Religion Seminar Series
Butler University Seminar on Religion and Global Affairs and Visiting Black Intellectual Series presents:
Black Diaspora: Faith and Expressions
The 2023–2024 series is an exciting new collaboration between Center for Faith and Vocation—Seminar on Religion and Global Affairs and the Hub for Black Affairs and Community Engagement’s Visiting Black Intellectual Series.
The timing of this seminar series is intentional in its connection to the approaching ending of the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent 2015–2024. The Center for Faith and Vocation in partnership with the Hub for Black Affairs and Community Engagement will present unique perspectives throughout the year on how Black people throughout the African Diaspora understand, practice, and express their faith/spirituality in meaningful and culturally collective ways. This series will not be comprehensive in presentation but will provide examples to encourage further exploration and dialogue among various audiences. Central to this series will be a focus on the necessity of faith and spirituality as a vehicle for resilience and resistance to oppressive conditions and struggles that especially effect Black people.
All events take place from 7:00-9:00 PM, Shelton Auditorium, on the South Campus of Butler University.
All events are free and open to the public. For more information about the series and virtual attendance, visit butlerartscenter.org
Thank you to our cosponsors and partners: Center for Interfaith Cooperation, Grace Unlimited, NEH/Frederic M. Ayres Fund, Sikh Satsang of Indianapolis, Butler Philosophy and Religion Department, and the Diversity Program Council.
For accessibility information or to request disability-related accommodations, please visit www.butler.edu/event-accommodations.
Butler Cultural Requirement (BCR)
Fall 2023
Black and Buddhist
Tuesday, September 26, 2023, 7:00 PM
View the Recording of Black and Buddhist
This seminar features the authors of the text Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us About Race, Resilience, Transformation and Freedom, Drs. Pamela Ayo Yetunde and Cheryl A. Giles. In the foreword to their text, Gaylon Ferguson writes “Now, more than ever, we need this message of peace, a. strong peace with justice and dignity. This is a practical message of cultivating inner spiritual power to meet the daily challenges of aggression, violence, lying, and deception.” We will learn about the Buddhist faith and practice has served as a source of healing and liberation for many Black people and what about this religion is effective in addressing individual and collective suffering.
Cheryl A. Giles is the Francis Greenwood Peabody Senior Lecturer on Pastoral Care and Counseling at Harvard Divinity School and a licensed clinical psychologist. Giles is a core faculty member of the Buddhist Ministry Initiative, where she mentors the International Ho Foundation Fellows and students preparing for chaplaincy and public leadership. Her most recent book, Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us About Race, Resilience, Transformation, and Freedom (2020) is co-edited with Pamela Ayo Yetunde and won the Gold Nautilus Award. Her articles have appeared in Christian Century magazine and the Journal of Pastoral Theology.
Pamela Ayo Yetunde is a pastoral counselor, instructor, writer, and speaker who is native to Indiana, which includes graduating from IU School of Law–Bloomington. Most recently Yetunde authored Casting Indra’s Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community (2023) and co-edited Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us About Race, Resilience, Transformation and Freedom (2020), which.on the Gold Nautilus Award. Yetunde is an associate editor with Lion’s Roar and is the principal co-founder of Buddhist Justice Reporter.
Black and Muslim
Monday, October 30, 2023, 7:00 PM
View the Recording of Black and Muslim
This seminar is a collaborative effort with the Muslim Student Association to bring the Islamic and African Studies scholar Dr. Rudolph “Butch” Ware II. He will provide knowledge and insight on his research of West African Muslim communities of Senegal, Gambia and Mauritania that serve as the basis for his book The Walking Qur’an: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa.
Rudolph (Butch) Ware is a historian of Africa and Islam, serving as Associate Professor in the History Department at U.C. Santa Barbara. His areas of focus are West Africa, Islamic Knowledge and Spirituality, and African Diaspora. Ware’s two recent publications include The Walking Quran: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge and History in West Africa (2014) as well as Jihad of the Pen: The Sufi Literature of West Africa (2018). Forthcoming work will include a new book titled Second Sight and Social Change in Islamic West Africa. Ware’s work is interdisciplinary, seeking to engage with and pushes the edges of both African and Islamic studies.
Imam Ahmed Alamine was born and raised in Saudi Arabia and spent significant time in West Africa, resulting in speaking six languages and ordination as an Imam. Since 2017 he has been the Imam and the Director of Religious Affairs of the Indianapolis Muslim Community Association, the first Muslim community and nonprofit organization in Indianapolis. In addition to his roles in the Muslim community, Imam Alamine currently is pursuing a professional doctorate in philanthropic leadership at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, serving as the Chair of the Board of Directors of Center for Interfaith Cooperation, and holds a role on the board for the Greater Indianapolis MultiFaith Alliance as well. Further, Imam Alamine serves as chaplain within the Marion County Sheriff’s Office and Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, serving officers and civilians.
Spring 2024
Black and Jewish
Monday, February 26, 2024, 7:00 PM
View the Recording of Black and Jewish
This seminar will involve the showing of the film, Queen Esther, and a discussion with the filmmaker Ira Mallory and two featured actresses—Erreol Robinson and Paige Wells, who will specifically discuss their specific roles. Ira Mallory is native to Indianapolis and in addition to responding to audience questions about the film, he will discuss how the intersections of his Jewish faith and his filmmaking work allows him to be more authentic.
Ira Mallory is an Indiana based film director and head of IRA FILMS, a division of BJYL Productions LLC. He is an alumni of the Fox Searchlight Director’s Labs in association with the American Black Film Festival. Hadassah: Queen Esther is Mallory’s premier project of recent release, which screened at the Silicon Valley African Film Festival in 2022 to much fanfare. Mallory was among over 40 Indiana artists awarded a fellowship with the On-Romp Creative Entrepreneur Accelerator, sponsored by the Indiana Art Commission in 2021.
Erreol D. Robinson is a wife, a mother, a ministry leader, Community Organizer, song writer and actress. She has toured professionally with two different theater companies and will always have a love for musical theatre. With her love for music and performance, Erreol was the first African American (as well as the first female) to be employed by The Lodge Recording studio in the city of Indianapolis. She was also a founding partner of Heart & Soul productions -where she would write and produce songs, jingles, theme song and radio commercials. Erreol later partnered with TylerMade music and co-wrote “Safe in His Arms”on the album of Grammy nominated, Steller and Dove Award recipient Earl Bynum. Erreol and her husband Gavin Morgan are the proud parents of 5 amazing teenagers and together they lead the youth ministry of New Direction Church in Indianapolis. Currently Erreol portrays Queen Esther in the award winning mini-series Hadassah: Queen Esther.
Paige Wells is a multi-talented artist hailing from Fort Wayne, Indiana. With a passion for music and acting, Wells has made a name for herself as a songwriter and actress. Having studied vocal performance and songwriting, Wells has released her own original music in addition to taking on roles as an actress.
Black and Womanist as expressed through Mermaids and Priestesses
Tuesday, March 26, 2024, 7:00 PM
The final seminar in the series includes Merwomanist scholar Dr. Jalondra Davis and Butler faculty member and historian Dr. Charlene Fletcher (History/Anthropology/Classics) discussing more traditional and alternative African religious expressions that are situated in the lives and experience of Black woman in the African Diaspora.
Dr. Jalondra A. Davis is a Black feminist artist intellectual, warrior mama, and merwomanist Melusine currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at University of California, Riverside. She has published theory and criticism of Black speculative fiction and culture in the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Shima Journal, the Museum of Science Fiction Journal of Science Fiction, and forthcoming in the Routledge Anthology of Co-Futurisms. Her monograph in progress, Merfolk and Black Being analyzes the many appearances of mermaids, water spirits, and other aquatic beings in African diasporic literature, art, and popular culture, with a focus on narratives that engage the transatlantic slave trade, Western modernity, and the Anthropocene. Mermaids center in her current scholarship, fiction writing, recreational practices as an amateur mermaid, and content creation for the Merwomanist Podcast as a site of both interrogating history through fantasy and as Black whimsy, pleasure, and play.
Charlene Fletcher is a historian, educator, and writer. With a PhD in History from Indiana University specializing in 19th century United States and African American history and gender studies, Fletcher joined Butler University’s faculty in fall 2023. Her forthcoming book explores the experiences of confined African American women in Kentucky from Reconstruction to the Progressive Era. Fletcher has been affiliate faculty at the Center for Africana Studies at IUPUI and Curatorial Director at Conner Prairie Museum as well. Among her many accolades, Fletcher served as the ACLS Emerging Voices Postdoctoral Research Associate at Brown University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice.
For many years Butler University has sponsored the Butler Seminar on Religion and Global Affairs. In 2003, the Lilly Endowment Inc. funded the creation of the Center for Faith and Vocation at Butler University which now sponsors the Butler Seminar. Below is a selection of past seminars in the form of the original brochures that were created for each event.
World Christianity in the New Century, 1999–2000
Religion and Law at Home and Abroad, 2003–2004
Religion and Science, 2004–2005
Religion and Media, 2005–2006
Religion and the Corporation, 2006–2007
Secularism and Religion in Global Perspective, 2007–2008
Darwin, Religion and Society, 2008–2009
Jerusalem: Traditions, Realities and Prospects, 2009–2010
Religion, Peacemaking and Conflict, 2010–2011
Global Christianity in the 21st Century, 2011–2012
Religion and Global Health, 2012–2013
Freedom of Expression and Religion, 2013–2014
Religion and Reconciliation in Global Perspective, 2014–2015
Religion, Race and Culture, 2015–2016
Religion and Trans Lives in a Global Perspective, 2016–2017
Religion, Refugees, and Migration, 2017–2018
Sacred Places: Intersections of Religion and Ecology, 2018–2019
317-940-8253
The Seminar on Religion and Global Affairs is a program of the Center for Faith and Vocation at Butler University, promoting understanding of interfaith and intercultural relations through the discussion of religious issues in global perspectives.
After each event, video will be available on this website.
Previous Years’ Recordings
Youth Engagement in Interfaith Activism
Today’s religious youth are passionate about activism and social justice. This inaugural session focuses on youth engagement through interfaith activism. We will hear from a former Interfaith Youth Corps activist who identifies as Hindu and Sikh, focusing on the training of youth and empowering them to become interfaith leaders. Additionally, audiences will hear from a recent Butler alumna and a current Butler student leader, both active in interfaith work on campus and beyond.
View the Recording of Youth Engagement in Interfaith Activism
Faith and Activism in Indiana
The work of interfaith activism is thriving in Indiana, with numerous organizations devoted to serving their communities. In this session, we will hear from a panel of local religious activists representing Catholic Charities in Indianapolis, Faith in Indiana, Hoosier Interfaith Power and Light, and Muslim Alliance of Indiana. The panelists will discuss their efforts to mobilize and implement change on individual, community, and policy levels.
View the Recording of Faith and Activism in Indiana
Faith Sustaining Activism
Activism is difficult and challenging work, requiring a sustained foundation. For many activists it is their faith that ultimately sustains them and compels them to engage in their work of social change. In this session we will hear from a prominent teacher and therapist about her activism at the intersection of Buddhist, Yoruba, and African American identities. A Christian homiletics scholar will respond on the role preaching serves in strengthening members within the Black Church community.
View the Recording of Faith Sustaining Activism
Faith and Activism through Revolutionary Love
In this concluding session of the year, we will learn about the Revolutionary Love project founded by Valarie Kaur: civil rights leader, lawyer, award-winning filmmaker, educator, and leader of the Revolutionary Love Project. With partnerships from the Center for Interfaith Cooperation, Grace Unlimited, the NEH/Frederic M. Ayres Fund, the Sikh Satsang of Indianapolis, Butler Philosophy and Religions Department, Butler DEI Innovation Fund, and the Diversity Program Council, this culminating event of the Seminar will be a unique opportunity to learn from a prominent national leader on the future of faith and activism.
View the Recording of Faith and Activism through Revolutionary Love
Growing God’s Family: Evangelical Global Adoption
Domestic and international adoption are deeply shaped by religion, raising questions about reproductive rights, social inequality, and proselytizing on a global scale. American Christian evangelicals are mobilized around a global project to adopt orphan children.Our speakers will explore the motivations and political impacts of this movement.
View the Recording of Growing God’s Family: Evangelical Global Adoption
Reproductive Ethics in the Middle East
Over the last 50 years, reproductive technologies have completely transformed who can biologically reproduce and when. These medical advancements have significant ethical and political implications. While some religious and secular groups have embraced these scientific breakthroughs, others have warned against their unintended consequences. This discussion brings two leading anthropologists into conversation on how religion and gender intertwine in the reproductive lives and policies of the Middle East.
View the Recording of Reproductive Ethics in the Middle East
Anti-Domestic Violence Work
In the United States, nearly 20 people are physically abused by an intimate partner each minute of the day. Today, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men have experienced severe intimate partner physical violence. How does religion offer both justifications for and possible resources to address domestic violence? This conversation brings together research, activism, and faith to address the problems and potentials of drawing on religion in anti-domestic violence work.
View the Recording of Anti-Domestic Violence Work
The Endings and Beginnings of Sacred Communities: Changes in Monastic Living
In the 21st century, traditional forms of family and community are being re-envisioned. These transformations are shaping ideas about sexual ethics, marriage, community and nation, forging new social relations for religious clerics and everyday people alike. Drawing together insights from Buddhist history with the lived realities of& today’s Nuns Nones—a community of Catholic sisters and millennial seekers who come together in their shared commitments for justice—the evening’s conversation will contemplate new forms of connection that challenge and reinvigorate the idea of sacred community.
View the Recording of The Endings and Beginnings of Sacred Communities: Changes in Monastic Living
Incarceration, Christianity, and Black Bodies
Why are black Americans disproportionately incarcerated in America? In this session, we explore the historical, social, cultural, and religious roots of this injustice through the lens of black theology and with reference to the resources of the black church.
View the Recording of Incarceration, Christianity, and Black Bodies
The Most Merciful: Muslim Work with Ex-Offenders
Many of America’s prisoners have embraced Islam while incarcerated, and Muslims have also been active in caring for the social and religious needs of ex-offenders. In this session, we explore what Islam has to say and what Muslims are doing about incarceration in America.
View the Recording of The Most Merciful: Muslim Work with Ex-Offenders
Dharma in Hell: Buddhist Mindfulness in Prisons
From the office to the hospital room, the benefits of mindfulness have been scientifically proven. In this session, we learn about various efforts to improve the lives of inmates through the practice of meditation.
View the Recording of Dharma in Hell: Buddhist Mindfulness in Prisons
Incarceration, Nationalism, and Religious Identity in China
The Chinese government has a troubled relationship with the nation’s religious minorities. In this session, we hear from experts on the persecution and mass incarceration of China’s Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims.
View the Recording of Incarceration, Nationalism, and Religious Identity in China
The Places that Move Us: Ecological Vocations
What draws people to the work of ecology, conservation, and environmental activism? In what sense is that work a vocation, a calling? In this session, we will hear from three scholars and activists, each with their own unique inspiration and vision of the work of ecology as a vocation.
View the Recording of The Places that Move Us: Ecological Vocations
Non-Theistic Perspectives on the Environment: Buddhist and Jain Ecologies
In this session, we will hear from scholars of two non-theistic religious traditions and learn how these traditions frame care for the Earth without reference to a Creator God. We will discover that Buddhism and Jainism contain powerful and promising resources, such as non-harm and interdependence, that can promote a robust environmental ethic.
View the Recording of Non-Theistic Perspectives on the Environment: Buddhist and Jain Ecologies
Global Religious Perspectives on Climate Change
Climate change is the most significant environmental problem of our time. In this session we will consider the perils of climate change from a global perspective with the help of scholars of Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism.
View the Recording of Global Religious Perspectives on Climate Change
Greening Indiana: Theologies and Ethics of Sustainability
What does it mean to “think globally and act locally” in terms of ecology and ecojustice? In this session, we will hear from three scholars and activists on the important environmental work being done right here in Indiana.
View the Recording of Greening Indiana: Theologies and Ethics of Sustainability