Academy Of Religion Research Articles

In Search of Rules for a Critical Study of Religion

Abstract This article builds on critical engagements with a 2022 essay that appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. At the centre of this essay was a concern with the influence of ‘Critical Religion’ (CR) on the academic study of religion, including the idea that CR is crypto-normative, inconsistent when applying its critiques, is overly deconstructive, and is unable to address ethical claims. Taking issue with some of the arguments in this essay, this article aims to push the conversation in a different direction by asking, are their rules for a critical study of religion? If so, then what do various ‘critical’ camps share in common? Where do they differ, and what kind of work is being done to move beyond some of these impasses today?

Publishing in Scholarly Journals

In The Archive, we republish an article that, in hindsight, may have been ahead of its time with its prescience. Our pull for this issue is a 1984 piece by Robert P. Scharlemann. In this paper Scharlemann, the former editor of The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, lends his experience—from being on both sides of the journal publishing divide—to Religious Studies colleagues who are newer to the field.

Practicing Reflexivity at the American Academy of Religion

Practicing Reflexivity at the American Academy of Religion

Critical Race and Religion

Laura McTighe (2020, 299) argues in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion that “Religious Studies has a race problem.” I strongly agree with this argument: not only does the field largely ignore issues of race in its examination of cultural and religious differences, but also the field itself was formed and developed (largely over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) in the context of British, continental European, and American colonialism. That is, the field of religious studies has in particular a whiteness problem. In short, the study of religion has the issue of race and racialization at its centre—and thus any attempt to explore issues of critical religion should also embrace critical race theory in all its forms. Drawing on writers such as Sara Ahmed, Aime Cesaire, Angela Y Davis, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Toni Morrison, I will examine some of the contours of what a “Critical Race and Religion” approach may contribute to a decolonized study of religion—including a strong critique of the underlying issues of whiteness (and white supremacy) within the contemporary field.

Decolonizing Religious Studies

Knowing that the working scholar cannot be everywhere at once, The Conference fills in readers on what they may have missed from various academic gatherings. In this issue, we are pleased to share a panel discussion from the 2022 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Denver, Colorado. On behalf of the Academic Relations Committee, Peter Valdina (Albion College) moderated a conversation on decolonization and the academic study of religion. The panel brought Bulletin Editor Richard Newton (University of Alabama), Natalie Avalos (University of Colorado) together to discuss the matter from their research expertise in this area. Also participating in the discussion was Jessica Albrecht, PhD. candidate at the University of Heidelberg, among other scholars.

Doing What, by Whom, for Whom and How?: An Essay on Interests, Modes, Methods and Other Dynamics in “Theology” and/or “Religious Studies”

The essay begins with a methodological exploration of aspects of the continuing contested relationship between modes of engaging in the study of religion, which are often described in English as “Theology” or “Religious Studies” and more sharply differentiated in the German language as Theologie and Religionswissenschaft. By reference to the example of some of the conflicts that emerged around the formation of the European Academy of Religion, the essay shows how these two modes can solidify into opposing scholarly camps. While acknowledging the economic pragmatics that can come to the fore in institutional settings, it notes that the primacy of “Theology” was rooted in a Christendom social, religious and legal inheritance, while the emergence of Religious Studies and Religionswissenschaft represented an Enlightenment aspiration towards freedom from such. However, the purpose of this essay is neither to take sides between these broad camps, nor to argue that the differences between them are unimportant. Rather, it is centrally concerned with critiquing both modes for having too often proceeded without a sufficiently self-conscious embrace of the contextual impact upon them of social, political and economic frameworks, interests and/or the individual positionalities taken in relation to these. To support its arguments, the essay deploys aspects of the theological and socio-political legacies of the Czech and German theologians Josef Hromádka and Dorothee Soelle, alongside methodological insights and arguments from the British Religious Studies scholars Richard King and Malory Nye. In conclusion, drawing on Ninian Smart’s call for “axioanalysis” in the study of religion, the essay sets out a series of questions to both “Theology” and/or “Religious Studies” which it posits could help to facilitate an important and needed transformation in both “Theology” and “Religious Studies”. Within such a transformation, if socio-political contextuality and positionality are embraced and embedded as necessary (but not exhaustive or exclusive) for both critical and constructive scholarship in “Theology” and “Religious Studies”, then an “engaged” approach to the study of religion might prove able to facilitate a fruitful “shared borderland” between the “hinterland territories” claimed by these otherwise often broadly differential modes of study.

Theorizing Awkwardness, with Style, in the Study of Religion: A Forum on Dana W. Logan’s Awkward Rituals (2022)

Abstract The 2022 meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Denver featured a book panel on Dana W. Logan’s Awkward Rituals: Sensations of Governance in Protestant America (University of Chicago Press, 2022). This essay introduces a forum based on the panel, featuring four scholars representing diverse subfields in religious studies: Ian MacCormack, Charles McCrary, Constance Furey, and Marko Geslani. It argues that Awkward Rituals, though embedded in ritual studies and the historiography of American religion, is a generative theoretical text for many areas of inquiry in the wider study of religion: the disjunctures and incoherences in religions; the practical applications of a mind/body dualism; the uses of the personal experiences of the scholar; and the endurance of comparison as a method.

Analytic Theology and the Academic Study of Religion, By William Wood

Journal Article Analytic Theology and the Academic Study of Religion. By William Wood Get access Analytic Theology and the Academic Study of Religion By William Wood Oxford University Press, 2021. 352 pages. $100 (hardcover), $99.99 (e-book). Ryan Darr Ryan Darr Yale University ryan.darr@yale.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, lfac056, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfac056 Published: 30 May 2023

Northrop Frye, C. G. Jung, and the Grand Scheme of Things: Mapping the Psycho-Mythical Cosmos

Northrop Frye and C. G. Jung both attempted to summarize their respective life’s work in the form of a grand diagram. Remarkably, these two diagrams are virtually identical in both form and content, and they seem to have been formulated independently. Both diagrams take the dual form of an axis mundi with four segments and a circle with four quadrants, and both are defined using the Eastern concept of the mandala. The diagrams attempt to map the development of the Western psyche (Jung) and its expression in myth and literature (Frye) over some two thousand years of the common era. While the scope of these schemas offers a stunning panorama, at their heart are four religious symbols. Frye, following biblical symbolism, called them (1) the Mountain, (2) the Garden, (3) the Cave, and (4) the Furnace. Jung, following certain Gnostic sources, called them (1) Anthropos, (2) Shadow, (3) Paradise, and (4) Lapis. We will journey through this fourfold kaleidoscope and conclude with some reflections on the narrowing of horizons in the contemporary academy of religion. Our current methods, and the objects they reveal, have become largely restricted to only one quadrant in this grand schema: the fourth quadrant, which saw the rise of modern scientific thinking. By using a subordinate category (modern science) to try to understand a superordinate category (religion), it is not surprising that our discipline has lost its way.

Introduction

Introduction Eric Bain-Selbo More than a decade ago, a relatively small group of scholars worked with Mercer University Press to launch the International Journal of Religion and Sport. The co-editors at the time were Christopher J. Anderson and Gordon Marino. The plan was to publish just once a year. But after that first volume in 2009, it was another four years before another volume was published. The co-editors for that volume were Eric Bain-Selbo and Andrew Parker. That volume was the last one published. Despite the good work of everyone involved, it just may not have been the right time for the journal. So, what’s different now? Just in the decade since the last volume of the journal, incredible strides have been made in the study of sport and religion. There now is a regular session on “Religion, Sport, and Play” at the American Academy of Religion. Springer launched a monograph series in religion and sport. Dozens of books have appeared and more and more young scholars are working on research in this area. So, when Terry Shoemaker and I were contacted by Catholic University of America Press about reviving the journal (with a slight name change), we not only agreed to serve as co-editors, we agreed enthusiastically and with confidence. The field of sport and religion has grown so significantly that we are confident that a journal can not only survive but can thrive. It is with that enthusiasm and confidence that we share this first issue with you. With this first issue, we thought it would be appropriate to have scholars in the field reflect on our history, the current state of scholarship, and where we might go in the future. These relatively short but very rich pieces accomplish several goals. First, they document much of the history of this area of study and memorialize some of the key figures in its development. Second, they provide some critical assessment of the scholarship happening today. And, third, they provide valuable insights as to where scholars can take (or should take) their research in the future. [End Page 1] A feature of every issue of the journal will be “Current Issues Conversations.” We will be bringing together a number of scholars, athletes, fans, and others in the sports industries for focused panels on pressing issues in the area of sport and religion. We kick off this special section of the journal with a panel discussion of the controversial Kennedy v. Bremerton School District case that was decided by the Supreme Court in June 2022. We hope that these discussions help readers expand their knowledge about important current issues and think more critically about a host of issues related to sport and religion. Finally, we’re taking the standard book review section and expanding it to a Book and Media Review section. This expansion will allow us to continue publishing book reviews, but also provides scholars with an opportunity to review relevant video games, television shows, documentaries, and movies. Interested in doing a review? Please let us know. As we move forward with the journal, we hope readers will reach out to us to provide feedback about the journal. And, of course, we are always interested in your scholarship. Please let us know if you have a completed article, something in the works, or just an initial idea for which you would like our feedback. [End Page 2] Copyright © 2023 The Catholic University of America Press

Sport and Religion: The State of the Field

Sport and Religion: The State of the Field Rebecca Alpert My own interest in the field of Religion and Sport began when I read the interview I did for Bill Freedman’s 1998 More Than a Pastime: An Oral History of Baseball Fans. Most of my reminiscences were about my childhood connection to the Brooklyn Dodgers. I talked about why Jackie Robinson’s breaking the color line was central to the development of my progressive political values, and how those values had been shaped by growing up in the Jewish community in Brooklyn in the 1950s. Thinking about that connection made me curious about why I automatically associated baseball and being Jewish. So I began to do some research about Jews in baseball. A key moment in that process was attending a panel on the edited volume The Faith of Fifty Million: Baseball, Religion, and American Culture at the American Academy of Religion in 2002. It was sponsored by the Religion and Popular Culture Group and featured panelists Randall Balmer, Donna Bowman, and Joseph Price, with responses from the editors, Christopher Evans and William R. Herzog II. While sitting in the audience it occurred to me (and a couple of Jewish sports fans who sat with me) that the absence of a discussion of Jewish contributions to baseball was a glaring omission. There wasn’t even an acknowledgement that Meyer Wolfschein, the fictional character to whom F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby) was alluding in that famous quotation about playing with the faith of fifty million, was modeled on the Jewish gambler Arnold Rothstein. And more, there wasn’t any reference to the antisemitism that erroneously blamed the 1919 Black Sox scandal on Jewish interference. Bringing Jewish concerns into that conversation seemed like an important contribution to make. I began to write about baseball and Jewish identity and became involved with groups like Jewish Major Leaguers and the [End Page 3] Society for American Baseball Research. In those spaces I met people who welcomed my musings about Jews and baseball and helped me with research questions. I gave papers on Jewish themes at a variety of baseball conferences and published them in Jewish and baseball journals. I became acquainted with the works of Jeffrey Gurock and Steven Riess who had been writing about the history of Jews and sports. The questions I was asking eventually led me to work on my own monograph, Out of Left Field: Jews in Black Baseball, that was published in 2011. In the process I became more curious about the broader context of religion and sports—were Jews always left out of the conversation? I started reading, beginning with Michael Novak’s classic 1976 work, The Joy of Sports: Endzones, Bases, Baskets, Balls, and the Consecration of the American Spirit. I read works by Allen Guttman, Robert Higgs, Joe Price, Tara Magdalinski and Timothy Chandler, Charles Prebish, and Clifford Putney. This was a rapidly developing field. Was there a way to bring these voices together and broaden the conversation to include Jewish voices too? Trolling through the program book of the American Academy of Religion in 2006, I noticed an additional meeting, “Forum on Sports and Religion.” It was described as a place where: Writers and researchers on the relationship of sports and religion meet to discuss their books, works-in-progress, and current research. All are welcome to join the general discussion about this relatively new area of cultural and religious studies. (AAR Program Book, Additional Meetings 2006, 44) Panelists included Joe Price, Eric Bain-Selbo, and editors from Mercer University Press, the sponsor of the meeting and publisher of a book series on sports and religion responsible for several of the works listed above. I was intrigued and attended the session. I joined them again in 2007 for conversations focused on football, in 2008 on the Chicago Cubs, and on sports films in 2009. By then the field had begun to explode, featuring new works by Craig Forney, Joe Price, Eric Bain-Selbo, William Baker, Steve Overman, Robert Higgs and Michael Braswell that explored the intersection of sports and religion and engaged in a debate over whether sports could be considered a religion...

Children and Family in Late Antique Egyptian Monasticism by Caroline T. Schroeder

Reviewed by: Children and Family in Late Antique Egyptian Monasticism by Caroline T. Schroeder Arietta Papaconstantinou Children and Family in Late Antique Egyptian Monasticism Caroline T. Schroeder Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xiii + 255. ISBN 9781107156876 When in 2006 Alice-Mary Talbot and I organized a conference on late antique and Byzantine childhood at Dumbarton Oaks, we felt we were venturing into new territory. In the fifteen years following that conference, the field has seen a spectacular rise in interest for all aspects of childhood in the broader late antique and Byzantine world. Caroline Schroeder's book is one of the most sophisticated products of this surge, both in its overall approach to the subject and in its nuanced and balanced discussions. Schroeder tackles a favorite of research on medieval childhood: the uneasy relationship between children and monasteries. This has not yet been studied comprehensively for the eastern Mediterranean, and this book, focused more specifically on late antique Egypt, makes an important first step in that direction. After an introduction defining the concept of "child" as used in the book and discussing the broader issue of how cultural norms can affect the way we study the subject, the first section, "Finding children," surveys a very broad array of sources, from monastic to visual to documentary (Chapter 1: "Documenting the Undocumented: Children in the Earliest Egyptian Monasteries"), and discusses the vocabulary of childhood and its ambiguities (Chapter 2: "The Language of Childhood"). Paradoxically, however, the second chapter undermines the first: the constant uncertainty regarding what exactly is being referred to by the various possible words for "child" does not support the argument that children's presence in monasteries was common and important. Neither does it invalidate it, of course, but the interpretation of most of the texts used is far from univocal. The second section, "Representations," is on much firmer ground, because it discusses literary themes about children. Each of the three chapters is based on a previously published article, and despite being self-standing studies, they combine to offer an excellent analysis of the thought-world of monastic writers and the literary uses to which they put children. Chapter 3, "Homoeroticism, Children, and the Making of Monks" (based on a 2009 publication, "Queer Eye for the Ascetic Guy? Homoeroticism, Children, and the Making of Monks in Late Antique Egypt" in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion 77: 333–47), treats the vexed issue of the sexualization of young boys in male monasteries. The undeniable grim reality underlying monastic literary [End Page 249] obsessions about young boys is difficult to access through texts that primarily express the sexual anxieties of monks. For the monks, they probably functioned similarly to texts about eunuchs or imaginary disguised women in their midst. Chapter 4, "Child sacrifice: from familial renunciation to Jephthah's lost daughter" (originally from 2012, "Child Sacrifice in Egyptian Monastic Culture: From Familial Renunciation to Jephthah's Lost Daughter" in the Journal of Early Christian Studies 20: 269–302), brings together topics as disparate as the killing of children and the renunciation of family affection. Schroeder shows how these hang together in a web of holy hierarchies, where obedience to God—and the line of authority figures representing him—trumps any bond within the biological family. She explores the complex intertextual relations between monastic stories and biblical models and the symbolic power of a practice that went against cultural norms. Biblical models like Jephtah and Abraham undeniably underlie such stories, but sacrificing one's child for a superior cause was also a Homeric theme and certainly familiar to monks with a Greek education. The final chapter in this section, chapter 5: "Monastic Family Values: The Healing of Children" (rooted in a 2011 publication, "Monastic Family Values: The Healing of Children in Late Antique Egypt" in Coptica 10: 21–28), discusses healing in both the literal and the symbolic sense—in other words, both biological and spiritual cures. Schroeder argues that the monastery thus took on the role of the household by providing care and moral education to the children. Although the monks' healing powers were ascribed to faith and asceticism, it seems inmates sometimes had medical expertise...

Holiness and Pentecostal Movements: Intertwined Pasts, Presents, and Futures

This volume is the first in a new Penn State University Press book series Studies in the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements, which has its origins in an ongoing joint session of the Manchester Wesley Research Centre and the Pentecostal Theological Seminary that began at the American Academy of Religion in 2018 with a focus on exploring the intersections between the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements. The introduction to the book gives some of the background to that exploration and presents a potted history, highlighting the pioneering work of those looking to build closer academic relationships between Pentecostal and Wesleyan scholars, which does not always make comfortable reading for those of us in the latter camp. Here some more detail would have been helpful at times to better understand acts of seeming intransigence: why, for example did the Executive Committee of the Wesleyan Theological Society discontinue joint meetings with the Society for Pentecostal Studies in 2020 without even allowing a discussion? (11)The rest of the book is divided into three sections, the first offering perspectives on the beginnings of the emergence of Pentecostalism from the Holiness Movement toward the end of the nineteenth century, beginning with the role of God’s Bible School in the education of early Holiness and Pentecostal leaders explored by David Bundy. Of particular interest to British readers is Kimberly Ervin Alexander’s assessment of the Wesleyan roots of British Pentecostalism in the ministry of Alexander A. Boddy, the Anglican vicar who founded the Pentecostal Missionary Union. The chapter highlights Boddy’s intriguing descendance from Mary Vazeille, a fact Boddy spoke proudly of at a bicentenary celebration of his great-great-great-step-grandfather, where he expressed a feeling of ‘much sympathy with the Methodists’ (77). Alexander rightly highlights the importance of Boddy’s geographical location in Sunderland, where from 1908 until 1914 he hosted an annual convention. She does, however, misjudge the source of Wesleyan and Holiness influences on the area: Lorenzo Dow visited neither here nor Manchester, where Boddy grew up (77) but the influence of James Caughey’s visit to Sunderland in the 1840s and especially Phoebe Palmer’s hugely successful campaign in the town in November 1859 are much more likely to have had lasting impacts. Alexander, though, does offer a much needed and perceptive study of Boddy, a vital British link between the Wesleyan Holiness Movement and Pentecostalism. Here lies one of the strengths of the book, in revaluating the contribution of neglected figures in the development of Holiness and Pentecostal theology and praxis.The second section of the book looks at the unity and diversity of the Holiness and Pentecostal movements as they developed. Daniel Woods gives a captivating account of the role of the railroad between 1880 and 1920, both as a theological metaphor for salvation typified in gospel songs such as This Train Is Bound for Glory and as a practical method of transport for preaching the gospel and establishing new ecclesial communities. As well as rescuing key figures from relative obscurity, the strongest essays in the collection also offer new interpretive tools with which to view them, as when Cheryl Sanders makes imaginative and perceptive use of the lenses of the Womanist perspective offered by Alice Walker and the insights of H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture to evaluate the contribution of Black Radical Holiness women like Amanda Berry Smith, Mother Lizzy Robertson, and Mother Lilian Brookes Coffey.The concluding section of the volume offers some theological perspectives and begins with Frank Macchia’s reflection on the role of Christ as Spirit baptizer in Luke 3:16–17 and its relevance for Holiness and Pentecostal views of the atonement. The collection concludes where it began: in the academy, with an exploration of the importance of the work of the Cleveland School of Pentecostal scholars, which emerged from the Church of God Theological Seminary in Tennessee.This is a rich and fascinating collection of essays that offers a variety of historical and theological insights, the fruit of closer academic cooperation between two traditions with deep Wesleyan roots to the benefit of both. Along with the other planned volumes in the Penn State series, it is a hopeful sign that the sometime tendency toward isolationism described in the book’s introduction may become a thing of the past.

Symposium on Harold Netland’s Religious Experience and the Knowledge of God

At the 2022 national meeting of the American Academy of Religion, the Evangelical Philosophical Society sponsored an exchange between Harold Netland, Jim Beilby, Doug Geivett, and Dolores Morris around Netland’s 2022 book, Religious Experience and the Knowledge of God. I briefly orient readers to the resulting Philosophia Christi symposium by saying a few words introducing Harold Netland and some key themes in his argument that a “critical trust” approach to religious experience offers modest—but significant—epistemic support for Christian belief and practice.

Hindutva 2.0: How a Conference on Hindu Nationalism Launches a Change in Strategy for North American Hindutva Organizations

Journal Article Roundtable on Hindutva Harassment of Academics in North America: Hindutva 2.0: How a Conference on Hindu Nationalism Launches a Change in Strategy for North American Hindutva Organizations Get access Dheepa Sundaram Dheepa Sundaram Department of Religious Studies, University of Denver, 2000 E. Asbury Avenue, Denver CO 80208, USA Email: dheepa.sundaram@du.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, lfad028, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfad028 Published: 23 June 2023

Through the Bone and Marrow: Re-Examining Theological Encounters with Dance in Medieval Europe, By Laura Hellsten

Journal Article Through the Bone and Marrow: Re-Examining Theological Encounters with Dance in Medieval Europe, By Laura Hellsten Get access Through the Bone and Marrow: Re-Examining Theological Encounters with Dance in Medieval Europe By Laura Hellsten Brepols, 2021. 372 pages. $98.00 (paperback). Kathryn Dickason Kathryn Dickason Simmons University dickason@alumni.stanford.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, lfad018, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfad018 Published: 07 June 2023

Leaving Iberia: Islamic Law and Christian Conquest in North West Africa, By Jocelyn Hendrickson

Journal Article Leaving Iberia: Islamic Law and Christian Conquest in North West Africa, By Jocelyn Hendrickson Get access Leaving Iberia: Islamic Law and Christian Conquest in North West Africa By Jocelyn Hendrickson Harvard University Press, 2021. 424 pages. $50.00 (hardcover). Ariela Marcus-Sells Ariela Marcus-Sells Elon University amarcussells@elon.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, lfad009, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfad009 Published: 07 June 2023

Taking “Religion” Seriously: Essays on the Discursive Study of Religion, By Teemu Taira

Journal Article Taking “Religion” Seriously: Essays on the Discursive Study of Religion, By Teemu Taira Get access Taking “Religion” Seriously: Essays on the Discursive Study of Religion By Teemu Taira Brill, 2022. 215 pages. $119.00 (hardcover), $123.00 (e-book). Gabriel Levy Gabriel Levy Norwegian University of Science and Technology gabriel.levy@ntnu.no Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, lfad017, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfad017 Published: 17 June 2023

Professor of Apocalypse: The Many Lives of Jacob Taubes. By Jerry Z. Muller

Journal Article Professor of Apocalypse: The Many Lives of Jacob Taubes. By Jerry Z. Muller Get access Professor of Apocalypse: The Many Lives of Jacob Taubes By Jerry Z. Muller Princeton University Press, 2022. 637 + viii pages. $39.95 (hardcover). Jeffrey A Bernstein Jeffrey A Bernstein College of the Holy Cross jbernste@holycross.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, lfad010, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfad010 Published: 14 June 2023

Christianity, Race, and Sport, By Jeffrey Scholes

Journal Article Christianity, Race, and Sport, By Jeffrey Scholes Get access Christianity, Race, and Sport By Jeffrey Scholes Routledge, 2021. 132 pages. $160.00 (hardcover), $42.95 (paperback). Rebecca Alpert Rebecca Alpert Temple University ralpert@temple.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, lfad020, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfad020 Published: 07 June 2023