CO-SPONSORSHIP: Christian Systematic Theology Unit and Open and Relational Theologies Unit

Imagining Liberative Futures

Reflecting on the AAR’s 2025 presidential theme of future/s we invite paper proposals that engage the concepts of imagination and/in liberative future/s, including but not limited to:

What makes liberative imagination possible, and how can we account for it theologically? What allows us to envision never-before-realized circumstances as possibilities? How can theological imagination contribute to the work of liberation?

Is a liberative future dependent on the supernatural (e.g., God injecting possibilities that would not otherwise have been present), or can it build on pre-existing natural possibilities (e.g., the seed that is sown on creaturely fertile ground)? Are these mutually exclusive?

To what extent must a liberative future be continuous with/grounded in the past? To what extent is it a rupture with/discontinuous with the past? How do we imagine divine and human liberative work in either (or another) case?

When we say a different kind of world is possible, what is the nature of that “possible”? How should we understand the difference between futures that are merely logically possible and futures that are live possibilities? What might one say theologically about how a liberative possible future moves from one category to the other?

What connection does a liberative future have with the tragedy and losses of the past?