FINAL REPORT
Kevin Lewis
Dept. of Religious Studies
Provost’s Humanities Grant 2011
“Mischief and Idolatry in the Language of Religious ‘Belief’”
Amount: $16,000
Primary purpose: to concentrate on writing a 9,000 word article in an area of philosophy
of religion, “hermeneutics” (theory of interpretation), to which I am technically a
newcomer, but for which my broad interdisciplinary background and substantial career
has prepared me. At the end of the first three months of my leave, taken in Wolfson
College, Cambridge, as a Visiting Fellow, I submitted the completed article to the journal
I reckoned most likely to take it, the Journal of Religion, published at the University of
Chicago, where I took my PhD (in Religion and Literature). Subsequently, after two
months of waiting for an answer, when I queried the Journal, I was told that my article
was being sent to other reviewers for their additional judgment. I think I understand: my
hermeneutic proposal amounts to a not quite precedented challenge to traditional thinking
on the subject. I await the Journal’s decision to publish or not to publish, and will not
pursue my line of argument, perhaps to book length, until and if I hear positively.
Other projects conducted during the semester of leave, spring 2012.
I presented a paper, “America’s Heirloom Comfort Song: ‘Amazing Grace’,” at the
thirty-fifth annual meeting of the British Conference on Implicit Religion held in Denton
Hall outside Ilkley, Yorkshire, on May 13th. At the encouragement of the Director of the
Conference who also serves as editor of the Journal of Implicit Religion, I revised and
submitted the paper as an article to this journal. He wants to publish it.
I submitted a proposal, an abstract, for a paper offered for the program of the ongoing
“Theopoetics Seminar” at the November 2012 Annual Meeting of the American
Academy of Religion in Chicago: “Cautionary Embodiment – Theopropheticpoetics”
I submitted a proposal of a paper for the program of the Annual Meeting of the
Nineteenth Century Studies Association scheduled for March 2013 in Fresno, CA: “OCD
Peripatetic – Walking the City, Mid-Century.” Following fairly extensive research, I
wrote the paper, addressing Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Poe, Dickens, and Whitman in
their relevant writings.
I submitted a very short, invited account of accomplishments and activities during our
residence in Wolfson College – Becky was also awarded a Visiting Fellowship – for the
annual Wolfson Review, scheduled for publication in November 2012.
Though not formally associated with the Faculty of Divinity in the University, I did
consult profitably with members of that Faculty who commented helpfully on my main
project in hermeneutics: Douglas Hedley, Sarah Coakley, Tim Jenkins, Judith Lieux, and
Graham Howes. I attended the “D” Society seminar meetings (on philosophical theology)
and the four annual Hulsean Lectures in a series (on western religious art), offered by the
Director of the British Library.
In Wolfson, I attended and contributed to several weekly Humanities Society talks
offered by various speakers midday on Wednesdays in the College Combination Room.
And several presentations by individual academics scheduled on Tuesday late afternoons
preceding Formal Hall (dinner). We took part in the life of the College.
We were invited to lunches and teas in the homes of several Senior Members of the
College, and went on a day-trip with visiting and permanent members of Wolfson to see
the Henry Moore studios and gardens in nearby Hertfordshire.