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This article interrogates the interpretation of Islam in the legacy of theological liberalism. Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923) has been labelled the figurehead of such liberalism. Islam is a recurrent referent in his thought, running through his theological and philosophical writings. Whereas studies such as Tomoko Masuzawa’s immensely influential The Invention of World Religions contend that Troeltsc
As of 1 June 2018, the symbol of the cross has to be shown in all state offices of Bavaria in Germany. In order to chart the churches’ reaction, I return to a conversation that Robert N. Bellah and Martin E. Marty had during the 1960s and the 1970s. Drawing on the core concepts of this conversation, I analyze and assess today’s cross controversy as a case of what I call the ‘populist predicament’.
Taking the recent UN Report about extreme poverty in the UK as a point of departure, this article analyses and assesses William Cavanaugh’s political ecclesiology. Drawing on the interpretation of Martin Luther’s concept of creation in Scandinavian Creation Theology, I argue that creation destabilises the distinction Cavanaugh draws between what he considers to be church and what he considers not
Many ecclesiologists assume that pluralisation is a problem for churches. By drawing on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s reception of Ernst Troeltsch, however, the author argues that pluralisation is instead a promise. Portraits which paint Bonhoeffer as ‘alternative’ to Troeltsch (and Troeltsch as ‘alternative’ to Bonhoeffer) have been proposed persistently. But in the ecclesiological explorations which Bon
Since the arrival, or the attempted arrival, of millions of refugees in Europe, the performances of the Center for Political Beauty – a Berlin-based collective of artists and activists – have had a huge impact on public and political debates about Germany's migration policies. In this paper, I analyze the performance “The Dead Are Coming” in which the artists buried refugees who drowned in their a
Whatever else it takes to drive a taxi, it takes trust. Day after day, the driver has to decide whether the other is or is not trustworthy. I take the taxi as a test case to analyze and assess Richard Kearney’s diacritical hermeneutics of the other. I argue that Kearney functionalizes the concept of transcendence in order to connect the transcendence of the finite other to the transcendence of the
Churches are in crisis. The turn to praxis in ecclesiology appears to attend to the current crisis; yet, the appearance might be deceptive. Since post-liberal ecclesiologies – such as John Milbank’s – consider neither quantitative-empirical nor qualitative-empirical accounts of concrete churches, the turn might be assessed as a turn to talk about praxis instead of a turn to praxis. Confronting Mil
For theologians such as Karl Barth the support for Germany’s militaristic ambitions and actions voiced in the manifesto "An die Kulturwelt", published in 1914, was a consequence of the historicization of theology. Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923), whose interdisciplinary thinking revolved around the significance of history for theology, was labeled the theologian of historicism. Although he had not sig
Abstract in GermanIn dieser ausführlichen Rezension wird die Hermeneutik nicht-religiösen und religiösen Vertrauens rekonstruiert, die die von Ingolf U. Dalferth und Simon Peng-Keller herausgegebene »Vertrauenstrilogie« prägt. Ich analysiere die Studienbände zur »Kommunikation des Vertrauens« sowie zum »Gottvertrauen« und zum »Grundvertrauen«, bevor ich die Vor- und Nachteile der darin entwickelteThis extensive review explores the hermeneutics of religious and non-religious trust which is characteristic for the ›trilogy on trust‹ edited by Ingolf U. Dalferth and Simon Peng-Keller. I analyze the three compilations which investigate the constitution and communication of trust, trust in God, and trust in one’s life or life-world (basic trust). Finally, I discuss the advantages and disadvantag
Based on observations obtained with the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) we investigate the spectral variability of the Herbig Ae star RR Tau. This star belongs to the UX Ori family, characterized by very deep fadings caused by the screening of the star with opaque fragments (clouds) of the protoplanetary discs. At the moments of such minima one observes strong spectral variability due to the fact t
Among the signs and symbols carried during the attack on the United States Capitol on 6 January 2021, a picture of Jesus stood out – a white Jesus, wearing a red cap with the caption ‘Make America Great Again’. This chapter concentrates on the Christian nationalism captured in this picture. Considering European and American contexts, the author charts concepts, complications, and critiques of (neo
Charting the conversation between Robert N. Bellah and Martin E. Marty in which the concept of public theology was coined, this chapter contends that public theologies have been haunted by a ghost – the ghost of theological liberalism, concretized in Paul Tillich. Instead of casting out the ghost, however, the chapter re-claims this legacy in order to carve out the contours of a criterion that all
Studies scrutinizing the significance of religion for populism are still scarce, but one metaphor has been adopted across almost all of them—the metaphor of the hijacked faith. This chapter sketches the nexus between metaphor and method in the study of populism, before it introduces the contributions to this compilation. Ulrich Schmiedel suggest that there are structural similarities between popul
In what is commonly called the current refugee crisis, Christian values are claimed by both the defenders and the despisers of migrants coming from countries with Muslim majorities. The conflict between them has been captured using the category of “Christianism” which contrasts “honest Christianity,” which is hospitable to Muslim migrants, with “hijacked Christianity,” which is hostile to Muslim m
Migration challenges democracies characterized by the assumption that the citizens who are affected by the law are also its authors and that the citizens who are its authors are also affected by the law. Taking the “hijab affair” in France as a point of departure, this chapter aims to confront the constitution of the law in decisionist political theology and dialectical political theology with the
For populists inside and outside of the German parliaments, Christianity is about belonging rather than believing. Yet identity politics are politics of exclusion that stifle democratic participation. In order to escape the anti-pluralist populist pattern, a starting point is to recognise Germany for what it is: a country whose citizens share multiple cultures and identities, all of which need to
