Description

The Luce Foundation’s Theology Program aims to advance scholarly and public understanding of religion and theology, and currently does so primarily through grants to seminaries, divinity schools, and research universities. From time to time, the program has also considered and recommended grants to media organizations, museums and other cultural institutions, and professional societies and scholarly associations. This proposed COVID-19 urgent needs grant to the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) falls into that latter category.
With support from Luce, the SBL will seek to capitalize on its pivot to a virtual meeting this year (to be held November 29 – December 10, 2020), in order to include hundreds of scholars from abroad who would not otherwise have been able to participate in the Society’s annual conference. This will represent the latest international component of a broader effort on SBL’s part to actively increase diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Founded in 1880, and housed in the Luce Center in Atlanta, the Society of Biblical Literature is the oldest and largest learned society devoted to the critical investigation of the Bible and related fields from a variety of academic disciplines. In 2018, SBL launched the first iteration of the online platform SBL Central, with the support of a grant from the Luce Foundation’s Theology Program. An earlier Theology Program grant supported the formation of an independent network of Qur’anic scholars, now known as The International Qur’anic Studies Association (IQSA).
As an international organization, SBL offers its members opportunities for mutual support, intellectual growth,  and professional development. Since 2007, the Society has been actively providing resources and means of participation for members in what it calls the International Cooperation Initiative (ICI), which focuses on members “who reside in the Global South, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe.” The goal of the initiative has been not simply to provide resources, support, and access to scholars in these regions, but to open, in the words of SBL’s executive director, “a two-way street, a cooperative effort that confronts and dismantles the colonial project, its influence, and its impact.” As such, SBL’s ICI program seeks to acknowledge “how impoverished scholarship in religion is without the active participation and contribution of academic peers in the Majority World, who labor under extraordinarily challenging conditions.”
The ICI serves individuals living in countries that have been identified as having a per capita Gross Domestic Product substantially lower than the average per capita Gross Domestic Product of the United States and the European Union. SBL currently has nearly 900 members in these regions of the world. For its 2020 annual meeting, grant funds from the Luce Foundation would allow SBL to provide complimentary registration to members who reside in countries involved in the ICI. Additional grant funds would support the development of a membership database tool that will allow SBL to more finely identify the economic condition of members in ICI countries, thereby supporting SBL’s ongoing work to expand access and participation in 2021 and beyond.