EHS Summer Conference | 23-25 July 2024 | University of Durham
The Church and the Military
Call for Papers, deadline – 15 April 2024
The 2024 Summer Conference will address the theme of the Church and the Military, a term which (for the purpose of these conferences) includes naval and air forces as well as armies. The Church’s encounter with men and women at arms, whether professionals or amateurs, is as old as Christianity itself and its approach has taken many different forms across time and space– including rejection, an impulse to evangelise, influence or control, endorsement, and even the flattery of imitation. If a perennial strain of Christian pacifism means that military organisations and their representatives will always be treated with some suspicion, in many militaries in the historically Christian world the closeness and longevity of their relationship with the Church has left an indelible mark on their identities and cultures.
The Church’s conflicting attitudes and approaches towards military service reveal fundamental tensions and divergencies in its understandings of the ethics of war, its attitudes towards the state and secular authority, its obligations to wider society, and even its approaches to gender. Furthermore, the Church’s complex and diverse relationship with military (or paramilitary) organisations and personnel embraces a multitude of periods, traditions, and perspectives, extending from the first to the twenty-first century and involving all branches of Christianity. The history and dynamics of this relationship can also be studied from a rich variety of disciplinary and inter-disciplinary viewpoints, including biblical reception, moral theology, art history, music, sociology, and gender and literary studies.
Proposals for twenty-minute papers are welcomed. Please send paper proposals of no more than 200 words to ehseditorial@gmail.com by 15 April 2024.