Vol. 26
No.1
Winter 2003
This issue is also available in Adobe Acrobat format.
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| CALL for PAPERS | AAR Annual Meeting, November 22-25, 2003, Atlanta, Georgia We invite papers addressing: 1. Psyche, soul, and self (teasing out the definitions, implications, and relationships of these categories) 2. Practicing theory and theorizing practice (personal accounts of achieving this vital balance in healing, teaching, preaching, etc.) 3. Psyche in film. Papers on all these topics may include theoretical, therapeutic, theological, or other perspectives. We also welcome papers on other themes dealing with person, culture, and religion. More information is on our PCR website, including a link to the AAR Annual Meeting pages. The deadline for proposals, participant forms,
and abstracts is March 1, 2003. Don't forget PCR pre-sessions Nov. 21-22 As you make your plans for the AAR Annual meeting in Atlanta, don't forget that the Person, Culture & Religion group will hold special sessions on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, November 21-22. These sessions are planned to allow for more experimental and participatory formats and include the "Works in Progress" and business sessions. We also invite you to join us for dinner together on Friday evening. More details will come your way as we get closer to the Annual Meeting. |
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| At the 2002 AAR Meeting in Toronto several changes were made to the PCR steering committee. Finishing their terms as co-chairs were Franz Metcalf and Kelley Raab—many thanks to them for their three years of service! Taking over from them as the new co-chair team are steering committee members Kathleen Bishop and Pamela Cooper-White. In order to comply with AAR regulations regarding term limits for Steering Committee members, Kelly Bulkeley (Secretary and PCR News editor) and D. Andrew Kille (Webmaster, e-mail group moderator and News layout) are moving to "ongoing support" status. And joining the SC are two brand new members: Felicity Kelcourse and Peter Savastano. By way of introduction to the two new SC members, here is a brief description of their backgrounds: Felicity Kelcourse is Assistant Professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling and Director of Training in Pastoral Psychotherapy at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. She is also a pastoral psychotherapist in private practice, beginning in New York City where she trained at Blanton-Peale Graduate Institute and did her doctoral work with Ann Ulanov at Union Theological Seminary. Her multi-cultural experience includes seven years living overseas in Paris, London and Jamaica, W.I. She has published articles in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, The Journal of Religion and Health, Encounter, Chaplaincy Today and The Living Pulpit. Her chapter "Discernment: the Soul's Eye View" appears in Out of the Silence: Quakers on Pastoral Care and Counseling, edited by Bill Ratliff (2001) and the book she has edited for Chalice Press, Human Development and Faith is due to appear in November 2003. A recorded Quaker minister, Fellow in the American Association of Pastoral Counseling, Clinical Member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy and a licensed Mental Health Counselor, she enjoys gardening and family life with her husband, 11 year old daughter and two cats. Peter Savastano received his Ph.D. in Religion and Society from Drew University in May 2002. Currently (spring semester 2003), he is Full-time Adjunct Instructor in Urban Ministries at Drew University's Theological and Graduate Schools in Madison, New Jersey. For many years Peter has been involved in the Gay Men's Issues in Religion Group of the AAR and, more recently, the Gay and Lesbian Scholar/Activist interest group. His primary discipline is anthropology, though he is multidisciplinary drawing upon Theology and Religious Studies, History, and Symbolic/Psychoanalytic Anthropology. During the course of his graduate studies, Peter specialized in issues of sexuality, gender, race, the human body and their intersection/clash with religion, primarily within Christianity, and most especially the Catholic traditions (Roman, Anglo, and Eastern Orthodox). However, Peter is not limited to those traditions. He possesses a lively interest in, and active engagement with, the Christian/Buddhist/Hindu dialogue and the practice of intraspirituality. Peter is also profoundly interested in hagiography and the application of queer theory to the lives and practices of Christian saints, mystics, heretics, and apostates. His other interests include: the role of the human body in religious practice; religious material culture; religious symbols and their use; and the innovative and transgressive uses of devotional practice, mystical texts and manuals, public and private rituals, by the marginalized and disenfranchised, in order to resist sexual, theological, doctrinal hegemony and religious authority of any kind. Peter's work is rooted in ethnography and qualitative research. |
| Kirk Bingaman (San Francisco Theological Seminary) has published Freud and Faith: Living in the Tension, with SUNY Press. The book, which builds on the work of Paul Ricoeur, Ana-Maria Rizzuto, and Judith Van Herik, makes the case that it is possible and even advantageous for believers to hold their religious faith in dialectical tension with psychoanalysis. He has also contributed a chapter ("Teaching Freud in the Seminary") to the edited volume, Teaching Freud (Edited by Diane Jonte-Pace, Oxford University Press), which is in the "AAR Teaching Religious Studies" series. Last year, his article, "Pastoral Counseling in an Age of Narcissism," was published by The American Journal of Pastoral Counseling. This article originated as a paper presented to the PCR group at the 2000 AAR meeting in Nashville. Douglas Whitcher (C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich) reports "I have been very busy with my psychotherapy practice and with leading up a regional association of psychotherapists who actively network with everyone in the area providing psychological and psychiatric care. This has been a very rewarding project, bringing therapists out of their school-identities in order to meet the practical needs of the many persons who desperately need help but don't necessarily find it on their own. Our website is www.psychotherapiewinterthur.ch. It is in German." Douglas has also been translating the Jung Institute of Zurich's homepage: www.junginstitut.ch. Schuyler Brown (University of Toronto) recently gave a lecture to the Guild of Pastoral Psychology in London on the topic of "The Bible and the Alchemy of Language." Catherine Roach (University of Alabama) notes that she has a book coming out in January of 2003 from Indiana University Press titled Mother/Nature: Popular Culture and Environmental Ethics. It draws heavily on Kleinian Object-Relations theory and ecopsychology, as well as Christian theology and ecofeminism. Jack Hanford (Ferris State University) is writing the entry on "Methodism" for the Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices. He invites any comments or information about the distinctiveness of Methodism. (jhan1722@tucker-usa.com). Kelley Raab (St. Lawrence University) calls to our attention a conference in Amsterdam in May called "One Hundred Years of Psychology and Religion." More information can be found at www.scw.vu.nl/amsterdam2003. D. Andrew Kille (San Jose, California)
will be teaching Holocaust Studies and Critical Thinking in High
Schools in Santa Clara County this Spring. "It's giving me
an opportunity to reflect more deeply on the social and psychological
dynamics of prejudice and hatred. With all the events unfolding
in this country since 9/11 it's both a really exciting and a really
terrifying time to be doing this. We try to help students make connections
between what happened in Germany and what continues to happen in
their daily lives." |
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| IN MEMORIAM: Dan Noel |
Long-time PCR member Dan Noel passed away in August of last year. A scholar of myth, depth psychology, and cultural criticism at the Pacifica Graduate Institute in California, Dan was a regular at the PCR presessions and a consistent contributor of news, insights, and observations for the PCR newsletter. Several people noticed his absence from this year's Toronto AAR Meeting, and everyone was surprised and saddened by the news of his death. A moving dedication to Dan written by one of his colleagues can be found at www.mythologicalmovieclub.com. |
| Ronald Weatherford, a United Methodist minister and author of Somebody's Knocking at your Door: AIDS nd the African-American Church, is compiling an anthology tentatively entitled Sermons on Health and Healing. He invites pastors, seminarians and evangelists to submit sermons for consideration. Possible topics include: addiction, cancer, chronic pain, diabetes, depression, domestic abuse, exercise/fitness, hospice/end-of-life issues, hypertension, living wills, mental illness, mental retardation, miscarriage, obesity/diet/nutrition, prayer and healing, smoking, stress, and surgery. Sermon length should range from 1,000 to 1,500 words (four to six double-spaced, typewritten pages). Include your name, address, phone number, email address and church affiliation on the first page of the sermon. If you would like for your sermon to be returned, enclose a self-addressed envelope with sufficient postage. Allow six months for notification of acceptance. Contributors will receive two complimentary copies of the book upon publication. For more information, contact Ronald Weatherford at weathfd@aol.com. Send sermon submissions to:
Rev. Weatherford's website is: |
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| Buddha in Your Backpack: Anyone who knows of Franz Metcalf's work on behalf of the PCR group will immediately recognize his lively voice, sharp wit, and compassionate view of human life in this follow-up book to his earlier What Would Buddha Do? Written specifically for adolescents who are in the midst of all those turbulent life changes that religion and psychology scholars have so carefully documented and analyzed, Buddha in Your Backpack offers an engaging introduction to the basic teachings of Buddhism and the tradition's vital relevance to 21st century teenagers. I have been reading the book with my two almost teenage children, and I can personally testify to Franz's success in making Buddhist spirituality (with some subtle help from object-relations theory) come alive. I confess that I have had to say "suffering" every time Franz uses the Sanskrit term dukkha, since the latter term is too close to the naughty, giggle-inducing title of Green Day's album "Dookie." That aside, each chapter of the book has prompted my kids to ask the most wonderfully probing existential questions about families, school, sex, and happiness. If you know an adolescent who could use a healthy shot of religious and psychological self-reflection, Buddha in the Backpack is highly recommended. Kelly Bulkeley (Graduate Theological Union) |
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| A Highlight from Toronto Pamela Cooper-White This year's AAR/SBL meeting in Toronto offered many sessions of interest, including our PCR sessions (of course!), but many others as well. One that has stayed with me in particular was the session Sunday morning offered by a panel of colleagues from Union Seminary, with Dwight Hopkins of the University of Chicago responding, entitled "Doing Our First Works Over: White Theologians and Ethicists Talk about Race" (session A88 in the program abstracts). In a sophisticated and nuanced way, these panelists, facilitated by Elizabeth Bounds, presiding, challenged white theologians and ethicists, and the academy more generally, to confront the silence about race that has long perpetuated racism by excluding it from our personal, professional, and scholarly discourse. The panel overall was clear that "white supremacy" is the appropriate term for white privilege, referring not only to the hate crimes of extremist groups, but the entire system of privilege and normativity that accompanies the social construction of race in north American society. Ruth Frankenberg first presented research on white women's attitudes toward race. She pointed out how whites have been for centuries the "non-defined definers of other people" and in a review of the theological literature pointed out how even some socially progressive writings have perpetuated the lack of serious discussion of race: "Our very being as white people depends on not talking about it." Karin Case continued with a discussion of the elements of what in her work she has termed "white blindness," by which erasure, amnesia, denial, and acquiescence to white privilege has obscured injustices, and forestalled critical inquiry. She described four aspects of whiteness: skin ("white" as a social construction, permeable and changing in definition), social location (as a feature within patriarchy and colonialism, in which structure of privilege, the kind and degree of benefit varies with other factors), identity, and white supremacy (unearned advantage, normativity, and dominance). Case recommends 3 practices as white people and scholars: 1) educate yourself. Admit you are a learner; read works by persons of color; 2) make a significant space in our work for perspectives and voices of persons of color—not just optional readings at the bottom of a syllabus; 3) seek the perspectives of persons of color in your field, and if not present, ask why? Is there something in the structure of your discipline or approach creates this problem? She concluded by quoting James Baldwin: "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed unless it is faced." Jennifer Harvey addressed the issue of reparations, reviewing both the historical ramifications of "unjust enrichment" of all who have benefited through the generations from slavery, and concluded with a discussion of ethics and morality. Quoting William Stringfellow, who said that "denial of corporate guilt is a symptom of it…it is a pathological state, even a form of insanity," she urged reparations as a precondition to solidarity. She urged "doing our first works over," as a journey toward rehumanization. Sally McNichol presented the works of two Southern lesbian feminists, Lillian Smith (1897-1966) and Mab Segrest, as examples of narratives of "race traitors," whose activism was the only whole response to the sin sickness that comes with genuine awareness. Her discussion of these women's courageous works illustrated her assertion that "the antidote to guilt and despair is struggle." Aana Vigen followed with a discussion of qualitative research methodology, in which research "subjects" are included as partners in the research enterprise, as a method for more sensitive and adequate cross-cultural listening and research. She urged scholars to pursue methodologies that take us out of our offices and libraries and into the community; methods that are inductive, from life experience, rather than deductive, from theory alone; finding avenues of sustained relationships with people whose lives are affected by racism and injustice—not "voyeuristic tourism!" She states that "if we don't get it right in our relationships, we won't get it right in our scholarship." In his response to the panel, Dwight Hopkins affirmed the efforts of white theologians and ethicists to take up the issue of race as a serious topic for our scholarly research and discourse. He reinforced the ideas of race and both biological and sociological; of prejudice as related to nationalism and individualism, rendering others as subhuman; racism as the ability and power of one race to assert privilege against another (Jews, African Americans, and other persons of color); and white supremacy as a systematic strategy that institutionalizes power of whites as a group. Affirming the panel's distinction between individual and corporate racism, he deconstructed the "human kindness of individual whites" over against the structural and institutional perpetuation of a "glass ceiling" for persons of color, and the maintenance of structures of privilege via "money, media, missionaries, and the military." In particular, in the academy, despite gains by persons of color, he asked us all to consider that the senior leadership in our schools remains basically the same. Why? Not because of the absence of a rich history of resistance, both black and white, but because race is still not considered a legitimate intellectual category in religious studies. In a statement that could not be heard without thinking of the posters of plenary presenter Jacques Derrida, he called us to awareness that white scholars are still considered the epitome of reasoned discourse, "but we do not name them as white, but simply "scholarship." Hopkins also cited the extraordinary reliance on white thought in scholarly footnotes. He called us to name white scholarship as emerging from a localized context, and to challenge the idea that white scholarship can be assumed to have universal significance while studies by persons of color are considered specialized and optional in syllabi, curricula, and our own research. Hopkins concluded on a powerful theological note, calling us to recognize that "God loves the other, and love is accountable." Drawing on African Ubuntu theology, he stated that God created difference in the image of the divine. Humanity is most human when it recognizes humanity in difference. In conclusion, this session, which met on
a Sunday morning, the most "segregated hour of the week in
America," offered important challenges for all of us who are
white teachers, scholars, and practitioners, calling us to accountability,
and giving us the tools to face our own complicity and guilt with
a passion for solidarity and struggle. To cite Karin Case once more:
in order to be aware of one's identity as racialized, to take an
active stand against white supremacy, we must insist as white
people that white skin does not equate with white supremacy, oppose
"white blindness" and resist acquiescence to unearned
advantage and dominance, in the academy, in our counseling practices,
and in the relationships where we live our everyday lives. |
| SBL Psychology and The Bible and Human Transformation. We welcome papers using psychological approaches to explore how the Bible expresses, depicts, and/or enables human transformation. For a second session we seek papers that propose and/or critique models for psychological interpretation of the Bible. Contact: D. Andrew Kille, 160 Maro Drive, San Jose, CA 95127; revdak@worldnet.att.net See the Psybibs website for more information: |
| PCR NEWS Volume 26 No. 1 Winter 2003 |
Editor: Kelly Bulkeley Layout: D. Andrew Kille |