CHF Conference 2021 - Crisis and Opportunity (booking deadline extended to 21st August)

In the light of the improving pandemic situation we are delighted to be moving forward with plans for our postponed residential conference with recent events stimulating reflection on how times of crisis can also be times of opportunity. As usual we welcome a wide variety of papers at our conference, but suggest exploring the above theme in three ways:

• Consideration of the current state and prospects for Christian historiography – does recent and ongoing global crisis (the climate emergency as well as the pandemic) provide us with new opportunities for reflection on the overall course of human history and the ways in which ‘God is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year’ (Arthur Campbell Ainger, 1894).
• Analysis of Christian and other responses to historic moments of crisis – eg wars and revolutions, natural and manmade disasters, the ‘Spanish’ flu pandemic of 1918.
• Is a sense of perpetual crisis – positively through personal experience of conversion, negatively through perceptions of a hostile ‘world’ - characteristic of the evangelical Christian tradition to which most of us belong? If so, how does that experience of ongoing crisis express itself in spirituality and action?

Please send paper proposals (up to 150 words for a presentation to be delivered in 20-30 minutes) to Prof John Wolffe, john.wolffe@open.ac.uk by Tuesday 1 June 2021.

Speakers are offered a concessionary rate of £80 for full attendance at the conference (two nights accommodation with full board Thursday evening to Saturday lunchtime). Additional subsidy may be available to students. You can sign up for the conference via the homepage.