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Funded by the Gingko Foundation’s Werner Mark Linz Memorial Grant, Fatima Tofighi and Ulrich Schmiedel hosted a workshop on Christian-Muslim Political Theology at the International Center for Comparative Theology and Social Issues at Bonn University in Germany from 14 to 15 October 2024. More than ten contributors from more than five countries grappled with classical texts about religion in politics, connecting Europe to the Middle East and the Middle East to Europe.

Christian theologians presented “their” political key thinkers and “their” political key texts to Muslim theologians who then responded to what they had heard. Muslim theologians presented “their” political key thinkers and “their” political key texts to Christian theologians who then responded to what they had heard. And in the conversations, the possessive pronoun “their” began to make less and less sense: Christians learning form Muslim political thought and Muslims learning from Christian political thought led to a situation in which both Christians and Muslims could think about “our” key texts and “our” key thinkers together. This is also the idea behind a two-volume Comparative Companion to Christian-Muslim Political Theology that is meant to be the outcome of a number of workshops like this one.

The conference was organised by the University of Bonn in collaboration with the Steyler Missionare (Societas Verbi Divini) in Sankt Augustin/ Bonn. The conference took place from 10 - 12 September 2024.

Can missionary collections become laboratories for intercultural and interreligious dialogue? An international, transdisciplinary conference seeks to answer this question by bringing together experts from the Study of Religions, Theology, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Global History, Art History, History of Science, Regional Studies of Africa, Oceania, South East Asia and South America as well as Critical Museum and Heritage Studies. It aims to analyze mission history and its material heritage in museums against the backdrop of a changing understanding of mission and decolonial criticism of museums. It also addresses the role of artistic creation in engaging with historical and contemporary religious contact and conflict and aims to rethink the history of collections as history of knowledge. These transdisciplinary discussions will ultimately lead to a future-oriented debate about the scientific and global-societal potential of missionary collections.

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“The Special Relationships of Judaism, Christianity and Islam as a Challenge for Comparative Theology”

This was the title of the first conference on Comparative Theology in Europe (CTE). From September 1-3 more than 30 scientists from all over the world held intensive discussions at the “Thomas Morus Akademie” in Bensberg.

In the American context, most comparative theologians developed their field of research out of the encounter of Christianity and the Eastern religions. In centers of comparative theology in Europe, for example in Edinburgh, Leuven, Paderborn and Bonn, the focus shifted to the encounters of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This led to different challenges because of the special relationships between these three religions. Judaism and Christianity seem to have developed themselves in the first centuries of the common era in a kind of twin birth which ties them much closer together than we thought in the past. Furthermore, Jesus and Paul have increasingly been understood within the Judaism of their times rather than only focusing on differences. Many Christian theologians developed Israel theologies to respond to this close relationship and to appreciate the importance of Judaism for Christianity. Some Jewish theologians responded constructively to this approach. Recent historical research on the emergence of Islam suggests that Islam started as a believers’ movement which, encountering the conflicts between Christianity and Judaism, sought to develop an inclusive vision for all three religions. This approach might provide resources for Muslims to create an Islamic theology of Judaism and Christianity which tries to articulate a similar way of appreciation like Israel theology in Christianity. Some Jews and Christians might modify their own theologies of Islam in a way that is responsive to this development. Christians continue to integrate concrete ways of learning from Rabbinic Judaism, and must reflect seriously on the limits and implications of shaping their theologies with the help of Rabbinic and Qur’anic insights. Jews might not only respond creatively to the Qur’anic challenge, but also to Christian appropriations of Rabbinic theologies. In this conference, we discussed new approaches in the theologies of the three religions that study their special relationships. Thereby, two meta questions have been addressed. First, do these approaches necessarily entail an asymmetry due to the order of appearance of the respective religions? Second, how is approaching this special relationship different from approaching other religious traditions comparatively?

Our conference in Bonn was the first step of a series of conferences held every two years in the beginning of September on Comparative Theology in Europe, 2026 in Edinburgh, 2028 in Leuven, 2030 in Paderborn and then at other European centers of Comparative Theology.

Am 19. und 20. August fand an der Universität Bonn ein Workshop zur Rechtsästhetik statt. Die Vergleichung staatlichen und religiösen Rechts diente Expert*innen aus Islamwissenschaft und Judaistik, christlicher und jüdischer Theologie und Philosophie, islamischem und Rabbinischem Recht, Literaturwissenschaften sowie Internationalem Privatrecht und Rechtsvergleichung als Basis, um in einer komparatistischen Perspektive über Form und Performativität juristischer Kommunikationen nachzudenken. Die Teilnehmer*innen erörterten, ob und inwieweit ästhetische Zugänge zum Recht taugen, um zu einem tieferen Verständnis von Recht zu gelangen und zu einer präziseren Beschreibung zu finden, was religiöses und säkulares Recht gemeinsam haben und was sie trennt. Forschungen zur Rechtsästhetik gehen zumeist von der Beobachtung aus, dass wenig über das Recht gesagt werden kann, ohne die Formen zu berücksichtigen, in denen sich das Recht verkörpert. Wenn Form und Inhalt nur gemeinsam Recht konstituieren, ermutigt dies die Entwicklung hermeneutischer Zugänge zum Recht, die Form und Inhalt in einem dialektischen Verhältnis sehen. Was aber heißt das für staatliches und religiöses Recht? Während religiöse und säkulare Rechtstraditionen sich in Bezug auf ihren Rechtsinhalt gegenwärtig zumeist stark unterscheiden, ist näherhin zu klären, ob und wie sich dies in ihren Formen spiegelt. Der Frage gingen die Teilnehmer*innen über zwei Tage in intensiven Arbeitseinheiten nach.

Beitragende waren  Nora K. Schmid (Oxford), Moshe Lavee (Haifa), Roy Lavee (Jerusalem), Idris Nassery (Paderborn), Judith Pfeiffer (Bonn), Menachem Lorberbaum (Tel Aviv), Sabine Meyer (Bonn), Bianca Scraback (Bonn). Als gemeinsames Organisationsteam wirkten Klaus von Stosch, Direktor des International Center for Comparative Theology and Social Issues, Susanne Gössl, Direktorin des Instituts für Internationales Privatrecht und Rechtsvergleichung, und Judith Hahn, Direktorin des Kirchenrechtlichen Seminars.