#CFP: NABPR 2027 Annual Meeting — Faith, Health, and Human Flourishing
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
- MAY 17-19, 2027
- Raleigh, NC
- Joint Meeting of the NABPR, BHHS, & AMGP
“Faith, Health, and Human Flourishing: Truth, Trust, and the Common Good in a Pluralistic Democracy.”
The meeting will bring scholars, ministry educators, healthcare professionals, chaplains, and community leaders into conversation about spirituality and healthcare, mental health and trauma, health disparities, pastoral care, and faith-based partnerships with public-health organizations. Sessions will examine religiously influenced attitudes toward vaccines, medical expertise, and mental-health treatment, while distinguishing misinformation-driven distrust from mistrust rooted in medical racism, exclusion, or unequal access to care. Additional topics will include biblical understandings of sickness and healing, the historic role of churches in establishing hospitals, the prosperity gospel, healthcare access and education, and ministry with people experiencing illness, disability, grief, and trauma.
The May meeting will place questions of health within the larger struggle over religious freedom, public trust, Christian nationalism, and democratic life. Public health depends upon truthful communication, credible institutions, respect for evidence, freedom of conscience, concern for vulnerable neighbors, and equitable access to the conditions necessary for human flourishing. These goods are weakened when Christian faith is fused with nationalist political identity, scientific expertise is portrayed as hostile to religion, or one theological perspective seeks authority over a religiously diverse public. Drawing on historic Baptist commitments to liberty of conscience, rigorous scholarship, church freedom, and church-state separation, the meeting will explore how faith communities can strengthen the common good without seeking cultural domination.
The NABPR invites paper and panel proposals related to the conference theme; but as always, we welcome all proposals, even if unrelated to the conference theme. The conference will feature a range of presentations and sessions, including church history, church ministry, pedagogy, Old and New Testament, ethics and theology.
The May meeting represents a collaboration between NABPR, the Association of Ministry Guidance Professionals (AMGP), and the Baptist History & Heritage Society (BHHS). Each organization is issuing a separate call for papers. Individuals may submit different paper proposals to multiple organizations, but may not submit the same proposal to multiple organizations. For individuals submitting proposals to multiple organizations, please indicate so when submitting.
Graduate students are encouraged to submit proposals. Graduate students must register for the meeting, but the cost is reduced to a $5 administrative fee, regardless of whether a paper is proposed. Graduate students who present papers and request travel funding to [email protected] will be awarded a $250 travel stipend.
Proposals must be received by January 30, 2027. Proposals should include the name(s) and contact information of the presenter(s), title of the presentation, preferred discipline, and 300-word abstract.
Papers will be scheduled into a 30-minute time period, including discussion.
Proposals will be accepted or denied by March 1, 2027.