Grassroots and Indigenous Digital Faith-Based Activism Colloquium—Call for Papers

Digital technology is changing the world. In response to global challenges, diverse grassroots faith-based organisations, indigenous or otherwise, are using digital technologies to activate for justice. These activists draw on contextual wisdom and religious resources and express their activist commitments publicly in social media forums. Some of these organisations describe themselves as indigenous. Others find terms like grassroots more helpful. Academic analysis of these local digital activisms provides ways to learn with and from online theologies that are immediate, provisional and contextual.

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Yale-Edinburgh 2025 – Call for Papers

For the first time since its inception the next Yale-Edinburgh conference will be held in the Global South. Mackenzie Presbyterian University in São Paulo, one of Brazil’s largest private universities, has kindly agreed to host the conference in their Higienópolis Campus on 28-30 May 2025. We are thankful to Prof Sérgio Santos, head of the School of Theology, for his generosity. The theme will be ‘Christianity, Democracy, and Nationalism.’


Christianity, Democracy, and Nationalism
28-30 May 2025 ‧ Universidade Mackenzie, São Paulo, Brazil ‧ #YaleEdin2025
Yale-Edinburgh Conference on World Christianity and the History of Mission
Deadline: 15 December 2024

Christian communities around the world have long developed an ambiguous and troubled relationship with nationalist movements and processes of democratisation. They can be seen on all possible sides of the religious, political, and ideological divides: at times fostering patriotic sentiments, at times falling victim to nationalist pride; at times providing theological rationale and exemplary models for movements of racial, gender, and class equality, at times portraying social hierarchies as organic and God-given. Such interactions between religious communities, the authority of the state, and the imagining of the nation shaped decisively the historical experiences of the modern world and exert a profound impact in the political and religious configurations of our time. In the Global South, local and indigenous leaders educated in Christian institutions rallied against foreign colonial control and laid the groundwork for movements of independence. We can think of the Latin American Catholic clergymen in the nineteenth century and their role in fostering “creole patriotism” against the Iberian colonisers, or the young leaders educated in Protestant missionary schools in Africa and East Asia who around a century later challenged Western colonialism. Nationalist ideals, however, could also be leveraged against religious minorities. Catholics in nineteenth-century Britain, for instance, were seen as disloyal to the monarchy on account of their attachment to Rome, while Christian conversion in post-1949 China and postcolonial India was often deemed as detrimental to the nation. In yet another way, Christian thinkers and laypeople in the modern era conceived themselves as members of a universal fellowship crossing territorial, ethnic, and linguistic boundaries, sentiments that challenged aspects of nationalist pride. Much has been written in recent years about the simultaneous revival of populist regimes and charismatic Christianity worldwide, especially their impact on processes of democratisation. The intersection of these two forces have contributed to the polarisation of civil society and the destabilisation of democratic systems of checks and balances in the United States, Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, and Zimbabwe. Conversely, Christians of different persuasions have both organised large-scale mobilisations in favour of the enfranchisement of social and religious minorities and deployed theological arguments to withstand political authoritarianism. Examples of this abound and range from the Catholic critique of totalitarianism in interwar Europe, the evangelical participation in the Civil Rights movement in the United States, the militant Christianity of Latin America in the Cold War, to grassroots movements of popular theological reflection and action in East Asia.

For our 2025 conference we invite papers that interrogate the relationship between democracy, nationalism, Christian communities, and the Christian faith around the world. We especially welcome historical case studies exploring the relationship of Christian bodies with changing sociopolitical circumstances; ethnographies that illuminate the religious and cultural imaginaries of Christian communities and their lived realities; theological interrogations into the politicisation of Christian religion; comparative studies highlighting patterns of interactions between religious communities, democratisation, and nationalism; and any other pertinent topics.

Please, send us your name, affiliation, and 250-word abstract by 15 December 2024 using this form. We accept proposals and papers in English, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Yale-Edinburgh 2024 – Call for Papers

Spirit and the Spiritual:
Ancestors, Deities and the Holy Spirit in Church, and Mission
26th-28th June 2024 ‧ Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT ‧ #YaleEdin2024
Proposals due 15th February 2024

Yale-Edinburgh Group

Missions from the West brought Christianity into worlds with a wide array of cosmologies. Recipient cultures embraced Christian faith while negotiating differing perspectives of spiritual realities. The subsequent transition from missionary Christianity to indigenous faith produced a range of responses to the notion of ‘spiritual beings.’ Through mission, Christianity encountered traditional religions which venerated ancestors, revered spiritual beings, and navigated intricate relationships between deities in a world far more complex than the typical Western experience. From Korea to Brazil, Nigeria to Samoa, France to India – these multifaceted cosmologies continue to animate the Christian experience producing dynamic expressions of the faith. Movements of the Holy Spirit represent another dimension of Christianity. A wide range of pneumatic Christianities populate the long history of Christian expansion around the world.

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Yale-Edinburgh 2023 – Call for Papers

Creation, Climate Change, and World Christianity #YaleEdin2023
21st–23rd June 2023 ‧ In-person in Edinburgh,
with hybrid hubs in Nairobi, Singapore, and São Paulo
Proposals due 15th February 2023 1st March 2023

Yale-Edinburgh Group

The natural environment influences the perspectives and activities of Christian groups and peoples. At a time when rapid climate change challenges and disrupts the lives of humans and animals, our theme provides plenty of scope for examining the responses of Christians worldwide, past and present, to the planet.

The first article of the Apostle’s Creed asserts that Christians uphold a God Who is ‘Creator of Heaven and Earth’. However, Christianity has sometimes appeared to focus more closely on the heavenly realm than on the earthly realm. Theologies underscoring the domination of creation have overridden theologies of care and concern over the natural order. Missionaries and migrants have been at the mercy of the seas. Under the influence of romantic idealisation of pristine lands and unspoilt ‘primitive’ peoples, missionaries romanticised rural villages and communities untouched by modern vices as sites of religious transformation. Other missionaries were keen amateur botanists and geographers. How did their assumptions and knowledge influence understanding of the natural environment? What did they learn from people connected with the land, the sea, and their plants and animals? In what ways did indigenous communities around the world relate Christianity to their natural landscapes and animal worlds? In contemporary Christianity, where are the movements responding to the climate crisis or theologies developing from land rights or a reduction in bio-diversity? How, for example, are Pacific islanders responding theologically and practically to the threat of the rise in sea-levels? Or those living in the Amazon rainforest responding to its destruction? What is observed when Pentecostals do battle with nature spirits? What Christian groups are responding to the tensions when natural resources are limited or used badly? What role does climate change play in the movement of people? What does the establishment of migrant churches in cities mean for engagement with the natural environment?

The theme is vast and applicable to interdisciplinary working in planetary health and geo-sciences, as well as the familiar history, theology and social sciences. We welcome papers that focus on the observation and analysis of what is happening in World Christianity vis-à-vis the topic.

Please supply an abstract of 250 words to cswc-events@ed.ac.uk by 15th February 2023 1st March 2023 that clearly states the enquiry, method and the literature in which you situate your paper. We expect all speakers to be presenting from Edinburgh, with the exception of keynotes separately organized by one of our hubs. We anticipate a high level of interest in the conference and may not be able to accept all papers.

Further details will be released on the Yale-Edinburgh page.