Brief Updates from the Barth Center
As the fall academic semester concludes and the holidays near, we recognize this is a busy time of year for everyone. Below are a few brief updates that we hope will be of interest, highlighting recent happenings in Barth studies.
The Karl Barth Society of North America (KBSNA)
As scholars and students gather in Boston on November 21–25 for the annual meeting of the 2025 American Academy of Religion (AAR), the Karl Barth Society of North America (KBSNA) is pleased to host three sessions that press into some of the timeliest questions in theology today. In conversation with a variety of topics, these sessions reflect the continuing vitality of Barth studies—focused on constructive engagement that can imagine and labor toward more just and liberative futures.
What is the KBSNA?
Founded in 1972 in Toronto and inspired by Markus Barth, the Karl Barth Society of North America exists to encourage a critical and constructive theology in continuity with the work of Karl Barth. The Society pursues this mission by:
Supporting the Karl Barth Foundation in Switzerland as it collects, preserves, and publishes Barth’s writings
Building a comprehensive research collection of Barth’s works in North America
Organizing conferences, panels, and dialogues that explore the theological resources found in Barth’s work
Through this work, the KBSNA serves as a hub for scholars and students committed to engaging Barth as a living resource for contemporary theology, ethics, and church life.
KBSNA Events at the 2025 AAR
Friday, November 21 | 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM
Karl Barth and Black Theology: Retrospect and Prospect
Location: Hynes Convention Center, 312
Presiding: Cambria Kaltwasser, Northwestern College, Orange City
This opening session interrogates the intersections of Barth’s theology with Black theological traditions—both retrospectively and prospectively. It asks where this conversation has been and what liberating work remains ahead.
Presenters:
Brandon Watson (University of Münster), “Toward Revolutionary Permanence: Assessing the Barthian Roots in Paul Lehmann and James Cone”
Jason Evans (Princeton Theological Seminary), “What’s the Use? A Black Queer (Critical) Appreciation of Karl Barth”
Saturday, November 22 | 9:30 AM – 11:00 AM
Karl Barth and Freedom
Location: Sheraton, Liberty B (Second Floor)
Presiding: Paul Dafydd Jones, University of Virginia
In keeping with the AAR’s 2025 theme, this session asks what Barth has to say about freedom—divine and human, theological and political—and what that means today for Christian witness.
Presenters:
David McNutt, “‘You Are Responsible to No One and to Nothing’: Barth, Berdyaev, and Artistic Freedom”
Lisa Powell (St. Ambrose University), “Mary’s Fiat: Freedom for Surrogacy?”
Monday, November 24 | 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
The Politics of Redemption: A Conversation with M. Shawn Copeland
Location: Hynes Convention Center, Plaza Level, 108
Cosponsored by: Black Theology Unit, KBSNA, Womanist Approaches to Religion and Society
Presiding: Cambria Kaltwasser and Paul Dafydd Jones
This session centers M. Shawn Copeland’s work on Black theology, Womanist thought, embodiment, and political liberation. Together with leading scholars, it invites us to consider redemption—not as abstraction but as struggle.
Panelists:
M. Shawn Copeland, Boston College
Willie Jennings, Yale Divinity School (respondent)
Andrea C. White, Union Theological Seminary (respondent)
Other AAR/SBL Sessions Related to Karl Barth
Saturday, November 22 | 4:00 PM – 6:30 PM
Review Panel: Sarah C. Jobe, No Godforsaken Place: Prison Chaplaincy, Karl Barth, and Practicing Life in Prison (T&T Clark, 2025)
Cosponsored by: Biblical Studies and Spiritual Care: Intersections of Pastoral Praxis and Biblical Hermeneutics & AAR Innovations in Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care Unit
Location: Sheraton, Republic A (Second Floor)
Presider: Ryan Schellenberg, Methodist Theological School in Ohio
This session reviews Sarah Jobe’s newly published book No Godforsaken Place, which brings together ethnographic research with prison chaplains, biblical interpretation, and Karl Barth’s theology to construct a “practical soteriology” rooted in carceral contexts. Jobe explores what it means to speak of salvation, life-in-death, and Christian hope within and against the realities of the U.S. prison system.
Panelists:
Jason Oliver Evans, University of Virginia
Jerusha Matsen Neal, Duke Divinity School
Shelley Rambo, Boston University
Patrick Tugwell, University of California Santa Barbara
Author Introduction:
Sarah C. Jobe, Duke University
Coming Soon: 2025 Karl Barth Conference Recordings
Beginning in the next few weeks, we will begin publishing recordings on YouTube from the 2025 Karl Barth Conference, “The Incarcerated God: Thinking with and Beyond Barth on the Prison System,” held this past June 15–18 at Princeton Theological Seminary.
Co-organized by the Center for Barth Studies (Princeton Theological Seminary), the Prison Studies Program (Duke Divinity School), the Calvin Prison Initiative (Calvin University), and the Partnership for Religion and Education in Prisons Program (Drew Theological School), the conference gathered scholars, activists, chaplains, artists, and formerly and currently incarcerated leaders to reflect on Barth’s theological vision in relation to incarceration, systemic injustice, and Christian witness.
Speakers explored questions such as:
What does it mean to confess a God who identifies with imprisoned persons?
How might Barth’s theology disrupt carceral logics and state violence?
What constructive theological resources might guide the work of solidarity and liberation today?
The recordings will be released incrementally on the Center for Barth Studies YouTube channel. Stay tuned and consider subscribing so you don’t miss them.
Forthcoming Publication
The center is excited to announce that the next volume of English translations from the Translators Seminar will be published this upcoming April. You can pre-order a copy now through Westminster John Knox Press!
The period covered by the volumes in the Early Barth series—1905 to 1933—saw Barth emerge from his training under such theological giants as Adolf von Harnack and Wilhelm Herrmann; assert his rejection of liberal Protestant theology in his towering commentary on Romans; and work through an earlier uncertainty to become a critic on theological grounds of the rise of Nazism. These volumes contain English translations of essays, lectures, academic papers, correspondences, editorials, and other writings that were not previously translated into English, and they provide insight into the development of Barth’s theology during this crucial period of his life.
Volume 2 of The Early Barth—Lectures and Shorter Works, 1909–1914 covers the period in Barth’s career when he served as a pastor, first in Geneva and then in Safenwil, Swizerland, and up through the point where his theology takes a decisive turn in response to the outbreak of the First World War. It includes substantive footnotes offering historical context and comparative documents, as well as annotations at the beginning of each writing, providing background information that contextualizes the Barth piece, Barth’s purpose for writing it, his approach and sources, its reception, and more.
The English translation of this volume was funded by a Scholarly Editions and Translations grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Whether you are joining us in Boston or following along from afar, we hope these sessions and resources will deepen your engagement with Karl Barth’s theology and witness—always in conversation with the urgent demands of our present.