“What Does Theology Do, Actually?” Dialogue between Differing Theological Approaches

This Special Issue aims to curate a robust set of scholarly discussions of “approaches” to “theology” as an important contemporary “societal semantic”. For purposes of this issue, the term “societal semantic” can be understood most basically as any way that social groups communicate to and about themselves in processing their relations to the various other social groupings with which they interact. In so doing, two vectors help guide the field of vision: First, rather than defining theologies or doing theology, contributions are sought that focus on describing what theologies do in and for the communities in which they hold significance and as far as possible in those communities’ own perspectives. This is not, however, to call for an “outside” or “neutral perspective”. Rather, second, contributions are sought that explore mixings, interactions, co-operations, and dialogues among theological approaches, however “approach” may be defined. This might range from more familiar approaches like interreligious and ecumenical dialogue to more experimental and still evolving approaches like theological performance or the participation of theologians in ethics advisory boards and so on.