Theological Reflections: Eastern European Journal of Theology: Announcements

The editorial board invites to submit articles for publication in the issue 23.1 (2025) Theology of Memory in the Context of Experiencing Trauma and Collective Violence

2024-07-24T07:25:17+03:00

Memory plays a key role in forming and preserving personal, social, and cultural identity. It is no coincidence that the Book of Revelation chastises those who have forgotten their first love. There are different ways of reconstructing the past, but they all involve a complex interweaving of the past with the present and the future. The fragility and fragmentation of memory link the concept of the past to two other concepts: remembering and forgetting. This issue of the journal aims to explore the intersections of remembering and forgetting from different theological perspectives, as well as the relation between other complex processes of memory, such as disregard, denial, alienation, and imagination, the recovery of memories, and the individual and collective reconstruction of relations with the past. Given the interdisciplinary nature of memory studies, we will accept for publication in this issue not only theological studies but also articles that consider philosophy, anthropology, sociology, neurophysiology, cognitive science, literary studies, and other disciplines.

For a theological reflection on these issues, the Editorial Board invites authors to submit articles that address the following topics:

Memory, tradition, and text: social memory theory and its impact on biblical studies
God, remembering and forgetting in the Old Testament
Biblical understanding of the experience of war and collective violence
Collective memory and identity in early Christianity
St. Augustine on inner memory (memoria interior) as the foundation of inner experience and knowledge of God
The Lord's Supper: theological and liturgical meanings of the Commemoration of Christ's death
The end of memory? Miroslav Wolf on the peacemaking role of remembering and forgetting
In the shadow of trauma: remembering the reality of traumatic experience
Wrestling with the past: theology and politics of memory
Johann Baptist Metz and the “dangerous memory” of the victims of history as a space for creative thinking and seeds of change
Places of memory, their material, symbolic, and functional meanings
Dementia as a theological and ethical issue
The future of memory in the age of artificial intelligence
Recollection and memory of victims in the theology of William T. Kavanaugh

We accept original and overview articles, as well as reviews, covering this complex topic. The article's length should not exceed 5,000 words.

The deadline for submitting materials is February 15, 2025. The date of publication of the issue is May 15, 2025.

To submit an article, please upload it on the journal's website: http://reflections.eeit-edu.info/about/submissions

Guidelines for authors are available here: http://reflections.eeit-edu.info/guidelines

For additional questions and suggestions, please contact reflections@eeit-edu.info.

Eastern European Journal of Theology calls for papers for the next issue 22.2 "Disability Theology: Eastern European Context"

2024-06-17T20:22:25+03:00

Dear colleagues, the Editorial Board of “Theological Reflections: Eastern European Journal of Theology ” invites papers that reflect on disability in Eastern European context.

The problems of people with disabilities affect not only doctors and therapists. In the twentieth century, they drew attention of sociologists, philosophers, and cultural critics. What began as a movement for a decent independent life for veterans of the two world wars turned into a movement for the rights of a minority that was systematically pushed to the periphery of public life. This resulted in changes in the legal and social spheres. In the early 1980s, the foundations were laid for a whole new field - disability studies. And in the 1990s, the field attracted attention of theologians.

Speaking about Ukrainian reality, according to official statistics, 2.7 million people with disabilities were registered in Ukraine before the full-scale invasion. According to the available data, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the number of such people has increased by at least 300,000 of those who became disabled due to the war. This number is likely to grow as the fighting continues.

All this raises a serious question: are the churches of Eastern Europe and Ukraine ready for this new reality? To what extent do our theology and church practices take into account such people? Are we ready not only to see them on our streets in everyday life but also to accept them on their terms, according to their capabilities? What do we consider "normal" and why?

The editorial board would like to dedicate the next issue of the journal (22.2, 2024) to the discussion of disability from biblical, theological, historical, and practical perspectives. We invite theologians, Christian philosophers, pastors, and practitioners to contribute. Articles may address but are not limited by the following topics:

Disability theology as a critique of “normality” and “ableness”
Disability in the Old and New Testaments
Healing in the New Testament: a perspective from disability theology
The fall, broken creation, and disability
The cross of Christ and disability theology
Disability and Imago Dei
Disability and the resurrection of the body
Inclusivity, accessibility, and accepting the Other
People with disability in Church history
The Church as the Body of Christ: implications for disability theology
Church of all and for all?
Open community and open table: liturgical and ecclesiological aspects of disability
Ministering to others or ministering with others?
Disability in mass culture

We consider original papers, overview papers, and reviews on this complex subject. The paper should not exceed 5,000 words.

The deadline for submission – September 15, 2024. The estimated date of publication is December 15, 2024.

To submit the paper, you need to upload it on the journal’s website: http://reflections.eeit-edu.info/about/submissions. The author’s guidelines should be consulted at the link http://reflections.eeit-edu.info/guidelines. Should you have additional questions or suggestions, write to us at reflections@eeit-edu.info.

Journal Theological Reflections Invites Submission to the Next Issue 22.1 The Sacred and the Secular in the Theopolitical Reference Frame of Central and Eastern Europe

2023-11-08T23:10:59+02:00

Dear colleagues, Theological Reflections: Eastern European Journal of Theology is pleased to invite you to submit articles for publication in the next issue (22:1) on the topic: “The Sacred and the Secular in the Theopolitical Reference Frame of Central and Eastern Europe.”

Christian presence and activity in the political space are carried out in the context of the Christian's responsibility both to the eternal city of God and to earthly society. Since Augustine, the church, as the earthly manifestation of God's rule, has found its calling in sanctifying and strengthening relationships based on domination and submission. This approach, which was the basis of state formation, radically influenced the church's role in social and political life.

Since the Enlightenment, leading philosophers and scholars have postulated that traditional theological dogmas, liturgical rituals, and sacred practices are products of the past and have no place in the modern era. Secularization, along with bureaucratization, rationalization, and urbanization, transformed medieval agrarian societies into modern industrial nations. Gradually, religion was pushed out of the political and public space and into private life. The sacred that permeated worldview, its intellectual foundations, and institutional forms seemed to have finally given way to secularized Western society.

However, at the end of the last century, the process of "desecularization" (P. Berger) or "the great return of religion" (V. Yelenskyi) began, and its role is steadily increasing in European and world politics. The growing political weight of religion and religious institutions is a paradoxical process, given the ongoing secularization, which is weakening its role in everyday life.

Although the complex intertwining of religion and politics in the modern world has long been the focus of several academic disciplines, the editorial board of the journal considers it appropriate to devote this issue to the peculiarities of theological and political discourses in the post-theistic context of Central and Eastern Europe, where, on the one hand, the interaction of Christian churches with civil society is growing. On the other hand, churches are increasingly becoming participants and instruments of populist political movements, mainly on the right.

For a theological reflection on these issues, the editorial board invites authors to submit articles that address the following matters:

Peculiarities of the return of the sacred to public space in post-communist countries
Rethinking the dichotomy of the sacred/secular in contemporary political theology
Political populism, Christianity and threats to democracy
The relationship between human rights and Christianity in the socio-cultural matrix of Central and Eastern Europe
A new reading of the intersection of religious authority and political power in the cultures of Central and Eastern Europe
Sacralization of political power: theological fallacies and political threats
The interaction of the secular and the sacred in contemporary art and fiction of the region
A theological perspective on the concepts of desecularization and post-secularity, as well as their manifestations in the political sphere

We accept original and overview articles, as well as reviews that cover this complex topic. The length of the article should not exceed 5,000 words.

The deadline for submission is February 15, 2024. The date of publication of the issue is April 15, 2024.

Manuscripts can be submitted electronically via the journal's website http://reflections.eeit-edu.info/about/submissions. Guidelines for authors are available here http://reflections.eeit-edu.info/guidelines. Should you have any questions, please contact us by e-mail: reflections@eeit-edu.info.