Erfolg für JRAT: Journal des Forschungszentrums RaT erreicht Q1 im SCImago Ranking

Erfolg für JRAT: Journal des Forschungszentrums RaT erreicht Q1 im SCImago Ranking

Wir freuen uns, mitteilen zu dürfen, dass das von RaT im Open-Access herausgegebene "Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society" im neuen Ranking von SCImago im Bereich Religious Studies in das oberste Quartal der meistzitierten Zeitschriften aufgestiegen ist.

Damit konnte sich unser Journal gegenüber der bisherigen, bereits sehr respektablen, Position in Q2 deutlich verbessern.

Dies ist ein toller Erfolg für unser Zentrum und leistet einen wichtigen Beitrag dazu, die internationale Sichtbarkeit der an der Universität Wien betriebenen Theologie und Religionsforschung  zu erhöhen. Das hohe Niveau der in diesen Fächern an unserer Universität erbrachten Leistungen wurde erst kürzlich durch das neue QS-Ranking bestätigt, in dem die Universität Wien im Bereich "Theology, Divinity & Religious Studies" den 21. Platz belegt. Dies bedeutet gegenüber dem Vorjahr eine Verbesserung um 7, wodurch die Theologie und Religionsforschung erneut den zweitbesten Platz unter allen an der Universität Wien vertretenen Fächern einnimmt!

JRAT 9 (2/2023): From Syncretism to Hybridity: Transformations in African-derived American Religions

edited by Hans Gerald Hödl and Bettina Schmidt

In this volume, we bring together research on African derived Religions in Latin America and African American Religions in the USA. Theoretically, the concepts of hybridity and syncretism are discussed, in the introduction as well as in the papers included. The papers featured deal with Brazilian Umbanda, Cuban Santería, US African Black Hebrew Israelites, the Five Percenter movement (an offspring of the Nation of Islam), and one single person, Robert T. Browne, an activist in the Black Nationalist movement. In the religions covered – that are an outcome of the historical circumstances of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade – elements taken from West and Central African traditions, European Christianity, and Kardecian Spiritism blend to new forms of religious movements. This being the “fundamental” transformation of religion addressed here, some essays in the volume also look at the further transformation of those traditions in a “glocalized” world.

JRAT 9 (1/2023): Exploring Asian Religions in Europe

edited by Ugo Dessì and Lukas K. Pokorny

In the last fifty years there has been an increasing interest in alternative “spiritualities” in the European context, which have crystallised to a significant extent around “Eastern” religious forms. Whereas an important impulse has certainly been given in this respect by Orientalist views, the role played by missionaries in the transmission of Asian religious forms to Europe has been equally important. Still another major factor behind the transmission of “Eastern” religions to Europe is migration, which is becoming more and more relevant with the increasing number of immigrants from Asian countries. Against this general framework, the articles collected in this special issue attempt to shed more light on selected aspects of Asian religions in the European context, with particular attention to institutional, semi-institutional, and more informal practices, still relatively understudied areas (e.g., parts of Eastern Europe), and broad historical developments.

JRAT 8 (2/2022): Sacrifice and Self-Sacrifice: A Religious Concept under Transformation.

edited by Katerina Koci and Ludger Hagedorn

Sacrifice, originally a religious-cultic concept, has become highly secularized and used in various instances for different social phenomena. The current issue puts forward a selection of papers that offer insights into sacrifice and self-sacrifice and focus on the process of transformation of the sacrificial individual. Three main axes put the concrete papers into a dialogue with one another: first, there is the philosophical-theological and gender reflection of the experience of the paradigmatic sacrificial story of the western tradition, i.e., the Akedah (Gen 22); second, the existential-phenomenological interpretation of self-sacrifice in the secular world which nevertheless aims to reveal a higher good – Freedom, Love, or the Good; third, the gender and feminist reflection of the motherly sacrifice of childbirth both in the religious-cultic context and in the secular context which presents childbirth both as a moment of autonomy loss and submission and a moment of women self-emancipation.

JRAT 8 (1/2022): The Illusion of the Obvious. On Truth and Reliability in Times of Crisis.

edited by Cornelia Richter

The introduction of the editor explains research context and research objectives of the topic, highlights the most important insights and demonstrates relations among the contributions collected in the volume. The papers, written by young and senior researchers, on the one hand, discuss aspects of truth and various modes of deception like insincerity, whitewashing, or bullshit, all of which set forth destructing forces and eroding democratic processes. On the other hand, the papers address phenomena of dissolving and eroding the reliability of collective efforts to maintain truth and sanctions on deception, especially when they are linked to dangerous reductionist movements and hermetic subgroups which systematically prevent the efforts of peacebuilding measures and make anti-democratic movements settle to an extent that endangers cohesion and collective identity within Europe.

JRAT 7 (2/2021): Religion and Disease

edited by Rüdiger Lohlker

The contributions of this issue show an understanding of disease(s) and religion in a multifaceted way. Covering traditions of Christianity, Islam, Taoism, indigenous Indonesian people, fundamentalism, and secularism discourses allow for an approach to liminal situations related to diseases and healing and resilience towards the challenges these situations mean. Philosophical reflections, empirical research, theological discussions, studying ideas on sciences, and theoretical reflections on practical dimensions of resilience contribute to a stimulating mosaic of ideas.

JRAT 7 (1/2021): Religion and the Sense of Law

edited by Stefan Hammer and Jakob Deibl

The issue reflects on concepts of law determined or impacted by various currents of Abrahamitic religious traditions. Major alternative approaches regarding the status of revelation as a source of law are being addressed. Two basic types of religious approach can be distinguished: one embracing the idea of divine revelation containing prescriptions which are to be connected to and implemented in human legal and political reasoning, and another one absconding the divine from earthly political and legal paradigms in order to permeate them with relativizing spirituality. The various contributions explore the historical development of relevant strands of religious thought as well as the way in which they articulate themselves in the present-day diversity of a secularized and globalized environment.

JRAT 6 (2/2020): Interreligious Dialogue in Context: A European Perspective

edited by Karsten Lehmann

The article sketches the overall layout of the thematic issue of the ‘Journal of Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Societies (JRAT)’ on Interreligious Dialogue (IRD) in context. It argues that an analysis of Interreligious Dialogue-activities in their socio-cultural contexts helps to counterbalance the long-standing individualistic bias of IRD-research. First, it presents a systematic description of the present state of the art that distinguishes two strands of IRD-research. Second, it argues for a European comparison, based upon the most recent findings from the ‘SMRE – Swiss Metadatabase of Religious Affiliation in Europe’. The article closes with references to the structure of the present volume of JRAT to facilitate such a comparison.

JRAT 6 (1/2020): Exploring Human Dignity. Foundations and Applications that Transform Contemporary Society

edited by Nenad Polgar, Sigrid Müller, Katharina Mairinger and Todd A. Salzman

Two generations after the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there is a need to evaluate what has been achieved when it comes to discussions on human dignity and human rights in terms of their foundations and applications. This issue of the Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society addresses this task from the point of view of theological ethics and religious studies. Part One of this collection provides a solid foundation for defining human dignity and promoting human rights. Part Two demonstrates how this foundation can be applied to current and pressing ethical, legal, and theological issues confronting humanity, by addressing four exemplary issues (homosexuality, gender, migrants, and climate change). Combined, these essays point a way forward for the ongoing development of a comprehensive, comprehensible, consistent, and credible definition of human dignity and human rights and their role in addressing ongoing ethical, legal, and theological issues.

JRAT 5 (2/2019): Religion, Community, Borders: Social Imaginaries and the Challenge of Pluralism

edited by Laurens ten Kate and Ernst van den Hemel

The 21st century so far has turned out to be a time of crossroads. On the one hand, neoliberal globalization continues to shape the way in which people, thoughts, ideas flow and interconnect. On the other hand, nationally or culturally oriented identifications are on the rise. This issue of the Journal for Religion and Transformation addresses how these junctions between the liquidity and the tenacity of borders determine the way in which the present and its “sense” is imagined, with a particular emphasis on the role of religious and secular worldviews. The issue consists of ten articles; each of them departs from the framework of social imaginaries theory, and explores how the current interdisciplinary scholarship on social imaginaries, whether theoretical or empirical, may contribute to the study of this double bind of fluid as well as solid borders that seems to be one of the hallmarks of our era. The aim of the authors is to reboot the conceptual understanding of borders and of the crises they bring about. In particular, the authors focus on the way in which borders are imagined as outlines of old and new communities, as these communities feed on religious and secular worldview traditions.

This issue was published in collaboration with the international consortium SIMAGINE (based at the University of Humanistic Studies, Utrecht; members from the Universities of Cambridge, Boulder, Bloemfontein, Amsterdam, Brussels, Vienna).

JRAT 5 (1/2019): Religious Experience, Secular Reason and Politics around 1900. Sources of the Contemporary Turn to Spirituality

edited by Hans Schelkshorn and Herman Westerink

The emergence of a scholarly and popular interest in religious experience, spirituality and mysticism around 1900 plays a crucial role in the further transformations in religion in the twentieth century and in contemporary Western and non-Western societies. This volume contains philosophical reflections on the emergence of these new constellations, discourses and practices. The ‘rediscovery’ of the various spiritual and mystical sources and traditions, and the turn towards the individual’s religious experiences, can be situated against the background of a growing critique of global scientific positivism and the rise of secular (atheistic, Marxist) philosophies. The turn to spirituality and mysticism is associated with political projects of anti-imperialist emancipation in for example, India, the Islamic countries, Russia and Latin-America. Through philosophical inquiries into key authors such as Bergson, Blondel, James, Heidegger, Bremond, Weil, Solov’ëv, Rodó, Iqbal and Vivekenanda, this volume presents a comprehensive perspective on the fundamental issues and discussions that inspired the turn to spirituality in a modern era of secular reason.

JRAT 4 (2/2018): The Crisis of Representation

edited by Kurt Appel and Carl Raschke

Der Ausdruck “Crisis of Representation”, der durch M. Foucault große Aufmerksamkeit erlangte, steht im Mittelpunkt dieser Ausgabe. Die Krise wird dabei nicht allein in politischer und ökonomischer, sondern auch in kultureller, ästhetischer und religiöser Hinsicht betrachtet. Die Untersuchung dieses komplexen und vielschichtigen Phänomens verlangt eine interdisziplinäre Form der Annäherung. Die Beiträge der Autor*innen stammen aus den Bereichen Philosophie und Theologie sowie aus den Sozial-, Religions-, und Islamwissenschaften. Sie legen in disziplinenübergreifender Weise den Fokus auf die politische, religiöse, gesellschaftliche und ökonomische Dimensionen der Krise und beziehen sich auf gegenwärtige philosophische und postkoloniale Debatten. Zum einen zielen die Beiträge des Bandes auf eine Untersuchung des Wesens der Krise der Repräsentation ab, um dieser einen theoretischen Rahmen zu geben; zum anderen verstehen sie die Krise der Repräsentation als eine Kategorie, die geeignet erscheint, um religiöse und gesellschaftliche Transformationen zu untersuchen.

JRAT 4 (1/2018): Moralities of Warfare and Religion

edited by Angela Kallhoff and Thomas Schulte-Umberg

Die Beiträge der sechsten Ausgabe des Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society (JRAT) erörtern das Thema Kriegsmoralitäten und Religion aus einem langfristigen historischen Blickwinkel. Die Ausgabe bringt Wissenschaftler*innen verschiedener Disziplinen – Geschichte, Theologie, Literaturwissenschaft, Philosophie und Soziologie – zusammen, um neueste Ergebnisse zur Kriegstheorie und zu Kriegserfahrungen insbesondere mit Blick auf Religion zu präsentieren. Durch die Fokussierung auf das Kommitment von Kombattanten und das Kommitment, den Frieden zu stärken, bietet die Ausgabe eine frische und immer noch ungewöhnliche Perspektive. Sie wird weiterführende Diskussionen zum moralischen Kommitment in der Kriegsethik, zur Rolle von Religion im Krieg und zu den Aussichten einer Friedensethik befördern. Religion spielte eine große Rolle für Kombattanten und Nicht-Kombattanten im Ersten Weltkrieg, der „Urkatastrophe“ (George Kennan) des 20. Jahrhunderts. Religion war und bleibt ein facettenreicher und beständiger Aspekt der Kriegsführung, in mancherlei Hinsicht auch eine den Frieden befördernde Art und Weise die Welt zu sehen.