Signs of the Times: Interdisciplinary Responses to Religious Nationalism 2025 Catholic Social Tradition Conference March 20–22, 2025 | University of Notre Dame
This 2025 CST conference will remember the 60th anniversary of two significant Vatican II texts, Gaudium et spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World) and Dignitatis humanae (Declaration on Religious Freedom). Released on the final day of Vatican II, these texts together invited serious consideration of the role of the church and other religious communities in relation to the state.
This year’s CST conference takes up Vatican II’s invitation to discern “the signs of the times” and to attend to the roles of church and state within civil society with a view toward the common good. These central CST themes warrant further exploration as Christian and other forms of religious nationalism represent a significant sign of the current time in particular national and international contexts.
This interdisciplinary conference invites historical, constructive, and comparative approaches as we consider the ecumenical, interfaith, and transdisciplinary challenges of religious nationalism.
For example, what is the history of Christian nationalism in the United States and how is it related to similar movements in other parts of the world? What are the scriptural and theological resources available to analyze these expressions of Christian and national identity? To what degree and under what forms are the academy and the Christian churches complicit with the history and recent expressions of white Christian nationalism? What are the possible connections between the reemergence of various forms of religious nationalism with economic changes, poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation? How has the rise of these political ideologies been facilitated by changes in laws and institutional structures? What are the implications of Christian and other forms of religious nationalism for the relationship of religious bodies and the state in civil society? What are the pedagogical challenges across the disciplines in addressing the significance of Christian and religious nationalism? Normatively, what options for constructive engagement and responses emerge from our shared consideration of these questions?
Deadline: November 1, 2024
Proposals for concurrent sessions that address the foregoing questions and related issues from a particular disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspective are welcome. Especially encouraged are those proposals exploring the practical issues arising in educational contexts and in various social and political contexts. For example, proposals might address responses to religious nationalism in religiously affiliated educational institutions, the influence of technological changes on the dissemination of religious nationalist ideas, or the present-day nationalist discourses in inter-religious spaces nationally and/or internationally.
Both individual paper and panel proposals are welcome.
Acceptance of proposals will be communicated by December 1, 2024.
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