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This study confronts the current crisis of churches. In critical and creative conversation with the German theologian Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923), Ulrich Schmiedel argues that churches need to be “elasticized” in order to engage the other. Examining contested concepts of religiosity, community, and identity, Schmiedel explores how the closure of church against the sociological other corresponds to
Populism is a buzzword. This compilation explores the significance of religion for the controversies stirred up by populist politics in European and American contexts in order to understand what lies behind the buzz. Engaging Jewish, Christian, and Islamic political thought and theology, contributions by more than twenty established and emerging scholars explore right-wing and left-wing protests,
Mit dem Namen “Liberale Theologie” verbindet sich der Aufbruch protestantischer Strömungen im 19. Jahrhundert, die sich um eine Vermittlung zwischen der Moderne und dem Christentum bemühten. Offensichtlich ist an dem Programm liberaler Theologie etwas von bleibender Anziehungskraft für alle, die das Christentum mit einer zwar nicht unkritischen, aber letztlich doch positiven Bewertung der Moderne
This book explores the roles of religion in the current refugee crisis of Europe. Combining sociological, philosophical, and theological accounts of what is commonly considered a crisis, renowned scholars from across Europe examine how religion has been employed to call either for eliminating or for enforcing the walls around “Fortress Europe”. Religion, they argue, is radically ambiguous, simulta
Religious Experience Revisited explores a dilemma which has haunted the study of religion since William James. Is religion rooted in experiences? Is religion rooted in expressions? How are experiences and expressions related? The contributors to this international and interdisciplinary compilation explore the possibilities and the impossibilities of a hermeneutics of religion. Combining theology a
Who is my other? What do I encounter when I encounter my other? And what responses and responsibilities does the encounter with my other evoke? Grappling with questions like these, the contributions to this compilation analyse alterity in the Bible, alterity in philosophy, alterity in theology, alterity in interreligious dialogues, and the radical alterity of God. This Festschrift in honour of Wer
The contributions to this special section suggest that 9/11 is not necessarily the watershed between a pre- and a post-9/11 order that politicians and pundits continue to write about. Instead, the attacks have served as a catalyst for trends and trajectories in the global governance of religion that continue to have a significant impact today. Returning to 9/11, then, the contributions take stock
Many primates produce copulation calls, but we have surprisingly little data on what human sex sounds like. I present 34 h of audio recordings from 2239 authentic sexual episodes shared online. These include partnered sex or masturbation, but each recording has only one main vocalizer (1950 female, 289 male). Both acoustic features and arousal ratings from an online perceptual experiment with 109
Studies on 9/11 could fill a library. In this short introduction, the editor explains the reason for overcoming the hesitation to add more studies to this library by contextualizing and charting the key concerns and the key concepts of the following contributions. These contributions suggest that 9/11 is not necessarily the watershed between a pre- and a post-9/11 order that politicians and pundit
Both inside and outside the academy, identifications of Islam as a terrorist threat have gained traction during the on-going War on Terror. William Cavanaugh’s conceptualization and critique of what he calls “the myth of religious violence” claims to offer a critique of these identifications. This critique has been influential across a variety of disciplines. In this article, I assess both his mor
This article assesses the tension between cosmopolitan and communitarian approaches to the ethics of migration by analysing how the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) has responded to the current so-called migration crisis in Europe. I argue that the statements of the EKD frame people on the move either as migrants or as Muslims. These frames come with competing ethical consequences. Whereas migra
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
