Kirschner and Pittrof head new “KU Center for Religion, Church and Society in Transformation”

“Being a central research institute at the KU, the center has the task of bringing the subjects and disciplines at the KU that deal with the topic areas of religion, church and society together. We want to pool existing expertise and focus on joint research questions and objectives from the perspective of change and transformation”, explains Prof. Kirschner. At its start, the ZRKG consists of 27 researchers from seven KU faculties. The research topics of the involved parties reach from theology and classical archaeology over philosophy and social pedagogy to the fields of sociology, political science and art history and literary studies. Early-career researchers from different disciplines are also welcome to support the ZRKG with their work as a member. “Processes of modernization do not lead to the disappearance of religion but to a profound change in its forms of belief, expression and social forms. In this process, religion turns out to be both an influential and ambivalent factor in socio-cultural development and international politics”, explains Kirschner. He continues to say that questions on the significance of religion for individuals and societies and questions regarding the reasons and conditions of its institutionalization had by no means become obsolete in our present times. Rather, they had to be reiterated with a new urgency and by also taking into account global factors.

In their work, researchers at the ZRKG concentrate on three areas of research. In the field of “media and practices in religious transformation processes”, they especially seek to investigate the historical dimensions of Christianity and Judaism. In their research, they want to focus on the communication in the context of religious transformation processes and their framework conditions – reaching from oral tradition to modern communication media and its social contexts.

In the research area “personal development today: challenges, forms, foundations”, researchers investigate how humans in all stages of their lives develop their personalities, accept challenges of present times and contribute to shaping the world they live in: What are the foundations of personal development processes? How can the Christian view of human life with its ethical implications and consequences be used effectively for such development processes? How do we shape living conditions in modern societies and how can they be brought into dialog with cultural and religious traditions?

The third research focus of the ZRKG deals with fundamental questions of “religiousness in transformation processes of the present”. It investigates the profound transformation in the field of religiousness and ecclesiastical social forms as well as the understanding of faith. Research shows that there is an individual and plural approach to religion on the one hand, in which people build their religion from a toolbox of heterogeneous religious offers. On the other hand, researchers also detect a growing significance of fundamentalist movements that seek to establish a fixed identity that excludes the other(s) through selective recourse to individual traditions. “In order to be able to understand the current transformation processes of religiousness in the present times and interpret them, we need to take into account social, political, cultural and religious perspectives as well as approaches from literary studies just as much as we need the theological point of view”, emphasizes Prof. Kirschner, head of ZRKG.

For more detailed information on the program and members of the “KU Center for Religion, Church and Society in Transformation”, please visit the website at www.ku.de/zrkg.