For the 2019 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature in San Diego, the SBL’s “Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity” Unit and the AAR Unit, “Comparative Approaches to Religion and Violence,” co-organized a review panel for Ellen Muehlberger’s Moment of Reckoning: Imagined Death and Its Consequences in Late Ancient Christianity (2019). The steering committees sought to invite a range of panelists, from those who could speak to the ancient contexts and the historiographical scholarship Muehlberger engaged to others who could extend Muehlberger’s work on a broader historical trajectory and draw in traditions beyond Christianity. In cooperation with the editorial team at AJR, we are pleased to bring this panel to a larger audience.
Over the next two weeks AJR will feature the remarks delivered by Nyasha Junior (Temple University), an expert on Biblical reception who focuses on the intersection of race, gender, and religion; Laura Nasrallah (Yale Divinity School), a scholar of early Christianity whose research centers on material culture and literature; and Constance Furey (Indiana University), a specialist in early modern Christianity, a recurring commentator on the topic of death at The Immanent Frame, and a recent recipient of a grant from the Luce foundation to study what it means to be human. The series will conclude with a response by Ellen Muehlberger.
As an organizer, I was struck by the depth of the exchange between panelists and respondent. By uncovering the powerful, imagined “postmortal,” Muehlberger’s book inspired a surfeit of ideas on the various, life-changing, society- and tradition-altering impact of the “moment of reckoning.” Each response underscored the book’s central insight: imagining the moment of death has the power to shape our lived experiences and expectations, to construct communities and mold their moral horizons, and to influence actions and inform politics. The composition of the panel further exposed the power of imagined death to bring into stark relief our own society’s injustices, and I hope that you find reading this conversation as stimulating as did those in attendance at the AAR/SBL.
Diane Shane Fruchtman is Assistant Professor of Religion at Rutgers University, and specializes in medieval Christianity in the Latin west. Her research explores rhetoric and the realities it helps construct, particularly in the realms of violence and martyrdom.