CHICAGO — The joint meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion drew 10,700 scholars, professors, publishers and clergy members last weekend to the McCormick Place Convention Center, where for four days they established their alternate universe. It was reminiscent of the Mos Eisley cantina in “Star Wars,” filled with polyglot eccentrics. Dead languages lived (He speaks Latin! She reads Akkadian!). One saw robed Buddhist monks; priests and friars, collared or cassocked; nuns, in habit or not; imams in kufis; the occasional yarmulked Jew. And thousands more in rumpled khakis, name tag on lanyard like an officer’s medals. They clutched biblical concordances, Hebrew lexicons, Gospel commentaries.

The scholarly jargon may have been hard to decipher, but the topics of the panel discussions were often earthy and real: theological responses to AIDS or poverty, for example. Or the problem of evil, why bad things happen to good people. Religious questions are never just academic; they are what scared children ask their parents.

Doing her own kind of religious work, Carolyn Roncolato, a graduate student at Chicago Theological Seminary, was in the hallway near the registration booths, handing out buttons that said “I Support the Hyatt Boycott.” To hear Ms. Roncolato explain it, astral theorizing and scholarly jargon are meaningless if they can’t touch down on the hard turf of workers’ rights.

At two of the hotels booked for these conventioneers, the Hyatt McCormick and the Hyatt Regency, unionized housekeepers have been working without a contract since 2009. Unite Here, their union, wants Hyatt to give its housekeepers the same contract several other hotels in Chicago have already signed, but Hyatt has refused.