The College

Augustine famously believed fallen human sex to be inescapably bound up with sinful lust. In every sexual act, lust embodies both the sin of the fall (prideful idolatry) and that sin's consequences. John C. Cavadini has extended Augustine's conception of lust to include domination, and even violence. This leaves us with a disturbing question: is sex without violence possible? Building upon Jean-Luc Marion's distinction between idol and icon, this paper locates a solution to the problem of lust in Augustine's conception of friendship. Identifying the beloved as an icon of God entails relating to the beloved without lustful domination.

In Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars: Critical Explorations in the History of Religions, Lincoln’s “How to Read a Religious Text” is anchored in decades of work with mythological texts or canonical texts, the six points deployed have their origins in his prior work, Theorizing Myth (Lincoln 2012, 5-15; Lincoln 1999, 150-155). 1 The sections from the Chandogya Upaniʂds that Lincoln uses to illustrate his points thus, fall in line with a number of his selected examples over the course of his career, add to this the analysis of relatively discrete events. The essay will apply Lincoln’s six lines of inquiry to Sara J. Duncan’s Progressive Missions in the South and Addresses: With Illustrations and Sketches of Missionary Workers and Ministers and Bishop’s Wives (1906) to walk through of the utility, limits and necessary adaptations that surface when Lincoln’s categories are applied to other types of religious texts beyond myth and canon.

"Methodologies and Analytical Study of Religion

SBL and AAR  SORAAAD Pre-Conference workshop
Baltimore, Maryland
Friday, November 22, 1:00 - 5:00 p.m.


In its third year, SORAAAD will address a long over due need to focus on the methodologies with which the field observes and analyzes the range of activity that falls loosely within or overlaps with religious experiences or things deemed special and  social responses to and conflicts regarding things designated sacred. 1
SORAAAD will focus on the selection, design, and implementation of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, as well as responsible ways to use quantitative and qualitative research generated by other scholars outside of the study of religion.
SORAAAD’s Methodologies and the Analytical Study of Religion will be of particular interest for graduate students and established scholars who already enact social science and critical humanities research methodologies, who want to implement newer or different methodologies, or who need to integrate existing social science and critical humanities research outside of religion (Sociology, Anthropology, Cognitive Science, Critical and Social Theories) into their research design, data acquisition and analysis.

Part One: Methodologies and the Study of Religion will address the implementation of particular methodologies and techniques: Discourse Analysis, Free Listing, Structured Observation, Ethnography and Grounded Theory. Our speakers will include Steven Engler, Kocku von Stuckrad, Michael Stausberg and Jens Kreinath.

Part Two: Interdisciplinary Religious Research: Design, Implementation, and Collaboration will highlight the experience of integrating work on religion with social scientific methodologies such as fields experiments, GIS network analysis, cognitive science and Ethnography. With remarks from Ann Taves, our speakers will include: John Thibdeau, Michael Kinsella and Philip Deslippe

The suggested readings for each segment of the SORAAAD workshop will be, along with the presentations, the basis for discussion during each part of the workshop. Further readings are grounding points of reference for scholars new to a methodology or technique.
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The dissertation utilized conceptual history and discourse analysis to track social holiness and the "Richard Allen ethos" as found in the writings and activities of three African Methodist Episcopal (AME) women, Fanny Jackson-Coppin, Sara J. Duncan and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander and the two women's religious organizations within the AME, the Woman's Parent Mite Missionary Society (WPMMS) and the Women's Home and Foreign Missionary Society (WHFMS) from 1860-1970. As religious and civic leaders, through the WPMMS, the WHFMS, as teachers and through government service, their enactments of social holiness and the "Richard Allen ethos," in evidence in their respective work and writings were part of the religious and intellectual history of the mid-twentieth century civil rights movement.

An interview of Brad Stoddard and Craig Martin a year after the kick off of the Practicum: Critical Theory, Religion and Pedagogy June 29, 2015.
http://www.equinoxpub.com/blog/2015/06/better-get-to-know-practicum-critical-theory-religion-and-pedagogy/