2023 Annual Karl Barth Conference

The task of theology, as Barth maintained throughout his life, is to talk about God, but who this God is will invariably conjure up conflict with political power aspirations. Barth’s positioning of theology has always been contested—as too political by some, as un-political or anti-political by others–and his concrete theological commitments as well as his concrete political stances have been problematized in a variety of ways.

The aim of the conference is simple and momentous: to engage the contested and the disruptive in both the theological and the political. Major scholars working in different areas of political theology will test and contest Barth as a resource for political theology, broadly construed, and enter into critical and constructive conversation with Barth. The conference will foster new conversations on Barth and political theology, generate creative space for critical engagement, and explore the potential for an explicitly theological stance in complex and difficult social and political contexts.

ORGANIZED BY

Center for Barth Studies

2022 Annual Karl Barth Conference

The 2022 Annual Karl Barth Conference will be hosted by the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary from June 19–22, 2022. The Conference takes as its theme on this occasion “Karl Barth and Reformed Theology: Tradition, Dialogue, and Construction”. The primary aim of the Conference is to explore some of the ways in which Karl Barth as a Reformed theologian interacted with the Reformed and other traditions, along paths both expository and critical, and to reflect upon the possibility that his creative engagement might encourage and resource generative work in theology in the contemporary era. A wide range of speakers of diverse perspectives has been assembled for the event, all of whom share an interest in the work of Karl Barth and a commitment to constructive theological dialogue around substantive issues affecting church and world. The Conference will also serve as an appropriate occasion to mark the retirement of Professor Bruce L. McCormack from Princeton Theological Seminary in 2022.

ORGANIZED BY

Center for Barth Studies

Hope from Ashes: Legacies and Lessons from the Los Angeles Riots

Thirty years after the 1992 Los Angeles Riots, African American and Asian American communities struggle to find lasting responses to the persistence of social, racial, and economic injustice in their communities.

ORGANIZED BY

The Betsey Stockton Center for Black Church Studies

The Center for Asian American Christianity

White Supremacy and Christianity: Reckoning with the Past and Reimagining the Future

This conference seeks to assert the continuing hope in the power of theological interrogation to assist both theological discourse and the praxes of the church but also desires to engage in a reexamination of the tools of theological or praxiological inquiry into white supremacy. It may be that the persistence of white supremacy is partly a response to Christian theology’s use of intellectual or practical tools that have themselves become infected with white supremacy. Instead of resistance, theological discourse has become complicit with white supremacy. The goal of this event is to foster dialogue and constructive conversation around alternative modes of existence and theological inquiry. At the same time, we also seek to identify the ways religious leaders, faith scholars, and their respective institutions might continue to assert the enduring hope of the Christian faith to reimagine a future free of the lingering effects of white supremacy.

ORGANIZED BY

The Betsey Stockton Center for Black Church Studies

The Center for Barth Studies