain efforts to locate principles of free market capitalism within their own scriptural tradition, alongside present-day Jain attempts to reconcile the moral vicissitudes of the global financial marketplace with the strict Jain precepts of non-violence, non-possessiveness, and absolute truthfulness. The author examines what are in some cases direct correspondences between Hindu and Jain sentiments regarding the historical presence of liberal economic models in India historically, direct interface between Hindus and Jains which has generated a portion of this discourse, as well as discourses of “Jain exceptionalism,” i.e. insistence that Jain economic success has been historically supplemented with superlative models of philanthropy. 

This paper argues for the centrality of an expanded concept of “commercial capitalism” for understanding both the economic practices of Jains in the early 20th century, as well as why this association persists to this day. Following the historian Jairus Banaji, I argue that capitalism is neither simply commercial activity (Adam Smith’s famous “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange”) nor reducible simply to heavy industry. Drawing on archival data from Sirohi, a small independent Rajput kingdom, in the late colonial period, this paper puts forward a theory of how commercial capitalists, mostly Jain, came to dominate agrarian production. I then argue, based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in modern Rajasthan and Gujarat, that contemporary perceptions of Jains are still primarily structured by this form of capitalism.

While exclusionary forces continue to claim Muslims do not belong in India, specific Muslims are uniquely visible across diverse genres of cultural representation. This paper focuses on the tension between official forms of Muslim exclusion and the visibility of certain types of Muslims in diverse media forms including commercial theatre, Hindi cinema, and heritage tourism. Questions this paper explores include: what kinds of Muslims are “sellable” for twenty-first century forms of cultural consumption? How are the goals and strategies of producers to make Muslims visible in genres of cultural representation shaped by the forces of twenty-first century, late-stage Indian capitalism and neoliberalism? The typologies of desirable Muslims in cultural representation identified in this paper reveal the socio-political conditions of religious belonging not just in India, but also in other secular democratic societies during twenty and twenty-first century late-stage capitalism. More than just simply entertainment, these moments of representation shape knowledge about religion, and particularly Islam, both for Muslims and non-Muslims.