Religion and the Ending of War Conference

In its new location at Shrivenham, the Armed Forces Chaplaincy Centre (AFCC) continues to sponsor the work of the long-running conference previously held at Amport House, now known as the Beckett House Conference (Religion and Defence). As 2020 marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of the end of the Second World War, the first and only use of atomic weapons in war, and the seventy-fifth anniversary of the UN Charter, this conference will reflect on the role of religion in ending armed conflict and in healing the scars of war. It will explore how the end of conflict has been envisioned and interpreted by different religious traditions and will ask how religion and religious agencies have promoted (or frustrated) peacebuilding and reconciliation. It will study how religion has helped to achieve post-conflict healing, on a personal, national and international level. It will study the role of religion in memorialisation and remembrance, and the influence, significance and difficulties of religious themes in this process. 

Students of all religious traditions, and secularism, and contributors from all relevant disciplines are invited to submit proposals for thirty-minute papers, which will include ten minutes of questions and discussion. While the Beckett House Conference (formerly the Amport Conference) focuses on the modern era (defined as post-1800), it warmly welcomes perspectives from other periods. Cognisant of the evolving level and nature of restrictions with respect to the COVID pandemic, some speakers may wish to present their papers virtually (please state in your proposal if that is the case). Additionally, some papers from the conference will be selected to form the basis of a further webinar on the theme of this year's conference which will be held in November 2021. 

The conference and webinar will be hosted by the staff of the AFCC and will be co-ordinated by Canon Professor Michael Snape (Michael Ramsey Professor of Anglican Studies, Durham University) and Dr Alastair Lockhart (Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge and Academic Director, Centre for the Critical Study of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements, Bedford, UK). Four-hundred-word abstracts should be copied, along with a one-page CV, to Michael Snape and Alastair Lockhart by Friday 7 May 2021. 

The International Network for the Study of War and Religion in the Modern World was established in 2009 to promote greater communication and collaboration among scholars working in the field of war and religion from the eighteenth century to the present. AFCC, Beckett House, is a constituent college of the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, delivering and fostering research, education and training, and is the home of chaplaincy in defence.