Research focus I: Media and practices in religious transformation Processes

Within the KU Center for Religion, Church and Society in Transformation, research focus I deals with the historical dimension of religious transformation processes.

Transformation processes have characterized the history of religions since the very beginning. They relate to the independent change in the structures, behaviors and forms of expression of religion and its approach to tradition, but can also affect them indirectly as a result of a change in their socio-cultural embedding. 

The research focus understands 'transformation' itself as a framework concept: as a designation for a transformation process between (at least) two states. On the one hand, it tentatively captures the overall area of religious-historical processes of overarching duration (longue durée) between a 'before/until then' and an 'after/afterwards'; on the other hand, it can be analytically related to sub-processes of religious life and their connections to general history. The term can be used to describe processes through which "the previous forms and structures of possible changes themselves change", which can be accompanied by a profound "change in the orders of knowledge or the knowledge-based orders of power and patterns of interpretation that shape action". Transformations therefore not only affect social sub-processes; they can also consist of a symbiosis of different sub-processes.

Ideally, such transformations can be experienced in two ways: as a disruptive crisis that fundamentally questions categories of order and patterns of interpretation, or as a gradual change that emphasizes continuity. In specific examples of historical findings, however, it is often not possible to clearly separate these basic types. Thus, revealed religions have an essential moment of continuity as a basis in their sacred scriptures. On the one hand, this gives rise to a fundamental resistance to change; on the other hand, it can provoke ever new interpretations and appropriations of religious writings and traditions, which in turn give rise to religious practices that are specific to a particular time, culture and language.

Since the beginning of the early modern period, transformations in the field of religion have led to enormous pluralization. This raises the question of the extent to which such a pluralization dynamic can also be observed in earlier transformation processes.

Using the example of Christianity, the 'dynamics of pluralization' is understood in a first approach as the totality of those processes in the course of which Christianity, first in its pre-confessional late antique and medieval formations, then since its early modern confessionalization, migrated into the various cultural areas of Europe, the Middle East, the two Americas, Asia, Oceania and Africa, In this reciprocal interpenetration of shaping and being shaped, it has become the culturally specific, medially and discursively differentiated formations in which it presents itself today worldwide as a universalistic, pluralistic and confessionalistically interpretable formation of a church-based religion. Within a history of 'occidental rationality', a specifically "Christian secularity" has developed, in which the self-descriptions of Christianity only cover part of its descriptive possibilities as a result of its extra-theological scientification since the 18th and 19th centuries. The pluralization dynamics of 'Christianity' have also become those of its systems of interpretation and description themselves; the possibilities of understanding it have expanded in a previously unimagined way (not least because they have been disconnected from the bond of faith). 

On the other hand, it also seems that culture and society have grown weary of their "secular mode of self-description" (D. Kemper), especially in so-called advanced Western societies, where – contrary to a global trend – the number of church members has declined. This leads to the astonishing finding that, although the significance of church-based religiosity in these societies is declining, the sociological (discursive) relevance of religion is actually increasing. In addition, a kind of "nova effect" can be observed, which – alongside and apart from church-based religiosity – is producing an ever greater variety of moral and spiritual options. If we look back from here to the history of Christianity, we may have to expect quite different temporal structures from those of modern times. This leads to the question of whether there is such a thing as 'proper times', 'proper temporalities' in the 'temporalization' of Christianity, in which the focus is not on change, but on stabilization – even if there is tension. 

Since religious transformation processes are essentially shaped by discourses, they are inconceivable without their corresponding forms of expression: Religion only becomes socially perceptible through media communication. This is based on a broad concept of media that includes oral, written, musical, pictorial and performative forms of expression. The possibilities of hybrid interaction (intermediality) and, more recently, the variety of electronic storage and communication media must also be considered. The respective medium dictates certain conditions of expression and communication. However, it is also subject to the conditions of the specific organizational form in which it appears (e.g. the sermon includes not only the spoken word, but also the spatial design, liturgical embedding and the predisposition of the listeners). Media-historical processes of change can therefore significantly influence transformations in the religious field.

With the media, the broad area of practices is one of the objects examined in this research focus. In historical research, human action has been holding a central position for a number of years; however, not just any action can be subsumed under practices. According to the definition of the philosopher Theodore R. Schatzki, practices are to be understood as a "typified, routinized and socially understandable bundle of activities". In this way, individualistic or structuralist reductions of history are prevented, while at the same time action is embedded in social contexts. Both the development of typifications and routines as well as inter-subjective comprehensibility are due to social discourses. Against this background, special attention should be paid to a praxeological approach together with a media-historical approach when investigating transformation processes.

A particular focus in the work of the research focus is currently on the description of intermedial objects, texts and practices in the veneration of saints as a constituent of Christian religion. This is based on the idea that the intermedial nature of the veneration of saints makes it possible in a special way to perceive processes of change that take place in times of transformation (e.g. late antiquity, Reformation period, Enlightenment). The aim is to identify fundamental structural moments of religious transformation processes with a particular focus on the medial constitution of objects, texts and practices of the veneration of saints.

Go to ‘Members of the Field of Research I’