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Expertise on Eastern Christianity: New online platform is to pool knowledge and dialog

[Translate to Englisch:] Makedonien

In contrast to developments in Western Europe, religion continues to gain importance globally - also with regard to political processes of recent times. Even in the current Ukraine conflict, religion plays a role after the country’s Orthodox Church was split with the nation’s independence in the early 1990s. Knowledge about Orthodox Churches and Churches of the Christian Orient in the Middle East, however, remains scattered around the world. That is why, under the leadership of the KU, a new interdisciplinary online platform on "Eastern Christian Studies" will be created, which will preserve and pool the relevant expertise and make it accessible in the sense of Open Science. In addition, the "Eastern Christian Studies Online Campus" (ESC Online Campus) will create digital teaching formats as well as a range of classes for the general public. The project is headed by Prof. Dr. Thomas Kremer, who holds the endowed professorship "Prinz Max von Sachsen” (Prince Max of Saxony) for Theology of Christian East at the KU. The Volkswagen Foundation is funding the project, which will initially last seven years, with more than 970,000 euros as part of the program "Weltwissen - Strukturelle Stärkung Kleiner Fächer, a program to promote rare subjects.

In addition to a close cooperation with the Research Center Christian Orient at the KU, the partners of the Online Campus include researchers from Germany, Austria, France, Greece, Italy, the USA as well as Ukraine, Armenia and Lebanon. They also include representatives of peace and conflict studies, migration studies, various philologies, and ecumenical and interreligious theology.

The concept, which Professor Kremer developed with his research associate Joachim Braun in exchange with numerous partners, addresses the academic situation of Christian Oriental Studies in the German-speaking world: "On the one hand, specially endowed chairs have not been reoccupied in recent years; on the other hand, the subject has gained in importance precisely because of recent migration movements, in which many Christians have had to leave their Eastern homelands," Kremer says. This shows how much the culture of Eastern Christianity is threatened in the countries of origin and how it is simultaneously present in our own country thanks to migration. Historically, the Armenian diaspora in France is an example that continues to have an impact even today: After World War I, the country was a major destination for Armenian refugees, who today form the world's fourth-largest Armenian community, with over 600,000 people - after Armenia, Russia and the USA. Most of them belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church.

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