Ethics

Nancy M. Rourke, Canisius College (NY)

rourken@canisius.edu

Kari-Shane Davis-Zimmerman, College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University (MN)

kdavis@csbsju.edu

This year’s convention theme, “Human Families: Identities, Relationships, and Responsibilities,” offers opportunities for a wide range of explorations and applications of theological ethics and moral theology. The Ethics Section calls for paper proposals that thoughtfully and creatively engage this theme and for high quality proposals in any other area of theological ethics and moral theology. Proposals which centrally engage the convention themes will receive primary consideration.

As the convention’s theme notes, “human families, broadly considered, may encompass all the vital relationships that support human personal and social development. These vital relationships are constitutive of healthy human persons as it is in and through them that individuals come to know themselves as well as their responsibilities to and for others.”

The Ethics section seeks papers that engage family and families in creative and faithful ways.

Such papers might consider:

• the realities of today family life today both within and beyond the Church
• outcomes of recent developments in the Church, such as synods on the family, on youth, the papal visits during the World Meeting of Families, or the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia
• implications of the theme’s focus for theological anthropology as a central consideration of moral theology
• the moral contours of the Church as a family
• moral issues related to the sacraments
• moral issues related to contraception, abortion, same-sex marriage, the humanitarian crisis of child immigrants and family separations within the U.S. or elsewhere, the sex abuse crisis
• moral issues related to non-human forms of life with whom families interact

Finally, the ethics section invites proposals that attend to the interdisciplinary, ecumenical, or interreligious context of a contemporary ethical inquiry into this theme, particularly in collaboration with scholars of the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion.

Please note: Conference presenters must be members of the College Theology Society, and Ph.D. candidates must be ABD in order to submit a proposal.

Please submit a proposal of 300 words and a brief list of the 3-5 most centrally significant sources for this paper in the body of an e-mail message directed to both conveners by December 15, 2019. Include your institutional affiliation (if any), contact information, and current status (Assistant, Associate, PhD. Candidate) along with your proposal.