Attitudes towards the Bible and Use of the Bible and its different media and cultural forms in Germany

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Alexander Deeg; Professor Dr. Gert Pickel
• Subject Area: Protestant Theology
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 439630984

The present continuation application is based on the main project “Multiple Bible use in late modern society” and extends the discussion there on the basis of the results obtained by the question: To what extent do members of free churches differ in their Bible reading behavior from members of other Christian denominations - and what does this mean for their socio-political positions? The representative survey carried out in the main project shows a proportion of regular Bible readers of 4.8%. The proportion is particularly high among free-church respondents, who in turn only make up 1.1% of respondents. The analysis of the connection between free-church denominations and their understanding of the Bible is of theological and religious sociological interest, as the Bible and its interpretation have always been an important factor for differences in Christian religious communities. Moreover, there are only a few studies in the research landscape with a sufficient number of respondents from the free churches, but they hardly or not at all address the use, understanding and meaning of the Bible. Due to a change in the project organization, a special sample of N=3893 Bible readers could be surveyed during the main project, including a proportion of n=1537 people who belong to the free church landscape. There are also plans to conduct 8 additional guided interviews with members of the free church. The continuation project thus pursues a total of 5 specific research questions: (1) What differences exist in the use of the Bible between the various free-church congregations? (2) How do free-church biblical-hermeneutical constructions of meaning differ from those of the Protestant state churches? (3) Can characteristics of biblical fundamentalism be discovered and how are these distributed along the denominations?, (4) To what extent are different biblical hermeneutics related to socio-political attitudes?, (5) What are the reasons and causes for a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible? As a result, empirically reliable statements about the understanding of the Bible and the associated socio-political attitudes are expected. Based on quantitative and qualitative data material, it is possible to further reflect on the above-mentioned sociological and (practical) theological/hermeneutical questions. Added value for the biblical hermeneutical debate as well as for the religious sociological discourse on fundamentalism arises in the continuation project above all through the inclusion of a high proportion of members of the Free Church.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants