European Academy of Religion (EuARe) Lectures
The European Academy of Religion (EuARe) is an independent association supporting the study, research, and collaboration of religious topics across disciplines at the intersection of religion and social, cultural, and political issues. Its annual conference is a meeting place where researchers on religion of all academic disciplines are invited to share their research and contribute to the intellectual discourse. The variety of disciplines, methodologies and geographical approaches contributing to the life of EuARe is reflected in the lectures hosted. The EuARe Lectures series makes the papers available in digital – open access – format, as well as in print, aiming to disseminate current scholarship as widely as possible and weaving the fil rouge of the community’s debated topics.
This 7th volume in the series EUARE LECTURES contains the four keynote lectures presented at the European Academy of Religion’s Seventh Annual Conference held in Palermo, Italy, May 20-23, 2024 as it was organized by FSCIRE. The overarching theme of the conference was “Paradigm Shifts”, and four keynote lectures were invited to speak about the topic from their original point of view: Prof. Alberto Melloni (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia), Prof. Alexander Kulik (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Prof. Elisabeth Gräb-Schmidt (Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen), and Prof. Vincent Goossaert (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes).
The expression “paradigm shift can be fruitfully applied to scholarship regarding religion to flesh out and highlight when and how the multiple disciplines of the broader field of religious studies found ways to change their own perspectives and the manner of defining, reading and analyzing the objects of their analyses. The lectures deal with paradigm shifts that result from the positive or conflictual engagement with major historical events, the use of innovative theoretical lenses, the adoption of brand new or established technologies or simply from renewed reading of religious sources often inspired by the results of academic research.
Diversity characterises internal dynamics and external relations of all religious groups in their different dimensions: texts – in their origins, exegesis, hermeneutics, critical editions; cults – in their anthropology, aesthetics, adaptations; norms – in their sources, implementation, collection; doctrines – with their languages, narratives, transmissions; practices – in their motivation, evolution, connection or antagonism with other societal actors. A complex system with multiple variants which finds its most visible reasons and outcomes in the way societies transform and represent it into their political, juridical, social systems, but also in the ways that the faith communities generate dialogue or conflict within themselves and towards other communities (religious and non-religious).
The four lectures here presented offer insights on some of these outcomes: the power balances between majoritarian, privileged communities and minoritarian, discriminated ones; the role of religious education for today’s European society; the challenges faced by academia in understanding change in religion and theology; the chances that religions may offer in supporting agency and resilience for refugees.
Are religions like everything else in the world subject of permanent change – in their practices and their doctrines – or are they the perhaps only stable element for people in a world of permanent change? Within the wide field of this discourse alternative, the five authors – Rowan Williams, Judith Wolfe, Guy G. Stroumsa, Vassilis Saroglou and Azza Karam – of the book are discussing various constellations, in which the relation of religion and change with its diverse aspects is illuminated.
“Empowering the Individual, Nurturing the Community” is the topic that authors discussed in their lectures delivered at the Second Annual Conference of the European Academy of Religion (2019), the texts of which are collected in this volume. Tackling the theme from the different perspectives of their fields of study, Craig Calhoun (Arizona State University) explores the meaning of secularisation for the individual and the community, and the challenges resulting from the reorganisation of human existence on a global scale and from new technologies; Maureen Junker-Kenny (Trinity College Dublin) analyses different approaches to the relationship between individuality and sociality, and the consequences of this for people’s views of religion; Sophie Nordmann (École Pratique des Hautes Études) discusses the contribution of Jewish philosophers to political theory in the twentieth century, and how they developed their conceptions of the way in which individuals belong to social, political, and cultural communities; finally, Tim Winter (University of Cambridge) surveys foundational Islamic assumptions about human diversity and measures their intelligibility to modern positivism.
This volume is the first in a series whose aim is to keep track of the topics and changes which guide research, understanding and dissemination within the many disciplines involved in the study of religion in Europe. The volume collects some of the lectures delivered at the Ex Nihilo Zero Conference (2017) and the First Annual Conference (2018), while the following issues will be dedicated to one annual conference each. Authors are leading European scholars within their own field of expertise and will guide the reader through the themes which set the pace of recent scholarly debates. The heterogeneity of the topics is precisely the distinctive mark of EuARe, which supports the disciplinary and interdisciplinary creation and dissemination of knowledge in order to contribute to the construction of society and the formation of culture.
