Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Chair: Religious Studies and Missionary Science

The task of Studies in Religion is seen as the challenges to describe what is meant by "religion" with all the problems of this term, to describe where there are similarities among the various religions and where there are differences. This has to be explained both academic in a comprehensible way with arguments and intelligible to non-religious persons as such as to members of different religions. Therefore religions can be understood as ways of interpreting and shaping reality, which are observable in human behaviour and in interpersonal communication. These ways of interpreting and shaping reality exist next to other possible ways of understanding reality by human beings.

In the context of being part of the faculty of theology there is the chance for studies in religion to put an emphasis on analysing encounters between religions and the mutual perceptions within these meetings. This includes also the observation of co-operations and also the observation of conflicts among the religions. The current holder of chair is especially interested in focussing on the Muslim-Christian relations.

In the courses the students are given the opportunity to visit mosques, Hindu or Buddhist temples to experience these places and to approximate to the particular self-concept of a religion. In doing so it should be examined what makes it successful to understand others without projecting own images and terms to the foreign ambience. Another focus lies on comparing religions under historical, current, ethical and anthropological aspects.