Ethics

2023 Call for Papers

Ramon Luzarraga, Saint Martin's University (WA)

rluzarraga@stmartin.edu

Jacob Kohlhaas, Loras College, Jacob.Kohlhaas@loras.edu

Kari-Shane Davis Zimmerman, College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University (MN)

kdavis@csbsju.edu

This year’s convention theme, “Theology and Media(tion): Rendering the Absent Present” offers opportunities for a wide range of explorations and applications of theological ethics and moral theology.

Mediation, the dynamic between that which is present and that which is absent, has a long history in Christian moral thought as Christians have struggled to articulate virtues, norms, and values between the Incarnation and the Eschaton. On one extreme, rigorist dualists have emphasized the chasm between worldly and divine, seeing God’s presence in this life only dimly while portraying the body as a prison and the world as a battlefield. On the other extreme, idealists have pursued dreams of establishing heaven on earth through utopian communities. Or persons succumbed to quietism with its claims of union with God being achievable in this life to the point that God’s grace and the mediating institution of the Church was no longer felt to be necessary. Today, advances in communications and technologies have further expanded the means through which humans encounter the world, one another, and even the divine, yet differences in how people construct and understand their realities remain vast.

The Ethics section invites proposals considering these perspectives, and all those in between, that seek to explore the ways in which persons, the world, and God are both known and unknown in the work of moral theology and Christian ethics.

The Ethics section also seeks to continue conversations begun at the 2022 convention that addressed questions of race/racism/systemic racism with the intention of dedicating conversation space to this topic, as well as to the conference theme.

Proposals  on this theme are invited independent of the conference theme or may incorporate both, such as investigations of how race and other aspects of personhood, such as class, gender, or sexual orientation are shaped by communication and mediated in and through our relationships and ways of acting in the world.

High-quality proposals in any other area of theological ethics and moral theology will be considered, but proposals which centrally engage the convention theme and/or race/racism/systemic racism will receive primary consideration. At the same time, the Ethics section invites proposals that attend to the interdisciplinary, ecumenical, or interreligious context of a contemporary ethical inquiry into this theme, particularly in collaboration with scholars of the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion.

Submission Requirement:

• ·       Conference presenters must be members of the College Theology Society, and Ph.D. candidates must be ABD in order to submit a proposal.

Submission Information Details:

• ·       Please submit a proposal of 300 words and a brief list of the 3-5 most centrally significant sources for this paper in the body of an e-mail message directed to both conveners. 
• ·       Please also include your institutional affiliation (if any), contact information, and current status (Assistant, Associate, PhD. Candidate) along with your proposal.