American Academy of Religion

This session was organized for the 2016 AAR Annual Meeting as a roundtable discussion between authors of recent major books that address issues of religion, race, and politics. Additionally, these authors have served as frequent public commentators on the 2016 election. Drawing upon on their research and experiences during the election cycle, the panelists discuss our understanding of the role that religion and race played in the election (e.g., the surprising white evangelical Protestant support for Donald Trump over Ted Cruz, the role of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric, the Black Lives Matter movement, etc.), the impact of changing demographics of the electorate, and prospects and resources for coming together after a political season that promises to be one of the most polarizing and divisive in the modern era. Serene Jones, Union Theological Seminary, presiding Panelists: Kelly Brown Douglas, Goucher College Robert P. Jones, Public Religion Research Institute Stephen Prothero, Boston University Jim Wallis, Sojourners Responding: Andrea C. White, Union Theological Seminary This session (A19-100) was recorded during the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, November 19–22, in San Antonio, Texas.

In the Zoroastrian Empire of Iran during late antiquity, what were the limits of Christian identity? Richard E. Payne, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Ancient Near Eastern History at the University of Chicago, explains how Christians were able to navigate the Iranian political world and how their identity as Christians did not necessarily preclude political participation in a thoroughly Zoroastrian empire. Payne is the author of "A State of Mixture: Christians, Zoroastrians, and Iranian Political Culture in Late Antiquity" (University of California Press, 2015), which won the AAR's 2016 Book Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the category of historical studies.

Francis J. Beckwith, professor of philosophy & church-state studies at Baylor University, discusses how we form complex beliefs and if the difference between the process of developing so-called religious beliefs and secular beliefs might be smaller than we think. Beckwith is the author of "Taking Rites Seriously: Law, Politics, and the Reasonableness of Faith" (Cambridge University Press, 2015). The book won the American Academy of Religion's 2016 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the category of constructive-reflective studies.

David A. Lambert talks to Religious Studies News about his book How Repentance Became Biblical: Judaism, Christianity, and the Interpretation of Scripture (Oxford University Press), which won the American Academy of Religion’s 2016 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in Textual Studies. Lambert's book "considers the development of repentance as a concept around the turn of the Common Era and how it came to be naturalized as an essential component of religion through a series of reading practices that allowed nascent Jewish and Christian communities to locate repentance in Scripture." Dr. Lambert is associate professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

In 1491, the king of the west central African kingdom of Kongo was baptized as a Christian by Portuguese missionaries, and in so doing, he ushered a unique and centuries-long relationship between the Kongo kingdom and European political and religious powers. Cécile Fromont, assistant professor of art history at the University of Chicago, describes the unique beliefs and material culture of Christianity that developed in the kingdom as a result of the transatlantic trade of goods and ideas. Cécile Fromont is the author of The Art of Conversion: Christian Visual Culture in the Kingdom of Kongo (UNC Press, published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2014), which won the AAR's 2015 Award for the Best First Book in the History of Religions.

What can study of the beliefs and practices of one tradition bring to bear on another? Michelle Voss Roberts, associate professor of theology at Wake Forest University's divinity school, discusses how ethnographic study of Indian and South Asian Hindu rituals and aesthetics can bring new theological space to explore Christian practice. Using the Indian framework of "rasa," loosely defined as emotion or taste, Roberts suggests that Christian scholars, theologians, and practitioners can reexamine and experience the Divine through mood and affect. Robert's 2014 book, "Tastes of the Divine: Hindu and Christian Theologies of Emotion" (Fordham University Press), won the American Academy of Religion's 2015 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion for constructive-reflective studies.

The 1991 publication of Karen McCarthy Brown’s “Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn,” now in its third edition, was a watershed contribution to the field of religious studies and became a perennial favorite among assigned textbooks. Brown’s exemplary ethnographic treatment of the religious practices of a Haitian immigrant humanized the adepts of this much-maligned African diaspora religion, and made social science methodology accessible to religious studies, a field theretofore dominated by (and still largely defined by) textual studies. Brown’s feminist scholarship valued women’s accounts of their religious practices and life experiences as data for research, and provided a self-reflexive interpretation of the relationships she established with field subjects who became her own religious family. The panelists reflect upon the influence of Karen McCarthy Brown’s scholarship on their own research and teaching, and how her work marked, and helped to produce, the “ethnographic turn” in the study of religion. Following their discussion, Brown's students and colleagues in the audience share candid memories of their beloved teacher and friend. Panelists: Jalane D. Schmidt, University of Virginia, Presiding Robert A. Orsi, Northwestern University Pamela Klassen, University of Toronto Aisha Beliso-De Jesus, Harvard University Claudine Michel, University of California, Santa Barbara with remarks by Linda E. Thomas, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago Charles Selengut, County College of Morris Dorothy Austin, Harvard University Diana L. Eck, Harvard University Ennis Edmonds, Kenyon College Jack Hawley, Barnard College The session was recorded at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion on November 22 in Atlanta, GA.

Scholar and filmmaker Ziba Mir-Hosseini, a specialist in Islamic law, gender and development and Professorial Research Associate at the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Law, University of London, is the recipient of the 2015 Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion. At the Marty Forum, Professor Mir-Hosseini will be interviewed by Diana L. Eck, Harvard University. The Marty Award recognizes extraordinary contributions to the public understanding of religion. Michael Kessler (Georgetown University) and Ayesha S. Chaudhry (University of British Columbia), Presiding

In this interview, Tariq Jaffer talks about the subject of his award-winning 2014 book, Razi: Master of Qur'anic Interpretation and Theological Reasoning. Razi (1148–1210), a post-classical scholar, solidified the rational method of interpretation and reasoning in the Islamic tradition. Jaffer's book won the 2015 American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the textual studies category.

A 2015 article in The Atlantic by Graeme Wood - "What ISIS Really Wants" – and the controversy it has given rise to, has brought once again to the fore questions about the kind of role scholars of religion can legitimately and usefully play in ‘defining’ religion in the public square. Wood, citing heavily the work of the Princeton Scholar of religion Bernard Haykel, is of the view that ISIS is Islamic, rooted in the textual tradition its supporters employ to authenticate their actions. In a response to this article, also in The Atlantic, Caner K. Dagli, associate professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross, is sharply critical of Wood, writing, "On what grounds do non-Muslim journalists and academics tell Muslims that their judgment that ISIS does not take a full and fair view of the Quran and Sunnah (the example and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad) amounts to a 'cotton-candy' view of Islam, while these non-Muslims retain the right to judge how 'serious' ISIS is in its understanding of core Islamic texts?" However, it is not just non-Muslim academics and journalists and their critics who are engaging in the formation of representations of what is and is not Islamic through different media channels (responses and counter responses to What ISIS Really Wants are being played out across new social media, Twitter, blogs etc). ISIS/ISIL itself makes use of social networking to also engage in a process of making a claim on what counts as Islam and Islamic. This is a very public strategy that has involved the production and the global dissemination of videos of beheadings as well as the use of Twitter and Facebook to apparently lure young Muslim women, including those from North America and Europe, to travel to the Middle East to join ISIS and engage in ‘radical’ ‘jihadist’ activities. This in turn has received no small amount of media interest and some emergent academic commentary from those wishing to document and better understanding the way that young women might be ‘radicalized’ in this way via new media. This panel brings together experts from both academia and journalism that have engaged with: 1) The recent controversies over the way in which ISIS/ISIL is represented in the public square by academics and journalists; and 2) How ISIS supporters represent ISIS via different forms of new social media, including the rising concern over the radicalization of young women. The panel session was recorded at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Atlanta, GA, November 21-24. Panelists: Kecia Ali, Boston University Caner Dagli, College of the Holy Cross Sohaira Siddiqi, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service Ayesha S. Chaudhry, University of British Columbia, presiding