Profile

• Religious Studies is done in a number of different ways with different methodological approaches. At the “Institute for Religious Studies and Inter-Faith Theology” one special research focus is on the study of cognitive and existential aspects, i.e. religious messages/doctrines/practices in so far as they mediate meaning and generate existential challenges. Therefore the work of the Institute is located at the interdisciplinary cross sections of Religious Studies, Philosophy of Religion and (not only Christian) Theology.


• The existential challenge emerging from the religions affects not only their own followers. Under contemporary conditions religions encounter each other in a much broader and far more intensive way than ever before. In this situation religions are mutually challenged to responding to one another and developing consistent interpretations of religious diversity. On the one hand, this implies a considerable potential for conflict, but on the other hand also the possibility of a constructive transformation in the religions’ perception of themselves and others. The study of the encounter of religions and– in a broad sense – the “theological” implications of this process thus form a further focus of the Institute.


• From a Christian perspective other religions have been frequently perceived in the past under a missionary aspect, i.e. they were studied in order to finally replace them by Christianity. With the change of former “Mission Studies” to “Intercultural Theology” some pioneers of this transition (e.g. H.-J. Margull, R. Friedli) combined the expectation to see non-Christian religions – their existence as such and their specific appearance – theologically no longer in a way that aims at their substitution by Christianity but envisages the possibility of mutual transformation and cross-fertilization. This expectation, however, is only insufficiently expressed by the concept of “Intercultural Theology” but can be more adequately designated by the concept of an “Interreligious Theology”. Already in 1987 Richard Friedli therefore wrote (Lexikon Missionstheologischer Grundbegriffe, p. 182): „The Christian intercultural theology thus opens itself towards a growing Interreligious theology…”. Christian, as well as non-Christian steps in the direction of an interreligious Theology form the third focus in the work of the Institute.


• Given that the questions resulting from the encounter of religions have significant socio-political implications, the Institute participates in the Cluster of Excellence „Religion and Politics in Pre-Modern and Modern Cultures“, with Prof. Schmidt-Leukel as one of the „Principal Investigators“.