The 2026 November Annual Meeting in Denver, CO: Friday, November 20 - Tuesday, November 24. All times are listed in Mountain Time Zone. For more information about the November Annual Meeting, co-hosted with the Society of Biblical Literature, click here.
Please note that this is the preliminary schedule and is subject to change. We anticipate a mostly final schedule in mid-August. If you have any questions, please contact annualmeeting@aarweb.org. For Other Events, your event is not confirmed until you received notification from AAR staff.
NAASR’s annual business meeting provides members with updates on the association’s activities, discussions of ongoing priorities, opportunities for member involvement, and any formal business requiring consideration or approval.
This session comprises two papers that reckon with Karl Barth's work in relation to Christian nationalism, past and present, along with responses and a period of QandA.
Karl Barth’s critique of German Christian nationalism is well known, but some American Christian nationalists have drawn on the theology of Barth and Barmen to justify and support their agenda—notably John MacArthur’s Grace Church during the COVID-19 crisis, the masterminds behind Project 2025, Kevin Roberts and Russell Vought, and antiabortion activist Katelyn Walls Shelton. This paper argues that Barth’s political writings in the 1930s evince a characteristic weakness—an overly abstract notion of Christian freedom and an overly sanguine confidence in the self-evidence of the Bible’s witness against Christian nationalism. Both points may have made sense within the context of Germany, but they have translated poorly in the American context. Those committed to Barth’s intentions must recover elements of his earlier theology from the first Romans commentary and his more overtly socialist writings as a necessary supplement and corrective to his later work.
This paper explores how a doctrine of sin drawn from resources found in Karl Barth might contribute to theological reflection on nationhood, nationalism, and patriotism. Focusing on my own Scottish and British context while engaging broader theoretical questions, I argue that attentiveness to sin provides an essential tool for Christian engagement with the modern nation-state. Rather than offering any prescriptive political conclusion, the paper proposes that a robust doctrine of sin, developed in conversation with Barth, can help to reframe discussions of nationalism within churches in ways that are both chastening and constructive. I argue that a well-constructed hamartiology based on a critical and appreciative reading of Barth illuminates the dynamics of (self) deception, the insidious functioning of ideology, and the potential of all states and nations to become “at least a little Leviathan,” whilst also preserving the possibility of responsible, hopeful political discernment with regard to the nation.
This session brings together two papers that examine how social and cultural boundaries are constructed, maintained, and challenged. The first paper explores mimetic theory in a prison context, focusing on dynamics of purity, exclusion, and the challenge of extending compassion to the most marginalized. The second paper reconsiders the Vattimo–Girard debate through the lens of Henza culture, highlighting how more fluid forms of identity (“loose ontology”) open new possibilities for rethinking gender, metaphysics, and the role of difference in social life.
This session brings together two papers that examine how social and cultural boundaries are constructed, maintained, and challenged. The first paper explores mimetic theory in a prison context, focusing on dynamics of purity, exclusion, and the challenge of extending compassion to the most marginalized. The second paper reconsiders the Vattimo–Girard debate through the lens of Henza culture, highlighting how more fluid forms of identity (“loose ontology”) open new possibilities for rethinking gender, metaphysics, and the role of difference in social life.
This essay reframes the debate between Vattimo and Girard—between ‘weak thought’ and anthropological facts—through Okinawa’s Henza culture where identities are established through a ‘loose’ ontology. This ontology presents a mythical-metaphysical reality that structures male-female complimentarity, though also allowing individuals to cross genders for cultural reasons. This essay contrasts ‘loose’ ontology with the ‘strong’ ontologies of western culture/religion where individual identities are ‘fixed’. For his part, Girard defines cultural intelligibility through acts of exclusion (scapegoating), though when the ‘other’ is not a fixed entity—even if an anthropological fact—new possibilities appear for metaphysics in relation to identity. Susan Sered’s reading of Henza culture enables a reimagining of the nominalist-realist dispute replayed in the Vattimo-Girard debate, and provides a solution akin to Martin Jay’s‘ magical nominalism’. We need neither get rid of metaphysics nor fully identify with it—something Girard had foreseen with profound theological consequences.
This panel discussion, hosted at the Colorado State Capitol, brings together Denver-area scholar-practitioners who hold positions in city and state leadership and bring theologically informed perspectives to their public roles. Drawing on their training in theology and religious studies, panelists will examine how scholarly engagement with religion shapes the intellectual and ethical frameworks that guide policy decisions and institutional leadership. The discussion will also address the challenges of navigating political structures as theologically trained professionals, and the broader contributions that religious scholarship can make to contemporary democratic practice. Collectively, this panel makes the case that formation in theology and religious studies provides a substantive and generative foundation for principled civic leadership. For more information, including panelists and directions, visit tinyurl.com/RACStateCapitolEvent. For questions, contact aarreligionandcities@gmail.com.
Blaine Charette, Northwest University, Presiding Panelists: Carmen Joy Imes, Talbot School of Theology (20 min) Rebecca Basdeo Hill, Pentecostal Theological Seminary (20 min) Jon Bentall, Northwest University (20 min) Response: Rebecca Idestrom, Tyndale Seminary (30 min) Panel Discussion (30 min) Open Discussion (30 min)
Sabbath Worship
9:30 -10:15 am Sabbath School Panel Discussion: “The Church Reimagined”
10:15 – 11:00 am Interview “Looking Ahead” with Tihomir Lazić
11:00 – 11:30 am Worship
11:30 am – 12:30 pm Sermon, Kendra Haloviak Valentine, La Sierra University
Lee Edelman writes that “For politics, however radical the means by which specific constituencies attempt to produce a more desirable social order, remains, at its core, conservative, insofar as it works to affirm a structure, to authenticate social order, which it then intends to transmit to the future in the form of its inner Child." This session takes Edelman’s point seriously for religious studies, where the graduate student is quite literally the figure in whom the discipline invests its futurity. Each panelist - themselves PhD candidates trained on the field's critical apparatus - offers a brief provocation from within Edelman's frame, examining how the logic of disciplinary reproduction shapes what the field can imagine for itself: what counts as legitimate scholarship, what gets preserved and at what cost, and why alternatives that might require genuine transformation remain foreclosed in favor of transmitting the field as it already is. Their provocations then become the basis for a larger open conversation that asks not what religious studies owes its future but what its commitment to having one - in a specific, recognizable form - forecloses.
Boniuk Institute Meeting to disscuss current context and future directions in research on Faith and AI.
The Center for Colorado Women’s History is a history museum that focuses on the stories, memories, and experiences of women of Colorado. Join us for an hour-long docent-led tour and learn about the experiences of Colorado women pre-statehood, suffrage, class history with a focus on domestic work, World War 1, the Arts and Crafts Movement, and women artists in Colorado. The tour will be followed by an hour-long tea seating. Refreshments served include light savory and sweet fare from local, woman-led business Miss Peabody’s Southern Tea Cakes alongside our museum’s signature Lady Lavender Black Tea with citrus, vanilla, and bergamot.
The Center for Colorado Women's History is located at 1310 Bannock St, only 0.6 miles away from the Colorado Convention Center. Transportation will not be provided between the Colorado Convention Center and the Center. The price of this tour includes a ride share voucher.
