Annie Heckman

Frequencies for Listening: Telling Stories of Missionary Colonialism

An alliance of church and state which forcibly took Indigenous children from their families in order to assimilate them to Christianity, the English language, and acceptance of the sovereignty of the Dominion of Canada, residential schools were, to use the language of the TRC, a form of cultural genocide with ongoing intergenerational effects. In this lecture, I approached the complicated spiritual politics of storytelling in the wake of the TRC by reflecting on the life of an early-twentieth-century missionary in the Pacific Northwest who participated in Christian colonial settlement on Indigenous land, while also condemning residential schools.

“Frequencies for Listening: Telling Stories of Missionary Colonialism in the Wake of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools”, Religion Programme, University of Otago, Dunedin, Aoteoroa/New Zealand, April 18, 2018.

Ekklesia: Three Inquiries in Church and State

Ekklesia: Three Inquiries in Church and State, co-authored with Paul C. Johnson and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, University of Chicago Press, spring 2018.

Ekklesia: Three Inquiries in Church and State offers a New World rejoinder to the largely Europe-centered academic discourse on church and state. In contrast to what is often assumed, in the Americas the relationship between church and state has not been one of freedom or separation but one of unstable and adaptable collusion. Ekklesia sees in the settler states of North and South America alternative patterns of conjoined religious and political power, patterns resulting from the undertow of other gods, other peoples, and other claims to sovereignty. These local challenges have led to a continuously contested attempt to realize a church-minded state, a state-minded church, and the systems that develop in their concert. The shifting borders of their separation and the episodic conjoining of church and state took new forms in both theory and practice. My essay argues that the colonial churchstate relationship of Canada came into being through local and national practices that emerged as Indigenous nations responded to and resisted becoming “possessions” of colonial British America.

Telepathy, Empire, and Public Memory

In an era of government-sponsored processes of apology, truth, and reconciliation for colonial violence and dispossession, what is the burden of public memory? To hazard an answer to this question, I reflected on my process of narrating the story of an early-twentieth-century Anglican missionary in the Pacific Northwest who thought telepathy was the solution to everything from class warfare to religious divisions.

“Telepathy, Empire, and Public Memory” Max Planck Institute for Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany, February 15, 2018.

When Secularism Fails Women

Scott’s theoretical, historical narrative in Sex and Secularism takes its place in a wider conversation in which critical thinkers working in many genres—including film, music, and fiction—ponder gender, race, religion, and sexual difference in a way that refuses essentialism while taking seriously the political effects of these categories on people living in worlds of ongoing inequality and violence. Secularism is not the savior, nor is it the demon in this narrative; it is, like all political ideals, including feminism, a promise that variably incites and excludes.

This review of Joan Scott’s Sex and Secularism for Public Books can be found here. “When Secularism Fails Women.”

Epic Lives

When asked at a cosmic scale, the answer to the question “Is this all there is?” may often be yes. Measured by the secular—in the sense of very long duration—ages that predict the heat death of the universe, the prospects for eternal meaning look dim. Measured by the storytelling genius of George Eliot, Alice Munro, and Elena Ferrante, the answer is also a kind of yes. All that there is can be found right in front of you, in the people whom you encounter in your everyday lives, on the street, in a classroom, in your home. Human relationships are not the only force in the world for change, redemptive or evil. But they are, I hazard, required for our existence.

For the ten-year anniversary of The Immanent Frame, I shared a personal reflection on mothers, daughters, and books under the Is This All There Is? theme. It can be found here.