CFP: Cognition Histories and Sociology as Tools for Open Theological Reflection

CALL FOR PAPERS

for a topical issue of Open Theology

COGNITION HISTORIES AND SOCIOLOGY AS TOOLS FOR OPEN THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION

Open Theology (https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/opth/html) invites submissions for the topical issue “Cognition Histories and Sociology as Tools for Open Theological Reflection” edited by Neville Buch (University of Queensland, Australia).

DESCRIPTION

Cognition Histories are statements of the thinking in the historiographic arguments, achieved at the philosophical level of meta-reflection. Cognition Sociology is an examination of sociological models for how the elements of common thinking built the model. A cognition of open theology goes to the theological statements of history and sociology. Why is this theme important? Academia struggles to be relevant to the way the public thinks. Public History, Public Sociology, and Applied Philosophy are three fields which bring this problem to the fore. 

A model for open theological statements framed as interdisciplinary cognition studies is David W. Kim’s and Duncan Wright’s edited Socio-Anthropological Approaches to Religion: Environmental Hope (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024). Open theological reflection has no ideological boundaries as intellectual examination for thinking behind theological expression. It is, nevertheless, a necessarily liberal approach for its pluralism to be sustained. 

In this regard, Don Cupitt’s radical-liberal a-theology provided another early model, in The Meaning of the West: An Apologia for Secular Christianity (2008), and the approach is still open to “Eastern” models of thought (Spearritt 1995). Open theological reflection has arrived at the place it has, due to the collapse of various arguments, apologia for orthodoxy. Henderson (1998) demonstrated a construction of both orthodoxy and heresy where the boundaries are not what many theologians have described. Dominic Erdozain (2016) demonstrates that ‘orthodox theologies’ are not as orthodox as these theologians think, where history is a process of doubt into new doctoral formulations. Unitarian-Universalism is another heretical model (Hillard 2005, Nelson 2017, Struckmeyer 2017).

Society now exists in a heretical world, but the engagement is also opened to conservative Protestants, Catholics and the ‘Eastern’ Orthodox (Myers 2008, O'Connor 2011). Orthodoxy is still a state of affairs which challenges open theology (Davis & Robinson 1996), but it is dissenting education and its worldviews which has forged the pathway to openness in the last half-century (Roberts 2015). 

The aim of this topical issue is to provide cognition histories and sociology for theological dialogue.

Because the journal is published under an Open Access model, as a rule, publication costs should be covered by Article Publishing Charges (APC), paid by authors, their affiliated institutions, funders or sponsors. Authors without access to publishing funds are encouraged to discuss potential discounts or waivers with Managing Editor of the journal Dr Katarzyna Tempczyk ([email protected]) before submitting their manuscripts.

HOW TO SUBMIT

Submissions will be collected January 1 - April 30, 2025, via the on-line submission system at http://www.editorialmanager.com/openth/

Choose as article type: Cognition Histories and Sociology as Tools for Open Theological Reflection.

Before submission the authors should carefully read the Instruction for Authors, available at: https://www.degruyter.com/publication/journal_key/OPTH/downloadAsset/OPTH_Instruction%20for%20Authors.pdf 

All contributions will undergo critical peer-review before being accepted for publication.

Further questions about content for this thematic issue can be addressed to Dr Neville Buch (e-mail [email protected]). In case of technical problems with submission please write to [email protected].

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