Call for Papers
Conference Date: December 4-5, 2017
Location: Queens College, Flushing, New York
Keynote Speakers: Tamara Cohn Eskenazi (Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institution of Religion), J. Kameron Carter (Duke Divinity School), Mohammad Hassan Khalil (Michigan State University).
In Genesis 18, Abraham goes out of his way to provide for the three strangers who appeared at Mamre: he attended to them much like he might have attended to God himself. This gesture of hospitality betrays the same kindness and humanity that Abraham would later show in pleading with God on behalf of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is thus profoundly ironic that, of all the world religions, the three traditions that trace back to the figure of Abraham—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—have struggled the most with the ethical challenge posed by the stranger. All three faiths have at some point shown themselves “allergic” to otherness, to use a Levinasian expression, whether this otherness is embodied in people of other faiths, or in members within the faith who have refused or failed to abide by an enclosed system of beliefs and dogmas. One wonders, then, whether this distrust of the stranger that has played out in these three major religions does not constitute a departure from the original impulse of the Abrahamic journey of faith. To miss the central place given to the stranger within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam might then arguably amount to missing the essential message of these three faiths.
The purpose of this conference is to provide a forum for scholars across the disciplines to discuss and debate the significance of this original impulse embodied in Abraham, particularly vis-à-vis the divisive and exclusionary impulses that otherwise get played out in both the historical and contemporary manifestations of the three Abrahamic faiths. We are interested in papers that show how the welcoming of the stranger constitutes the very essence and original impulse of Judaism, Christianity and/or Islam, and this, on the sole basis of their respective scriptures, the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Quran.
Possible paper topics could include:
- To the extent that we acknowledge the divisive and exclusionary impulses within the Abrahamic religions, what new approaches to the study and interpretation of the Abrahamic Scriptures might help us counteract those impulses?
- How is hospitality towards the stranger essential to and not merely a contingent byproduct of the Jewish, Christian or Muslim faiths?
- What hermeneutic or analytic resources can we mine from the Abrahamic Scriptures that can help us examine and address racism and racial prejudice?
- How can we come to a renewed understanding of the significance/role of women in the three Abrahamic scriptures?
- How might the Jewish, Christian, or Muslim scriptures provide new approaches to probing or addressing the challenges posed by LGBTQ individuals to religious communities?
- How can we read the stance towards the infidel/unbeliever/heretic in the Jewish, Christian, or Muslim scriptures in more nuanced ways?
- What might a stranger-friendly hermeneutical approach look like and how might it be argued for?
- How can the challenge of welcoming the other qua other inform or transform our pedagogies, or the ways in which we engage one another as scholars?
- How can acknowledging and inhabiting our own status as strangers (e.g., as Biblical scholars in secular institutions) help us better understand the ethical challenge posed by the stranger?
Submission Guidelines:
Paper abstracts of up to 300 words should be submitted by August 25th, 2017 to revisitingmamre@gmail.com. Paper length should not exceed 10 pages, double-spaced, or 3000 words. Notice of acceptance will be sent by September 11th, 2017.
How is it that religion turns into a repository of hate? i read recently of an Imam in Denmark crying out for the death of Jews! Why???
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Great question.
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Psychology Today has an article on topic:
A Common Humanity — Or A Different Species?
Palestinian suicide bombers blowing up Jewish shoppers, Sunni insurgents killing Shia police, Christian fundamentalists murdering abortion doctors, Hindu mobs attacking worshippers at Muslim shrines . . . . So much of the intolerance and hatred in the world seems to spring from religious differences.
And yet religions give us the largest possible overview of mankind. They focus on our relationship with the god who created us, or the ultimate reality that lies behind all appearances. They ask of us to think about our lives from the perspective of eternity.
A story today in The New York Times tells about the Golden Temple, the holiest Sikh shrine, where members of different religions come together to prepare free meals that are available to all. Somehow, they leave behind their antagonisms, work together and eat together in a remarkable enterprise, going back to the sixteenth century, that serves up to 80,000 people a day.
Many Hindus at the shrine’s kitchen are able to suspend awareness of the rigid differences of their caste system. They prepare food, clean floors, and join in with others with whom social interaction is normally proscribed.
According to The Times: “Ashok Kumar, a Hindu who used to be a bookbinder, has been coming to the kitchen for the past five years – all day, almost every day – to work as a volunteer. ‘It is my service,’ he explained, after reluctantly taking a very brief break from his syncopated tray sorting.
“‘I feel happy here,’ he said when asked why he had given up his old life. Indians of all faiths come here to find a measure of peace largely unavailable in the cacophony of the nation’s 1.2 billion people.” (See, “A Sikh Temple Where All May Eat, and Pitch In.”)
The achievement is extraordinary but the idea is quite simple: this “service” gives them the chance of feel their connection with others. The basic function of feeding links them together in a common human activity based in a universal need. Religion can bring people together in this way.
On the other hand, it can also divide. It can split the human species into those believers who have truth, who have the proper genes, who obey the correct laws or subscribe to the right doctrine — and those apostates who do not deserve to live. The others, losing their humanity, no longer matter. Their death is no loss.
It’s not about God so much as it is about being human. The ability to feel one’s common humanity is not exclusive to religion. And, of course, hatred and contempt to not require sectarian differences and religious conflict to thrive.
But the sense of belonging to a common species is one of the crucial ideas at the heart of religion. It is what we celebrate together, when we do. And what we suffer from, when we don’t.
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Another source here.
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Here is another: http://www.alternet.org/hating-other-religions-fundamental-religion
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What do you think, nebulaflash?
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