2025 ANNUAL CATA MEETING & CONFERENCE
June 6, 2025: Public Lecture
Featuring: Dr. William Webb and Dr. Gord Oeste, Tyndale University, Toronto
Forestview Church (3175 Dundas St W, Oakville, ON)
June 7, 2025: Conference & Annual Meeting
McMaster Divinity College (1280 Main St W, Hamilton, ON)
The Executive of the Canadian-American Theological Association (CATA) welcomes proposals for papers to be presented at our Annual Meeting to be held on June 7, 2025. The conference will be held at McMaster Divinity Collage at McMaster University, Hamilton, ON.
In addition, CATA will host a Friday evening public lecture (7:15 – 9:30 p.m.) at Forestview Church in Oakville, ON.
As with last year, the CATA conference will be offered as a stand-alone conference, separate from the Canadian Congress of the Humanities & Social Sciences. Consequently, enrolling in the CATA conference does not require enrollment in Congress.
CATA encourages submission of high-quality papers on any topic of theological relevance to the church. Proposals from graduate students are enthusiastically welcomed. Graduate students, post-docs, independent scholars, and pre-tenured faculty are invited to submit papers for the CATA Student and Early Career Paper Competition.
Special consideration will be given to papers that offer theological reflection on the theme “Divine Justice in Response to Evil and Tyranny.” We are interpreting “theological reflection” to include the following: biblical studies; theological readings of Scripture; historical, systematic, philosophical, moral, and pastoral theology; and theology that engages culture, the church, or other academic disciplines.
Topics in the broad theological disciplines that fall outside of the specific theme of the conference are also welcome. For example, related themes might include theological reflection on:
- The nature of evil and/or how it manifests
- Divine justice or judgment in relation to tyranny and/or coercive power
- Imprecation and Christian prayer
- God’s sovereignty and providence in relation to human affairs and governance
- Christian thought in relation to the monstrous (and/or horror)
- Violence in the Bible (apparently with divine sanction)
- Theodicy and contemporary contexts and challenges
Papers for the CATA meeting should be scholarly but not highly specialized presentations of about 20 minutes, aimed at an audience of scholars from across the spectrum of theological disciplines.
Proposal Submissions
Proposals should be approximately 250 words in length. Please prepare them for blind review and submit as an email attachment, accompanied by a short CV in a separate file. To facilitate anonymous review of proposals, please include your name, institutional affiliation, contact information, and the title of your proposal in the body of your email.
All proposals should be submitted electronically by March 1, 2025 to the address below in Word or PDF format. Please write “CATA 2025 Paper Proposal” in the subject line of your email (those intending to submit their papers simultaneously to the paper competition should write “CATA 2025 Paper Competition”).
For those intending to enter the Student and Early Career paper competition, proposals are due on March 1, 2025, and then finalized, full-text papers must be submitted by May 1, 2025. The winning paper will be published in CATA’s journal, the Canadian-American Theological Review, and its author will receive a congratulatory monetary gift.
Authors whose submissions are chosen for participation in the conference will be notified by the end of May.
Email all conference paper proposals to:
Dr. Patrick Franklin
President, Canadian-American Theological Association
pfranklin@tyndale.ca