Monday Thoughts: Live from SBL

I'm sitting in the lobby of the San Diego Manchester Hyatt with Frank Sinatra singing in the background. It's the annual pilgrimage of all good little religion scholars to AAR-SBL. I'm here for SBL--the Society of Biblical Literature. This is the last year (at least for a few years) that we'll be meeting with AAR--the American Academy of Religion. Word has it that the power structures of AAR wanted to separate from the more Jewish and Christian nature of SBL.

The whole separation thing seems to represent to me a power sequence all too frequent. The power structures want one thing, often on principal. At the same time, the "grass roots" or rank and file want something else. What often plays out is an exodus of the rank and file to other venues. The "principaled" leadership often doesn't mind the smaller numbers, because what's left is the "right" group. Of course if they're not careful, they find themselves leading only themselves. Many booksellers, for example, are considering not going to AAR in Chicago next year--only to SBL in Boston.

The main impact on me is friends. Those who come here for theology (e.g., Barth) are usually members of AAR rather than SBL (although from what I understand SBL has made it clear to individual AAR groups they are welcome to jump ship :-). The Wesleyan-Free Methodist breakfast and worship on Sundays, for example, may not survive, as its perpetrator, Don Thorsen, an AAR Wesley scholar, will be in Chicago rather than Boston next year.

So what is SBL like?

Friends
You see people here that you won't see anywhere else each year. I've had breakfast with Joe Dongell and David Thompson. I've chatted with old Durham friends and had breakfast with old seminary buddies. Because of SBL I can call friends people like George Guthrie and Craig Koester, who I would only read otherwise. These are truly great privileges that SBL affords.

Opportunities
It's hard to get a publisher to take a book idea. Everyone knows that a personal contact at a conference improves your chances greatly. Yesterday I had a very good talk with a publisher in which he took my idea and reformulated it into something similar his press might be interested in. Now when I send the formal proposal, it has a better than average chance of acceptance.

Saturday morning I gave a paper that was well received to a group I had not previously attended. Several people really liked it and, once again, this opens up possibilities for future projects and cooperation with others on future projects.

Sessions also give you a chance to hear what the leading thinkers of the guild are, well, thinking, even before it reaches publication. One nice thing is to realize how tentative some of them are before their thoughts reach the page. Many scholars are just your "above average Joe" or Jane who has had time to reflect (and get feedback) before their thoughts reach the page.

The book hall would have to be the bomb. 50% off on new titles--and everyone is here. We spend hours in the book hall, catching up with what people are writing and chatting with old friends we haven't seen since last year.

Frustration
It would be hard to think of a better argument for deconstruction than SBL. Here you have over 10,000 people doing similar things, and yet they all disagree on fundamental things. One person looks at a book from the angle of Roman imperialism, another from a social-scientific perspective, another from the standpoint of ideological criticism. If they were just different angles that fit together to provide a "thick" understanding, that would be one thing. But more often than not they completely conflict with each other. At some point you begin to ask yourself, am I as off the wall as that presenter is, and I just think my ideas make sense?

If this place makes you wonder if two people can ever communicate with each other, there is also the power aspect of the place. There are people with power in a place like this, and they wield it behind the scenes. Papers get chosen for reasons other than the "intelligence" of the paper. Of course power is a fundamental element of human co-existence, so it would be naive to decry the use of power itself. The question is how to wield it ethically.

That gives you a taste of SBL, says Ken with his Starbucks coffee in hand. Have a happy Thanksgiving, all!