Gorazd Andrejc

Key Concepts in Religion. Maribor: Aristej, 2018 (in Slovenian. Orig. title: Religijski pojmovnik za mlade)

Gorazd Andrejč v svojem Pojmovniku religijo obravnava iz perspektiv različnih znanstvenih disciplin: zgodovine, sociologije, antropologije, politologije, filozofije, pa tudi teologije in religiologije, ki kombinira metode omenjenih disciplin.

»Prav zaradi tega, ker je religija polje kulturnih bojev, vkopanih mnenj, neredko močnih čustev, včasih pa celo vojn, moramo biti pri njenem preučevanju pozorni, potrpežljivi, natančni in odprtega uma. Religije se je, kot vsakega družbenega pojava, treba lotiti kritično in znanstveno. Nerazumevanje religijskih pogledov na življenje (če smo nereligiozni), in obratno, nerazumevanje ali obtoževanje ateističnega pogleda na življenje in religijo (če smo religiozni) sta navadno znak pomanjkanja posluha za druge in drugačnost. Kakršnokoli je že naše stališče do religije, duhovnosti, boga ali bogov, je družbeni dialog med neverujočimi in verujočimi neizogiben, če želimo živeti v vsaj minimalno urejeni in svobodni politični skupnosti.«

Interpreting Interreligious Relations with Wittgenstein: Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies, co-edited with Daniel Weiss; Leiden: Brill (Volume 9 in Philosophy of Religion – World Religions series); 2019.

Interpreting Interreligious Relations with Wittgenstein argues that Wittgenstein’s philosophy of religion and his thought in general continue to be highly relevant for present and future research on interreligious relations. Spanning several (sub)disciplines – from philosophy of religion, philosophy of language, comparative philosophy, comparative theology, to religious studies – the contributions engage with recent developments in interpretation of Wittgenstein and those in philosophy and theology of interreligious encounter. The book shows that there is an important and under-explored potential for constructive and fruitful engagement between these academic fields. It explores, and attempts to realize, some of this potential by involving both philosophers and theologians, and critically assesses previous applications of Wittgenstein’s work in interreligious studies.

This book critically examines three distinct interpretations of Ludwig Wittgenstein, those of George Lindbeck, David Tracy, and David Burrell, while paying special attention to the topic of interreligious disagreement. In theological and philosophical work on interreligious communication, Ludwig Wittgenstein has been interpreted in very different, sometimes contradicting ways. This is partly due to the nature of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, which is not composed of a theory but several, varying conceptions of religion. In this volume, Gorazd Andrejč illustrates how assorted uptakes of Wittgenstein’s conceptions of religion, and the differing theological perspectives of the authors who formulated them, shape interpretations of interreligious disagreement and dialogue. Inspired by selected perspectives from Tillichian philosophical theology, this book suggests a new way of engaging both descriptive and normative aspects of Wittgenstein’s conceptions of religion in the interpretation of interreligious disagreement.

http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137503077

‘Interpretations of Wittgenstein, Religion and Interreligious Relations’, in G. Andrejč and D. Weiss (eds.), Interpreting Interreligious Relations with Wittgenstein: Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies. Leiden: Brill; forthcoming Sept/Oct 2019.

In the introductive chapter to the volume, I place the studies presented in the volume within the most relevant scholarly contexts: first and foremost, the studies in Wittgenstein interpretation, especially of Wittgenstein on ‘religion’, ‘belief’, and related concepts; and second, the recent versions of Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion and Wittgensteinian theology. I do this by offering a way to read Wittgenstein on religion through tracing four conceptions or ‘pictures’ of religion in Wittgenstein’s thought, which have a particular place in Wittgenstein’s specific understanding of philosophy as grammatical investigation. I show how the studies in the current volume relate to previous applications of Wittgenstein to the study of interreligious encounter, communication, disagreement, and related topics, and suggest how they are connected to some of the recent debates in religious studies, comparative theology, and comparative philosophy of religion more broadly.
Keywords: Wittgenstein, Religious language, Interreligious relations, Comparative theology, Interreligious dialogue.

‘A Philosophical Problem with the Concept “Saint”’, in V. Harrison (ed.), Philosophy and Spirituality. London: Routledge. Forthcoming 2019.

The central idea of this essay stems from a peculiarity of the grammar of ‘being a saint’ in the Christian context, which can be described as follows: normally, the term ‘saint’ seems to be ascribable only to others but not to oneself. This is because claiming for oneself that one is a saint is normally considered morally and spiritually inappropriate, indeed self-defeating. Now, not all Christians are convinced that the problem with the self-ascriptions of sainthood is a general feature of the property ‘being a saint’. But, if we focus on a particular but influential conception of 'saint' which I here call ‘the exceptionalist sense of “saint”’, there is a solid basis for accepting a rather strong grammatical asymmetry of ‘saint’. Evidence is presented for the claim that traditional Christian understandings of humility, sainthood and human nature, respectively, support a rather stable interpretation of this grammatical asymmetry. In the light of this, I argue that the strong realist metaphysics of sainthood, which presupposes an influential variety of the exceptionalist sense of ‘saint’, should be either thoroughly re-conceived or abandoned. Instead of the strong realist metaphysics, I suggested a different, Lutheran-episodic conception of sainthood which is free of this problem.

‘Liberal Theology as a Slippery Slope: What’s in the Metaphor?’, in Jörg Lauster, Ulrich Schmiedel and Peter Schüz (eds.), Liberale Theologie heute/Liberal Theology Today. Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming 2019/20.

A metaphor, commonly used by the critics of Liberal Theology, portrays it as a slippery slope between Christianity and unbelief. Descriptively-sociologically speaking, the picture of " sliding through liberal theology towards unbelief " includes some truth. In this paper, however, I take a closer look at the philosophical and theological meaning of the slippery slope argument and offer a response to it. Firstly, I examine and critique the underlying conception(s) of religious belief in typical contemporary anti-Liberal uses of the slippery slope argument against Liberal Theology. Secondly, I argue that the Slippery Slope metaphor can and should be taken (also) as a positive interpretation of an adequate religious belief-attitude rather than (merely as) a negative criticism.

Delivered as an academic paper at the conference Liberal Theology Today, Ludwig Maximillan University, Munich, 18-21 July 2018.

This chapter offers a comparative analysis of the discourse within two Christian communities in Slovenia: the Roman Catholic Church (majority) and the Seventh-day Adventist Church (small minority). Among their responses to the 2015–2016 migrant crisis in Slovenia, we could find attitudes and arguments that were particular to the Slovenian context. Those attitudes and arguments had to do with the Slovenian socio-political imaginary and cultural memory, which includes anti-Muslim tropes, Slovenian political dynamics, and the Slovenian experience with Bosnian Muslims. A clear tension between a Christian-humanitarian attitude and an anti-Muslim identitarian Christianity brought a significant disunity into the Catholic response, while the Adventist response remained almost consistently Christian humanitarian. The main difference, however, was not along the denominational lines, but between those Christian responses that were theological and those that moved away from theology into securitarian and identitarian discourse.

Rooting itself in Catholic social teaching rather than theology of creation, this book develops a novel approach to Catholic ecological ethics. It argues that the traditional conception of the social common good should be fully broadened to encompass all creation, including abiota. Furthermore, the book suggests a comparative-theological approach to ecological ethics through careful conversations with Buddhist, Hindu, and American Lakota conceptions and practices. While its vision of the cosmic common good at times appears too inclusive and perhaps ‘too good to be true’, this book is a valuable contribution to Christian ecological ethics and includes a fresh comparative-theological take on ecological questions.

I suggest that we can recognize four major conceptions of religion in Wittgenstein’s work. I call them grammaticalist, instinctivist, existentialist, and nonsensicalist conceptions of religion. The grammaticalist conception of religion depicts central religious utterances as ‘grammatical propositions’, or grammatical ‘remarks’ (PI §251). For example, Christian doctrinal formulations, such as ‘God has sent his Son Jesus Christ for the salvation of souls’, are understood as rules of grammar for the central Christian concepts, in this case ‘God’, ‘God’s son’, ‘salvation’, and ‘soul’. Instinctivist conception refers to Wittgenstein’s emphasis that religion (of linguistic behaviour, believing, rituals, and other religious practices), however complex and intellectually sophisticated, has primarily to do with ‘primitive’ or ‘instinctive reactions’, and not (at least not primarily) with ‘cool’ intellectual procedures. By Wittgenstein’s existentialist conception of religion I mean his affirmation of the intimate connection between religious believing on one hand and decisions of living importance as well as particular kinds of felt experience on the other (e.g. wonder at the existence of the world, feeling of absolute safety, existential guilt). Lastly, nonsensicalist conception depicts religious language as ‘[running] against the boundaries of language’, as the expressions of religiously and ethically salient experience are strictly speaking ‘nonsensical’ (LE 11–12).

In this paper, I explore the possibility of reading Wittgenstein’s understanding of religious belief with Tillich’s concept of existential/religious doubt, especially as developed in his Dynamics of Faith. I will argue, first, that Wittgenstein’s understanding of religious belief as a deep certainty of a grammatical remark is not the same as his understanding of hinge-certainty of “hinge propositions”, and that the relevant difference is that Wittgenstein leaves room for the possibility of doubt in the former but not in the latter. I then argue that Tillich’s concept of dynamic faith by which Tillich explicates the role of doubt internal to religious believing can significantly enrich the Wittgensteinian conception of religious belief. Despite the notable differences between Wittgenstein’s thoughts and Tillich’s overall system of theology, Tillich’s treatment of the concept of “faith” signals a possibility of a more positive way of relating Wittgenstein’s grammatical investigation and Tillich’s mature understanding of philosophical theology. At the end of the essay, responding to D.Z. Phillips’ negative assessment of Tillich’s theology in the name of Wittgenstein, I will suggest what that more positive way of relating the two might look like.

Wittgenstein's work is especially relevant for understanding ‘hard’ kinds of dialogue: intercultural, interfaith and religious-secular dialogue, i.e. dialogues between individuals or groups with different overall perspectives on reality as a whole, and orientations in life. Wittgenstein emphasized the fact that different world-pictures – and hence, we can extrapolate, different religions and cultures – are often characterized by different depth-grammars. But he also affirmed important ‘connecting links’ between these: in his later work he repeatedly writes that a persistent grammatical investigation reveals that the roots of most language games are not in intellectual reasoning but in instinctive reactions. While these are not necessarily 'good', they comprise 'non-intellectual grounds' that enable - especially if dialogue partners persist in joint, cross-worldpicture grammatical investigation for some time - significant degree of interfaith and intercultural (literal) communication.

Religious Plurality and the Slovenian Military Chaplaincy
Gorazd Andrejč and George R. Wilkes

This study focuses on the the ways in which religious diversity features in and affects the activities, the structure and the attitudes of the military chaplaincy in the Slovenian Armed Forces (SAF). The chaplaincy's future is shaped by the fact that this is a post-Communist state with a historically Catholic majority affected by a vibrant conflict over secular-religious relationships, a conflict evoked in regular debate between the politically dominant parties of the Left and Right. This study illustrates how chaplaincy staff are affected by this polarization, and explores the extent to which their treatment of religious diversity supports their attempts to surmount the constraints placed on chaplaincy by the polarization they experience.


Brief Description of the Book:

Title: Military Chaplaincy in an Era of Religious Pluralism: Military–Religious Nexus in Asia, Europe, and USA. Oxford/New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Edited by Torkel Brekke and Vladimir Tikhonov

Part of Religion and Democracy Series

Present-day militaries are often microcosms of the societies that maintain them. Unsurprising then that the armed forces have to come to terms with the question of religion, a subject that has increasingly become of importance in modern nation states.
At the very heart of these connections between the armed forces, religion, and society is the institution of military chaplaincy. Acting as spiritual guides, military chaplains contribute to war efforts by espousing the legitimacy of state violence and preserving the mental health of soldiers. Their role in performing the last rites of the fallen is also of paramount importance Through cross-cultural analysis and taking into account the diversities of military chaplaincies, this volume examines how they mirror societal attitudes towards the armed forces and also contribute in shaping them. Comparing the varied cultural and political contexts of the USA, India, Slovenia, South Korea, Japan, and many other countries, the book takes a pioneering step towards broadening the horizons of existing scholarship in this field.

About the Editors

Torkel Brekke is Deputy Director and Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway. He is the author of several books, among them Faithonomics: Religion and the Free Market (2016) and Fundamentalism: Prophecy and Protest in an Age of Globalization (2012).
Vladimir Tikhonov is Professor at the University of Oslo. Recently, he published Modern Korea and Its Others: Perceptions of the Neighbouring Countries and Korean Modernity (2015) and co-edited (with Torkel Brekke) Buddhism and Violence: Militarism and Buddhism in Modern Asia (2012).

Table of Content:

Introduction: Military Chaplaincy in Comparative Perspective
Torkel Brekke

1. Religious Teachers in the Indian Army
Torkel Brekke
2. Religious Plurality and the Slovenian Military Chaplaincy
Gorazd Andrejč and George R. Wilkes
3. Paths Untrodden in Japanese Buddhist Chaplaincy to the Imperial Military
Micah Auerback
4. ‘Operation Dhamma’: The Sri Lankan Armed Forces as an instrument of Buddhist Nationalism
Iselin Frydenlund
5. Military Rabbis as Community Builders: The Israeli Case
Ori Goldberg
6. The Divine Is in the Details: Managing Religion in Pluralizing Militaries
Kim Philip Hansen
7. Pluralistic Permutations: The Thai Buddhist Military Chaplaincy
Michael Jerryson
8. From Confessional to Concessional: The Adaptation to Religious Pluralism by the Chaplaincy of the Norwegian Armed Forces
Bård Mæland and Nils Terje Lunde
9. Religion in the Sepoy Army of British India
Kaushik Roy
10. Twilight of the Padres: The End of British Military Chaplaincy in India
Michael Snape
11. South Korean Military Chaplaincy in the 1950–70s: Religion as Ideology?
Vladimir Tikhonov

Mystical experience can be interpreted as experience in which existential feelings have a prominent role - unintentional, all-encompassing, affective states which open (or close) the world of possibilities of being for one and enable intentionality (beliefs, emotional feelings, etc.) in the first place (Heidegger, Ratcliffe). What is the relationship between relevant existential feelings and Christian religious language? In this essay I am asking this question with the help of a phenomenological understanding of existential feelings, late-Wittgensteinian understanding of religious language, and a protestant (Schleiermacher-Tillichian) mystical theology. The result is a somewhat counter-intuitive "late-Wittgensteinian phenomenology of mystical experience", which is possible, however, because Wittgenstein's critique of (Jamesian) religious experience is not a complete rejection, i.e. anti-experientialist, but aimed at a particular model of the mind in which an 'inner person' supposedly looks at an 'internal screen of consciousness'. Once such picture of religiously significant, felt experience is abandoned, a late-Wittgensteinian phenomenology of feelings is enabled which, I argue, is a promising framework for understanding the relationship between certain kinds of existential feelings and religious language.

The article engages with two contemporary understandings of Schleiermacher’s notion of feeling which are in important aspects in conflict: a social understanding (Kevin W. Hector and Christine Helmer) and an existentialmystical understanding (Thandeka). Using the phenomenological category of ‘existential feelings’ drawn from the work of Matthew Ratcliffe, I argue that they can be brought into a coherent overall account that recognizes different aspects of feeling in Schleiermacher’s work. I also suggest that such an interpretation of Schleiermacher’s concept of religious feeling offers a different and better understanding of the role of feelings in religious experience and belief than the contemporary ‘perception-model’ of religious experience.

The present essay is a reflection on philosophical and theological foundations for, and interpretation of, a neglected intercultural dialogue between Protestant Christianity and Animism/Shamanism. David Abram in his book The Spell of the Sensous (1997) develops an ecologically-minded defense of animism on the basis of Heidegger's and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. In his ecological critique of Christianity, Abram makes a case that Christianity has robbed nature of her sacredness and spiritual relevancy, and confined spirituality within the social space of the Church and a narrowly defined orthodox doctrine. Such spirituality entails a flight from our mortal, bodily nature which is intextricable from the rest of nature, claims Abram, and argues that Western destructivity towards the environment and non-human animals is a consequence of the Christian fixation on the written word of its founding text, anthropocentric view of spirituality, and Platonist reification of ideas set in a vertical opposition to the less valued, material/sensual world. While conceding that contemporary Christianity can not but acknowledge the validity of some of the central points of this ecophenomenological critique, there are powerful resources in Christian tradition that can rise to the challenge. One such is Friedrich Schleiermacher's philosophy of 'religious feelings', which I interpret in conversation with Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger. Schleiermacher argues that the common feature of religious feelings is a fact that in them, human beings can experience a communion with the universe, or with 'all' – either through/with their social or natural environment. A healthy faith in God is related, for Schleiermacher, to such deep, phenomenologically non-intentional aspects of being-in-the-world. Despite great theological and cultural differences between Christianity and animism, a progressive-Protestant understanding of Christian spirituality shares with animism at least one important wisdom: it is ethically and religiously/spiritually significant that we humans are related to our environment on a depth-phenomenological level.

The paper examines the discussion from the late 1980ies to the present of most influential understandings of, and attitudes towards, non-Christian religions in British Protestant theology. Starting with the liberal-inclusivist and pluralist perspectives of John Macquarrie and John Hick, respectively, influential during 1970s and 1980s, I examine different theological reactions to pluralism. Special attention is given to the evangelical (represented by Leslie Nebwign and Alister McGrath), the postliberal (Rowan Williams, Nicholas Adams), and the radical orthodox (John Milbank) responses to the pluralist paradigm. All three schools of thought enjoy considerable influence in contemporary British theology. Furthermore, among recently developed positions that attempt to move the debate forward and overcome the universalist-particularist dichotomy in Christian theology of religions are the so-called 'postliberal-evangelical-universalist' approach by Tom Greggs, and the (very different) pluralist-syncretist approach of Perry Schmidt-Leukel. In the concluding discussion, I argue that the (over-)emphasis on particularism, characteristic for the evangelical, postliberal and radical orthodox positions, has impoverished Christian theological approaches to non-Christian religions and need to be thoroughly rethought.

In the past ages, the conversion of the Jews was, at least in principle, always welcomed by the Christian side. Yet, ethical awakening after the Holocaust, the new self-critical attitude toward anti-Judaism in Christian theology, and the new perspectives in biblical studies which show that earliest Christianity was an integral part of the first-Century Judaism – all these factors influenced the position of numerous Protestant Churches and the Roman Catholic Church regarding their mission among the Jews. As a result, some Churches (or groups in the Churches) have given up any organized mission to the Jews (for ex. Roman Catholic Church); others defend the priority of dialogue over mission which has to be based on mutual witness to ones own faith; but there are also those who try to convert the Jews with specially designed methods. Although there is some significant agreement regarding the Christian attitude towards the Jews and Judaism in contemporary Western Christianity, the question of mission (and conversion) is one of the most difficult issues in Jewish-Christian relations today. It remains, in important sense, an open question.

The strong ‘religious vote’ for Trump raises – or rather, revives – poignant questions about the relationship between faith, reason and politics. Is there something about religious ways of reasoning and speaking more generally, perhaps, that goes against the virtue of truthfulness?

This article presents some of the challenges that face the young people and interfaith activists in Bosnia-Herzegovina today. Significant degree of ethno-religious segregation, poorly functioning state institutions, and ongoing economic hardships for many, offer little encouragement and many obstacles to effective youth interfaith dialogue in the country. Activists testify that the knowledge of the religious ‘other’ among young people in Bosnia-Herzegovina today is notably low. On a more positive note, a level of awareness in society over the importance of younger generations' involvement in reconciliation is high and, despite the aforementioned obstacles, several exemplary projects are going on and bearing fruit among increasing circles of the youth of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Was this most horrible European conflict after WW II a religious war? Views over this question differ widely, even among experts, both foreign and local, let alone journalists and lay people. On the two opposite ends of the spectrum of views we find what we may call the ‘religious war’ view and ‘religion abused’ view. But both of these views are oversimplified and ultimately obscuring. Looking beyond these, we can identify some ways in which religious phenomena were intertwined with the conflict. But a careful study of this topic reveals that there is no simple answer to the initial question whether the Bosnian conflict 'was religious or not'. Such examination of the details ultimately lead us to correct or refine the question. http://www.thewitnessonline.co.uk/?p=699

This opinion piece in the leading Slovenian daily DELO directs attention to versions of Protestantism which are underrepresented in Slovenian religious landscape, although they are historically-culturally closer to the Slovenian society than the voices which often appear most vocal in Slovenian Protestantism (mostly inspired by American Evangelicalism). It is argued that  the liberal Protestant tradition in particular (at times - but too seldom - voiced by the traditional Evangelical Lutherans of Slovenia) offers ideic resources with an important potential to mediate between secularist-atheist and traditionalist-Catholic camps, in relation to hot political and social issues which tend to polarize Slovenian public.

This short article offers a reflection on the challenge which the very existence of Messianic Jewish groups poses to the mainstream Jewish-Christian dialogue. It concludes that this challenge can be seen as constructive and thought-provoking from a dialogical perspective, despite notable ethical (and, for many, also theological) problems with some Messianic-Jewish modes of communication with other Jewish communities.

Today, few would disagree that interreligious dialogue is an indispensable tool (or medium) for mutual coexistence, acceptance and peace. In recent times, the importance of such dialogue has been highlighted by the revival and the resurgence of religion (de- secularisaton), relevant in variety of contexts – e.g. in the context of democratic politics, the context of political extremism and terrorism, or that of integration or non-integration of immigrants who are often of different faith and/or culture than that of the host communities.

At the same time, we should also ask critically whether interreligious dialogue has indeed been as beneficial and useful as the dialogue activists claim it has and as they want it to be. While dialogue between the religions can be understood as a pressing step in the modern development of intercultural relations, it can only work when it is founded on careful investigation of their foundations.

At this conference, we want to reconceptualize the question of the importance of an active and well informed interreligious dialogue. The focus will be on in-depth, philosophical-theological conversation between Christians and Muslims. We will explore new ways in which philosophical theories can foster Christian-Muslim understanding. Examples of the questions to be addressed are:
• Can Christian and Muslim theologies as equal partners in conversaton, and as comparative theologies, help us foster better intercultural understanding?
• What are best philosophical models and theories of dialogue for framing the theological conversation between European Christians on one hand and Iranian and other Middle Eastern Muslims on the other?
• Is it the Aristotelian, Platonist, one of the modern philosophical foundations (Continental, Analytical, Witgensteinian, Phenomenological, Deconstructivist, Pragmatist, or other), or a combination of these?
• How can the experiences and perspectives of the relevant “in-house” minorities (Muslim minorities in Europe, Christian minorities in the Middle East), as well as those of Christians and Muslims in special social and political circumstances (refugees, migrants, displaced persons), inform contemporary philosophicaltheological dialogue between Christianity and Islam?
• And, how should philosophical and comparative theologies address the contemporary criticisms of interreligious dialogue, which brand it as a failed tool for better understanding between cultures, or as a Western invention and tool for cultural domination, or as a cover-up for power-relations between groups in power, as opposed to empowering those who are often voiceless and excluded from interreligious dialogue (“heretical” sects, secularists, women, sexual and other minorities, migrants)?

At the conference, we will address these and related questions in carefully prepared lectures, delivered in pairs during thematically ordered 1,5 hour sessions of two speakers, with ample time for responses and discussions.

Conference co -organized by:
Science and Research Centre Koper (Slovenia)
Iranian Association for Philosophy of Religion (Iran)
Centre for Comparative Theology and Cultural Studies, University of Paderborn (Germany)
European Academy of Sciences and Arts (EASA) – World Religions Class (Austria)

Applications are now being accepted for the Woolf Institute online course, Interreligious Understanding Today.

As we live in an age of increasing plurality but also instability, the need for interreligious understanding, grounded on solid academic research and in touch with the realities of interreligious encounter, is greater than ever. The course has been designed to meet this need. It consists of two modules (part-time and flexible) – 'Exploring the Principles' and 'Addressing the Issues' – which together with Induction and Conclusion weeks lasts for 10 weeks in total.

The course combines history, philosophy, sociology, ethics, politics, and theology. It will provide a forum in which participants will, for example, explore different kinds of interreligious understanding (Intellectual, Empathic, Civil, Spiritual) between religions and compare the ways in which such understanding can be achieved in different cultural and political contexts in the world (US, Asia, Europe).

Applications are now being accepted for the course commencing on Monday 1 April 2019. The deadline for applications is Sunday 10 March 2019.

The course fee is £325. Bursaries are available.

For further details, visit the course webpage: https://www.woolf.cam.ac.uk/study/online-courses/interreligious-understanding-today

Deparment of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor

Conference: New Perspectives In European Philosophy of Religion 

Maribor, 28-29 November 2018
Venue: Faculty of Arts, Koroška cesta 160, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia

Main Speakers:
Yujin Nagasawa
Hanne Appelqvist
Robin LePoidevin
Nuno Venturinha
Aku Visala
Marko Uršič

Call for Papers

Conference: New Perspectives in European Philosophy of Religion

28-29 November 2018, University of Maribor, Slovenia

Confirmed speakers:
Robin Le Poidevin (University of Leeds)
Hanne Appelqvist (University of Turku)
Yujin Nagasawa (University of Birmingham)
Aku Visala (University of Helsinki)
Sebastjan Vörös (University of Ljubljana)
Gorazd Andrejč (University of Maribor)

Contemporary analytic philosophy of religion is developing fast and in different directions. We find critical engagements with cognitive science and its implications for philosophy of religion; non-classical forms of theism and deism are being developed with fresh expressions and arguments; the links between aesthetics and analytic philosophy of religion have opened up new field of research; the theoretical possibilities of non-Western religious-philosophical thought have become more appreciated in Western philosophy of religion; at the same time, new lines of debate have emerged on some of the traditional topics, such as the Ontological Argument and the the Fine-Tuning variant of the Teleological Argument.

At this conference organized by the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor (Slovenia), recent research on some of these topics will be presented and discussed. The speakers are coming from different European universities. The two-day conference in Maribor is meant especially for early career scholars and PhD students interested in recent analytic philosophy of religion. But more senior scholars and those whose work combines different philosophical methodologies and philosophy with other disciplines are also welcome.

Applications are being accepted for short papers (20 min + 10 min discussion). You can apply by sending an abstract of 300 words to the conference organizer Dr G. Andrejč (ga344[at]cam.ac.uk). The deadline for applications is 10 September 2018. The conference fee is 20 EUR for students and early career scholars (up to 5 years after the completion of the PhD), and 30 EUR for others. The conference will take place at the Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor. We will provide recommendations for accommodation nearby (affordable but good standard) and travel advice to Maribor for international participants.

More information will become available in due course on the website:

https://tinyurl.com/mariborconference

Call for Chapters: Lived Religion and Participatory Democracy: Beyond Identity Politics

Palgrave Studies in Lived Religion and Societal Challenges (Palgrave Macmillan)

Editorial Team:
    • Gorazd Andrejč (Woolf Institute, Cambridge, United Kingdom; University of Maribor, Slovenia)
    • Srdjan Sremac (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

The Amsterdam Centre for the Study of Lived Religion invites chapter-essay proposals for an edited volume Lived Religion and Participatory Democracy: Beyond Identity Politics. In the past decade or so, an observation that ‘religion has returned into politics’ has become commonplace. The emphasis has normally been on the influence of religiously informed moralities, political ideas and parties, as well as religious identity politics, on contemporary politics around the world.

There are, however, other angles from which the relation of religion and politics can be studied, and some of those angles have been underexplored. For example, very few careful studies have been done of either actual or potential ways in which lived religion contributes to, mixes with, or obstructs participatory democracy.
This volume will bring together original essays which will explore – either theoretical or empirical or both – exactly this: the intersection between the above mentioned research themes, the lived religion and participatory democracy. The focus on ’lived religion’ means an ethnographic and hermeneutical framework for understanding the performative dimensions of religion as it functions in people’s ordinary lives. The theme of participatory democracy, on the other hand, stands for political theories and arrangements which make a broad inclusion into the democratic process a top priority and include the commitment and/or policies that enable or even ensure broad participation, often not only in the political but also economic and social-communal decision-making.

Areas of interest include, but are not strictly limited to, the following topics:
    • Different aspects of participatory democracy and the ways they intersect with the study of lived religion, that is:
        ◦ Lived religion and direct democracy
        ◦ Lived religion and economic democracy
        ◦ Lived religion and environmental democracy
        ◦ Lived religion and political activism
    • Lived religion form the perspectives of epistemology of democracy (e.g. Dewey, Foucault, Medina) and various political theories of participatory democracy (B. Kaufmann, T. Schiller, J. Fishkin)
    • Religious practices and conceptualizations of inclusion and participation within chosen religious communities and their potential for participatory-democratic politics  (case studies, e.g.  the shared-economy models of religious groups such as Amish and Hutterites colonies, and comparable movements in other religions)
    • The role of religion in the recent participatory-democratic experiments, such as the Occupy movement; the new democratic socialist movements in Europe and elsewhere; Transitional Town movements (UK); The Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (Rojava), and similar
    • Interreligious relations (from a ‘lived religion’ perspective) and participatory democracy
    • Analysis of key factors involved in the intersection of lived religion and participatory democracy: culture, politics, media, gender, religious tradition, sexuality.
    • Theological reflections ‘from below’ (focus on the ‘everyday’ forms of religiosity)  in relation to participatory democracy
    • Forms of lived religion as obstacles to participatory democracy

Aim: The aim of the volume is to bring together people from different areas, disciplines, and interests to share ideas and explore the links between lived religion and participatory democracy.

Format: Single or co-authored essays between 8000 and 10.000 words (inclusive of footnotes and bibliography) 

Expressing interest: Please send a 500 word abstract to Gorazdeo@gmail.com and s.sremac@vu.nl

Abstracts should be in Word format with the following information and in this order:
    • author(s)
    • affiliation and short bio (up to 150 words)
    • email address
    • title of proposal
    • body of proposal (200-300 words)
    • up to 10 keywords.

All chapters will be double blind peer reviewed. Please use plain text and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all proposals submitted.

Deadline for abstracts/expressions of interest: Please send in your abstracts/expressions of interest by April 30, 2018.

Deadline for chapters: Please submit your draft essays by September 20, 2018.

The Woolf Institute (Cambridge) is delighted to announce that applications are now being accepted for the online course, Jews, Christians and Muslims in Europe: Modern Challenges.

Running for the 8th year, the course will be led by Dr Gorazd Andrejč with contributions from Dr Esther-Miriam Wagner and Dr Julian Hargreaves.

This timely online course focuses on the relationships between Jews, Christians and Muslims in modern Europe. The course is multidisciplinary and examines historical trends, religious and cultural interaction, and issues of contemporary citizenship.

For more information on the topics covered, the structure of the course, and the application details, visit the webpage here.

The online learning approach allows participants to study wherever and whenever they choose via the internet. You can engage with fellow participants from all over the world. Many participants from across Europe and around the world - Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, as well as Australia, China, Kenya, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States - have already taken this course.

The closing date for applications is 2 August 2018. The course commences, with Induction Week, on Monday 3 September 2018. For further information, including how to apply, visit the webpage here.

If you have any queries about the course, contact Dr Emma Harris, Director of Studies, at eth22@cam.ac.uk.

http://www.woolf.cam.ac.uk/study/online-courses/jews-christians-and-muslims-in-europe-modern-challenges

In this paper I examine how four different Christian theologians have engaged with Wittgenstein in their approach to interreligious relations: George Lindbeck, David Tracy, David Burrell, and Klaus von Stosch. Drawing on recent research in Wittgenstein studies (David Stern, Oskari Kuusela, Brian Clack, Gabriel Citron), we can now see more clearly than before how different strands of Wittgenstein’s philosophy have informed different comparative theologians. I will explain how the highly particular nature of ‘Wittgensteinian conceptions’ or pictures (Kuusela) helps us understand the purpose of the four conceptions of religion in Wittgenstein’s work (nonsensicalist, grammaticalist, existentialist, and instictivist) and why these can’t be taken as ‘theories of religion’. When the interpretations and uses of Wittgenstein in comparative theology are examined in the light of Wittgenstein’s four conceptions, it becomes clear that the differences between them reflect the fact that each of them has (typically) taken up one, or two, but ignored or downplayed the other Wittgensteinian conceptions of religion (with a possible exception of Klaus von Stosch’s interpretation). I will suggest that taking into consideration all four conceptions of religion in Wittgenstein suggests valuable conceptual material for a more holistic and multi-aspectual Wittgensteinian approach in comparative, but also interreligious theology (Leirvik).

Since the 1980s, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s thought has been engaged with in various ways in order to elucidate (the possibilities of) interreligious communication. In Christian theology, particularly influential approaches that have claimed Wittgenstein as inspiration have been Post-Liberal (George Lindbeck), Grammatical Thomist (David Burrell), and Liberal Comparative (Keith Ward, Klaus von Stosch). Several Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu thinkers have engaged with Wittgenstein while working on various kinds of discursive encounters between members of different religions. In philosophy, some scholars have, for example, taken the concept religion as a ‘family-resemblance concept’ (Philosophical Investigations, §§ 66-67) in working out the relationships between conceptual and belief-systems of different religions (John Hick, Victoria Harrison).

The conference Wittgenstein and Interreligious Communication, organized by The Woolf Institute, will provide a platform for conversation on recent and current approaches from these and other theological and philosophical perspectives towards interreligious communication that engage with Wittgenstein’s thought.

Please see pp. 2-4 of this document to see the conference programme, or visit https://wittcomm.wordpress.com/ .

In this paper I examine possibilities and limitations of interpreting Wittgenstein’s understanding of religious belief with the help of Paul Tillich’s notion of dynamic faith. It has been claimed that Tillich’s method in theology is incompatible with Wittgenstein’s anti-metaphysical stance toward religion in general (D.Z. Phillips). While this may be the case in relation to some aspects of Wittgenstein’s approach and Tillich’s approach respectively, I will argue that, on the question of the nature of religious belief, Tillich’s notion of existential doubt as a positive and constantly present (if not always actualized) aspect of faith can provide a theoretically fruitful counterbalance to Wittgenstein’s strong emphasis of religious faith as unquestioning certainty. The “collaboration” is possible because the later Wittgenstein, contrary to an influential interpretation (recently, G. Shoenbaumsfeld, M. Kober), does in fact leave room for doubt as a live possibility in genuine religious believing, and (contra Lindbeck) doesn’t deny certain kinds of felt experiencing an important role in religious language- and belief-formation. However, this collaboration between a Wittgensteinian and a Tillichian understanding of religious belief-cum-doubt cannot be stretched too far. The reason is the following: Tillich’s understanding (in Systematic Theology I) of the way in which religious/existential beliefs can be “tested” – i.e. the way he frames the possibility of “experiential verification” of belief in God – remains irreconcilably at odds with Wittgenstein’s rejection of any genuine verification of religious beliefs. For, despite some openness to the role of doubt in religious believing, any kind of verification can only be inextricably tied together with the “evidence-giving game” for Wittgenstein, where evidence-giving makes sense only for “ordinary” and not for “extraordinary” (religious) beliefs. Finally, I will compare my reading of Wittgenstein through Tillich with a similar, liberal-theological interpretation of Wittgenstein advocated recently by Klaus von Stosch, presenting both parallels and some differences between his interpretation and mine.

Upcoming lecture at the conference Christian Faith, Identity and Otherness: possibilities and limitations of dialogue in ecumenical and interfaith discourse; organised by The Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge; 31st August - 2nd September 2015 in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.

Martin Kusch builds his communitarian epistemology on critical engagement with four major programmes in philosophy and sociology: the later Wittgenstein (especially Philosophical Investigation and On Certainty), the genealogy of knowledge (Edward Craig), the “strong programme” in sociology of knowledge (Barry Barnes, David Bloor), and the “historical epistemology” (e.g. Steven Shapin). In the first part of this paper, I will sum up three aspects of Kusch’s epistemology – (1) his use of Craig’s genealogy, (2) the Wittgensteinian idea of “knowledge” as a family-resemblance concept, and (3) the role of testimony in knowledge. In the second part, I will combine these aspects of communitarian epistemology with Janet Soskice’s view of religious language and a broadly Schleiermacherian theology of feeling, and then suggest an account of Christian knowledge of God which combines these three strands of thought.

The question of the relation between religious experience and Christian belief in God is addressed in radically different ways within contemporary theology and philosophy of religion. In order to develop an answer which avoids the pitfalls of the ‘analytic perception model’ (Alston, Yandell, Swinburne) and the ‘overlinguistic’ model for interpreting Christian religious experience (Lindbeck), this thesis offers an approach which combines a phenomenological study of feelings, conceptual investigation of Christian God-talk and ‘belief’-talk, as well as theological, sociological and anthropological perspectives. At the centre of the interpretation developed here is the phenomenological category ‘existential feelings’ which should be seen, it is suggested, as a theologically and philosophically central aspect of Christian religious experiencing. Using this contemporary concept, a novel reading of F. Schleiermacher’s concept of ‘feeling’ is proposed and several kinds of Christian experiencing interpreted (like the experiences of ‘awe’, ‘miracle of existence’, ‘wretchedness’, and ‘redeemed community’). By way of a philosophical understanding of Christian believing in God, this study offers a critical interpretation of the later Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘religious belief’, combining Wittgensteinian insights with Paul Tillich’s notion of ‘dynamic faith’ and arguing against Wittgensteinian ‘grammaticalist’ and ‘expressivist’ accounts. Christian beliefs about God are normally life-guiding but nevertheless dubitable. The nature of Christian God-talk is interpreted, again, by combining the later Wittgenstein’s insights into the grammatical and expressive roles of God-talk with Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on linguistic innovation and Roman Jakobson’s perspective on the functions of language. Finally, the claim which connects phenomenological, conceptual and theological strands of this study is a recognition of a ‘religious belief-inviting pull’ of the relevant experience. Christian religious belief-formation and concept-formation can be seen as stemming from ‘extraordinary’ existential feelings, where the resulting beliefs about God are largely but not completely bound by traditional meanings.

Introduction
1. Phenomenology of Existential Feelings Within a
Broader Philosophical Context
2. Schleiermacher’s ‘Gefühl’ as Existential Feeling
3. Wittgenstein, Belief-Attitudes, and ‘Hinge-
Certainty’
4. Beyond the Wittgensteinian Grammaticalist View
of Religious Belief
5. The Expressive Among the Functions of Language
6. God-talk, Feelings and Beliefs
Conclusion

Online: https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/10262