Vol. 26
No.2
Summer 2003
|
||||||||||||||||
This issue is also available in Adobe Acrobat format.
| NEWS FROM PCR MEMBERS |
Harvey Aronson is finishing up work on a new book, Buddhist Practice on Western Ground: Reconciling Eastern Ideal and Western Psychology. Due Winter/Spring 2004 from Shambhala, the book will look at the transplantation of this Asian discipline in the modern West, with a focus on anger, love, attachment and self. Ralph Underwood (Austin Seminary), who retired from Austin in 2001, has come out of retirement for a time to be the seminary's interim academic dean, beginning August 1. Greg Schneider (Pacific Union College) is spending time in New York City this summer at a Research Colloquium sponsored by the journal, Crosscurrents. Greg says, "It's a four-week gig (July 6 to August 1) where about 20 scholars participate, each with a particular research project. We stay at Union Theological Seminary and have access to libraries there and at Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University. My project, "Ritual and Burden of the Modern Self," seeks to use some sociological and anthropological ritual theory, e.g., Roy Rappaport, Erving Goffman, and Charles Derber, to examine the pursuit of attention inherent in the secular rituals of everyday life. My guiding question is which religious rituals might provide relief from, or reinforcement of, the burdens imposed by this quest. Here's the link to where Crosscurrents explains the Research Colloquium, which is in its 20th year, just in case other PCR members might find such a thing interesting: http://www.aril.org/colloquium.html. Kelly Bulkeley (Graduate Theological Union) recently published Dreams of Healing: Transforming Nightmares into Visions of Hope (Paulist Press). The book looks at recurrent patterns in dreams and nightmares following a sudden catastrophe, whether a collective event like September 11 or an individual trauma like a car accident. In contrast to the mainstream psychotherapeutic goal of helping trauma victims regain "ego control," this book argues that post-traumatic dreams are pointing to new potentials for creative living that are best understood as part of a process of spiritual/religious transformation. Jon Alexander (Providence College) is working on a study titled "Plot Trumps Race, Ethnicity, and Class: A Comparison of Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of an American Slave (1845) and Edward Boyd Barreett's The Magnificent Illusion (1930)." The project will focus on basic narrative themes relating to escape from oppression in these and other American autobiographical texts. Susan Easton wants to bring to PCR attention the services of the Religion Newswriters Association, which provides email alerts on various stories having to do with religion (www.religionwriters.com). She also reports, "I'm working on a book - The Vatican in 20th Century Literature. Part religious studies and comp lit, part book review extravaganza, (130 novels identified to date, whew); an assessment of the past, present, and future of the church as played out in literary license and fertile imaginings. There are a number of truly good books.... also some really wild novels..... Great summer reading if you know what I mean.... FYI - We will be at our London residence beginning the first week in Sept. Have a week or two side trip to Geneva planned. Back to the states sometime in mid to late October. Within reason, I am willing to do research related errands ... but am equally willing to fetch and return with boutique jams and teas...." Lucy Bregman (Temple University) is pleased to announce the publication of her new book Death and Dying, Spirituality and Religions: A Study of the Death Awareness Movement. (Peter Lang Publishing, 2003). "The death awareness movement provides a new language for speaking about death and dying by stressing death. dying and bereavement as meaningful human experiences beyond their medical context. This movement appears secular and detatched from religion, although its advocates embrace spirituality. However, this book refutes the "secularity" view, and undermines the popular opposition between spirituality and religion. The death awareness movement is deeply indebted to popular Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and tribal religions for ideas and images. Urging a thoughtful theological response, this book illustrates how such diverse religious legacies contribute to contemporary views of death and dying." Felicity Kelcourse (Christian Theological Seminary) reports that Human Development and Faith: Life-cycle stages of change in body, mind and soul, an introductory text book she edited and wrote three chapters for, has been delivered to Chalice Press and is due out in April, 2004 (Pamela Cooper-White, Roy Steinhoff-Smith and Bernie Lyon are among the contributors). She will also be giving an advance version of her November AAR/PCR talk ("A phenomenology of psyche, self and soul: What can we learn from a name?") for the Washington Psychoanalytic Foundation's October 24-26 program on "The Future of Religion in the Psychoanalytic World: Revisiting the Mind/Soul Dilemma." Fellow panelists include Diane Jonte-Pace, Ana-Maria Rizzuto and Polly Young-Eisendrath. James Jones (Rutgers University) has a new book coming out this fall titled The Mirror of God: Christian Faith as spiritual practice — lessons from Buddhism and psychotherapy (Palgrave). Charlene Burns (University of Wisconsin Eau-Claire) recently published Divine Becoming: Rethinking Jesus and Incarnation (Fortress Press, 2002). "In it I use an analysis of the capacity for empathy in human psychological development to argue that incarnation can continue to be considered an ontological category within Christian thought, without the problematic taint of ancient `substance metaphysics.'" Charlene also has an article forthcoming this fall in volume 23 (2003) of Buddhist-Christian Studies entitled "Soul-less Christianity and the Buddhist Empirical Self: Buddhist-Christian Convergence?" in which she examines possible parallels between non-reductive physicalism (á la Murphey, et. al.) and Buddhist no-self teachings as interpreted by Peter Harvey. Judith Kay (University of Puget Sound) is putting the finishing touches on a book entitled A Story to Die For: Why Abolishing the Death Penalty Isn't Enough, which examines the moral psychology and habits of murderers, citizens, and participants who support the death penalty and how some victims' families construct a different story. The book is due out 2004 from Rowman & Littlefield. An abridged version of D.
Andrew Kille's (Revdak,
San Jose, CA) article "`The Bible Made Me Do It:' Text,
Interpretation and Violence" appeared in the June 2003 online
issue of the Religious
Study Review (SBL Edition), which was devoted to the issue
of violence and the Bible.
The full article is scheduled to come out from Praeger this fall
as part of J. Harold Ellens' four-volume The Destructive Power
of Religion. |
|
A Request from
Al Dueck |
I am a faculty member in Fuller Theological Seminary's School of Psychology. My specific responsibility is to encourage the dialogue between religion/theology and psychology/psychotherapy. In many of our courses we focus on interdisciplinary dialogue but when our students search for placements that are religion-accommodating, there are very few. I am wondering if any of you know of counseling centers that supervise clinical psychology interns and are uniquely competent in addressing religious issues. Are they APA approved? Do you know of supervisors that particularly skilled in this area who, though they are not part of a clinic, provide supervision for a clinic? Please contact me at adueck@fuller.edu. |
|
|
PCR Members
in Other AAR Programs? |
PCR members are often active in other program units of the AAR and make presentations that are potentially of interest to the rest of the PCR group. If you are making a presentation in Atlanta in a different group or section, or if you know of a session you think will be of special relevance to PCR concerns, please let us know so we can spread the word. |
|
SBL Sessions of Interest Times and locations TBA |
Session 1: Methods and Explorations in Psychological Criticism Ilona N. Rashkow David G. Garber, Jr. Neil Douglas-Klotz Daniel B. Mathewson Petri Merenlahti Halvor Ronning Session 2: The Bible and Human Transformation Lyn
M. Bechtel Walter Wink
Wayne G. Rollins |
|
|
|
||
|
Upcoming Conferences |
|
|
| The Great Divorce: AAR and SBL to Separate
|
After more than 30 years of joint Annual Meetings of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature, the Board of Directors of the AAR voted this Spring to hold stand-alone Annual Meetings, effective in 2008. The decision was made after many years of discussion, prompted both by the AAR's evolution as a distinctively different organization and by the unwieldy size of recent meetings. Some signs over the past few years of the impending separation included the separation of membership services, the organization of the program book, and publishing ventures following the close of Scholars Press in 1999. The Board hopes that separating the meetings will allow for smaller
meetings that would allow for more AAR sessions and permit use
of smaller, more personal meeting facilities. Because of joint
commitments for future meetings through 2007, the first AAR-only
meeting will take place in 2008. In the interim, the AAR and SBL
meetings will be held "concurrently," As one who has worked "both sides of the aisle" over the years, I'm not sure how I feel about the decision. On the one hand, more manageable meetings (especially ones that can keep us away from Disney World and Opryland) would be a welcome change. On the other, separate meetings will make our particular cross-disciplinary endeavors more difficult and force us to "choose sides." More information about the decision can be found on the AAR website at www.aarweb.org/annualmeet/decision-faq.asp. D. Andrew Kille |
| Book Note |
The Mind and the Brain: For those who are troubled by the moral, religious, and psychological implications of recent advances in evolutionary theory, The Mind and the Brain offers a well-reasoned, though narrowly framed, response. Against the deterministic tendencies of cognitive neuroscience (see Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate), in which human mental life is nothing more than an epiphenomenon of genetically-driven neural hard-wiring, Schwartz and Begley argue that our minds are in fact far more capable of change, adaptation, and self-directed action than mainstream neuroscience is willing to admit. Schwartz, a research psychiatrist at UCLA, describes his success in treating patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) by means of what he calls "directed mental force," a kind of power-of-positive-thinking method that he says actually changes the physical functioning of the brain. Schwartz's success in treating OCD is further evidence of what he and other researchers are calling "neuroplasticity," the surprising mutability of the brain-mind system in response to changes in activity and/or experience. Although Schwartz and his co-author Begley focus exclusively on the implications for individual willpower (Begley, science correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, clearly sees Schwartz's research as support for the entrepreneurial spirit), the phenomenon of neuroplasticity is also a huge opening for those of interested in religion and culture generally as potent influences on human life and development. Religious experience is not simply a product of the brain, it can actually be a producer of the brain—that is the exciting prospect opened up by Schwartz's work. The Mind and the Brain is also noteworthy as another textual example of a contemporary Western scientist deeply enamored of Buddhism. Schwartz dedicates the book to his Buddhist teacher, he proudly describes his 25 years of "Bare Attention" meditation, and he concludes the book with a quote from Gotama about the Law of Karma. Are there any Christian scientists out there who are as open and unapologetic about the harmony they perceive between their faith and their research? I can't think of any. For religious studies scholars who are interested in the emergence of a distinctively American style of Buddhism, this book offers a particularly vigorous assertion of the compatibility of Buddhist philosophy and cutting-edge neuroscience. Along with that, The Mind and the Brain offers provocative discussions of William James (Schwartz loves him), quantum physics (pushing brain-mind science beyond Newton), and the psychology of moral choice (it's real, not epiphenomenal). One does not have to be obsessed with the neuroscience literature (as I confess I have become) to appreciate the relevance of these ideas for the ongoing work of religious studies scholarship. Kelly Bulkeley |
| PCR NEWS Volume 26 No. 2 Summer 2003 |
Editor: Kelly Bulkeley Layout: D. Andrew Kille |