In-person November Annual Meeting 2026 Program Book

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.

In the standard Platonic use of the concept of participation there is a dominant interest in fulfilling formulas of unity such that the wilder side of entering into formations of life, unprogrammed creation and association with other worldly beings, goes unappreciated. This paper proposes to correct this ontological bias and do justice to our richer ordinary sense of meaningful engagement by partnering the centering ideal of participation with the extending ideal of involvement, illustrating this move with a significant transition in Western art history. Raphael's High Renaissance Transfiguration shows a convincing domination of physical nature by eternal form, while Caravaggio's Baroque Calling of St. Matthew shows a meaning-determining materiality, contingency, and "horizontality" in similar subject matter. Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin can be read as an icon for the union of participation and involvement.

Raphael’s fresco cycle in the Stanza della Segnatura offers a poetic and participatory definition of Platonism at the birth of modernity. Rather than focusing on a Platonism of specific doctrines, I propose that Raphael articulates the essence of Platonism visually through two interrelated principles: a henological commitment to the One as ontological ground and a psychological orientation in which the soul mediates between unity and plurality. Read as a whole, beyond the iconic The School of Athens, the room presents philosophy, theology, poetry, and justice as interdependent modes of participation in a unified cosmos. The unrepresented One and the centrally positioned observer function as absent presences structuring the composition. Raphael’s poetics thus renders participatory metaphysics experientially accessible, demonstrating how artistic creation itself can enact and communicate the Platonic tradition’s vision of reality.

In one of his notebooks, the Romantic poet and theologian Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) wrote that superstition was "the Giant Shadow of Humanity with its back to the setting Sun of True Religion." This paper uses Coleridge as a lens to explore the role of superstition in a metaphysics of participation, wherein a combination of ignorance, wonder, and myth serve as the starting point of philosophy. This exploration will then link participation and poetics in two ways. The first is the role of the preternatural in Coleridge's poetry and philosophy, where the unknown in nature manifests in poetry as ambiguous spiritual forces. The second is the vulnerability of the person to supernatural forces beyond explanation, a participatory metaphysic that travels both ways, as expressed by Coleridge in his notebooks and poetry on dreams and nightmares.

Poiēsis and participatory metaphysics exist in an irreconcilable tension between ascension to the Forms and descension to representation. Yet, two well-known 20th century Platonists, Simone Weil and Irish Murdoch, identify this tension as a generative site of poetics. Taking a cue from these thinkers and the work of Kevin Hart, and Jean-Luc Marion, I attempt to show that the tension between poiēsis and participation is a guise of the problem of onto-theology: can one participate in metaphysical theism without thereby rendering God an idol? Transcribing the poiēsis/participation tension into a theological register will enable us to better understand Weil and Murdoch’s reappraisal of Plato, and will suggest that the poiēsis/participation tension can only be navigated via an appeal to a transcendent divinity, which wills to render itself accessible through sacramental signs. To test this hypothesis, I turn to the poetics of Seamus Heaney.

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.

This paper frames Christian Nationalism as a deep story founded on an apocalyptic narrative that fuses Christian and American identities, rooted in historical and theological interpretations of the book of Revelation and Puritan founding myths. Drawing on sociological frameworks, it explains how these stories shape ontology, mythology, and epistemology for adherents, forging strong group cohesion by framing their experience as a divinely mandated cosmic struggle. This apocalyptic framework promotes a perception of persecution and a sense of divine purpose that inspires political engagement, supports exclusionary practices, and forms the basis for movements such as Dominionism and the New Apostolic Reformation. The Christian Nationalism narrative interprets perceived challenges to a divinely established national identity as grounds for efforts aimed at restoring and sustaining Christian prominence in society.

The study of affect has been historically attributed to Western philosophical traditions, beginning with Kant, Spinoza, Husserl, Freud, and Heidegger. In contemporary times, the politics of academic publications on affect invariably involve their ethnographic accounts from the ‘Orient’ but do not engage with these accounts as theories or epistemes in themselves. As a form of the decolonial methodology of undoing the Eurocentrism inherent within the academic study of affect and looking at its pluriversal conceptions, in this paper, I will discuss the Vedic concept of ‘Rasa’ that was first systematically defined by Bharata in the 2nd century BCE, its expansion by later Sanskrit scholars and its relevance in contemporary India.

This paper explores moral disorientation as an affective experience of temporal rupture. Interweaving short audio clips, images, and analytic commentary, I read everyday pastoral disclosures through phenomenologies of dis/orientation, vertigo, and hesitation developed by Sara Ahmed, Ami Harbin, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, and Alia Al-Saji. I argue that moral disorientation disorderly reorients bodies in and out of time with God and the world, generating ambivalent intervals of indetermination where moral and temporal orientations can either be unsettled or renewed. The presentation contrasts pastoral strategies that resynchronize congregants into linear futures guided by divine providence with homiletic practices that sustain affective and temporal wobble as an opening toward queer/just futures. 

In a Singapore state-run columbarium where people of different religions are put to rest, it is common to see dollhouse-sized polymer clay miniatures of foods of local fare and other everyday items attached to the niche plaque or the base of a columbarium niche. While they are present across multiple religious traditions represented the columbarium, these are especially common on Christian niches. While niches in Catholic columbariums in Singapore also contain these polymer clay miniatures, there are significantly fewer of them. Instead, Chinese New Year and Christmas decorations abound. Using photographic documentation as a starting point, this presentation will :1) analyze the semantic complexity of various material objects surrounding and affixed to columbarium niches of Catholics in Singapore with attention to their theological and social dimensions; 2) contrast the ways in which Catholic and state-run columbariums function as ritual spaces that reflect, generate and sustain theologies of ancestors and family differently; and 3) propose that columbariums are overlooked spaces of primary theology (theologia prima) – a source of theology that is lived, embodied, and experienced – through which material expressions of local theologies as “new creations” emerge.

In several Chinese Filipino Catholic parishes in Manila, devotional practices surrounding Chinese New Year extend beyond the liturgy into ritual engagements with ancestors, saints, and sacred objects. On the eve of the feast, parishioners present offerings of incense sticks, flowers, wine, and fruits before ancestral tablets and images of Mary and the saints. These offerings are later brought to family tombs, while an ancestral veneration ritual concludes the Mass. Commonly described as alay (offering), these practices situate Catholic devotion within networks of kinship, memory, and material practice.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in parishes and cemeteries in Manila, this paper examines how such offerings function as material mediators of remembrance in Chinese Filipino Catholic life. Engaging Jayeel Serrano Cornelio’s concept of “creative Catholics” (2016) alongside theological reflections on inculturation by Jonathan Y. Tan (2011), Peter C. Phan (2004), and Aristotle Dy (2005), the paper argues that alay operates as embodied memory through which Catholic identity is transmitted across generations, revealing material devotion as a form of prima theologia.

This paper explores the Malaysian Chinese Catholic re-imagination of the traditional first day of the Chinese New Year ancestor veneration ritual at the parish columbarium of Saint Michael’s Church, the Chinese Catholic parish in Ipoh, Malaysia. It examines how the parish columbarium provides the ritual space to re-imagine the traditional ancestor veneration ritual on the first day of the Chinese New Year in an inculturated Malaysian Chinese Catholic context beyond its official liturgical placement in the authorized Chinese New Year Mass. In doing so, it questions the conventional definition of liturgical space within the architectural confines of a church building, evaluates the interplay between anamnetic memory and ritual experience which remake and remagine liturgical space as the space which is constructed, negotiated, and synthesized through anamnetic ritualization by the ritual participants themselves.

This study examines Catholic charismatic prayer groups of El Shaddai among overseas Filipino workers in Hong Kong and Singapore through an ethnohistorical analysis of migrant devotional practice. It investigates how prayer gatherings function as sites of identity formation and spatial negotiation. Drawing on theories of religion and space by Thomas A. Tweed (2006) and Kim Knott (2005), the study shows how charismatic practices transform shared environments into temporary sacred spaces. Using interviews, participant observation, and historical reconstruction, it analyzes how praise-and-worship and devotional objects such as rosaries, handkerchiefs, and digital media mediate divine presence while blurring distinctions between official liturgy and vernacular devotion. The findings suggest that migrant religiosity provides both spiritual and socio-cultural support while negotiating authority between lay movements and institutional Catholic structures, producing what the study terms “kabayan spirit in place or out of space.”