Research in Contemporary Religion (RCR) – serie

Die Studie zielt auf ein besseres Verständnis von Wandlungen und Grenzen religiöser Identitätskonstruktionen in interkulturellen Austauschprozessen. Dafür wird in drei evangelischen, indonesischen Kirchen je ein Themenfeld für Kontextualisierungsbemühungen untersucht: Frauenordination, christliche Kunst und Architektur, sowie traditionelle Trauer- und Begräbnisriten. Die dabei sichtbar werdenden interkulturellen, theologischen Aushandlungsprozesse werden daraufhin geprüft, welche Kriterien in den jeweiligen Argumentationszusammenhängen Anwendung fanden, um christliche Identität zu bestimmen und einzugrenzen. Als Beitrag zur Theoriebildung interkultureller Theologie wird anhand der gewonnenen Ergebnisse unter Rückgriff auf kulturwissenschaftliche, philosophische und religionsphilosophische Konzepte nach Zuordnung von kontextuellen und universellen Wahrheitsansprüchen im theologischen Fachgespräch gefragt. Dabei wird der Begriff „Verifiation“ als Ergänzung zu „Verifikation“ in den Wahrheitsdiskurs eingeführt.

Meshack Edward Njinga explores the kinds of Bible study reading of the economically underprivileged Christians of southwest of Tanzania. He researched how economically underprivileged Christians read and interpret the text about poverty, themselves being poor people. Moreover, the study looked on how Christians move from the text to their context. As a result of research, the study has found that the economically underprivileged Christians use their context to inform the text rather than moving from text to the context.In the CBS, the economically underprivileged Christians do theology. The kind of theology they are doing is a theology from below, the theology of the economically underprivileged. This is a practical theology which includes all people regardless of their academic background within African, specifically, Tanzanian Christianity. It involves all kinds of people regarding how they understand, communicate and live their Christian faith under perilous circumstances under which they are living in the community.

Kaia Rønsdal combines the perspective of production of space, ethical theory and fieldwork, focusing on the contradictions in lived space, by observing encounters and interactions between different groups of people in everyday public space.It is an interdisciplinary contribution to the science of diaconia. The interest lies with the lives that diaconia traditionally have been concerned with and the spaces where these lives are lived, exploring the concept of calling through narratives of these lives and spaces. The book challenges and contributes to traditional and contemporary notions of calling as it is understood in the Scandinavian tradition. These notions, stemming from interpretations of Luther, place the calling among humans, as opposed to it being something exclusively divine and ecclesiastical. The discussion on the calling is enriched with concepts stemming from French sociology and human geography, primarily from H. Lefebvre and M. Foucault, as well as phenomenological contributions. These are concerned with the significance of body, space, urbanity, and spatial interpretation as space is a relational, formative phenomenon constituted in practice and interaction. Through methodologies developed from phenomenology and spatial theory, where the researcher subject is an evident embodied participant, detailed accounts from the field form the material, describing everyday life in an Oslo cityscape. From this material, the concept of calling is explored, developing the discussion from the perspective of the spaces of others. The assumption being that it is in the spaces where people meet and bodies respond to other bodies, whether marginalised or not, that calling may manifest itself. Through spatial analysis of the minute details of bodies and socialities in everyday life, new material for ethical considerations is explored. The analysis and discussion may enrich and further deepen the understanding of what takes place in public spaces, recognising them as a source of knowledge in a range of disciplines. These everyday encounters may also be described and analysed as contributions to the development of theory and praxis of diaconia.