Religious Identity and Solidarity in Sociological Theory
A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 16 October 2026 | Viewed by 1258
Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue on Christian scripture and theology that will be published by the journal of Religions. This invitation stems from your well-received scholarship on Christian scriptural traditions and/or theology. Fundamentally, your work at the intersection of these received traditions and the contemporary contexts of a believing community contributes to the contextual appreciation of the Christian tradition.
The aim of this project is to engage in an interaction with the biblical and/or theological traditions of the Christian heritage in a social and cultural context of the hearers of the message of God’s relationship with a believing community which is told against the backdrop of the experiences of a particular people in a historical milieu. Contributors are invited to be mindful and intentional in their reading and interpretation of scripture; their interpretations are expected to reveal the layers of meaning in the biblical material about the interaction between the divine and a believing community. In fact, such an interpretation will require from contributors an ardent fidelity to the historical and social contexts of the believing community whose relationship with a loving God is codified in the biblical material. This project is mindful of the fact that an exegesis of the appreciation of the context of the scriptural tradition inexorably leads to a profound appreciation of the hermeneutics of cultural and social appropriation for a believing community today.
Therefore, contributors are invited to allow the meaning gleaned from the historical, cultural and theological interpretation of scripture to interact with the cultural and social realities of a believing community today in their encounter with the divine. This is because the interpretation of scripture from the lived experiences of flesh and blood believers in a cultural context invites a rejection of a history of interpretation and Christian identity that is not congruent with the everyday experiences of a believing community in their relationship with the divine. Also, such an engaged and conscious interpretation attains an appreciation of the identity and socio-cultural heritage of a believing community in their relationship with God. Another result from such an endeavor in hermeneutical consciousness gives value and dignity to the humanity of a people, creates the consciousness of equality of all peoples on the basis of God’s presence in their social context, and challenges values and ideologies that dehumanizes.
The scope of this project is the Christian heritage and the experience of a believing community. The primary sources of this project are the scriptural tradition and/or Christian theology engaged with the lived experiences of a believing community today. The historical–literary–theological lens within a contextual framework is the interpretative tool applied in this project. Applying this interpretative tool allows for an interaction between two contexts: the biblical context and the context of a believing community today. This is because the biblical tradition and/or Christian theological tradition must have meaning in the context of a community in their relationship with the divine.
In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but not limited to) the following:
- Scripture;
- Theology and Culture;
- Ecclesiology and Context.
The vision of this project on scripture, theology and the socio-cultural context of a believing community today is to strengthen the hermeneutic debate in scholarship on the critical significance of reading scripture and doing theology today by engaging the everydayness of a community of believers, in other words, from a context. Likewise, this Issue will bring to the fore the consciousness of pastors and bible study groups to read into the stories of scripture their social and cultural experiences, and then find meaning in the ways the divine is present in their lives.
We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200-300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editor, or to the Assistant Editor Ms. Rudy Miao. (rudy.miao@mdpi.com) of Religions. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editor for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.
We look forward to receiving your valuable contributions.
Keep in mind that your essay will undergo a peer-review process before publication. A 7000–10,000 words is highly encouraged for your essay. Citations and references follow the policy of the Journal as shown below:
All the references mentioned in the text should be cited in the “Author-Date” format, for example, (Woodward 1987) or Woodward (1987), (Ward and Burns 2007) or Ward and Burns (2007).
Do not hesitate to reach out with any questions that you may have as you prepare your essay for publication. In the interim, please prepare to submit an abstract of about 300 words by October 16th, 2026. Your essay is due on March 31st, 2027.
Dr. Ferdinand Okorie
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- God
- Jesus Christ
- Holy Spirit
- theology
- church
- culture
- context
- postcolonial
- community
- dignity
- justice
- hermeneutic
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