Appel à contributions - "Creeds, Councils and Canons. 2025 EHS Conference", Edinburgh

The 2025 EHS Conference theme will be ‘Creeds, Councils and Canons’, held in Edinburgh on 15-17 July 2025.

Keynote speakers:

• Professor David Fergusson, University of Cambridge

• Professor Emma Wild-Wood, University of Edinburgh

• Professor Alberto Camplani, Sapienza Università di Roma

• Dr Sara Parvis, University of Edinburgh

2025 is the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, widely recognised as the Church’s first Ecumenical Council. This drew on and popularised a tradition which has been widely adopted by churches throughout the world, of church leaders and/or representatives meeting to deal with matters doctrinal, ethical, disciplinary, missionary and liturgical, and documenting them in creeds and canons. The recognition or not of councils and their documents has also become a way in which churches tell their own institutional history, and situate themselves with regard to one another.

The development of distinct linguistic traditions of Christianity in Asian and African languages from the fourth century onwards can be traced by the reception or not of the documents of Nicaea and of the Ecumenical Councils of Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon which followed it. Conciliar material translated from Greek into Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian and Georgian led to new literary expressions of World Christianity based on gathered collections which often broke free from their original contexts. These became both textual witnesses to their own transmission, and sources in their turn for further theological and legal reflection and prescription.

The collecting and weighing up of different conciliar and canonical traditions became a means whereby local churches and monasteries across the world could demonstrate to one another the quality of their libraries and their level of erudition, catholicity and historical knowledge. Medieval women writers also often show knowledge of conciliar pronouncements: their engagement with these often reveals their level of interest in being accepted on a broader ecclesiastical political stage, and also in avoiding accusations of heresy. Conciliarism became one of the main drivers of ecclesiastical reform in the late medieval period.

In Africa and Asia, the relationship of the existing Christian churches to the early Ecumenical Councils often shaped encounters with organised missions from Europe. In Europe itself, theological and ecclesiological debates in the Early Modern period, including at the Council of Trent, drew heavily on the early Councils and Creeds. Erudite debates on these sometimes served the forces of violence and coercion, but also sometimes performed a hidden role of facilitating ecumenism and peace-making.

In the modern period, the ancient councils have continued to be used throughout the world as agreed authorities for otherwise divergent Church traditions, or else as starting points for creatively discussing difference. New councils of different sorts have become themselves a means of ecclesiastical renewal. The Edinburgh 1910 missionary conference, which led to the World Council of Churches, established a fresh sense of Protestant Christian unity for the twentieth century. The Second Vatican Council refreshed Catholic thinking on ecclesiology, Scripture, Tradition, liturgy, ecumenism, inter-faith dialogue and the role of the Church in the modern world. Feminist critiques, meanwhile, can fruitfully be raised against the male-centred concerns of a conciliar tradition in which women often appear as more legislated against than legislating.

The Call for Papers for this conference is now open. Submission deadlines: 10 January 2025 (for those who need visas), 15 April 2025 (final). To apply, please fill out the following form and send it to ehseditorial@gmail.com.

Summer Proposal Form 2025

Bursaries

The EHS offers a number of generous bursaries to allow postgraduate students to attend its Summer Conferences. If you are eligible, and would like to be considered for a bursary, please complete this application form and send to the email address provided, along with a reference. The deadline for bursary applications is the same as that for proposals for communications (15 April 2025).