Between religion and religiousness – challenges for religious education and church youth work posed by uncommitted religious cultures.

From October 7th to October 9th, 2010, the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt hosted the international and interdisciplinary research symposium “Jugend - Religion - Religiosität” (Youth - Religion - Religiousness) which dealt with results, problems and perspectives of current religious research. The congress volume which was published in 2012 summarizes the acquired insights of the symposium and features an individual chapter on theses which could serve as a guideline for future developments in the field of religious education and church youth work. If these theses are correct, they entail questions of how practical measures have to change in these fields.

Such questions could be:

• Will religious education of the future rather be a religiousness education, as religion and religiousness grow apart more and more in our post-modern lives?
• Where do church youth work and sacrament catechesis stand within the tension field of a religiousness of young people which becomes more and more individualized and Christianity as a religion with a central self-understanding in confessions of faith, content of teaching, standardized ritual implementations and communities of faith?
• Which consequences does the changed way in which young people treat religion, i.e. the reception and articulation of religion in esthetic and multimedia formats, entail for religious education and church youth work?
• What is the current situation of certain non-Christian groups: young Muslims in a conflict situation between religious individualization and identification with Islam on the one hand and youths from the new German federal states with tendencies towards secular religiousness on the other hand?

The Eichstätt congress 2013 is a continuation of the 2010 symposium insofar as it made the practical relevance of the theoretical constructs developed in 2010 a topic of discussion by placing it into the context of the field of tension between youth, religion and religiousness.

This is why the hosts also invited responsible representatives and employees from the field of religious education and youth work who are active in church associations (ordinariates, school departments, departments for church work with young adults, education houses etc.) along with researchers from the fields of religious education and pastoral theology and practical theology of both confessions. Furthermore, the hosts warmly welcomed interested multipliers (e.g. From religious educational/catechetical institutes or institutions for teacher training).

Organzier: Prof. Dr. Ulrich Kropač / Prof. Dr. Uto Meier / AOR Klaus König