Call for Short Papers

Overview

For the 2026 conference, SST invites papers on the theme of Theology: A Discipline of Failure?.

Please submit abstracts of up to 250 words, by the deadline of 14th December 2026 (17:00 GMT), using the form at the bottom of this page. Successful applicants will be notified by the selection panel by the 14th of January.

If you have any questions or issues, please get in touch with short.papers@theologysociety.org.uk.

Call for papers

“Whichever way you look at it, theology has failed … Failure is not merely inevitable but constitutive.” (Marika Rose)

“We need to look failure full in the face. That is partly because it is looking us full in the face all the time. We can’t escape from it … So the question is, how do we learn to get better at making better mistakes?” (Emma Ineson)

“The failure, rather than the success of the church is the means of its symbolic pointing toward the body of Christ that lies outside its walls in whomever the church understands as its others.” (Linn Marie Tonstad)

“In the despair over the failure of method, the theologian might be disabused of the hubris of self-justification and prepared for the grace we have needed all along.” (Hanna Reichel)

As these quotations from our colleagues illustrate, in recent years there has been a “turn to failure” in many systematic and constructive theologies, chiming with wider appeals to failure across disciplines and discourses including queer and affect theory, politics, social sciences and beyond.

Christian churches are among those institutions facing up to their own failures and confronting realities such as demographic challenges, reckonings concerning histories of sex abuse and institutional racism, and awareness of the ravages of sin. These have all prompted Christians to concentrate their minds on what it means to relate to God and to other creatures in a context of failure.

Building on the turn to failure in theological discourse and beyond, the Society for the Study of Theology invites submissions for our upcoming Annual Conference on the theme Theology and Failure.

Short paper submissions might touch on themes such as:

• What it might mean to hold to Christian hope for redemption in a context of an awareness of failure.
• How theologians can or should distinguish between those failures which are normal and necessary facts of existence in the world, and the failures which represent horrific breakdown and abnegation of their responsibilities by institutions and individuals.
• How proper attention to the reality of failure might affect theological accounts of areas such as ecclesiology, theological anthropology, soteriology, hamartiology, eschatology, and the doctrine of God.
• How the awareness of individual theologians’ own failures might or should affect whether and how their work continues to be used and acknowledged.
• The well-attested moral failings of individual churches and church leaders, and their impacts on theological discourse and the churches’ relationships with wider society.
• The implications of Christianity’s own failure to satisfactorily address a range of political and social injustices.

This theme seeks to prompt theological reflection on failure in a range of contexts, and might encompass areas such as policy, economics, ability and disability, sexuality and gender, and leadership. It recognises that failure is a common experience across institutions and challenges contributors to consider how far theology as a discipline might be deemed to have failed and what its putative chastened future/s might look like.

Submission formats

In addition to traditional academic papers, the Society welcomes and encourages non-traditional forms of presentations, including but not limited to:

• Performance: Dramatic or poetic performances that engage with the theme of failure.
• Visual Productions/Representations: Artworks that explore theological concepts through visual media.
• Artistic Expressions: Any other forms of artistic expression that provide insight into theological discussions of failure.

Selection criteria

The Short Papers Subcommittee will review submissions by following an anonymized review process. Authors’ names and identifying details will be redacted during the selection process.

We encourage applicants to consider the following criteria for selection of papers:

• Abstracts will be judged according to their originality and rigour, as well as the clarity of their argument and approach and their relevance to the conference theme
• We particularly encourage papers that reflect ongoing work-in-progress, for example as part of an article, thesis, or wider project
• Please note that multiple applications are permitted, but presenters will be limited to giving a maximum of one paper at the conference overall (i.e. across short papers and seminar sessions), in order to ensure that opportunities to present can be given to more delegates.

Support and guidance

In 2024 Dr Selina Stone, on behalf of the Short Papers Subcommittee, produced a document containing guidance on writing a successful abstract, which applicants – especially first-time applicants – may find useful. Click here to access the guidance (pdf, 38 kb).

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Submission portal