1 Introduction
After twelve years of research on Dynamics in the History of Religions Between Asia and Europe, the Bochum Käte Hamburger Kolleg (KHK) called for its final conference to be held in March 2020. The idea was, first, to look back at these twelve years, reconsider the central programmatic idea of the KHK â its focus on religious contacts â and take stock of how this approach has benefited researchers in their studies on religious phenomena past and present. Second, the idea of this conference was to discuss the KHKâs work in light of other relevant and influential approaches in the field. How does the KHKâs legacy â if such a wording is allowed â fit into the field at large? What place does it have in research on religion of the next decades?
It was only a couple of days before the conference when events of this scale and international traveling were restricted or downright prohibited due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As can be imagined, the organizing committee members vividly remember these times of doubt, anxiety, and, most importantly, a severe concern for the health and well-being of the planned conference participants. In the end, the conference was postponed to a later date. Back in 2020, not many would have thought that the conference would take place 15 months later â in June 2021 â yet still, the pandemic required us to host an online event with researchers taking part from their homes and offices across the globe.
In a sense, this turn of events stands in stark contrast to the work of the KHK itself, which, for the twelve years of its existence, was proud to host more than 150 international research fellows directly in Bochum. Working together in the same place for a considerable time period â most fellows stayed in Bochum for twelve months â provided excellent possibilities for intensive scholarly exchanges, in and beyond the weekly plenary sessions.
This large-scale fellow program was the heart of the Käte Hamburger funding line, having come into being in 2007 under the auspices of then German Minister of Education and Research, Annette Schavan. Unlike many other national and international funding lines, the KHKâs were explicitly designed for research in the humanities and social sciences and tailored to these disciplinesâ specific requirements and challenges. Expressly, first, the KHKâs were set up to provide âFreiraum für Geisteswissenschaften,â i.e., free space for scholars in the humanities to concentrate on research rather than teaching and administrative work. Second, the KHKâs were meant as an instrument to internationalize the humanities in Germany through the said fellow program. In turn, a total of ten KHKâs was founded between 2008 and 2012, with the KHK in Bochum as one of the first to pick up its work on 1 April, 2008.
In this introduction, we will first sketch theoretical considerations of how the Center for Religious Studies in Bochum (CERES) conceives religion. This is important because the endeavor of the KHK program âDynamics in the history of religionâ is inspired by such a theoretical framework. Second, we outline how we understand religious studies as a multidisciplinary field of study and how this understanding enables the inclusion of numerous scholars from different backgrounds in terms of theoretical and methodological orientation and different fields of historical, cultural and philological expertise. After all, the KHK as a whole was constructed on this idea of bringing a maximum of expertise into the study of religion. Third, we describe how we aim to study âcontactâ as a central driving force in the dynamics of religious history via the methodological approach of comparison.
2 A Short Introduction to the KHK
2.1 The KHK and Its Understanding of âReligionâ
The endeavor of the KHK was to investigate contacts between different religious traditions in the past and present. As an interdisciplinary consortium that integrated social scientific, philological, and historical research, it was based on a neutral, academic perspective, which we call a religious studies (religionswissenschaftliche) perspective.1 It aimed to reconstruct and explain religious phenomena in light of an approach that conceives religion, in the Durkheimian sense, as a âfait social,â a social fact.2 We thus abstain from answering inherently religious questions, whether they refer to the existence or non-existence of god(s) or spiritual beings, or the question of which religion is âtrue.â These questions are and have been of utmost importance for thousands of people. The diverse answers that have been suggested throughout history are a driving force in the dynamics of the history of religion. But they can only be answered by religion itself. The endeavor of the KHK, in the context of the German tradition of âReligionswissenschaft,â mainly after the sociological turn, was to arrive at a better understanding of the emergence, stabilization and diffusion of religious traditions.
The religiously âneutralâ position is based on a position of methodological agnosticism. It maintains its scientific perspective without privileging any, not even atheistic, religious positions. Religious questions can never be answered scientifically â this is one of the major insights since the enlightenment philosophies of thinkers such as David Hume and Immanuel Kant. This basic conclusion, with Jürgen Habermas,3 establishes the foundation of âpostmetaphysical reasoning,â i.e., the distinction between religious reasoning on the one hand and philosophical and scientific reasoning on the other. It states the impossibility of answering metaphysical questions by way of scientific procedures.
A scientific perspective on religion needs to limit itself to analyzing how, and why, religious questions were answered in different times and places in different ways, depending partly (but not entirely) on extra-religious social conditions, and, in the Weberian sense, affecting these vice versa, as religion is a social force and factor in its own right. A religious studies perspective such as ours scrutinizes the discursive practices, confrontations, and religious struggles evolving around the constitution of religious truth claims in the context of the formation of different religious traditions.
Following the systems theoretical perspective of Niklas Luhmann,4 we claim that the construction of religious meaning is based on the distinction of immanence and transcendence, or similar distinctions such as familiar/unfamiliar, observable/unobservable, revealed/concealed, present/absent, etc. These binary distinctions have in common that the immanent, the familiar, the observable, the revealed, the present side is easily accessible, while its flip side is not.
Before we move on, two qualifications must be made. First, this perspective is built on semiotic constructivism. Distinctions appear (or sometimes do not!) in communicative processes. It is not the task of the scholar to delineate the boundary of what is truly, or essentially, unfamiliar, unobservable, concealed, absent or transcendent. Questions such as what is truly transcendent are raised, answered or negotiated differently in different cultural or social contexts. It is important, however, that these distinctions themselves are results of processes of observation. They may appear as part of a common sense perspective (it is not yet foreseeable whether I will fall sick tomorrow), but under certain conditions, as will be shown further below, they may be transformed into distinguishable acts of religious, or scientific, communication.
Second, the argument that the unobservable or transcendent is not easily accessible does not mean that from an emic perspective, the perspective of believers, an intimate, personal relationship to what is conceived as transcendent entities is not possible. Quite the contrary, from a religious perspective, the existence of transcendent entities may be experienced as much evident as, say, the existence of rocks and stones.5 However, as will be shown below, evidence of the existence of transcendent, not quite familiar, not directly observable entities are based on a specific observation operation.
These distinctions that constitute religious â and scientific â communication are based on a certain imbalance. What is present, familiar, observable or immanent is usually close at hand and easily accessible. Because of this, the very constitution of these binary distinctions may at times direct the attention to the absent, the unfamiliar, the unobservable and the transcendent, raising the question of what is hidden on the other side, behind the border. Here, we see a major difference between religion and science. A scientific perspective disqualifies assertions and propositions about the unobservable and transcendent as speculation (in the sense the term has been used since the critique of pure reason by Immanuel Kant).6 What is unobservable, i.e., inaccessible with scientific procedures, is beyond the scope of science. True knowledge that is based on scientific operations can never access the realm of the unobservable or the transcendent. Scientific operations can only shift the border: making, by technological means, observable what formerly was unobservable.
Whereas science limits itself to the one side of these distinctions, religion does not. Religion makes propositions about the transcendent, the concealed, the unfamiliar, the absent, the unobservable. Where science fears to tread, religion moves on. How is this possible? It has often been remarked that the depictions of transcendence are always based on immanent means. Hell, for instance, is a place where people are tortured pretty much like in certain prisons. The systems theoretical approach is more precise here and describes the operation of a religious observation as a specific kind of a re-entry. Re-entries, in the definition of George Spencer Brown,7 are the coupling of a binary distinction within itself. A re-entry appears when one and the same distinction appears again, on either the one or the other side of the binary distinction. Luhmann contests that this is precisely what happens in religious observations: âIn the case of religion, the distinction between observable and unobservable reenters the observable realm.â8 Religion semantically reveals something about absolute transcendence through immanent signs. In practices of divination, for instance, the unobservable future can be seen by hints in the liver of a sacrificed animal, by the flight of birds, or by tarot cards. Religions of revelation assert that the transcendent appears in the immanent, that God descended from heaven to earth and appeared as a human being in Jesus Christ, or that God appeared in a burning bush, or that his message was transmitted by an angel. Science does not permit this crossing of the boundary. The progress of science is based rather on the shifting of the boundary, by the constant extension of what is observable and familiar (for example, by the construction of better microscopes or telescopes). Because religion is constituted by the crossing, rather than the mere shifting, of the boundary between the immanent and the transcendent, it is able to âseeâ more than science.
But this âadvantageâ of religion over science has a price. For one, from a scientific point of view, any religious assertion is but pure speculation. Science cannot prove whether religious assertions are right or wrong, but it can cast doubt on their truth claims. For another, religious truth claims are not only challenged by science, but also by other religions, since any assertion regarding the unobservable, the transcendent, is based on a lack of empirical evidence. This point refers back to the re-entry between observable and unobservable. A burning bush may be conceived as a âhardâ empirical fact. And for some, it may be just that, a burning bush whose fire can be explained by ânaturalâ causes. Or does it signify the presence of God? And which one? Is it a sign, is it a prophecy? Against this backdrop, the formation of relatively stable religious traditions cannot be taken for granted. Rather, we see the need to investigate basic operations of religious truth games as they evolve, crystalize, stabilize, and dissolve in the course of history.
Thus, religion as a scholarly concept can be understood by outlining how it differs from science. Two more aspects are central to our understanding of religion: First, religion emerges in communicative processes. It does not âfall from the sky,â neither is it âinventedâ by some influential social actors to reach their (political, societal, economic, etc.) goals. Understanding society in general, and religion in particular, as fundamentally communicative processes allows us to disconnect it from both supernatural beings and the intentions of (human) actors. And as soon as these communicative processes treat the immanence-transcendence distinction (as outlined above), we can identify them as potentially religious. It is important to add here that communication is based on different kinds of media, including, but not limited to, written and spoken language, images, rituals, gestures and bodily movements, clothing, food, and architecture.
Second, the distinction of immanence and transcendence is at work in many social processes. For instance, every time we talk to someone else, imagining the other and his/her opinions is an act of transcending the immanent position of the self. Every time we plan ahead or think back, we are transcending the here and now. What makes transcendence specifically religious is dealing with ultimate contingency (âletztinstanzliche Kontingenzâ). Even contingency, the fact that everything is what it is without necessarily having to be this way and potentially could be different without having to be different, is dealt with in many ways, not all of them religious (think of insurance companies, for instance). Only when communicative systems claim to deal with topics such as the ultimate questions of life (its beginning, its end, its meaning and purpose), the fundamental nature of the world and of human societies, or the cosmos in general, can this be regarded as treating ultimate contingency.
As such, we arrive at a working definition of the concept âreligionâ that assumes religion as a communicative system that is based on the immanence-transcendence distinction and deals with ultimate contingency.9
These general theoretical positions include two further conclusions. On the one hand, with a rather clear distinction between science and religion, we see ourselves in the tradition of theories of social differentiation. Religion is a social fact, certainly, but it is not the only fait social. There are other social areas, âspheres of valueâ in the terminology of Max Weber, âfieldsâ with Pierre Bourdieu, âfunctional subsystemsâ in the social systems theory of Niklas Luhmann.10 This does not mean that religion is entirely set apart. As a social fact it is deeply intertwined with other fields, such as the economy, law, politics, education, art, eroticism, etc. But in contrast to the postmodern critique of theories of differentiation, or claims that postmodernity is an age of de-differentiation,11 we argue that these spheres/fields are analytically distinguishable â historically and up until today. Science, economy, politics, etc. are clearly not one and the same; each follows its own internal logic (âEigenrationalitätâ), and the transformations in each may have an impact on any other field. For instance, the dependency of religious institutions on financial income is a well-known fact. A âchurchâ is a religious institution, but it cannot survive without money. This creates tensions between the logics of the religious and the economic spheres: A religious institution is always exposed to its dogmatic theological reasonings, but it is also confronted with the plain fact that it can only survive with a stable economic base. And, as Max Weber argued in his âZwischenbetrachtungenâ,12 such tension between âspheres of valueâ may be a driving force in the history of religions.
Second, dynamics in the history of religions are not only caused by the exposure of the religious field to non-religious factors (a potential shortcoming of Marxist approaches that are based on a clear-cut distinction between a dynamic âbaseâ and a rather passive âsuperstructureâ). Religion also inspires itself. Religious communication inspires further religious communication, and each act of communication is based on evolutionary processes of variation, selection, and stabilization.13 As has been outlined above, religion faces the problem of stabilization. Religious constructions of reality, which are based on the observation of transcendent realms, always include an element of speculation, and are thus continually under threat of being called into question and being challenged by diverging constructions of reality. There is a certain irony often overlooked in constructivist theories of religion, as developed, e.g., by Emile Durkheim or Peter L. Berger.14 Both argue that society itself, and any construction of reality, is contingent. Any social structure is thus threatened by anomy, as Durkheim pointed out, which is why social structures need a defense mechanism. Both Durkheim and Berger were certain that religion constitutes this defense mechanism: With the help of a âsacred canopyâ, the contingency of social structures can be overcome by relating the status quo to a fixed, stable, cosmological order. The sacred is a safeguard to maintain the stability of society, to prevent it from collapse. However, the speculative nature of religious constructions of reality as outlined above proves that religion itself is not free of contingency. The social problem of contingency is thus solved by contingent means, and in a way, religion is thus a threat to itself. The religious construction of meaning is always challenged by diverging constructions. This seems to be another driving force in the history of religion, and this is what the KHK has focused on over the past twelve years. How did religious constructions of meaning emerge, compete against existing ones, stabilize, and turn into âtraditionsâ? What were defense mechanisms against other religious traditions?
In summary, the dynamics in the history of religions can be pinned down, on the one hand, to extra-religious factors, such as the stimulation of religious reasoning in the context of economic, political, scientific, or other social structural processes of transformation. Religion continuously needs to adapt to its social environment in order to be meaningful. On the other hand, religion constantly inspires and irritates itself. Religious reasoning and religious practice give rise to continuous, or reformed, or revised âacts of faith.â This process happens even in a âclosedâ religious setting, such as the former âidealâ cultural anthropological model of isolated tribal communities. But it happens more so in the context of contact and communication beyond âclosedâ settings. This is why the KHK has given special attention to the dimension of contact. Under the condition of the formation of religious traditions, this dimension of contact can either be intra-religious to include struggles and debates within religious traditions, e.g., about the âtrueâ Christian, or Muslim, or Buddhist faith; or it can be inter-religious, occurring between religious traditions, and contribute the construction of religious communities and boundaries.
2.2 âReligionswissenschaftâ as an Interdisciplinary Endeavor at the KHK
As elaborated above, the KHK operates within a framework that is informed by approaches from the study of religion (âReligionswissenschaftâ). But at the same time, it is not confined to the discipline. This is due to practical as well as conceptual reasons: The breadth of expertise that is required to carry out collaborative research on the scale of the KHK, covering a wide range of case studies from Eurasia and various historical periods, is hardly found in a single religious studies department. But an endeavour like this can also gain much conceptually by drawing from a wide range of disciplinary, theoretical, methodological, and empirical backgrounds.
In a way, the KHK is a practical implementation of an idea that Volkhard Krech sketched out in his 2006 article âWohin mit der Religionswissenschaft?â (Where to go with Religious Studies?).15 In this article, Krech suggests that the study of religion should not be thought of as a single discipline, but as an integral forum for the interdisciplinary study of its research topic. This, however, poses a challenge for the collaborative work that was carried out in the KHK: While âreligionâ is not an exclusive subject of study of any discipline, the field of religious studies does constitute a discursive community. This does not entail consensus with regard to methodological or theoretical approaches, but it brings with it a certain awareness of a range of debates that have shaped the field. Of course, other disciplines also study religion, be it as a central topic from another angle (as is the case in theology), or as an inevitable part of the empirical reality under study (as it is often the case in history or philology). But bringing together scholars with very different academic backgrounds to not only compile a series of case studies but to create a surplus in the form of systematic insight into historical processes requires a series of instruments that foster integrative scholarship.
The KHK had three basic points of orientation that framed its work: Situations of religious contact as the empirical point of orientation, the act of comparison as the methodological point of orientation, and an approach based on the sociology of knowledge (laid out in the paragraph above) as the theoretical point of orientation. This latter point does not presume that all researchers in the KHK engage with sociological theory. But it posits, in a very basic sense, the interplay between religious semantics and social structures â âideasâ and âinterestsâ in the distinction of Max Weber â as the focal point of comparative research.16 While understanding religion as a social fact, this emphasis on knowledge (or belief systems, or basically culture) respects a certain degree of autonomy of (religious) thought which is not simply a cloak for interests or power structures. Maintaining this focus and at times re-centering the work of the KHK along these three aspects required continuous effort. But overall, this approach created a framework within which all researchers could at the same time bring their own disciplinary approaches forward and engage with the broader questions guiding the KHK as a whole.
2.3 The KHK Approach in a Nutshell
In essence, the approach of our KHK in Bochum, as developed by KHK founding director Volkhard Krech, is very simple. To understand it, it is useful to consider the name that is sometimes given to our discipline: comparative religion. How, then, do we compare religions? Or better: According to what do we compare them? The KHK thus started with a thorough reappraisal of comparison as a basic operation in religious studies, which had hardly been done systematically in the field for a long time.17
As is the case with any comparison, the comparison must be in relation to something. When we compare two people, we can compare them with respect to height, place of residence, gender, and a million other things. It is the same with religions. We compare them with respect to their number of adherents, their region of origin, their conceptualizations of life after death, and so forth. For these points of comparison, the KHK has used the Latin term tertia comparationis.18 These tertia comparationis can be relatively straightforward â as is the case with the number of adherents, for example. But more often, these tertia tend to be more complex and, not infrequently, contested among scholars. This is typically the case when a scholar feels that a particular tertium should not be deployed with regard to a particular religious tradition. This tertium, the scholar might argue, may be relevant in another religious tradition, but to the religion or culture in question, it is entirely alien. Similarly, the scholar might argue that a particular tertium is too generic, something that may seem like a useful point of comparison in the abstract, but lacks a firm basis in the empirical material.
At the KHK, it has often been noted that such skepticism towards generalizations is particularly prominent in Sinology. For example, in the introduction to the volume Chinaâs Early Empires. A Re-Appraisal, editors Michael Loewe and Michael Nylan report that âcontributors to the volume have been asked to sidestep a number of [â¦] conventional categories (âart,â âcorrelative thinking,â âphilosophy,â and âBuddhismâ being but four). Believing that good history aims to be as precise as the sources allow (but not one whit more), we have all tried to step back from generalities and abstractions, however comforting such pablum may be.â19 Quite possibly, the most prominent example of a generic concept hotly debated and often dismissed in Sinology and elsewhere is the concept of âtranscendenceâ.20 As summarized in Knut Stünkelâs forthcoming book Key Concepts in the Study of Religion in Contact,21 while we need to avoid the usage of âtranscendenceâ in a specific, Christian sense when we talk about other cultures, it can be useful when understood in a formal sense. In this sense of âmoving beyondâ oneâs own immanent standpoint, as Heiner Roetz has argued, the concept can actually be employed to explain the development of thought in Ancient China.22
In a way, such struggles mirror the history of religious studies as a discipline: In classical phenomenology, comparisons were often based on broad, generic concepts that were assumed to be shared between religious traditions and that often lead to rather simplistic â or downright false â understandings of particular religious traditions. A popular idea in phenomenology was that all religions share basic experiences and that only the expressions of these experiences differ.23 Later, and at the other end of the spectrum, studies inspired by postmodern and postcolonial approaches criticized the idea âthat religion has an autonomous essenceâ24 that distinguishes it from science or politics while positing something immutable that allows comparisons across time and place. From another angle, that of traditional philology, one can observe another form of skepticism towards systematic comparison: A religious phenomenon is described in minute and accurate detail â often by using the object-language of the adherents themselves. But in so doing, such studies tend to lose their comparative potency. We may learn a lot about one phenomenon from such studies, but the more focus we put on the intricacies of individual cases, the less we are able to consider similarities and differences between cases.
This, then, was the KHKâs starting point. We needed to find a way to avoid broad and simplistic generalizations on the one hand, and mere paraphrases of religious phenomena on the other. Neither did we wish to lose analytical power, nor were we willing to give up a firm basis in the empirical material. In other words: We needed tertia comparationis that were suitable to the material. What better way, then, but to look for these tertia in the material itself? If we want to find appropriate terms with which to compare religions as scholars, we need to consider the ways in which religions compare themselves.
To find such comparisons â and this really is the KHK in a nutshell â we need to look at situations of religious contact. A person that is 6.5 ft is not tall per se. In fact, he or she (probably he) will not ever ponder on the concept of height until he meets someone shorter or taller. Similarly, in historical sources, we are much more likely to find conceptual thinking on the part of a religious tradition when it finds itself in contact with another tradition. It is in these situations that practices, convictions, narratives, and entire belief systems that were long taken for granted and needed no thematization suddenly become a topic of deliberation and discourse. In turn, the object-linguistic concepts employed by the religions themselves in a contact situation can be the basis for further conceptualization in the study of religion and be transformed into meta-language.
It is important to note that we employed a broad understanding of the term contact at the KHK. Contact thus neither refers only to actual physical encounters between religious groups nor to amicable meetings. Rather, religious contact refers to all occasions that trigger religious reflection. This can be a military struggle with a rival religious group, or a friendly cooperation, a polemical pamphlet, or a cordial letter. Religious contact can occur under synchronous physical conditions, e.g., when one religious group migrates into a region dominated by another. We called this âsynchronic contactâ at the KHK. Religious reflection can, however, also be triggered when a religious tradition is, for one reason or another, confronted with historical circumstances, e.g., when a rising charismatic leader preaches going back to the âold waysâ. Like synchronic contact, such âdiachronic contactâ can be in reference to what is considered oneâs own tradition (intra-religious contact) or in reference to what is considered a different tradition (inter-religious contact). Both contrastive pairs, synchronic/diachronic and intra-religious/inter-religious, are not to be essentialized, but indicate the endpoints of a theoretical spectrum. Understood in this way, they have proved highly useful for the KHK discussions.
Thinking our approach further, it is easy to see that in a relational perspective, no religious entity can be seen in isolation and none can be taken for granted. Religious traditions are thus not there per se, but they form and develop in relation to one another. It thus makes little sense to speak of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, but rather of a relational network in which these terms do not signify fixed entities but dynamic and ever-changing points of contestation.
3 About the Present Volume
When we started the KHK in 2008, our hope and intention was to sustainably establish the approach outlined above â particularly our focus on religious contacts â in the highly diverse research field that is religious studies. This has been successful â to a certain degree. If you were to ask someone at a religious studies conference somewhere in the world what they think of our KHKâs approach, chances are that they might not immediately know what you are talking about. In part, such shortcomings are connected to the specificities of the funding format, most notably the fact that it is very challenging to establish a continuous work program with annually changing research fellows.25
On the other hand, these same guest researchers as well as our KHK core colleagues have demonstrated in hundreds of publications that working with the KHK approach can be very fruitful. Moreover, our online journal Entangled Religions, with 120+ articles published in the last 8 years, has become a highly respected place to publish research on religious contact. In fact, the sheer number of studies devoted to religious contact situations that were published over the lifetime of (and very often inspired by) the KHK is impossible to count. In an attempt to get an overview of this extensive work nonetheless, KHK members are committed to reviewing a large number of such studies and discussing them in light of our ever-developing typology in a separate volume, âStudying Religion through Religious Contacts: Conceptual Framework, Typological Sketches, and Bibliographyâ (working title), to be published in the present book series. The book will be edited by Volkhard Krech and Kianoosh Rezania as past KHK directors as well as long-time KHK members Tim Karis and Knut Martin Stünkel.
The present volume is thus neither a comprehensive review of past studies, nor does it engage with the experience of our everyday work at the KHK. Likewise, regarding the final conference, we decided not to invite only âfriends and familyâ, i.e., former fellows and other KHK partners who are familiar with our work and eager to engage with it. Instead, we also invited colleagues less familiar with our work or even those that might have heard about it for the first time and held differing or opposing views.
The present volume thus has a twofold aim: The first is to reflect on the theoretical paradigms and methodological approaches that have informed the KHKâs work and demonstrate its usability in research practice. The second is to consider how the KHKâs approaches and paradigms resonate with the study of religion and related disciplines more generally. What is the place of the KHK in a diverse field of scholarly approaches? As such, the volume casts a look both backwards to the work within the KHK and forward to the future of the field, bringing together contributions by scholars formerly involved in the KHK as well as scholars joining the discussion with âfreshâ perspectives.
4 Contents of This Volume
4.1 Part I: Religious Contacts: Theoretical Framework and Selected Case Studies (Chapters 1 and 2)
In his contribution, Volkhard Krech demonstrates how the KHK approach can be developed further in light of larger debates revolving around topics such as the distinction between semantics and social structure or the emergence of a global religious field. Krech also explains in more detail the concept of the four dimensions of religion, which have proved highly fruitful for the KHK discussions and serve as the basic structure of this volume (see below).
In his analysis of Chinese Buddhist travelogues on their journey to India, former KHK fellow Max Deeg provides empirical research on how the distinction between immanence and transcendence, outlined above, is constructed spatially in religious object language. He points out a decisive paradox when it comes to âsacred spacesâ: The spatial proximity (a sacred space can be âvisitedâ, the spatial distance is reduced by the act of pilgrimage, for example) needs to be balanced by an often temporal distancing: the sacred space is holy because it is here that primordial â or at least temporally remote events â have occurred. Applying Knut Stünkelâs distinction26 between basic, formal, and specifically religious transcendence, Deegâs contribution displays the fruits of the collaboration between philological and historical research on religion on the one hand and theoretical approaches on the other in the framework of the KHK.
4.2 Part II: Future Perspectives in the Study of Religion (Chapters 3â13)
As mentioned above, the second part of the present volume follows the conferenceâs goal to look beyond the KHK itself and consider other relevant approaches in the field. It includes 11 chapters offering diverse perspectives on the study of religion, including religious experience, digital religion, cognitive historiography, ritual approaches, and the materiality of religion.
To structure these diverse contributions, we have decided to revert to the concept of the four dimensions of religion, which was developed in the KHK context and structured much of the KHK day-to-day activities. The four dimensions are (A) knowledge, (B) experience, (C) action, and (D) materiality. Put simply, in the dimension of knowledge, we refer to religion as something people believe in: An idea, a dogma, a narrative, a worldview. In the dimension of experience, we refer to religion as something that people feel: the presence of a deity, ecstasy, an epiphany. In the dimension of action, we look at religion as something that people do: worship, pray, dance, go on a pilgrimage, or conduct their whole life in a religious way. Finally, in the dimension of materiality, we look at religion as something we can touch: A building, a relic, a book, an altar, the human body.
It is easy to see that religious phenomena can rarely be described as belonging, as it were, to only one of these four dimensions. So, while a book is a material object (dimension D), it is likely to contain narratives and dogmas (dimension A). People might read from it in a ritual (dimension C), and hearing what is considered the word of God can evoke religious feelings (dimension B). Thus, the four dimensions are not intended to introduce artificial boundaries into the discussion. Rather, they function, first, as a heuristic device to structure a discussion. At the KHK, we had meetings devoted to each one of these dimensions in turn, allowing us to focus on particular generic aspects of given cases with more rigor. Second, and quite to the contrary, the dimensions are a constant reminder that the exclusive focus on just one dimension of religion leads to incomplete pictures of what we wish to analyze. It is striking to see that large parts of the disciplinary history can be seen as shifts in focus from one dimension of religion to another (see Krech in this volume).
In a nutshell, thus, the dimensions signify which aspect of the diverse and complex phenomenon that is religion is especially put into focus in a scholarly endeavor. The following 8 chapters are thus organized according to these four dimensions, while the final three chapters focus on methodological questions in religious studies.
4.3 Dimension A: Knowledge
James L. Cox draws attention to the history and potential of the phenomenology of religion as a research perspective in religious studies. He calls back into the academic conversation some of the basic goals of phenomenological approaches, specifically the ideal to prepare and conduct comparative analyses. He also emphasizes the potential of this approach to promote tolerance and inter-religious cooperation. Being very aware of decades of critical debates in the phenomenology of religion, Cox nonetheless urges the scientific community to reconsider its skepticism. Particularly when it comes to the communal property of knowledge, he argues, a modern and updated phenomenological approach could help researchers understand that âtheirâ academic knowledge is in fact jointly owned by the communities which are the subjects of study and religious studies researchers.
In a very different vein, Darlene M. Juschka compares space aliens with cosmic deities to make the critical point that religious studies, as a discipline, tends to accept only the latter as legitimate objects of study, while not taking seriously the potential of the former as offering fruitful insight into parallel âsystems of beliefs and practices.â She focuses on the topic of alien abduction to bolster her argument, drawing primarily from abduction narratives in fiction (film and television) and non-fiction (news media) and comparing the discursive representations therein with those of deities in terms of imagined space, figuring, capacity, benefits and harms, forms of contact and relationships between human, alien and divine entities, and perceived complications in these relationships. In this sense, the contribution is a valuable reflection on how religious studies draws the boundaries of its field, thereby (perhaps too) narrowly defining the range of phenomena that may be considered as âreligionâ or âreligiousâ.
4.4 Dimension B: Experience
In his contribution, former speaker of the KHK advisory board Jens Schlieter deals with the question of religious experience. In a genealogical reconstruction, Schlieter highlights the semantic shifts between 1500 and 1900 in order to show how this concept became meaningful in religious object language within a Protestant framework and would finally evolve into a scholarly concept in the academic study of religion. Second, in a systematic way, Schlieter asks how religious experiences may be recognized as such. This is not only, or even primarily, a question of a distant scholar, but a question that needs to be answered by individuals themselves. How does an individual âknowâ that they have had a âreligious experienceâ? Schlieterâs thesis is that the ârecognitionâ of what individuals or converts conceive as such an experience depends on their former life experiences. This is why, as Schlieter argues, in the analysis of autobiographies, more attention should be given to similar events in their former life.
Ophira Gamliel, another former KHK fellow, approaches the issue of religious experience on two levels: On the theoretical level, she starts with a critical discussion of William Jamesâ account of religious experience. Drawing on recent debates on the suitability of the category of experience in the study of religions, she suggests a critical approach to so-called âmystical experiencesâ that is aware of the pitfalls of the Jamesian concept while still taking the dimension of experience seriously. On the methodological level, she asks how one can study this dimension in a historical and comparative manner. Approaches to religious experience, like that of Ann Taves, are often rooted in a psychological paradigm and use synchronic methods. Gamliel argues that phenomena related to perceptions of the self and the body can also be analyzed in historical sources. Taking the genre of self-praise hymns, in which speakers speak of themselves as otherworldly entities, she explores central shared characteristics of these accounts across multiple religious traditions.
4.5 Dimension C: Action
Heidi A. Campbell, herself a prominent figure in the field, provides an overview of research in digital religion studies. As she points out, since the rise of Internet communication, individuals and groups have integrated new technologies into their religious conduct of life in diverse ways. This has triggered multiple waves of research on the subject and led to the development of influential paradigms, such as the differentiation between âreligion onlineâ and âonline religionâ or a new focus of hybrid forms of online and offline religiosities. As an emergent scholarly field examining a phenomenon that is itself developing quickly, digital religious studies is sure to form an even more important part of religious studies going forward.
In his contribution, former KHK fellow Tim Weitzel asks how religious object language reflects the question of how communication not about, but with God, or transcendent beings in a broader sense, is possible. Beyond the thesis of Niklas Luhmann, which holds that (from a systems theoretical perspective) religion with God is impossible, he addresses an issue that is taken for granted in many religions, even if this is not achieved easily. Most religions claim that communication with transcendent beings is not as âfluidâ as with other human beings. How can one be sure that God listens to oneâs plea, and how do we receive â and interpret â his (or her) reply? What are the risks in the communication with transcendent beings? Weitzelâs focus is on medieval texts, prayer books, and manuals that reflect upon these questions within a Christian framework, and he asks how to methodologically approach the primary sources for a larger research framework on this basic question.
4.6 Dimension D: Materiality
Birgit Meyer, renowned for her contribution to what is called the âmaterial turnâ in the study of religion, opens a new perspective on the debate on religion and materiality by focusing on Feuerbachâs idea about the stomach as a basis for his materialist but non-reductive philosophy. She also focuses on the notion of âfetish,â using the example of legba figures from the Ewe in Ghana and Togo, now stored in the anthropological Ãbersee-Museum in Bremen, Germany. She assumes that food is an entry point into the debate about physical and corporeal dimensions of religion. Thus, she opens a new path for the future of studying religion. She also contributes to current debates about religion and colonialism as well as to how the colonial history of some of the collections in European museums are entangled with the history of the study of religions and some of its central concepts (such as âfetishâ or âidolâ). Her take on âreligious matters,â i.e., any concrete physical forms such as buildings, images, or food, and as matters of political and societal concern, offers new methodological and conceptual possibilities.
In parallel to other contributions in this volume, Ruth Tsuria focuses on the future of digital religion, but she particularly highlights the tension between the immaterial, abstract nature of the Internet and the very real â material â results that online engagement has on the lives of people by breaking the opposition down to six separate analytical layers. Studying online discourses of religious or religiously inspired practice, she argues, offers glimpses of ârepresentational lived religionâ because digital media is used by a broad swath of the population and digital content is archived and continually accessible. These discourses, and more specifically the users who participate in them, thus contribute to shaping normative understandings of religious practice. She draws from the example of the religious policing of the female body, particularly in Orthodox Judaism, to show how the issues of female masturbation and motherhood are negotiated online and what material, i.e., bodily, and social consequences these discourses bring with them.
4.7 Methodological Outlook
Katrine Frøkjær Baunvig dares an outlook into the (near) future of methodological developments in the study of religions. Not only the study of digital religion as a contemporary phenomenon, but also the historical study of religions is confronted with new forms (and volume) of data. Baunvig expects a methodological shift that follows the change in data. The emergence of digital (or: computational) humanities will, in the long run, transform the humanities as a whole, she assumes. But in the medium term, some areas will observe this shift earlier. On the one hand, text-based studies are the focus of current methodological innovations like text mining, and within them â given the amount of data required for large-scale text analysis â especially the study of religion in the nineteenth century will benefit from these. On the other hand, computational analyses in the humanities require a careful evaluation of both data and analysis outputs, leading to an increasing demand of qualifications that support, as Baunvig coins it, the âreturn of the philologists.â As illustrations of these methodological developments, Baunvig draws on her own studies of the work of Danish writer, pastor, and politician N.F.S. Grundtvig.
Eviatar Shulman takes off from the KHKâs terminology and approaches, identifying situations of contact and patterns of interaction between and within religious traditions. His focus in this contribution is the position and positionality of researchers, who are not uninfluenced by the realities they study. As such, he urges his readers to ask how the ideas and social practices of the communities they study relate to themselves as human individuals. Seeking to undermine the we-they distinction, he points out that religious communities (past and present) may not easily fall into pre-made categories. He also re-opens the question of religious truth, arguing that scholars should enter this discussion of religious truth seriously in order to arrive at more accurate representations of historical and contemporary religions because it lets scholars see the world in the same way as religious people see it.
In the final contribution to this volume, Luther H. Martin explores the question of what a âscientificâ study of religion and its future perspectives might be from the perspective of cognitive sciences, network theory, and quantitative approaches. He understands the scientific study of religion as based on the methods of the natural sciences, particularly evolutionary psychologyâs vast and growing research on the human brain. This cognition-based approach, he argues, allows researchers to examine issues such as attributing mental states to others, particularly intentionality to superhuman agents or the effects of mind-altering practices such as meditation or group arousal, from a critical, empirically based, rigorously tested and intersubjectively assessed perspective. He also touches upon behavioral economics and cognitive historiography in his sketch of the future of the scientific study of religion.
Bibliography
Ames, Rogert, T. âGetting Past Transcendence: Determinacy, Indeterminacy, and Emergence in Chinese Natural Cosmology.â In Transcendence, Immanence, and Intercultural Philosophy, edited by Nahum Brown and William Franke, pp. 3â34. Cham, s.l.: Springer International Publishing, 2016.
Asad, Talal. âThe Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category.â In A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, edited by Michael Lambek, pp. 114â132. Blackwell Anthologies in Social and Cultural Anthropology 2. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2002.
Berger, Peter L. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. Harmondsworth: Anchor, 1967.
Bourdieu, Pierre. âLegitimation and Structured Interest in Weberâs Theory of Religion.â In Max Weber: Rationality and Modernity, edited by Scott Lash and Sam Whimster, pp. 119â136. London: Routledge, 1987.
Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1912] 2008.
Durkheim, Emile. The Rules of Sociological Method. Translated by W.D. Halls and edited by Steven Lukes. New York, NY: The Free Press, 1982.
Freiberger, Oliver. Considering Comparison. A Method for Religious Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Habermas, Jürgen. Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2019.
Joas, Hans. Die Macht des Heiligen: Eine Alternative zur Geschichte der Entzauberung. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2017.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Karis, Tim, and Volkhard Krech. âWhite Paper: The Käte Hamburger Kolleg (KHK) in Bochum as an Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities.â Entangled Religions 13, no. 1 (2022). https://doi.org/10.46586/er.13.2022.9603.
Krech, Volkhard. Die Evolution der Religion: Ein soziologischer Grundriss. Bielefeld: Transkript, 2021.
Krech, Volkhard. âWohin mit der Religionswissenschaft? Skizze zur Lage der Religionsforschung und zu Möglichkeiten ihrer Entwicklung.â Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 58, no. 2 (2006): 97â113. https://doi.org/10.1163/157007306776562062.
Leeuw, Gerardus van der. Einführung in die Phänomenologie der Religion. Christentum und Fremdreligionen 1. München: Ernst Reinhardt, 1925.
Loewe, Michael, and Michael Nylan. âIntroduction.â In Chinaâs Early Empires. A Re-Appraisal, edited by Michael Loewe and Michael Nylan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Luhmann, Niklas. A Systems Theory of Religion. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2013.
Reimann, Ralf Ingo. Der Schamane sieht eine Hexe, der Ethnologe sieht nichts: Menschliche Informationsverarbeitung und ethnologische Forschung. Frankfurt: Campus, 1998.
Roetz, Heiner. âTradition, Universality, and the Time Paradigm of Zhou Philosophy.â The Journal of Chinese Philosophy 36, no. 3 (2009), 359â375.
Spencer-Brown, George. Laws of Form. London: Allen and Unwin, 1969.
Stünkel, Knut Martin. Key Concepts in the Study of Religion in Contact. Leiden: Brill, forthcoming.
Weber, Max. Religion und Gesellschaft: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie. Frankfurt: Zweitausendeins, 2010.
There is an ongoing debate regarding a correct term for this perspective. Some scholars prefer terms like âcomparative religionâ, âscientific study of religionâ, or others. In the following, we refer to this as âreligious studiesâ in the sense of âReligionswissenschaft.â
Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1912] 2008), 52.
Jürgen Habermas, Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2019).
Niklas Luhmann, A Systems Theory of Religion (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2013).
For a detailed discussion, see Ralf Ingo Reimann, Der Schamane sieht eine Hexe, der Ethnologe sieht nichts: Menschliche Informationsverarbeitung und ethnologische Forschung (Frankfurt: Campus, 1998).
Kant states: âA theoretical cognition is speculative if it pertains to an object or concepts of an object to which one cannot attain in any experience. It is opposed to the cognition of nature, which pertains to no objects, or their predicates, except those that can be given in a possible experience.â Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 585.
George Spencer-Brown, Laws of Form (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969).
Luhmann, Systems Theory of Religion, 23.
Volkhard Krech, Die Evolution der Religion: Ein soziologischer Grundriss (Bielefeld: Transkript, 2021), 24. This definition has, over the years, been developed by KHK founding director Volkhard Krech who also published extensively about it. We present only a very brief sketch here.
Max Weber uses the term âspheres of valueâ in his âZwischenbetrachtungenâ. See Max Weber, Religion und Gesellschaft: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie (Frankfurt: Zweitausendeins, 2010). On Pierre Bourdieuâs theory of the religious field, see Pierre Bourdieu, âLegitimation and Structured Interest in Weberâs Theory of Religion,â in Max Weber: Rationality and Modernity, ed. S. Whimster and S. Lash (London: Routledge, 1987), 119â136. For Luhmannâs systems theoretical approach to religion, see again Luhmann, A Systems Theory of Religion.
E.g., Hans Joas, Die Macht des Heiligen: Eine Alternative zur Geschichte der Entzauberung (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2017).
Weber, Religion und Gesellschaft.
Volkhard Krech, Die Evolution der Religion.
Durkheim, Elementary Forms; Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Harmondsworth: Anchor, 1967).
Volkhard Krech, âWohin mit der Religionswissenschaft? Skizze zur Lage der Religionsforschung und zu Möglichkeiten ihrer Entwicklung,â Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 58, no. 2 (2006): 97â113, https://doi.org/10.1163/157007306776562062. The title is not easily translated, as it plays with the double meaning of âWhere to put Religious Studies?â and âWhere to go with Religious Studies?â
Krech, âWohin mit der Religionswissenschaft?,â 105.
Oliver Freibergerâs book-length study Considering Comparison. A Method for Religious Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) is a notable and welcome exception. As a KHK-fellow in 2015â16, Freiberger has contributed significantly to the continuing discussions on comparison in our consortium.
See Freiberger, Considering Comparison, 94.
Michael Loewe and Michael Nylan, âIntroduction,â in Chinaâs Early Empires. A Re-Appraisal, ed. Michael Loewe and Michael Nylan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 4.
For a critical standpoint, see Rogert T. Ames, âGetting Past Transcendence: Determinacy, Indeterminacy, and Emergence in Chinese Natural Cosmology,â in Transcendence, Immanence, and Intercultural Philosophy, ed. Nahum Brown und William Franke (Cham, s.l.: Springer International Publishing, 2016), 3â34.
See Knut Martin Stünkel, Key Concepts in the Study of Religion in Contact (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).
See Heiner Roetz, âTradition, Universality, and the Time Paradigm of Zhou Philosophy,â The Journal of Chinese Philosophy 36, no. 3 (2009), 359â375, 363.
See, e.g., Gerardus van der Leeuw, Einführung in die Phänomenologie der Religion, Christentum und Fremdreligionen 1 (München: Ernst Reinhardt, 1925), 7.
Talal Asad, âThe Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category,â in A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, ed. Michael Lambek, Blackwell Anthologies in Social and Cultural Anthropology 2 (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), 114â32, 115.
We have discussed these and other challenges connected to our experience with the funding line in a White Paper published in Entangled Religions (Tim Karis and Volkhard Krech, âWhite Paper: The Käte Hamburger Kolleg (KHK) in Bochum as an Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities,â Entangled Religions 13, no. 1 (2022)). https://doi.org/10.46586/er.13.2022.9603.
Knut Martin Stünkel, Key Concepts.