A Call from the Jacque Ellul Society for submissions:
What is the word’s status today? In a time marked by division and polarization over politics, medicine, science, culture, or even what it means to be human, often words are weaponized and truth is buried under lies. Confronted by such circumstances, what would it look like to attune ourselves to the conditions of spoken and written words today? What challenges and possibilities might emerge if we take the word seriously, even imaginatively and hopefully, today and in the future?
The 2026 International Jacques Ellul Society conference explores these and related questions through engagement with themes developed in and beyond Jacques Ellul’s 1981 book The Humiliation of the Word. Humiliation is a creative sociological, theological, and personal meditation on the place of language in the late twentieth-century West, written during a time of deep cultural upheaval, technological change, and political tension. For this reason, many readers rank Humiliation as a piece of Ellul’s most profound sociology, most mature theology, and most poetic prose. Furthermore, it is a distinct contribution to and central text for the field of media ecology.
But if this text is so significant, what did Ellul say within it that makes it so resonant? Although there are many ways to answer this question, a short-form answer can be given here: Ellul uses this text to show us that the humble fragility of the spoken word is humanity’s most sure path toward freedom, truth, and peace. In this sense, Ellul makes an ambitious and hopeful claim for the power of the word in a time when the word seems to be powerless.
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