In-person November Annual Meeting 2026 Program Book

The Earth Magistrate of White Crane (Bạch Hạc Thổ Lệnh) is a deity of northern Vietnam whose cult began in the 650s CE, when the region was a Tang protectorate. Two accounts of its origin survive: one in a Daoist bronze bell inscription cast in 1321, and another in the 14th‑century narrative collection Compendium on Mystic Numina of the Việt Realm (Việt điện u linh tập). I compare these versions and show that the bell inscription is earlier, and that both preserve two contrasting narrative motifs. The evidence further indicates that Xu Zongdao, a Song Daoist refugee and author of the inscription, sought to embed court Daoism within 14th‑century Trần elite culture by anchoring its ritual efficacy in the sacred landscape of Đại Việt. His project aimed partly at securing state protection and military advantage during the Mongol invasions, and partly at providing post‑mortem salvation for Trần imperial clan members.

Hòa Hảo Buddism is a devotional movement based in the Mekong Delta, founded in 1939. The relationship between this group and the state has been mostly antagonistic, but Hòa Hảo leaders have recently made changes to improve this situation. One example is the implementation of the ritual Lễ Cầu Quốc Thái Dân An (Prayer Ceremony for National Peace and Prosperity) into Hòa Hảo practice. This ceremony is also an official ritual of the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha, which has performed it on the United Nations Day of Vesak since the early 2000s, together with senior politicians. After a long time of marginalization, Hòa Hảo is now seeking opportunities for revival. Based on participant observation and interviews with Hòa Hảo leaders, this paper examines the impact of these changes. It argues that the Prayer Ceremony has helped Hòa Hảo recruit new members, acquire political legitimacy, and gain recognition from other religious organizations.

Fishing communities in central and southern Vietnam venerate whales and dolphins as incarnations of Ông Nam Hải (Lord of the South Sea), also known as Cá Ông (Lord Fish). They enshrine the bones of stranded cetaceans at temples, give them ritual offerings, and hold annual festivals (lễ hội Cầu ngư) in their honour. In the early nineteenth century, the incorporation of this protective sea deity into the state pantheon was part of a strategy for justifying Nguyễn rule over southern Vietnam. During the colonial and revolutionary periods, whale temples and festivals lost state patronage, but they survived in many coastal villages and towns. This paper shows that in recent years, these practices have regained state patronage and acquired new ideological and economic significance under the "intangible cultural heritage" label. It will present ethnographic material from two port cities, Đà Nẵng and Phan Thiết, where this development is clearly visible.

In contemporary Vietnam, grassroots charity movements are rising to address humanitarian needs. Rapid development compounds these needs, as social services become privatized and urban migration strains city infrastructure. Volunteer groups respond by fundraising to subsidize medical treatments, distribute food, and construct bridges for their local communities. Many charities attract volunteers and promote their projects by appealing to Vietnam's most common religion, Buddhism, often incorporating Buddhist rituals into charity events. However, the styles of Buddhism invoked by these movements are not monolithic. Volunteers join charities for distinct and contradictory reasons. While some charities advocate for Buddhist volunteerism as fulfilling duties of socialist citizenship, other charities promote Buddhist volunteerism as a solution to the state's failed political promises of abundance and equality for all citizens. I analyze these two disparate political stances as converging to create a wave of ritualized "political spirituality" (Foucault 1978) that drives social change at a grassroots level.

The Earth Magistrate of White Crane (Bạch Hạc Thổ Lệnh) is a deity of northern Vietnam whose cult began in the 650s CE, when the region was a Tang protectorate. Two accounts of its origin survive: one in a Daoist bronze bell inscription cast in 1321, and another in the 14th‑century narrative collection Compendium on Mystic Numina of the Việt Realm (Việt điện u linh tập). I compare these versions and show that the bell inscription is earlier, and that both preserve two contrasting narrative motifs. The evidence further indicates that Xu Zongdao, a Song Daoist refugee and author of the inscription, sought to embed court Daoism within 14th‑century Trần elite culture by anchoring its ritual efficacy in the sacred landscape of Đại Việt. His project aimed partly at securing state protection and military advantage during the Mongol invasions, and partly at providing post‑mortem salvation for Trần imperial clan members.

Hòa Hảo Buddism is a devotional movement based in the Mekong Delta, founded in 1939. The relationship between this group and the state has been mostly antagonistic, but Hòa Hảo leaders have recently made changes to improve this situation. One example is the implementation of the ritual Lễ Cầu Quốc Thái Dân An (Prayer Ceremony for National Peace and Prosperity) into Hòa Hảo practice. This ceremony is also an official ritual of the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha, which has performed it on the United Nations Day of Vesak since the early 2000s, together with senior politicians. After a long time of marginalization, Hòa Hảo is now seeking opportunities for revival. Based on participant observation and interviews with Hòa Hảo leaders, this paper examines the impact of these changes. It argues that the Prayer Ceremony has helped Hòa Hảo recruit new members, acquire political legitimacy, and gain recognition from other religious organizations.

Fishing communities in central and southern Vietnam venerate whales and dolphins as incarnations of Ông Nam Hải (Lord of the South Sea), also known as Cá Ông (Lord Fish). They enshrine the bones of stranded cetaceans at temples, give them ritual offerings, and hold annual festivals (lễ hội Cầu ngư) in their honour. In the early nineteenth century, the incorporation of this protective sea deity into the state pantheon was part of a strategy for justifying Nguyễn rule over southern Vietnam. During the colonial and revolutionary periods, whale temples and festivals lost state patronage, but they survived in many coastal villages and towns. This paper shows that in recent years, these practices have regained state patronage and acquired new ideological and economic significance under the "intangible cultural heritage" label. It will present ethnographic material from two port cities, Đà Nẵng and Phan Thiết, where this development is clearly visible.

In contemporary Vietnam, grassroots charity movements are rising to address humanitarian needs. Rapid development compounds these needs, as social services become privatized and urban migration strains city infrastructure. Volunteer groups respond by fundraising to subsidize medical treatments, distribute food, and construct bridges for their local communities. Many charities attract volunteers and promote their projects by appealing to Vietnam's most common religion, Buddhism, often incorporating Buddhist rituals into charity events. However, the styles of Buddhism invoked by these movements are not monolithic. Volunteers join charities for distinct and contradictory reasons. While some charities advocate for Buddhist volunteerism as fulfilling duties of socialist citizenship, other charities promote Buddhist volunteerism as a solution to the state's failed political promises of abundance and equality for all citizens. I analyze these two disparate political stances as converging to create a wave of ritualized "political spirituality" (Foucault 1978) that drives social change at a grassroots level.

In the global study of "Worship Wars," congregational conflicts typically center on musical genre and theology. This paper argues that in Hong Kong, this conflict is fought on a fiercely linguistic-aesthetic battlefield, where the demand for in-tone singing functions as an "aesthetic bullet." Reflecting the musicological principle of Hip-wan (協韻), Cantonese,a language with six contrastive lexical tones,requires a strict relational manifestation of tone to maintain the speech-melody complex. Misalignment distorts sacred meaning, allowing factions to weaponize acoustic integrity: progressives critique "out-of-tone" hymns as archaic, and disconnected from local belonging, while traditionalists attack "in-tone" CCM aesthetic as secularized . This study analyzes how acoustic integrity, “in-tone” aesthetics operate within Mandarin worship hegemonies, local music economies, and global diasporic migrations. Ultimately, in-tone practice transcends musical preference; these "bullets" exert tangible political influence by fortifying acoustic resistance against cultural assimilation, articulating a resilient, post-secular Hong Kong Christian aesthetic and identity.

This paper examines how Buddhist electronic music in Taiwan has become a site for reworking Buddhist modernism. Focusing on the Awakening Music Festival, a Buddhist electronic music festival in Taiwan, I argue that the event does more than reframe “tradition” for the present. Instead, it stages new relations between chanting, electronic sound, and collective listening. From ethnographic research, I analyze how the festival creates a shared sonic space in which religious and secular participants engage the performances through different modes of attention and embodiment. Drawing on Charles Hirschkind’s approach to moral listening and Tara Rodgers’ account of synthesis, I suggest that these contemporary music practices can be part of how devotional experience is produced. By placing Buddhist sonorities within festival infrastructure, club aesthetics, and translocal networks, the paper argues that Buddhist contemporary music in Taiwan offers a useful lens for understanding Buddhist modernism as an emergent and experimental formation.

In this paper, I argue that Contemporary Praise and Worship Music (CPWM) sounds in Brazil function as a form of sonic occupation. Leaning on ethnographic data collected in three megachurches in São Paulo, Brazil, I demonstrate how CPWM sounds participate in constructing a colonial ear in six ways: (1) the disciplining of vocal expressiveness, (2) the (dis)embodied formation of timbre, (3) sacrotechnotimbre as an aspiration to modernity, (4) masculinizing worship sounds, (5) the deterritorialization of the sonic realm, and (6) the commodification of tones in worship. Interpreting these practices through decolonial frameworks of musicoloniality, cosmophobia, and hungry listening, I argue that CPWM soundscapes produce an aesthetic of hyperculture—the detachment of culture from place, history, and land, as described (Han 2021)— that deterritorializes listening environments and detaches listeners from localized cosmologies and land.

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This paper will argue that previous studies of Martin Luther on masculinity and fatherhood have overlooked how these themes are applied over the course of his exegesis of the stories of the biblical patriarchs in the book of Genesis. To that end, this paper will examine how Luther’s depiction of the biblical patriarchs Joseph in visible emotional distress provides an alternative narrative of sixteenth century Protestant masculinity as dependent on demonstrable signs of ‘weakness’ in the form of tears and lament. In the modern era, this forgotten minor tradition of Luther’s highly emotionally intelligent biblical patriarchs presents an important challenge to contemporary depictions of masculinity as necessitating militarism and aggression. Ultimately, the recovery of these forgotten themes in Luther’s writings can provide a counter-memory that serves as the basis for a different vision of male embodiment in the twenty-first century. 

In the wake of postmodernity’s embrace of “Death of God” and democracy giving way to fascism, there is need for mature Protestant Christians responding to socio-political crises from their freedom found in faith and with responsible action. Sadly, the way Lutheran and Luther’s theology are framed as antagonistic toward faithful socio-political action and resistance in the world, cuts off the vibrant future of “adult” social action that is faith working itself out in loving deeds. This paper creates a theological link between theologian and activist Dorothee Sölle and Martin Luther demonstrating Sölle’s ability to take what Luther started and push it toward relevancy, specifically toward validating a theology of resistance as faith working itself out in loving deeds. This paper demonstrates Sölle’s work as the natural progression of Luther’s conception of freedom and responsibility by the “law of love” for the benefit of the neighbor to the glory of God.

To explore lost and possible futures of Lutheran theology demands an expansive view of the history of Luther’s reception. The expansive view recognizes the agency of protagonists of the tradition, but also the agency of detractors, reproducing elements of Lutheran thought or practice while trying to diminish, overwhelm, or destroy their power. The expansive view requires a dialogical method, one focused on the total play of ideas in conflict, and not merely on core concepts traveling across time. I explore a dialogical approach in three unconventional examples: 1) an immigrant silver miner tried for Lutheran heresy by the Bishop of Guadalajara in sixteenth-century Mexico, 2) the clandestine philosopher Jean Baptiste de Boyer d’Argens (d. 1737), and 3) the Protestant clergyman-critic of American imperialism, Samuel Guy Inman (d. 1965).

This paper proposes a reconstruction of Lutheran eschatology to address the "terminal acceleration" of late modernity, where technological and economic change outpaces human social integration. Moving beyond 20th-century eschatological proposals that focused on the inbreaking of the future, I advocate for a shift from purely chronological focus to the recovery of "shared space". By synthesizing Hannah Arendt’s concepts of promise and forgiveness with Luther’s communicatio idiomatum, I outline a tri-partite proposal for relating Lutheran eschatology to the healing and transformation of interpersonal, communal, and public spheres.

The proposal reimagines the church not as a "thin" institution or a weaponized political instrument, but as a "thick" architectural space of reconciliation and "new creation". Ultimately, Lutheran eschatology is presented as an apocalyptic power that resists fragmentation by re-embedding the promises of God within tangible, neighborly relationships and corporate healing.

This paper explores alternative epistemological and ontological frameworks for responding to the looming ecological crisis by comparing the Cree and Anishinaabe concept of Minopimatisiwin (the good life) with the Islamic notion of Ihsan (doing what is beautiful or good), particularly as developed within Sufi traditions. Modern responses to the environmental crisis often focus on technical solutions, such as renewable energy, while leaving unchallenged the deeper assumptions that shape human relationships with the natural world. In contrast, Minopimatisiwin emphasizes holistic well-being and relationality among humans, animals, and the environment, grounded in reciprocity and collective responsibility. Similarly, Ihsan calls for the cultivation of moral excellence and spiritual awareness, encouraging individuals to act with goodness and maintain accountability before God. This paper seeks to consider how these traditions offer relational and ethically grounded visions of the good life that can contribute to more sustainable and decolonizing futures.

The Qur’anic obligation of Amr Ma’ruf Nahi Munkar encounters a semantic challenge, frequently instrumentalized to justify coercive policing and sectarian discord. While Michael Cook’s scholarship traces its legal and historical development, a gap remains concerning its internal, non-coercive dimensions. This paper proposes an "organic" genealogy within Islamic ethics by drawing upon Toshihiko Izutsu’s comparative philosophy. By examining Izutsu’s interpretation of Amr (Divine Command) alongside the Taoist concept of Ming (Heavenly Mandate), and planning to utilizing his published works and archival marginalia from the Izutsu Bunko this research develops a framework of "Organic Ethics." It contends that ethical harmony is attained not through external imposition but via Wu Wei (non-interference) and the internal cultivation of the Fitrah, reflecting the philological roots of Wasiyyah as "intertwining vegetation." Ultimately, this study presents a "Theology of Non-Coercion," offering a significant interdisciplinary paradigm to address systemic crises within contemporary Islamic practice.

Scholars of medieval Islamic philosophy and mysticism have increasingly noted parallels between Fāṭimid Ismā‘īlī theology and the texts produced by contemporary Muslim and Jewish thinkers in Iberia and North Africa. 

Although I accept the need for a robust, sociological explanation of how proprietary Ismā‘īlī ideas and texts could have moved beyond these closed communities, I want to qualify this narrative of Fāṭimid propriety by comparing two da‘wah texts (al-‘Ālim wa-l-ghulām and Kitāb al-kashf) by Ja‘far ibn Manṣūr al Yaman (d. 10th c.) and The Guide of the Perplexed by Moses Maimonides (d. 1204). I will argue that Maimonides’ Guide, though focused on the esoteric interpretation of Jewish sources, not only echoes the rhetoric of esoteric initiation found in Fāṭimid da‘wah literature, but likewise follows the Ismā‘īlīs in framing hierarchical initiation as the analogue to the Active Intellect’s initiation into the hierarchy of separate intellects under God. 

This paper centers upon the gināns, an oral poetic tradition with over 1,000 known, transcribed compositions, which is associated with and claimed by the Shia Nizari Ismaili Muslims of, or tracing their heritage to, South Asia. I argue that while the gināns, with their many terminologies and cosmologies, are certainly a window into the ‘cumulative tradition’ of Nizari Ismailis of South Asia, they are also reflective of larger phenomenological realities and, critically, are windows into how our collective (understanding of) scholarship on Islam must grow. Tracing what Ismail Fajrie Alatas terms as ‘articulatory labors’ across time, texts, and contexts, I highlight how, as an oral tradition, the gināns are variously remembered, voiced, and transcribed, yet their recitation also archives tensions driven by the supposition of ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodox’ Islamic practice. The gināns are thus sites of emic negotiation, inflected by etic discourses, but nevertheless are an enduring, living tradition.