Conference Program

The World War II and Religion Conference

Hotel Duval
Tallahassee, Florida

November 29 – December 2, 2012

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Friday, November 30, 2012

 8:00 – 9:00      REGISTRATION

 9:00                 WELCOME

 9:30 – 11:30    MORNING SESSION
THE JEWISH EXPERIENCE
Chair:  G. Kurt Piehler, Florida State University

• Page Delano, Borough of Manhattan Community College
  “Prejudices and Open Hearts: Religion in the Vittel Internment Camp”
• Eliyana R. Adler, University of Maryland
  “Religious Revival in the Soviet Union at War?: The Case of Polish Jewish Deportees”
• Joan Friedman, College of Wooster
  “Red, White, and Blewish:  Orthodox Judaism Adapts to Military Service”

Commentator:  Nathan Stoltzfus, Florida State University

11:30 – 12:45  LUNCHEON (advance registration required)

 
1:00 – 3:00      RELIGION, ETHICS, AND THE WAR
Chair:  George Williamson, Florida State University

• David King, Memphis Theological Seminary
  “Preaching Peace in an Age of Total War”
• Richard Weikart, California State University
  “How Hitler’s Religion and Morality Spawned War and Genocide”
• Jeremy Koop, York University
  “Emanuel Hirsch and Karl Barth: Theopolitical Opposition and the Theological Support for War”

Commentator:  John Kelsay, Florida State University

3:15 – 5:15      RELIGIOUS LIFE UNDER THE NAZIS AND IN  STALIN’S RUSSIA

Chair:  Monte Finkelstein, Tallahassee Community College

• Panteleymon Anastasakis, City College in New York
  “Church of Greece Under Nazi Occupation”
• William Skiles, University of California, San Diego
  “Preaching to Nazi Germany: Confessing Church Sermons on National Socialism and the Jews”
• Gilya Gerda Schmidt, The University of Tennessee Knoxville
  “The Lutheran Church and the War Criminal in Their Midst: An Example”

Commentator:  Robert Gellately, Florida State University

 
Saturday, December 1, 2012

 
8:30 – 9:00      REGISTRATION

9:30 – 11:30    THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE AMERICAN G.I.

Chair:  Brooks Pettit, Florida State University

• John Seitz, Fordham University
  “Battle Fatigue:  U.S. Catholics and Mental Health in WWII and its Aftermath”
• Andrew Polk, Florida State University
  “For God and Country:  The Challenges of Religious Unity during the Second World War”
• Ronit Stahl, University of Michigan
  “Chaplain Jim Wants You!  Boundaries of Religion in the Warfare State”
• Kevin L. Walters, University of Kentucky
  “Exigencies of War:  Lay Leadership Among U.S. Troops in World War II"

Commentator:  G. Kurt Piehler, Florida State University

11:30 – 12:45  LUNCHEON (advance registration required)

1:00 – 3:00      QUESTIONS OF RACE AND JUSTICE
Chair:  Suzanne Sinke, Florida State University

• Anne Blankenship, Washington University in St. Louis
  “Planning a New World Order:  United Protestant Worship During the World War II Japanese American Incarceration”
• Beth Hessel, Texas Christian University
  “The Challenge of Justice and Comity: The Work of the Protestant Church Commissions for Japanese Service During World War II”
• John Lowell Crow, Florida State University
  “Ariosophic Demon Seeds:  Theosophical Roots of Nazi Race Theory”

Commentator:  Sarah A. Buck-Kachaluba, Florida State University

3:15 – 5:15      RELIGION AND NATIONALISM
Chair:  Claudia Liebeskind, Florida State University

• Akira Nishimura, Kagoshima University
  “Religious Sector’s Commitment to the Battlefield Pilgrimage in Postwar Japan”
• Kenta Awazu, Nanzan University
  “Rituals of Silence: The Shaping of Memorial Services in Wartime and Post-war Japan”
• Michiaki Okyuma, Nanzan University
  “Religious Responses to the Atomic Bomb in Nagasaki”

Commentator:  Theodore Cook, William Paterson University and IRCJS

 
7:30 – 9:00      BANQUET (advance registration required)

Speaker:  Edward J. K. Gitre, University of Virginia
                “Sheltering the Madonna and Child”

 
Sunday, December 2, 2012

 
9:30 – 11:30    THE AFTERMATH OF THE WAR IN AMERICA
                        Chair:  Neil Jumonville, Florida State University

• James Burnham Sedgwick, Acadia Unversity
  “Courts, Conscience, Conversion: Religion and International Justice in the Wake of World War II”
• Joseph Williams, Rutgers University
  “Pentecostal Prophecy and Healing in the Aftermath of World War II”
• Brad L. Stoddard, Florida State University
  “Remembering World War II in the Nationof Islam”
• Matthew S. Hedstrom, University of Virginia
  “Religious Reading Mobilized: World War II and the Rise of Spiritual Cosmopolitanism in the US”

Commentator:  Rachel Lindsey, Florida State University

This conference has been made possible in part by an endowment established by Ms. Pearl S. Tyner.  Tyner was a 1930 graduate of the Florida State College for Women and served in World War II.  We also want to express our generosity to all who have supported the Institute financially.