The internationally renowned sociologist of religion Prof. Dr. Linda Woodhead from Lancaster University will assume the “Hans Blumenberg Visiting Professorship” at the University of Münster’s Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” in the summer semester 2017. During her stay, the British academic will focus on the worldwide growing number of so-called “nones”, people who are unaffiliated with any religion. In a public lecture on 8 May she will discuss the question “Is ‘No Religion’ the New Religion?”.
On the occasion of the 300th birthday of Empress Maria Theresa (1717-1780), many clichés about one of the most powerful women in history need to be abandoned according to the latest research. “Maria Theresa embodies a myth that was to remind Austria of lost greatness for a long time, but this spell must be broken today”, says historian Prof. Dr. Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” of Münster University. The book is nominated for the “Non-Fiction” Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair.
The Gifford Lectures of Prof. Dr. Perry Schmidt-Leukel have now been published in an extended edition by Orbis Books, Mariknoll, New York as “Religious Pluralism and Interreligious Theology.” Schmidt-Leukel, an Anglican theologian, is Professor of Religious Studies and Intercultural Theology and a member of the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” at the University of Muenster.
Fasting in Christianity and Judaism was the focus of the international workshop “Fasting and Identity in Jewish and Christian Liturgy” in Jerusalem which was organised by liturgist Prof. Dr. Clemens Leonhard from the Cluster of Excellence and Prof. Dr. Dalia Marx from the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in Jerusalem.
The attitudes of Christians and Theravāda Buddhists toward religious diversity are at the center of a new publication jointly edited by Prof. Dr. Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Professor of Religious Studies and Intercultural Theology, and Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Großhans, Professor of Systematic Theology, from the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics”, together with Dr. Samuel Ngun Ling, Principal of the “Myanmar Institute of Theology” in Yangon, Myanmar.
