Online June Annual Meeting 2025 Program Book

This paper proposes a complementary Christology that integrates the traditional Nicene framework with the rich narrative, vocabulary, and symbols of the Scriptures. While the Nicene Creed defines the divinity and humanity of Christ using Hellenistic philosophical categories, it does not fully convey the scriptural narrative from which early Christian understanding emerged. Drawing on Second Temple Jewish theology and apostolic writings, this paper explores how early followers of Jesus articulated a Christology embedded in Israel’s story. By recovering this biblical vocabulary, the article presents a Christological framework that resonates with both Jewish and non-Chalcedonian Christian traditions. This approach offers a path toward theological rapprochement by reaffirming a shared monotheistic heritage while enriching Orthodox faith expressions through scripturally grounded language.

Chaos theory in physics shows that systems with nearly identical initial conditions can diverge exponentially, revealing the sensitivity of complex dynamical systems. This intrinsic unpredictability challenges strict determinism and has profound implications for epistemology and theology. Similarly, human knowledge evolves along divergent trajectories, as individual experiences shape unique interpretations even when the same text is encountered. This paper examines how these insights challenge the notion of absolute linguistic revelation in sacred texts such as the Bible and the Quran. Since language is inherently interpretive, subject to cultural drift, and reliant on personal experiences, the idea of an unchanging divine message is problematic. By integrating insights from physics, information theory, and hermeneutics, this study critically investigates whether a fixed divine message can persist amid the dynamic evolution of human language, lending support to mystical traditions that prioritize experiential knowledge. 

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has intensified scrutiny of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) as both an ideological force and a tool of Russian expansionism. Lithuania illustrates the securitization of religion, as the government facilitated an alternative Orthodox jurisdiction under the Ecumenical Patriarchate. In June 2022, five Russian Orthodox priests were dismissed from the Lithuanian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) for supporting Ukraine. They appealed to the Ecumenical Patriarch, who reinstated them in 2023 with Lithuanian government support. In February 2024, the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s Orthodox Church in Lithuania was officially registered. This paper examines Lithuania as a case of religion’s securitization, analyzing how church-state relations shift in geopolitical crises. It further explores how securitization intersects with postcolonial trauma and reshapes religious and political authority in Eastern Europe.

This paper explores the complex and evolving relationship between Canadian missionaries and the Armenian communities within the Ottoman Empire from the early 19th century to the early 20th century. Drawing on missionary correspondence, institutional records, and Armenian sources, the study investigates how Canadian Protestant missions, initially driven by evangelical and educational goals, came to play a significant role in the cultural, social, and political lives of Ottoman Armenians. The paper examines the mutual influences between missionaries and Armenian communities, highlighting how these relationships were shaped by shared religious affiliations, diverging national interests, and the broader context of imperial politics and rising ethnic tensions. It also considers the missionaries’ responses to the Armenian atrocities, tracing the transformation of missionary activity from religious outreach to humanitarian advocacy. Ultimately, this study reveals how Canadian missionaries, often overlooked in Ottoman historiography, became entangled in the complex web of intercommunal relations and imperial decline, leaving a lasting impact on Armenian memory and Canadian foreign engagement.

This paper critically engages with the shifting forms of violence targeting minority communities in the contemporary Middle East. The paper explores how religion has historically shaped, and continues to structure, narratives of rights, national identity, and political legitimacy in the Middle East. Religion operates through law and cultural memory to define who belongs, who is protected, and who may be excluded. Historically, extreme religious discourses, embedded in both state and sectarian institutions, have been instrumental in justifying violence, marginalization, and the targeting of minorities, especially those associated with collapsed regimes. These dynamics are often tolerated, silenced or normalized under the rhetoric of national stability. This study calls for a critical engagement with these narratives nationally and internationally , rather than deferring justice in the name of short-term peace and hopes of stability. By analyzing the enduring fusion of religion, violence, and legal-cultural power, the paper contributes to a deeper understanding of identity, governance, and rights in the region.

The Crimean Tatars, approximately 250,000 people, constitute a Muslim community in Ukraine. They lived in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea before the Russian annexation of the region in 2014. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 made the situation more difficult for this community as they started to face a higher level of oppression under Russian rule. This paper will elaborate on the changing status of Crimea in the modern era and how it affected the Crimean Tatar community through policies of mass deportation, oppression, and Russification. It will especially focus on the period after the end of the Cold War and the post-2014 developments, as Russian authorities imprison many Crimean politicians and activists, while highlighting the activities of the Crimean Tatar community and their organizations locally and globally. 

This study analyzes the religious discourse in video content disseminated by Hamas’s military media department via official Telegram accounts during the Gaza War (2023–2025). Focusing on speeches by military spokesperson Abu Obayda and footage of military operations, it investigates how religious rhetoric is used to frame resistance and justify armed actions. Traditionally centered on governance and diplomacy, Hamas’s media strategy has shifted toward emphasizing armed resistance through its military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades. Using critical discourse analysis, the research explores how Abu Obayda has become the central voice of Hamas’s media communication, marking a transition from political leadership to military representation. The findings show a strategic use of religious language to position Hamas’s actions as defensive and morally justified, while portraying Israel as the aggressor. This evolving media approach highlights how Hamas leverages visual propaganda to reinforce its identity as a resistance movement and reshape its messaging in the digital era.

Historically, faith and political power in Afghanistan maintained a relationship of indirect mutual cooperation. However, this dynamic shifted in 1978 when the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) seized power through the April Revolution, marking the rise of collective atheism. The Cold War and Soviet intervention in 1979, aimed at stabilizing the deteriorating communist regime, not only altered the nature of Afghan communism but also transformed its atheist foundation into a puritan religious movement, framing the conflict as a struggle between two forms of Islam: the “fake and American” versus the “true and egalitarian.”

This study examines that transformation, focusing on two key aspects. First, the role of a religion-friendly communist government in fostering Islamic jihadism. Second, the evolution of Afghan jihad from a religiously minimalistic movement to a global and maximalist force. The study argues that Afghan jihadis of the 20th and 21st centuries were shaped by the atheistic communism they opposed, meaning their movement cannot be fully understood through religious rhetoric alone. The analysis draws on sources from Afghanistan’s modern intellectual history and Vassily A. Klimentov’s examination of over 17,000 pages of Soviet Telegraph Agency reports from 1978 to 1988.

In this study, I seek to elucidate the embodied and relational implications of 靈性 (Língxìng), rendered as spirituality, through an East Asian etymological approach that challenges Western-centric origins. Within Chinese ideographic structure, 靈性 is a compound of 靈, which signifies a “relational spirit,” and 性, which indicates “innate nature.” This term etymologically underscores not only the cosmotheandric spiritual nature inherent in humans but also the integration of body and spirit. 靈性 plays a central role in exploring the spirituality discipline of East Asian scholars, and it also complements the early Western dualistic meaning of spirituality rooted in a rigid ascetic Christian context. Such an East Asian etymological analysis would contribute to interdisciplinary studies of Christian spirituality transcending the barriers of any centralism. By doing so, this proposal aims to create an inclusive space for interplay between East Asian and Western spiritualities, suggesting an embodied understanding of all lived spiritual experiences.

This paper argues for the centrality of spirituality, especially in times of cultural crisis, outlining a methodology of spiritual companioning called Just Listening that works as a fulcrum of action between justice and freedom. The paper draws upon the work of Martin Buber and his concept of I and Thou, and Paul Ricouer’s hermeneutic of mimesis praxeos, as well as Martin Luther King, Jr., Howard Thurman and other voices in marginalized communities. These inform a methodology of spiritual practice rooted in the concept of belovedness that moves toward the notion of beloved community. This employs a circular, iterative process—present, proximate, grounded, unknow(n), and discovery—to cultivate transformative relationality. Through active steps of pause, notice, and encounter, persons and communities deepen their own self-understanding and just relationship with the other and wider creation.

This paper discusses the concept of "Spirit" in the music of Willie Nelson. Beginning with a Christological concept album in 1971, Yesterday's Wine, Willie Nelson used music as a medium to discern a theology of spirituality. This procedure reaches a climax in the 1996 album spirit. This record is a series of explorations into the meaning of “spirit” as an experienced reality. More than a claim that the concept affords numerous meanings, the album posits that this multivalence is the meaning of Spirit. This idea finds support from works such as Charles Taylor and Friedrich Schiller, who help to explain the potency of Nelson's exploration. For spirit, both its poetic and symbolic presence means that the album is not an attempt to explain Spirit. It is an event where the meaning of Spirit is discovered. Its meaning is lived-through in the lyrical poetry and fragile sonics of the album. 

In what ways can spirituality be a life-giving resource in our death-dealing age? What methodological resources can help to inform our study of spirituality?  In this paper, I argue that pragmatic and liberationist methodologies have much to offer. I approach philosophical pragmatism and liberation theology as non-reductive empirical discourses that foreground the role of human intelligence in promoting human flourishing.  Such an approach helps to expand our understanding of spirituality as a pervasive quality of human experience, and it sheds significant light on spirituality as an active function of human intelligence.  Within a pragmatic model of inquiry, knowing is an “adaptive activity” that involves a dynamic process of doubt, belief, inquiry, and judgment.  As I show, in both pragmatism and liberation theology, human intelligence, broadly understood, is a—if not the—primary means by which human beings transact with the world and through which spirituality is, in fact, “activated.”