Traditions and Trajectories
Buddhist-Christian Engagement In Post-War Korea: Arguments of Mobility
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Patrick Laude
The theological and spiritual engagements between Buddhists and Christians during the post Korean War period have been complex and paradoxical. On some external levels they have been characterized by a hardening of exclusive positions, on the other hand they have sometimes resulted in cross-fertilization. On an ideological level two key-concepts have been social progress on the Christian side and cultural tolerance on the Buddhist side. Converts to Christianity sometimes associated Buddhism with cultural “immobilism” and saw Christianity as more compatible with the movement of modernity. This has been in part connected to a particular interpretation of Christian “historicity” and also its association, in Asian imagination, with the Western ideas of progress. On a philosophical level, the various debates have often revolved around a reevaluation of Christianity in Asian terms, hence a Buddhist inspired critique of “substance” and “duality”, as exemplified by the later works of Kim Iryōp. This has not only been the case in Buddhist writings about Christianity, however, but also, interestingly, in some important segments of Christian theological reflections, like in Hee-Sung Keel’s works. In all cases both Christians and Buddhists have tended to rely on arguments connected to a sense of mobility, whether historical or philosophical. This paper explores this focus on “movement”, its underpinnings and its ambiguities.
Doping, Sports, and American Protestant Morality: Side-stepping the Ritual of Confession
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Annie Blazer
In the nineteenth century, Protestant reformers declared: Sport builds character. They described sport as ethically valuable and as an experiential tool to teach values and cooperation. However, sports have long raised ethical challenges when it comes to fairness in competition. This paper examines controversies over performance-enhancing drugs and pays attention to the rituals of confession at play for those caught doping. Nineteenth-century revivalist Charles Finney formalized a ritual practice that became known as the “anxious bench”. Finney would demand that a sinner sit on the bench, separated from others because of their sinfulness, and confess their sinful ways in order to re-devote themselves to God and goodness. Turning to steroid use in Major League Baseball and Lance Armstrong’s doping scandal, I consider how rituals of confession based on the anxious bench failed to redeem these athletes because the athletes themselves resisted the premise. Rituals of confession preserve an underlying ideology that sport is morally valuable. When these rituals fail, they reveal less noble structural motivations that lead to doping in the first place like monetary reward, intense pressure to perform, and the entertainment demands of elite sport.
Slavery, the Last Parables, and the Loss of Compassion for the Truly Disadvantaged View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mary Marcel
This paper discusses the parable of the Minas and the last judgement from the Gospels of Matthew in light of their connections to slavery, the social justice gospel of Jesus, and the loss of compassion for the poor and disadvantaged by Matthew and in the epistolary books of the New Testament. The tendency of centuries of commentators and interpreters to soften the Biblical language of slavery to voluntary servitude undercuts both the radical nature of Jesus's teachings and justifies a triumphalist rhetoric which has become aligned with the socially and politically powerful, rather than their victims.
The Triune Moira as a Philosophical Concept in Dmitrii Merezhkovskii’s Works
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Vladislav Ronzhin
Writer and religious thinker Dmitrii Merezhkovskii (1866–1941) addressed an image of the ancient personification of fate – Greek Moirai (Ancient Greek: μοῖραι) and Roman Parcae – throughout his entire oeuvre. The aim of this paper is to analyze his definition of the deity given in the critical essay ‘Calderon’ (1891): Moira is characterized as a beginningless and unknowable tripartite Being, in which the luminous multitude of Olympian gods disappears and resolves itself into a divine Unit. In the same place, ancient tragedy is defined as a liturgy in praise of the Fate, which rules worlds. Comparative analysis allows us to consider The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) by Friedrich Nietzsche, among others, as a main source of these definitions. It is proved that emphasizing the attributes of the Christian god while speculating about the essence of the pagan deity is an early manifestation of the Merezhkovskii’s concept of a "new religious consciousness", according to which the Third Testament Kingdom is a synthesis of paganism and Christianity.
