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Call for Papers 2025

The Eighth Biennial
Christian Congregational Music: Local and Global Perspectives Conference

Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford, United Kingdom
5–8 August 2025

Congregational music-making is a vital and vibrant practice within Christian communities worldwide. It reflects, informs, and articulates convictions and concerns that are irreducibly local even as they flow along global networks. The Christian Congregational Music Conference aims to expand the avenues of scholarly inquiry into congregational music-making by bringing together world-class scholars and practitioners to explore the varying cultural, social, and spiritual roles music plays in the life of various Christian communities around the world. We are pleased to invite proposals for the eighth biennial conference at Ripon College in Cuddesdon, near Oxford, United Kingdom, from Tuesday, August 5 to Friday, August 8, 2025. The conference will feature guest speakers, roundtables, and workshops that reflect the ever-broadening scope of research and practice in Christian congregational music-making around the world.

Proposals on any topic related to the study of congregational music-making will be considered, but we especially welcome submissions that explore one or more of the following themes:

 

🙇 Embodying Congregational Songs

Congregational music is produced and experienced by human bodies in interaction with a range of different material spaces, tools, and environments. While focusing on the complex emotional, cognitive, corporeal, and spiritual experiences of congregational singing, we invite contributions that specifically investigate the embodied practices of worship and prayer, exploring how these practices shape and are shaped by the corporeal engagements with the sacred. What does it mean to acknowledge this embodiment in worship practices? How does music affect the body, and how are different bodies enlisted to produce different sounds and timbres? How can we make sense of the visceral bodily experiences invoked while working with congregational singing? How can communities make space for other ways of knowing, praying, praising, and being through sound? 

 

🏠 Sounding Home and Singing Nostalgia

In a complex world made up of multicultural societies and globalized localities, diasporic experiences of “in-betweenness” often draw on or evoke experiences of nostalgia. As congregational music repertories and practices respond to experiences of displacement, what is the role of nostalgia in the creation and adoption of particular Christian music practices? How are diasporic Christians worshiping in the context of loss, conflict, instability, and disaster? How have congregational liturgical and music repertories responded to changing migration patterns in the world? How is nostalgia embedded in processes of indigenization, resistance, and musical localization? How has nostalgia for a past musical style and sung theology impacted Christian congregational music practices today? 

 

🌿 Climate Change and Ecology

How have different congregational music traditions been bound up with questions of climate change, ecology, and (what we often call) nature in the past, and how is that changing today?  How do musical practices shape worshippers’ interactions with and imagination of non-human beings and landscapes? How do Christian congregational song networks and institutions incorporate or overlook ecologically-conscious practices and activism in their events and publications? From the printing of hymnals to the flights necessary for a worship tour, how do congregational song practices impact the environment? How do local congregations and congregants perceive the intersection between congregational music practices and environmental justice? How do aspects of social location, including socioeconomic class, political affiliation, and occupation impact how groups use congregational worship practices to address climate change, nature, and ecology? 

 

💰 Social and Financial Inequality

Social and financial inequities can be found throughout the history of Christian musicking, along with prophetic calls for justice and reparations. Whether through the backing of wealthy patrons, stamps of approval from rich institutions, or success in the commercial marketplace, some congregational songs, genres, and musical practices have proven lucrative. Others, however, have struggled to survive or faded into obscurity. What qualities, values, and networks must converge to make congregational music a “hot commodity”? Why are certain congregational music practices commoditized while others are not? How do factors such as gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, and social class play into the financial power structures governing congregational music’s creation and distribution? How do diverse theological perspectives on wealth and stewardship impact congregational song’s financial networks? 

 

😢 Musical Complicity in Religious Abuse and Trauma

While music is often touted as a force for healing, it can also be traumatizing. As a wave of recent scandals attests, Christian communities have often harbored abusers who have inflicted trauma on those under their care. How have Christian musicians, musical institutions, and music industries responded to charges of physical, emotional, and spiritual abuse? What role has congregational music played in perpetuating both individual wrongdoing and systemic injustice within religious institutions? What roles does congregational music play in the post-traumatic responses of abuse victims? What role can music play in calling out abuse, processing religious trauma, or repairing trust? 

 

🧭 “In Christ There Is No East or West?”: Troubling East/West Boundaries

The lines of demarcation between “Eastern” and “Western” Christianities are not a given, and music-making is a significant means whereby people actively create, maintain, and challenge these boundaries. How is music used not only to reflect but also to construct the “Easternness” of Eastern Christianities? How have folk or popular music genres of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Asia influenced congregational music-making?  How do “Eastern” and “Western” churches use music to position themselves relative to one another? In light of both historical and current geopolitical conflicts, how have people used congregational music in processes of “Othering” the East through orientalist tropes or appropriation? What orientalisms—or perhaps even “occidentalisms”—can be heard in congregational music-making, and what musical elements serve as points of contact between East and West? 

 

We are now accepting proposals for individual papers (20 minutes), organized panels (3 papers), and roundtables. The online proposal form can be found on the conference website: http://congregationalmusic.org/proposals

Whilst the conference retains its primary identity as an in-person event in Cuddesdon, we acknowledge that international travel can sometimes be challenging and will do our best to accommodate a limited number of remote/digital presentations over the course of the event.

Proposals must be received by 18 December 2024. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 31 January 2025, and conference registration will begin on 19 February 2025. Further instructions and information will be made available on the conference website at http://congregationalmusic.org.