Modern Religious Change: description
Document Actions
Prof. Fridriech Wilhelm Graf, Department of Lutheran Protestant Theology, LMU - Prof. Alf Christophersen, Department of Systematic Theology and Ethics, LMU
“Religions”—or, more accurately, religious interpretive cultures—are neither essentialist units nor substantial entities that can be presented as more or less self-contained phenomena. Rather, these cultures “exist” only in the ongoing process of reinterpreting worlds of symbols and meaning, whereby symbolic capital is appropriated from other, initially foreign religious cultures. Over the past thirty years, historians of religion have increasingly demonstrated the influence exerted by symbolic osmosis and the transfer of ideas on, for example, the symbols, teachings and ritual practices of the Christian, Jewish and Islamic religious cultures in the Middle Ages and the early modern period. As the boundaries between two different religions become blurred with the migration of symbols, theological concepts and life-shaping cults, there is normally an increased need to mark out new, sharply defined boundaries and to initiate a harsh exclusionary practice. To the extent that the acquisition of and transactions with the “other” tend to dissolve boundaries and thus jeopardize the inner consistency of a traditional system of symbols, a new identity construct is required, one based on exclusion and delimitation. Despite the postmodern boom in religious studies on cross-denominational, “floating” symbols and symbolic religious identity patterns, the communicative strategies of appropriating foreign symbols have been widely neglected, as has the paradoxical simultaneity of “attraction and repulsion” (Hegel), or of incorporation and delimitation. If the mutational dynamics of symbolic religious languages are to be understood, the techniques must be analyzed by which one religion’s (or confession’s) system of meaning incorporates the symbolic “software” of other religious traditions.
Reading List:
- Ulrich Beck, Weltrisikogesellschaft. Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Sicherheit, Frankfurt am Main 2007.
- José Casanova, Public religions in the modern world, Chicago u. a. 1994.
- Friedrich Wilhelm Graf. Moses Vermächtnis. Über göttliche und menschliche Gesetze. Munich, 20061-3.
- ders., Die Wiederkehr der Götter. Religion in der modernen Kultur. Munich, 20041-3. 2006 new pocket edition with a new preface and new epilogue.
- Hans Joas/Klaus Wiegandt (Hg.), Säkularisierung und die Weltreligionen. Frankfurt am Main (Fischer) 2007.
- Armin Nassehi, Der soziologische Diskurs der Moderne, Frankfurt am Main 2006.
Reading List:
- Ulrich Beck, Weltrisikogesellschaft. Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Sicherheit, Frankfurt am Main 2007.
- José Casanova, Public religions in the modern world, Chicago u. a. 1994.
- Friedrich Wilhelm Graf. Moses Vermächtnis. Über göttliche und menschliche Gesetze. Munich, 20061-3.
- ders., Die Wiederkehr der Götter. Religion in der modernen Kultur. Munich, 20041-3. 2006 new pocket edition with a new preface and new epilogue.
- Hans Joas/Klaus Wiegandt (Hg.), Säkularisierung und die Weltreligionen. Frankfurt am Main (Fischer) 2007.
- Armin Nassehi, Der soziologische Diskurs der Moderne, Frankfurt am Main 2006.
