Video: Academic Celebration to mark the 70th birthday of Perry Schmidt-Leukel

An academic ceremony was held in autumn 2024 to mark the 70th birthday of the religious scholar and theologian Perry Schmidt-Leukel. Schmidt-Leukel held the Chair of Religious Studies and Intercultural Theology at the Faculty of Protestant Theology in Münster from 2009 to 2023, and is now Senior Professor at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Religion and Politics’. The keynote lecture entitled ‘From Mission to Intersectionality: The Trajectory of Buddhist-Christian Studies’ was delivered in English by Thomas Cattoi, a theologian and expert on Buddhism who teaches in Rome. The British theologian Alan Race from the World Congress of Faiths, London, gave the laudatory speech, while Michael Seewald and Simone Sinn made addresses of welcome. At the end of the ceremony, Schmidt-Leukel was presented with the commemorative volume published by Waxmann, Beyond Boundaries: Essays on Theology, Dialogue, and Religion in Honor of Perry Schmidt-Leukel.

Schmidt-Leukel’s numerous works on religious pluralism, interreligious theology, Buddhist-Christian relations, and interreligious dialogue have provided international research on religion with key ideas. He is known in particular for his work on the fractal theory of religious diversity, which is based on the idea that the major religions are much less foreign to each other than is often assumed, and are indeed similar, especially in terms of their internal diversity.