GRK 1662:  Religious Knowledge in Pre-Modern Europe (800-1800). Transfers and Transformations - Ways to Modern Knowledge Society

• Subject Area: Theology ; History
• Term: from 2011 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 162347376

The research training group "Religious Knowledge in pre-modern Europe (800-1800)" pursues two aims: Establishing the term religious knowledge as an interdisciplinary research concept and thus describing in a new way how Western knowledge-based society could develop its self-proclaimed tolerance, secularism, and rationalism, as well as its differentiation of fields of education, including science and education, legislation and politics, religion, art and literature.The term religious knowledge refers to a complex socio-historical and historico-cultural phenomenon that since the Middle Ages greatly influenced the history of Europe, primarily of Christianity, but also in both other monotheistic religions. Christendom understands itself - like Juda-ism and Islam - as based in divine revelation. Knowledge gained through revelation was considered as its intangible basis. But this revelation knowledge only became relevant to action by special kinds of transfer and transformation. Religious knowledge as defined by the programme refers to these time- and culture-dependent adaptations. Dynamic processes and controversial areas in the formation of religious knowledge, interdependent with the revelation knowledge, are the focus of research interest.Thus, the programme analyses synchronic and diachronic transfers and transformation processes of religious knowledge that consistently produced new religious knowledge of all iterations in the course of historic processes of change. For this purpose, the programme focuses on how revelation knowledge functioned in actual life experience, and on how the religious inventory of knowledge transferred into different modes of transfers and passed on over temporal, spatial, and social boundaries.The programme approaches research on the following assumption: In specific instances religious knowledge was transferred and transformed, particularly in ritual, explanatory, aesthetic or empirical processes. Such patterns of thinking, reasoning structures, and differentiations were practiced by means of complex negotiation, as would categorically pave the way for the modern knowledge-based society. Correlations and shifts in the differentiation of religious versus other kinds of knowledge, which were brought about by processes of adaptation, also changed the understanding of revelation knowledge.

• DFG Programme: Research Training Groups
• Applicant Institution: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
• Participating Researchers: Dr. Christiane Ackermann; Professorin Dr. Renate Dürr; Professorin Dr. Annette Gerok-Reiter; Professor Dr. Andreas Holzem; Professor Dr. Andreas Odenthal; Professor Dr. Steffen Patzold; Professor Dr. Klaus Ridder; Professor Dr. Jörg Robert; Professor Dr. Jörn Staecker (†); Dr. Markus Thomé
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Volker Leppin