RaT-Newsletter

Latest Issue:

JRAT 8 (1/2022) "The Illusion of the Obvious. On Truth and Reliability in Times of Crisis", edited by Cornelia Richter

The contributions of this issue, written by young and senior researchers, on the one hand, discuss aspects of truth and various modes of deception like insincerity, whitewashing, or bullshit, all of which set forth destructing forces and eroding democratic processes. On the other hand, the papers address phenomena of dissolving and eroding the reliability of collective efforts to maintain truth and sanctions on deception, especially when they are linked to dangerous reductionist movements and hermetic subgroups which systematically prevent the efforts of peacebuilding measures and make anti-democratic movements settle to an extent that endangers cohesion and collective identity within Europe.

Link to the publication (full access).

Latest Contribution

published online "in advance":

"Santería in Catemaco, Mexico" by Maria Papenfuss

The Mexican city of Catemaco is famous for its diversity of African-American religious traditions. Although Santería was originally shaped in Cuba, the local Mexican versions show not only a variety of references regarding their origins and influences, ranging from West Africa and Cuba to local indigenous traditions, but also (re)interpretations of historically and geographically diverse contents. Based on interview data gathered during field research in 2017, this article outlines the different hybrid (re)configurations of African-Mexican Santería in Catemaco by tracing the changes made by the practitioners in order to adapt existing traditions.

Link to the publication (full access).

This contribution will later be integrated in the JRAT issue "From Syncretism to Hybridity", edited by Bettina Schmidt and Gerald Hödl.

Volume 2 "The Post-Secular City",
edited by Paolo Costa

The Post-Secular City examines the purported shift from a “secular” to a “post-secular” dispensation from the perspective of the ongoing de-construction of the secularization “theorem” (as Hans Blumenberg called it). Accordingly, the new secularization debate is described as being polarized between the “de-constructors” and the “maintainers” (or re-constructors) of the standard thesis of secularization. This is the assumption underlying an ambitious effort to map out the field, which consists of a long introduction where “secularization” is analysed as a deeply problematic concept-of-process and of eight chapters in which several protagonists of the recent (i.e. post-1960s) debate are selected and used as placeholders of crucial junctions in the space of reasons enveloping such multidisciplinary conversation. They are (in order of appearance): H. Blumenberg, D. Martin, C. Taylor, H. Joas, T. Asad, M. Gauchet, J. Habermas, G. Vattimo. The book’s conclusion is open-ended, to the effect that it is unclear whether the concept is still helpful for understanding what is going on around us and what is in store for us in the near future.
Link to the publication (full access).

Paolo Costa was a research fellow at RaT from May to July 2017 during which he gave two talks, respectively, on the new secularisation debate and the concept of “religious unmusicality”.

Aslan, Ednan/ Akkılıç, Evrim Erşan/ Hermansen, Marcia (eds.): Peace Education and Religion: Perspectives, Pedagogy, Policies. Wiener Beiträge zur Islamforschung. Wiesbaden: Springer VS 2022.

Contrary to the secularization thesis, many societies today are experiencing a revival of religion. Although religion performs different functions in diverse religious communities and in individual lives, in the media and public discourse it is increasingly associated with concepts such as extremism, violence, and fundamentalism. Thus religion is more and more seen as a threat to democratic and secular societies. In public debates religions have often been perceived as being less a solution to the problem of violence and more as being part of the problem. For this reason, religious leaders and organizations are urged to make their potential contributions to world peace transparent and tangible, because a conscious commitment to peace is essential in view of the current global situation. Peace education has always informally been part of a network of socio-political developments, pedagogical aims, historical narratives, and practical community activities. One challenge to peace education in today’s globalized, diverse, religiously pluralistic and mobile world is to be able to take both complex global and relevant local situations into account.

Link to the contribution.

Danz, Christian / Schüßler, Werner: Paul Tillich in der Diskussion. Werkgeschichte – Kontexte – Anknüpfungspunkte. Berlin: De Gruyter 2022.

Tillich research has changed fundamentally in the last 20 years. Whereas in the second half of the 20th century the focus of research was primarily on the late work as it is presented in Systematic Theology, since the turn of the millennium studies on the early work and the history of the work have increased. This is mainly due to the new sources made available to research through the editing work of Erdmann Sturm. The contributions in this volume explore the question of how the picture of the development of Tillich's theology and philosophy of religion in terms of the history of his work presents itself when these new sources are taken into account, and which aspects of his thought offer points of contact for contemporary theological debates. The volume thus comprises three parts: work-historical perspectives, problem-historical contexts and systematic points of contact. In this way, the volume dedicated to Erdmann Sturm on his 85th birthday offers a concise overview of the tendencies of current Tillich research.

Link to the publication.

Grohmann, Marianne: Klagelieder. Zürcher Bibelkommentare AT, Band NF 21. Zürich: TVZ 2022.

The Lamentations are crisis literature. In poetic language, they deal with a concrete historical event - the destruction of the city of Jerusalem and the Temple in 587 B.C. Marianne Grohmann's commentary shows the historical context of the tradition and spans the arc from the ancient Oriental lament literature to the many references within the Hebrew Bible to the history of reception, especially in Judaism. She interprets the five songs as literary, historical, anthropological and theological texts and sharpens the view for the ambiguity of Hebrew poetry.

Link to the publication.

Reiss, Wolfram / Lehmann, Karsten: Religiöse Vielfalt in Österreich. Baden-Baden: Nomos 2022.

This anthology provides a compact, up-to-date and easily understandable insight into Austria's religious diversity. In the introduction, the underlying concept of religion is described, an outline of the developments in the history of religion and legal history in dealing with religions is given, and the demographic developments of religion in Austria are shown. Then the entire religious landscape of Austria is examined from the perspective of religious studies.
This also includes small groups as well as agnostic and atheistic traditions. The focus is on internal diversity and the present. Finally, the interconnectedness of Austria's religions with different areas of society, such as education, art, media, politics, economy and law, is described by scholars of the respective disciplines.
Link to the publication.

Reiss, Wolfram / Wurzrainer, Robert / Auhser, Ferdinand / Futterknecht, Veronica / Varda, Karin Andrea: Vieltfalt (er)leben 2. Linz: Trauner Verlag 2022.

The second volume of the new textbook series "Vielfalt (er)leben" (Living Diversity) for the subject of ethics was also approved and will be used in ethics lessons at AHS, BHS and BMS from the school year 2022/23. The work attempts - as was already implemented in the first volume - to present the knowledge about religions required by the curriculum in ethics lessons from a religious studies perspective. According to the curriculum, the focus in this volume is on the Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - and deals with these religious traditions from both a historical and a systematic-comparative perspective.
This textbook was again written by a team of authors led by Prof. Wolfram Reiss and Mag. Robert Wurzrainer from the Institute for Systematic Theology and Religious Studies at the Faculty of Protestant Theology.

Link to the publication.

The basic approach of the textbook was explained on our RaT blog by Wolfram Reiss: click here to read.

Tiwald, Markus: Frühjudentum und beginnendes Christentum. Gemeinsame Wurzeln und das Parting of the Ways. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 2022.

Jesus and his first followers were Jews - they never intended a faith community apart from Judaism. The "Parting of the Ways", the separation of Jews and Christians, was a long and by no means monolinear process that only found its conclusion through the Christological fixations of the fourth century. Early Judaism (300 B.C. to 200 A.D.) is explained in its political, sociological, economic and religious diversity and the incipient Christianity is fitted into it. The synopsis of texts, archaeological finds, sociological backgrounds and theological argumentation patterns clarifies how differently identity markers were lived in early Judaism and how the later Christian positions developed from this.
This new edition of "Early Judaism and the Beginnings of Christianity" has been greatly expanded and thoroughly revised for inclusion in the Studienbücher Theologie. Tiwald emphasises that Christianity can only be understood from early Judaism, explains why the paths nevertheless diverged, and makes clear that Christians are permanently referred to their Jewish roots.

Link to the publication.

Viertbauer, Klaus: Religion und Lebensform. Religiöse Epistemologie im Anschluss an Jürgen Habermas. Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet 2022.

The volume takes up two characteristics that are contrary to each other for European societies of late modernity: On the one hand, as soon as a person elevates himself to the object of reflection, he sees himself referred to an alterity (traditionally interpreted in religious terms as "God"). On the other hand, the status of religious claims to validity in the public sphere (for example, in parliaments, courts or schools) is increasingly restricted and becomes more and more a private matter.

The author attempts to resolve this ambivalence by drawing on the work of Jürgen Habermas. Specifically, Habermas' distinctions between ethics and morality or faith and knowledge are to be linked to a religious epistemology with the aim of clarifying the significance and scope of religious convictions.

Link to the publication.

WELCOME TO RAT, KATHARINA IVANYI!

Katharina Ivanyi will start her FWF-funded Elise Richter project on the history of Islamic jurisprudence in the post-classical period (12th-15th c.) in November. Her project examines a corpus of hitherto unstudied Hanafi legal texts from Western, Central and South Asia – texts that would exert considerable influence on the development of Hanafi thought and legal practice up until the modern period (in contemporary Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, to Central Asia, the Middle East, Europe and North America). Trained in Arabic, Islamic Studies and Middle Eastern Studies at Oxford (B.A. 2003, M.Phil. 2005) and Princeton University (Ph.D. 2012), Katharina has taught at Princeton, St. Michael’s College and Columbia University. After a number of years in the Austrian civil service, she recently returned to scholarly work with a “back-to-research” grant (Marie-Jahoda-fellowship) of the University of Vienna. She is currently Elise-Richter fellow and lecturer at the Department of Near Eastern Studies (Institut für Orientalistik) at the University of Vienna. 

We wish Katharina all the best for her research project!

WELCOME TO RAT, MILJA RADOVIC!

Dr Milja Radovic is an international interdisciplinary scholar in religion, media and culture. Dr Radovic conducts specialised research in theology and film and her scientific work traverses theology of ascesis, visual arts, citizenship, nationalism, conflict and peacebuilding. She is the author of numerous scientific articles and authored monographs (Routledge, Ashgate, De Gruyter, JRFM, Edinburgh University Press). She holds lectures and keynotes internationally (Bologna, London, Edinburgh, St Andrews, Rome, Oxford, Cambridge, São Paulo, Nairobi, Boulder, Durham, Kent) and is the recipient of prestigious grants and awards for ground-breaking research in her field. Dr Radovic is actively engaged with the public sector, being an active member of Interfilm and serving as both president and member of the Ecumenical Jury at leading international film festivals, including Berlinale, Locarno, Karlovy Vary, Cottbus, and Oberhausen.

Dr Radovic works at the Research Centre Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society in Vienna. She is leading the FWF-funded Project "Reframing Space: Film as History" ("Transformationen des Raums: Film als Geschichte").

We wish Milja all the best for her research project!