News Archive 2015

This volume investigates the great divide introduced by modernization theorists between the “rational,” “scientific,” or “modern,” on the one hand, and “irrational,” “ritual,” or “nonmodern,” on the other.

In his new monograph, Prof. Ulrich Willems from the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” examines the challenge posed to democracy by conflicts over values.

An anthology by ancient historians Prof. Dr. Hans Beck from McGill University, Montreal and Prof. Dr. Peter Funke from the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” in Münster provides the first comprehensive reassessment of federalism in Greek antiquity. The world of ancient Greece witnessed some of the most sophisticated and varied experiments with federalism in the pre-modern era

In his book Islamic theologian Mouhanad Khorchide introduces the concept of Islamic humanism.

In the history of procedural law, there are two major epochs: the one without monopoly on violence and since 1495 the one with monopoly on violence. The textbook shows where and in which historical contexts the direction was set.

In his new historical-critical commentary on the Book of Exodus protestant theologian Prof. Dr. Rainer Alberts presents a new model for explaining the formation of the Pentateuch. The commentary provides the reader with a detailed exegesis (about 700 pages) of a central part of that foundation chart (Torah, Pentateuch), by which ancient Israel intended to define its religious and ethnic identity after the loss of its own statehood in a new way.

Classical scholars discovered invaluable ancient Syrian mosaics and buildings and are excavating one of the few sites that are currently accessible for studies on ancient Roman Syria despite the tense situation in the Middle East.

Jews, Christians and Muslims stand in an old history of conversions when they change their religion today. The cluster’s upcoming lecture series “Conversion. Reversals of faith and life” starts on 20 October.

Religion and Biopolitics are at the center of an international conference at the Cluster of Excellence. Bio-political questions are important and there is profound moral-ethical disagreement about whether such technologies should be allowed or forbidden.

According to the scholar of religion and theologian Professor Perry Schmidt-Leukel, traditional theologies provide insufficient answers to the growing challenge of religious diversity and conflicts.

“Der Staat als irdischer Gott” (“The state as a worldly God”) is the title of a newly published work by philosopher Prof. Dr. Ludwig Siep of the Cluster of Excellence „Religion and Politics“.

An international workshop organised by the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” in New Delhi will address gender-specific violence in India and Central Europe.

The new winter semester lecture series “Conversions. Turning points in faith and life” of the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” will investigate conversions from Late Antiquity until the present day.

The World to Come lists and describes more than eighty Last Judgment images from present-day Ukraine, eastern Slovakia, and southeastern Poland, making it the largest compilation of its kind.

The key issue discussed is about the appearance and self-presentation of the aristocracy in the middle Byzantine period (10th-13th century).

The office of God's Wife as influential position of a priestess in Ancient Egypt is at the center of an international conference at the Cluster of Excellence „Religion and Politics“.

From different research perspectives of a number of various disciplines, the volume examines the interplay between tradition and criticism of tradition in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, an interplay that has significantly shaped the development of the three religions.

This is not a book that provides a new integrated theory of religious change in modern societies, but one which develops some theoretical elements suited to make some of the contemporary religious alterations understood. Most of the approaches in sociology of religion are prone to emphasize either processes of religious decline or of religious upswing.

This is not a book that provides a new integrated theory of religious change in modern societies, but one which develops some theoretical elements suited to make some of the contemporary religious alterations understood.

From antiquity up to the present day, religions have been repeatedly influencing one another and adopting traditions from each other. The public lecture series “Transfer between religions" deals with such processes of transfer, starting on 14 April.

In the summer semester 2015, the lecture series of the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” and Centre for Religious Studies (Centrum für religionsbezogene Studien, CRS) deals with the “Transfer between religions.

In processes of religious reform, books and other forms of written communication play a dominant role in the "Long European Reformation", both for individuals as well as for communities.

This study focuses on the use of language in Protestant missionary publications. Combining historical and linguistic methods, the author examines the communicative strategies for legitimizing Swedish missions in Africa and Asia around 1900.

Historian Hubert Wolf presents ten traditions in church history which have been forgotten and surpressed.

The book goes back to a series of lectures in which experts analyzed inauguration‐rituals in different epochs and cultures.