In-person November Annual Meeting 2026 Program Book

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.”

Growing interest in contemplative sciences and their related well-being interventions has underscored the limitations of approaches rooted in individualistic, Western-centric frameworks and highlighted the need for models grounded in relational, nature-based perspectives. Indigenous contemplative sciences are knowledge systems that offer a rich repertoire of spiritual exercises and contemplative practices centered on kin relations, ecological belonging, place-based interconnectedness, reverence for the natural world, and planetary flourishing—principles that align with contemporary movements toward sustainable and inclusive well-being (Celidwen & Keltner, 2023). Despite this relevance, Indigenous contemplative traditions remain underrepresented and mischaracterized in current well-being research, obscuring their transformative potential. The present work introduces the Ethics of Belonging Scale (EofB Scale), designed to assess collective belonging, personality, lifestyle patterns, and relational dispositions aligned with eight dimensions of planetary flourishing derived from Indigenous contemplative principles. The EofB scale serves as a tool to evaluate how practices informed by Indigenous values contribute to enhanced collective self-identity, strengthened communal bonds, and greater environmental concern, while also upholding cultural integrity, ethical disposition, and spiritual acumen.

Meditation research has entered a third wave focused on contemplative states, stages, and endpoints that arise with mastery, including across traditions, yet existing empirical research is grounded primarily in Buddhist-derived practices. This paper introduces devekut, or cleaving to the Divine in the Jewish mystical tradition, as a case study for developing and refining emerging trans-traditional scientific models in advanced meditation research. Drawing on Kabbalistic and Hasidic scholarship alongside neurophenomenological meditation research, we argue that devekut offers an opportunity to enrich current frameworks in advanced meditation research in three ways: its entry points, including prayer and wordless melody, are not classically contemplative; its pathway to advanced absorption states is relational rather than detachment-based; and devekut is sometimes understood as pervading ordinary life rather than being confined to formal practice. These challenges and our proposed solutions point toward a contemplative science that can address cultural, religious, and cosmological complexity without flattening it.

Miles Davis advised his musicians, “don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.” Herbie Hancock said, “Jazz is about being in the moment.” Sonny Rollins said, “you can’t think and play at the same time.” That they sound like musicians and meditation teachers is typical. Jazz musicians frequently embrace the transformational capacity of music within a markedly contemplative approach to creativity. Engaging this in a scholarly capacity points toward research methods supportive of the academic impulse to understand and put into words these depths of experience. This paper explores how the intentional, inspired musical creativity of Jazz musicians also describes the transformational processes of contemplative scholarship, suggesting that understanding music as a contemplative practice deepens the processes by which we understand both while expanding our capacity to think critically about expressive culture and contemplative spirituality as points of personal and collective transformation, for musicians and scholars alike. 

A fundamental epistemological asymmetry shapes contemplative studies: Western academic frameworks treat the practitioner’s interior development as methodologically irrelevant, while Buddhist traditions treat it as the precondition of valid knowledge. This paper takes that asymmetry seriously as an invitation rather than a problem. Drawing on the Uttaratantra’s distinction between naturally abiding and transforming buddha nature, and on the lamrim tradition of Atiśa and Tsongkhapa, it argues that the lamrim functions as a rigorous developmental epistemology — one that shares structural features with Western developmental frameworks (Piaget, Erikson, Fowler) while asking a fundamentally different question: not how humans develop, but toward what highest possibility. The paper invites contemplative studies to engage this framework as a genuine epistemological resource, and suggests that doing so is essential if the field is to maintain its depth in a cultural moment that risks reducing contemplative practice to wellness commodity.

This paper examines how established historiography changes when new categories of sources are introduced. Our point of departure is Swedish historiography on the 1958 reform enabling women’s ordination in the Church of Sweden. Several competing historical narratives frame this reform either as a theological breakthrough, a political compromise, or an institutional crisis. These accounts rely almost exclusively on official documents, such as parliamentary and synod protocols, and on writings by prominent (male) theologians and church leaders.

By introducing a previously unused body of sources – the narratives of the first ordained women themselves – we show how the established historical narratives are complemented and complicated, revealing new insights into a crucial societal and ecclesiastical reform which not only calls for a revised understanding of the past but also reshapes how the future of the church can be imagined.

The medieval Latin hagiography The Life of Christian of Markyate: A Twelfth Century Recluse uses a range of literary devices and Latin wordplay in order to produce an effect known as controlled ambiguity. Medieval Christian literature utilized this in order to provoke its readers into complex theological dialogue, forcing them to navigate challenging and uncomfortable questions of doctrine and practice by refusing to provide straightforward clarity. As a result, ambiguity became a necessary aspect of theological literary production. However, this poses a problem for translation which traditionally prioritizes content accuracy over stylistics. This paper proposes new translations from The Life of Christina as examples of possible interventions in theological translation norms, refocusing on developing new parameters for ambiguity within the target text. By unsettling models for scholarly translation, it suggests new practical methodologies as well as new interpretive frameworks for future scholarship. 

One way to define the complex movement of Mahāyāna Buddhism is to identify its shared teleology: becoming an altruistic bodhisattva. The Yogācārabhūmi (YBh) has long been considered the foundational text for Yogācārin ethics. But does it present a different theory of ethics, especially on altruism, compared to non-Yogācāra Mahāyāna texts? Comparing the Śīla chapter in the Bodhisattvabhūmi of the YBh etc. with the Contemplation on Sentient Beings chapter in the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa etc., this paper argues that Yogācāra indeed developed a unique progressive approach to ethics. The YBh ethical scheme is defined by the threefold bodhisattva precepts. Vinaya precepts are included in the first division of saṃvaraśīla. The second division, kuśaladharmasaṃgrāhakaśīla, provides a modified version to virtue ethics based on an early model. Attention is drawn to the third division, sattvārthakriyāśīla, through which the altruistic imperative is taken to several “extreme cases” compared with the supramundane tendency found in the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa.

This presentation explores a Yogācāra approach to sickness by drawing from Kuiji’s Commentary of the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa. Reading the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa as a manual for bodhisattvas’ practice, Kuiji extends the Yogācāra theory of body to the embodiment of sickness. Instead of reducing sickness to a malfunction of material corporeality, Kuiji analyzes this embodiment to elucidate how illness for a person is karmically cohered into the saṃsāric cosmology of degeneration. When sickness is contextualized in the shared lifeworld of ignorance, a teleological life-trajectory becomes habitually indoctrinated to naturalize health and happiness as the social norms while stigmatizing sickness as a deviation or an inability. The transformation of ignorance to awakening recontextualizes the lived experience of sickness, through which bodhisattvas rehabitualize themselves to embody impermanence as a skillful means for criticizing and correcting social stigmas. It follows that the cultivation of compassion on the bodhisattvas’ path informs a critical-transformative social ethics.

This paper reconsiders the Nara-period Yogācāra monk Dōkyō (d. 772), who has long been portrayed as a corrupt monk who attempted to seize imperial power through Empress Shōtoku. Recent Japanese scholarship has begun to challenge this narrative. Building on this reassessment, the paper argues that Dōkyō may be better understood as an ethical agent operating within Yogācāra and bodhisattva frameworks. It examines his healing practices and use of esoteric Buddhist texts in attempts to cure the empress. Situating Dōkyō within a broader culture of Nara-period “bodhisattva monks,” the paper asks how Yogācāra ethics functioned as a lived moral system expressed through compassion, ritual efficacy, and skillful means. From this perspective, Dōkyō’s activities reveal how bodhisattva ethics could both support and destabilize the moral authority of the ritsuryō state.