A report on the RaT Reseach Day on November 24, 2023

On November 24, another RaT Research Day took place at Melk Abbey. Special thanks go to Noemi Call and Marian Weingartshofer for organizing and moderating the event, as well as to Jakob Deibl and Melk Abbey as our hosts. Like the last meeting on January 31, the event was held under the motto "Religious Exits", the current research focus of the Centre, which was also presented by Kurt Appel at the beginning. This time it was important for us to offer the new members of the Centre the opportunity to give an insight into their current religion-related research.

The first lecture by Fabio Wolkenstein focused on the changes in German and Austrian Christian democracy in the 1970s. He showed how, as a reaction to the social changes (keyword: 1968 movement) and the (relative) loss of power, a double movement towards socio-political opening on the one hand and international networking on the other began at this time. Regina Polak then gave an insight into the latest results of the "European Values Study", which she helped to organize. The focus was on the question of the relationship between religiosity and approval of democratic values. According to Polak, an ambivalent picture emerges: While, on the one hand, strong identification with religion often goes hand in hand with anti-democratic attitudes, the reverse is true: those who do not merely profess to be religious, but are involved in religious practices in their everyday lives, are more likely than average to be supporters of democracy.

After this first thematic block with a social science focus, the historian Kirsten Rüther, who recently joined the RaT as a member and teaches African Studies, presented the current interim status of a research project in which she is working on image sources from the archive of the Norwegian mission in South Africa: She highlighted how, when working with images created in a colonial context, reproductions of racist power relations become visible on the one hand, but how, on closer inspection, subversive and egalitarian aspects can also be discovered on the other. Fabian Völker then provided insights into mysticism research: the question of the definition of mysticism has been controversial since the late 19th century. In his own contributions to this debate, he argues on the one hand for the phenomenon's character, which transcends the structure of everyday experience, to be taken into account. At the same time, he is concerned to critically question the assumption often made by proponents of mysticism that mystical experiences necessarily have positive moral consequences.

The lunch break was followed by two lectures with a historical focus: Firstly, Uta Heil, Dean of the Protestant Theology Faculty, presented her research on the development of Christian Sunday culture since late antiquity, which was fed into a publicly accessible online database. It became clear that many aspects that seem self-evident to us today, which characterize Sunday as a holiday, emerged in a complex historical development, in which the demarcation from Judaism, the pragmatic-political purpose of the gathering, the attempt to ward off esoteric charges of meaning (keyword: planetary week) and finally the abolition of the Roman feast day calendar played a central role. Katharina Ivanyi then gave an insight into the history of Islamic law, more specifically into the Hanafi school of law, the largest of the four traditional schools of Sunni Islam, which emerged in the 8th century of our era in what is now Iraq. In the course of her lecture, it became clear which complex arguments and structures are hidden behind the term "Sharia", which is often used polemically today. Ivanyi also emphasized the tension that exists between the complex arguments based on the concepts of the possible and the probable and their codification over time.

Deniz Cosan Eke then spoke about her research into the Alevi religious community, which is still not recognized by the Turkish state, although it is the second largest religious group in Turkey. In a multi-year ethnographic study of various Alevi communities in Germany, she was able to observe how the rituals of the faith, which is strongly based on oral tradition, change over time and how complex the translation of the traditional and varied structures of Alevism into the requirements of German religious law is.

The last lecture block of the day was opened by Wolfgang Treitler, who reported on the central thesis of his recently published book Jesus, Josefs Sohn. The Messiah as the Gate of the Covenant: Jesus is interpreted in the light of a Jewish-Messianic tradition that does not stylize him as the "Son of David" who brings the final salvation and consequently must also reject the thesis of his God-manhood. Andrea Lehner-Hartmann, the current Dean of the Faculty of Catholic Theology, then presented her religious education theses on a contemporary concept of religious education: according to her, religious education must be understood as an educational process and not as mere learning in the sense of absorbing information. Above all, this means creating an open and fear-free space for reflection and encounter for the students, in which an encounter between different points of view and demands can take place, while at the same time preserving the "unavailability" of the other, which gives the lesson its title. The last lecture by Martin Fieder made it clear that the topic of religion is also attracting increasing interest in the natural sciences: In an exciting tour de force, the evolutionary biologist presented the latest findings from genome research on possible connections between religion and genetics.

Many of the speakers saw the topic of "religious exits" as a stimulus to revisit their research through this lens and to introduce the resulting questions into the discussion.  

The long day, characterized by exciting lectures and discussions, was concluded with a guided tour of the monastery led by Jakob Deibl and a joint dinner.

Text by Marian Weingartshofer