Martin Luther and Global Lutheran Traditions Unit

Open Call: The Martin Luther and Global Lutheran Traditions Unit welcomes paper, panel, and roundtable proposals on any topic relevant to the Unit’s interests. We particularly ask that proposals pay attention to the diversity of presiders, presenters, respondents, and topics. In panel or roundtable proposals, the Unit strongly encourages organizers be attentive to diversity in global context, race, gender, and sexuality. We strongly encourage junior scholars to submit proposals.

For the November’s Annual Meeting in Denver, the Martin Luther and Global Lutheran Traditions Unit especially welcomes any proposals on the following themes:

1) Future/s Lost: To honor the 2026 Presidential Theme, “Future/s”, we ask about “Future/s Lost.”  How do we wrestle with lost futures within Lutheran theology or because of it? How have Lutheran forms of settler colonialism, heteropatriarchy, ethnocentrism, racism or violence erased other possible futures? What is remembered, what is not, and why?  What is required in the wake of these erasures? Alternatively, what other possible futures, counter-memories, alternatives, minor themes, or forgotten texts or practices in scholarship on Martin Luther or within or against Global Lutheranism might offer us new ways of envisioning the future? Can we learn from paths not taken? And what right do we have to do so? As AAR President Laurel Schneider writes about the theme: “The muscle of dystopic imagination is well honed these days, and for good reason. But what about other possible futures, past and present? Where is the sensory richness that might enflesh imagination otherwise?” Again, how might paying attention to these lost futures generate new possibilities, counter-memories, alternative ways of embodiment for Lutheran theological reflection and action?

2) Lutheran Aesthetics and Material Cultures: 2026 marks the 500th commemoration of Martin Luther’s 1526 Deutsche Messe, and so the MLGLT Unit calls for papers that address the theological impact of this of Luther’s works in history or the present. Whether through worship in the vernacular German, integration of congregational and pastoral theologies, catechesis, the DM helped shape Lutheran Reformational thought and practice in unique ways.  This text also raises questions, however, of how one makes sense of Lutheran aesthetics or Lutheran theological interpretations of material culture. What might new materialisms have to offer scholarship on Luther or global Lutheranism? What role does language or translation have upon the matters of embodied theology? What theological sense do we make of the legacy of Luther and Lutheran liturgy, music, clothing, or material objects? 

3) Themes, Questions, or Trajectories in Lutheran Eschatology. What does Lutheran Eschatology look like today and where are the growing edges of Lutheran eschatological theology?

4) Lutheran Process Theologies: We also plan for a pre-arranged Co-Sponsored Session with the Open and Relational Theologies Unit on “Lutheran Process Theologies.” This session will highlight the contemporary ways some constructive theologians embody both, simul Lutheran and Process.