Though sleep may be a welcome, if not necessarily satisfying, conclusion to this volume, I nevertheless would like to spend a few additional pages on the concrete prospects for future work that builds on the findings and insights of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg. The ‘Dynamics of the History of Religions between Asia and Europe’, which covered a time span from about 5000 BCE up to present times and a geographical space from Japan to Iceland, and framed an abundance of religious traditions and religioid phenomena, cannot be covered in its entirety by a single approach—or rather, it can only be covered in relation to a situation-dependent research question that highlights particular subjects. With the possible exception of Hilaire Belloc, one cannot write on everything.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. As the angel of history moves backward, gazing at the past, the future development is and should be undetermined. With a little luck, it may even be surprising. The way of inquiry cannot be blocked or concluded. Tentative and incomplete as it is, an enterprise like the present one cannot conclude but in the form of a hope for the future. Thus, we admit that many things were not addressed and outline some possible applications and developments of the issues that were addressed.
After all, if I have not succeeded in making my case for a reinterpretation of certain key concepts, I, nevertheless and in accordance with the points made in the considerations on Andy Warhol Syndrome, hope to have shown that other approaches to the concepts also fail. This would be at least a negative result that may help to free inquiry. The main obstacle here is ignorance concerning the explorative potential of concepts and the often hostile stances towards conceptualization efforts. Though an exaggerated focus on concepts may cause one to lose sight of those matters in the history of religion that are not and do not have to be expressed explicitly in terms of concepts, losing sight of concepts, in turn, means losing sight of everything. The creativity of concepts has been firmly reestablished, and key concepts in the study of religions have to be freed from unsuitable and reductive approaches. I have explored several in this volume, including the choice-centered account of attractiveness, the reductive material notion of dynamics, the use of the notion of identity, the idea of pure immanence, the anti-theoretical stance towards religious phenomena related to the senses, the exclusivity of secrets and secrecy, and the immovability of religious space (and, to add that, the irrelevance of sleep).
To check the validity of my arguments, it is most important that these findings and suggestions be applied to cultures and religious traditions beyond the ones my personal knowledge of language and history gives me some access to. In a Popperian sense, the given hypotheses—that the concepts examined are indeed key concepts of the study of the history of religion—waits for corroboration or refutation. The main criterium, however, is less the supposed correspondence with ‘fact’ but the fertility with which they generate explanative perspectives. However, if I should be refuted, I shall, nevertheless, not abandon my theory but rather attempt to correct and adapt my theoretical considerations to the new evidence.
One suitable area of future research I have outlined is the model-form-based analysis of contact situations and the corresponding adaption of stories connected to the formation of model forms in religious traditions under study. Based on these findings, it may be possible to trace back the context determining the meaning of notions and concepts used to conceptualize both the situation of contact and the challenging or contrasting tradition. It is predominantly the form of contrast emerging from the contact situation that has to be measured, as it serves as a basis for object-language developments in conceptualizing or ‘model-forming’ future situations of encounter and challenge. Thus, the particular type of contact in a case at hand might be measured by the particular contrasts employed, which may be quite different for the diverse participants in contact situations.
Model forms may prove to be major instruments for understanding how religious traditions deal with situations of contact. Their function, therefore, as knowledge-generating devices has to be further scrutinized.1 In this regard, the model forms and their usage become elements of practices that may extend the field of religion proper. Particularly in the inevitably asymmetrical forms of contact, for example, in colonial contexts, model forms are, however, not merely means of informing of imperialistic tools but are also likely to be more subversively used through practical metaschematism. To me, the practice of metaschematizing in situations of contact between religious traditions deserves more extensive research, above all, with regard to diverse religious traditions and the possible comparison of adaptions.2
Moreover, the application of the structure of re-founded time—the retrospective perspective—may be an important tool for further work on the history of religions. Not only in abandoning fruitless attempts to find the ‘origins’ of things, but retrospection might also become important in the effort to rehabilitate the material of religious studies in the sense that, under this perspective, for example, layers of texts (say, nineteenth-century ‘misunderstandings’ of non-European religious textual traditions) may also contribute to the process of gaining insight into the dynamics of the history of religions.
To end this book, I would like to draw attention to some joint interdisciplinary efforts to continue the work of the KHK with regard to its major themes, special perspective, and the practice of scholarly work performed here. From the immediate context of the KHK, three projects have emerged that, hopefully, replenish or correct the present approach found in the field: namely, the online journal Entangled Religions, intended to provide case studies on the importance of the contact-based approach in the study of religion and articles on the basic notions of the KHK, a subsequent volume on the typology of situations of religious contact, and, last but not least, Volkhard Krech’s magnum opus on religious evolution.
1 Typology of Contact
Contact is the decisive element in both the history and the epistemology of religions—in KHK terms, the dynamics in the history of religions and the possible interrelations of object-language and metalanguage. Discerning the possible forms of contact is, therefore, a vital task in the study of religion. To gain a better differentiated picture of the field and to provide scholarly meta- language with more tools for detailed description, analysis, and explanation, a well-structured typology of contacts is necessary.
The forthcoming volume on the typology of contact, edited and written by long-term members of the KHK, aims to demonstrate the scientific fertility of researching contact situations between religious traditions in the study of the history of religions.3 Explicit attempts in this direction have already been made, notably by Günter Lanczkowski some fifty years ago4 and more recently by Martin Riesebrodt.5 The subject, however, has not quite attracted the attention it deserves, above all, regarding the theoretical significance of contact.
Over the years, the KHK has both produced and inspired a large number of studies on religious contact, as shall be described in the chapters of the planned volume. It will reiterate the basics of the contact-centered approach and also explain how the related concepts were refined in the course of the consortium’s work. Accordingly, the production of a typology of religious contacts is an important next step in contact-centered research on religion. The volume will explain why such a typology can enrich the understanding of religion and further measure the possible scope of such a typology. The bulk of the volume will consist of research reports from the author’s respective fields of expertise. Authors have been asked to discuss the state of the field, employ KHK terminology, and identify any possible patterns resulting from this. Each chapter will feature a comprehensive bibliography to be used as a point of reference for future research. The volume is intended to conclude with a systematic perspective motivating future case studies guided by the contact perspective: “In the concluding chapter, taking their cues from the reflections offered therein, the editors will take a birds-eye-view on the preceding research reports and discuss emerging patterns and structural similarities between cases. This will then lead to the suggestion of a number of types of religious contacts, which will be sketched and discussed. The chapter will end with the invitation to further research to add to the typology as well as refine, modify, and reject the suggested types.”6
2 Evolutional Semiosis and Relationality
In the chapter on the transcendence/immanence distinction, I have already marked a possible point for connecting the considerations given here to the elaborate theory of religious evolution (THERE) developed by Volkhard Krech.7 In his project, Krech aims to provide a triangulation between systems theory, the theory of evolution, and semiotically informed communication theory.8 Despite the fact that both approaches stem from the KHK context and rely on Luhmannian systems theory, I am, nevertheless, not sure if there is an ongoing connection between my understanding of the TID and Krech’s work or if there is rather an indication of a point of bifurcation that distinguishes a semiotic or Peircean approach from a processual or Whiteheadian approach to the phenomenon of religion and the history of religions.
In a recent article from 2019, Krech produced a ‘manifesto’, arguing for the value of relational religion as a synthesis of approaches in the study of religion that might help to explain the interplay between mental and bodily processes, material objects, and socio-cultural communication systems called religion.9 The idea is by no means unpopular. As it seems, relational religion is the dish of the day and the obvious path forward in the study of religion. Above all, as Francisca Cho and Richard King Squier, in their brilliant article Religion as a Complex and Dynamic System, put it, “[r]elational thinking is an antidote to the endless fragmentation threatened by the way current scholars of religion think about religious diversity.”10 In his study on Crossing and Dwelling, Thomas Tweed already argued for a movement “toward a dynamic and relational theory of religion.”11 The notion and the concept of dynamics have been explained, and relationality will soon follow as the focus of attention. Religion, however, is relational in many regards. The salient relevance of situations of contact for the emergence, formation, and condensation of religion and religions has been the major subject of the KHK. In this sense, religions depend relationally on one another. Its relational approach to the study of religions examines religious traditions as entangled entities that constitute, develop and transform each other through contact.
As Krech indicates, the methodic relevance of relationality is not confined to these situations of contact between religious traditions: “On the basis of relational theory as a background independent theory, single religious matters form in relation to other religious matters and thus constitute religious fields. In turn, religious fields and the religious field as a whole form in relationships to other societal spheres. Thus, a dynamic network of relations emerges through the interplay between semantics, social structures, mental processes, and material conditions. The defining feature of any single subject matter is therefore not substantively specified but instead can only be identified in relation to other entities.”12 Basing on Bateson’s notion of information as ‘a difference that makes a difference’ Krech describes the relational approach in the study of religion in the most general sense as follows: “Religion emerges and proceeds by relating single subject-matters to each other that are identified as being religious through their relation to each other.”13
Here, Whitehead’s theory of relationality, expressed in his ‘principle of relativity’, may prove a suitable background for relational religions.14 In the present context, I can only superficially allude to a line of possible further elaboration. The principle of relativity, as expressed in the relatedness of nature, denotes dynamics, by means of which every actual occasion is described as being in a continuous process of concrescence via contrast and contrasting.15 Relationality is additionally a basic characteristic of facts: “Fact is a relationship of factors. Every factor of fact essentially refers to its relationship with fact. Apart from this relationship it is not itself.”16
To be stressed in the relational approach to phenomena of religion and the history of religions is the interplay between interrelational and self-relational aspects, the two aspects that characterize the dynamics of the history of religion. Here, religious self-reference is a major object-language phenomenon for the identification of scholarly subject-matter.
3 Explorative Conceptualizing
The study of religion has to overcome the ‘fear of knowledge’, as manifested in the present fear of concepts. Concepts are tools that are not only used to secure results but also to generate, or rather, to unlock new perspectives or insights. They might be used in the way a device like a spoon is used or in the way the microscope was used—not only by its first inventors but by all knowledge-seekers who followed. Concepts do indeed have to be controlled carefully, but not in the way that their explorative capacity is lost.17
Theorists of religion have aimed to find a new language to provide a better picture of what is going on in the field and history of religions, preferably both.18 The new language is not least intended to allow more fertile communication between the material provided by specialists and the explanatory aims of scholarship as such. Reforming the colloquial language of the academic field does not necessarily mean overwhelming it with neologisms, which are all the more likely to fall victim to the familiar criticism that they are the product of armchair scholarship. It is also likely to lose contact with the results of previous research, particularly with its instructive failures.19 At points, it might be appropriate to come up with new concepts, but in most cases, it seems more adequate to refine well-known ones and to associate them with new, contrasting combinations. So, if, for example, the particular attraction of secrets is taken into consideration, there might be some new insight into the dynamics of contact between religious traditions and the particular characteristics of the main promoting elements of transfer processes.
Ringing a clarion peal against the notioclastic grain of the study of religion, the journal Entangled Religions follows a decidedly combinatorial approach in order to maintain the possibility of comparative work and theoretical generalizations in order to contribute to a possible growth of knowledge. Here, some of the key concepts discussed before are suggested as possible generic concepts to guide concrete work on the material. The journal gathers case studies on concrete situations of contact between religious traditions with reference to generic concepts (tertia comparationis) that allow for comparison and contextualization. By making use of the full possibilities of its online edition, the journal allows the application of computer-based methods for the analysis of diverse articles with regard to a common focus that might prove not to have been intended by the original author. Thus, patterns and references may be detected that otherwise would have remained undetected, thus allowing for description, analysis, and explication on a more refined level, not least for the sake of self-control of scholarly meta-language.
See as a first attempt into this direction Patrick F. Krüger and Knut Martin Stünkel, “Indische Religion(en) im Bild. Religionskontakt vor dem, um das und im Objekt,” Psychosozial 45, no. IV (2022): 28–44.
See for an example of analysis of the subversive capacity of model forms as metaschematism: Knut Martin Stünkel, “Biblical Metaschematism as a Device for Religious Transfer. Paul’s Communicative Strategy in a Situation of Religious Contact,” Entangled Religions 2 (2015): 1–34. Also compare Knut Martin Stünkel, “Halle—Stockholm—Tobolsk and back stronger than ever. Curt Friedrich von Wreech and his Wahrhafftige und umständliche Historie von denen schwedischen Gefangenen (1725/1728).” Entangled Religions 14, no. 1 (2023). Some attempts in this direction have also been made by others. In his article “Tertius motus: Die Erklärung der Präzession im Anti-Lucretius des Melchior de Polignac” Reinhold Glei examines a diachronic situation of contact as manifested in cardinal Melchior Polignac’s (1661–1741) work Anti-Lucretius. Aiming at establishing an anti-epicurean ethics, anthropology and theology, Polignac, interprets natural phenomena with scientific and rational means, thus metaschematically reenacting Lucretius’ approach. Reinhold F. Glei, “Tertius motus. Die Erklärung der Präzession im Anti-Lucretius des Melchior de Polignac,” in Die Poesie der Dinge. Ziele und Strategien der Wissensvermittlung im lateinischen Lehrgedicht der Frühen Neuzeit, eds. Ramunė Markevičiūtė and Bernd Roling (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2021), 206.
Studying Religion through Religious Contacts: Conceptual Framework, Typological Sketches, and Bibliography (Working Title), eds. Tim Karis, Volkhard Krech, Kianoosh Rezania, and Knut Martin Stünkel. Planned for 2025.
See Günter Lanczkowski, Begegnung und Wandel der Religionen (Düsseldorf/Köln: Diederichs, 1971), 5, 95–160.
Martin Riesebrodt has elaborated on a preliminary typology of contact in his theory of religion, see Martin Riesebrodt, Cultus und Heilsversprechen. Eine Theorie der Religionen (München: Beck, 2007), 44–74.
Volkhard Krech, Kianoosh Rezania, and Tim Karis, “Outline,” Studying Religion through Religious Contacts: Conceptual Framework, Typological Sketches, and Bibliography.
A prospective insight into the project is provided by the article: Volkhard Krech, “Theory and Empiricism of Religious Evolution (THERE): Foundation of a Research Program. Part 1,” Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 26 (2018): 1–51. A ‘short and compact’ version of the three planned THERE volumes has been published in 2021: Volkhard Krech, Die Evolution der Religion (Bielefeld: transcript, 2021).
Krech, “Theory and Empiricism of Religious Evolution,” 10.
Volkhard Krech, “Relational religion: manifesto for a synthesis in the study of religion,” Religion 49 (2019): 1–9.
Francisca Cho and Richard King Squier, “Religion as a Complex and Dynamic System,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 81 (2013): 369.
Thomas A. Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling, A Theory of Religion (Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press, 2006), 28.
Krech, “Relational Religion,” 2.
Krech, “Relational Religion,” 3.
See Alfred North Whitehead, The Principle of Relativity with applications to Physical Science (Mineola: Dover, 2004), in particular Chapter II: The Relatedness of Nature.
See chapter on the Transcendence/Immanence Distinction.
Whitehead, The Principle of Relativity, 14.
See chapter on More Than Semantics.
See Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling, 26.
See chapter on the Andy Warhol Syndrome.