ProgramKeynote Lecture Presenters
Presentations that will be given in German are presented with English titles followed by the German titles in brackets.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh
The Earth-System as a Matter of Spiritual Concern
The "earth-system" is explained by geologists as the life-support system of our planet and refers to the multifarious ways in which geological and biological processes on earth work together to create a system-like entity that supports complex forms of life and has done for hundreds of millions of years despite the planet having seen five "great extinctions." This earth-system, they now say, is broken, thanks to the destructive human impact on the planetary environment in the period (c.1950-present) of "the great acceleration" in human and earth-system histories. In this lecture, taking as my point of departure the distinction between the "globe" and the "planet" that I have developed in my previous publications on climate change, and drawing on some "religious" ideas from Indigenous and peasant societies around the world, I will try to explore possible spiritual orientations we may have towards the earth-system/planet in the geological epoch of the Anthropocene.
Dipesh Chakrabarty teaches History and South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (2000; 2007), The Climate of History in A Planetary Age (2021), One Planet, Many Worlds (2023), and other books and articles.
Gharaibeh, Mohammad
Text, Congregation, and Society: Islamic Theology from the Perspective of Intellectual History
[Text, Gemeinde und Gesellschaft - Islamische Theologie aus ideengeschichtlicher Perspektive]
Islam is often described as a scriptural religion that is constructed around the Qur’an. While this assumption is not unjustified, it nevertheless often overlooks the fact that almost all branches of Islam also attribute theological authority to individuals or the community, supplementing the Qur’an for theology and faith practice. And even if communities develop certain individual dynamics of their own, they still stay in exchange and interaction with society as a whole—which is why (Islamic) theology can only be conceived of in an interplay between text, congregation, and society. This presentation would like to take up this idea, demonstrating it with a historical overview and suggesting a perspective for Islamic theology in Germany.
Mohammad Gharaibeh is Professor of Islamic Intellectual History at the Belin Institute for Islamic Theology in the Humboldt University of Berlin. His research focuses on canonization and censorship processes, historical narratives and memory strategies, as well as the dynamics of knowledge production in scholarly networks.
Guttenberger, Gudrun
Last Generation: The Gospel of Mark and Its Chronotope
[Last Generation: das MkEv und sein Chronotop]
At the center of this lecture is a sketch of the chronotope of the Gospel of Mark, written in a time of crisis. The hermeneutical framework of this lecture focuses on the theme of the conference: On the one hand, it concerns whether observations about the Mark narrative can be made that can be presented as impulses for the narrative of one or another of our contemporary chronotopes that are also conceptualized as crisis ridden. On the other hand, by looking at selected sections of the history of research, it explores the relationship between scholars’ own present and the interpretation of Mark’s chronotope.
Gudrun Guttenberger received her doctorate from Heidelberg with the dissertation Status und Statusverzicht im Neuen Testament und seiner Umwelt under Prof. Gerd Theißen. She taught at Mainz from 1998–2001 and completed her habilitation there, published as Die Gottesvorstellung im Markusevangelium and with Prof. Friedrich W. Horn as its first examiner. She was Professor of Biblical Theology at Hannover University of Applied Sciences and Arts from 2001–2013 and since 2013 has been Professor of Lutheran Theology (Biblical Theology) at Ludwigsburg University of Education. Her research foci include the Gospel of Mark, 1 Peter, 1 Corinthians, biblical hermeneutics, and biblical didactics.
Hempel, Charlotte
The Materiality(/-ies) of the Land: Perspectives of “Grounded” Life in the Old Testament and Early Judaism
[Die Materialität(en) des Landes: Perspektiven des geerdeten Lebens im Alten Testament und Frühen Judentum]
In the Old Testament—especially in the narrative books—the right to live and die in the land of Israel appears as a central theological concept. Drawing on legal texts and debates on agrarian economy and practice in the Bible and in the Dead Sea Scrolls, this lecture turns to new perspectives that shed new light on the conception of life and death grounded in the land. The insights achieved are theologically relevant today, in a time in which the precarious production and use of the fruits of our earth are once again becoming similar to the circumstances of the lived-in world of antiquity.
Charlotte Hempel is Professor of Herew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Birmingham, UK, where she the head of the School of Philosophy, Theology, and Religion. She has authored and edited nine books, including most recently The Community Rules from Qumran: A Commentary (Tübingen 2020; Minneapolis 2023), and with George Brooke The T&T Clark Companion on the Dead Sea Scrolls (London 2018). She was editor-in-chief of Dead Sea Discoveries from 2012–2018 and has served as president of the British and Irish Association for Jewish Studies (2016) and president of the Society for Old Testament Study (2022).
Markschies, Christoph
“The Announcement of Time”: Opportunities and Problems with the Theological Attempt to Keep Time for Society
[„Zeitansage“: Chancen und Probleme theologischer Versuche, der Gesellschaft den Takt zu geben]
Even in antiquity, Christian theology attempted to create a set of time standards for society (following earlier Jewish models), such as for the calculation of the date of Easter (and the church calendar that is based on it). Corresponding “announcements of time” were attempts, both within the church and without, to exert power over the future. This lecture analyzes how “time” being set in this manner took place from a technical standpoint, whether and where it worked and how it was justified theologically. It then contrasts this ancient form of time announcement with select modern examples, with a closing glance at the concept of the German Protestant Church Assembly as an announcement of time. The conclusion then presents a comparative examination of the opportunities and problems of such attempts to access the future.
Christoph Markschies studied Protestant theology, philosophy, and classical philology in Marburg, Jerusalem, and Tübingen. As Professor of Early Church History, Historical Theology, and Ancient Christianity, he has worked in Jena, Heidelberg, and Berlin, and since 2020, he has led the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Arts and Sciences in Berlin and (alongside Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum and Hermann Parzinger) Einstein Center Chronoi: Time and Awareness of Time in Ancient Societies, a research center in Berlin. Markschies also regularly teaches in Jerusalem, and his most recent publication is Ptolemaeus Gnosticus? Studien zur Valentinianischen Gnosis II (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2023).
Merle, Kristin
“What is this knowledge for?”: Knowledge Practices and the Relevance of Theology in Society
[„What is this knowledge for?“ Wissenspraktiken und Gesellschaftsrelevanz von Theologie]
Knowledge practices structure and produce reality and through the organization of knowledge. Theology also does this as an academic discipline. In this, formations of knowledge and corresponding practices oriented towards forms of “closed” expertise are opened to criticism: According to the critique, this involves forms of epistemic injustice and the reproduction of ignorance (in a perspective critical of racism, Charles W. Mills also speaks of “white ignorance”). Both appear problematic when considering the future viability of theology. What perspectives to forms of knowledge acquisition that are participatory—and also supported by digital technologies—open when dealing with challenging issues of the present? And will the future of theology be decided by its relevance to society?
Dr. Kristin Merle is Professor of Practical Theology at the University of Hamburg. Her research focuses on the relationship between the public sphere, politics, and religion, on the mediatization of religious practices, and on the question of crisis and practices of critique.
Moos, Thorsten
The Future of Hope: Transhumanism and Religious Rationality
[Die Zukunft des Hoffens. Transhumanismus und religiöse Rationalität]
Among the technical, scientific-oriented approaches to the future, transhumanism is the most radical. What exists for humanity to hope for is ultimately the overcoming of humanity (and, with it, also the bearers of hope) as we know it. In its radical visions of the future, transhumanism inherits central elements of a Christian culture concerning the future and reinterprets them. What can be learned from this for the future of hope?
Prof. Dr. Thorsten Moos is Professor of Systematic Theology (Ethics) in the theology faculty of Heidelberg University. His research foci include bio- and medicinal ethics, systematic theology in context of bio- and empirical cultural studies, theological anthropology and the concept of illness, fundamental ethical questions of church and diaconal activity, and political ethics in historical and systematic-theological perspectives.
Nagel, Alexander-Kenneth
From Artificial Intelligence to Zombie invasion: ‘Apocalyptic’ imaginaries of the future in late modern societies
The lecture discusses the secular forms of expression of an ‘apocalyptic’ hermeneutic of crisis in modern societies. It begins by examining debates in literary studies and the sociology of knowledge to define the semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic structure of secular apocalypticism in greater detail. In the second step, these distinctions are applied to two current case studies. The first case pertains to apocalyptic imaginaries in recent socio-ecological protest movements such as Extinction Rebellion and Last Generation. Here, the apocalyptic framing functions as a ‘cipher of urgency’: the ecological crisis is being invoked in order to avert it. The second case involves end-time scenarios in the so-called ‘prepper’ scene. In this case, the apocalyptic definition of the situation is embedded in a concrete scheme of individual preparatory action, such as food hoarding or shelter building. The lecture concludes with reflections on the peculiarities of secular apocalypticism and explores avenues of cooperation between sociological and theological approaches to apocalyptic mentalities.
Alexander-Kenneth Nagel studied Sociology and Religious Studies at the University of Bremen from 2000 to 2005 and received his doctorate in 2008 with a thesis on the political sociology of tertiary education. Between 2009 and 2015, Nagel was a junior professor of social science research into religion at Ruhr University Bochum, and since 2015 he has been a professor of the Social scientific study of religion at the Institute of Sociology in Göttingen. His research topics include religion and migration as well as apocalyptic mentalities in modern societies. His most recent publication on this topic is: Corona und andere Weltuntergänge. Apokalyptische Krisenhermeneutik in der modernen Gesellschaft, Bielefeld: Transcript (open access).
Reichel, Hanna
From “What can we know?” to “What may we hope for?”: Towards a Theological Hermeneutic of the Future
[Von „Was können wir wissen?“ zu „Was dürfen wir hoffen?“ Zu einer theologischen Hermeneutik der Zukunft]
The future—a realm of possibilities and uncertainties—eludes ontological classifications of “being/not being” as well as epistemological classifications of “true/false.” Despite being “not yet,” the future “already” guides our hopes and fears and, conversely, is shaped through—if not even brought about by—our expectations and prognoses. This lecture outlines a theological hermeneutic of the future by taking into account its affective, political, and eschatological traits from theologies of hope to approaches of queer futurity and anti-futurity.
Hanna Reichel is Associate Professor of Reformed Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary (USA). Since the publication of After Method: Queer Grace, Conceptual Design and the Possibility of Theology (Westminster John Knox, 2023), Reichel has been working on a theological anthropology that engages with recent anti-humanisms.
Rivera, Mayra
The Time that Remains
Climate catastrophes, experienced and anticipated, put pressure on our experience of time; making imaginaries of the end ubiquitous. Yet “the time that remains” is also meant to point to other dimensions of temporality—both the experiences of ruptures in time that accompany climate catastrophe and the persistence of past histories in the present. How then can we, should we imagine the future? This lecture will explore what climate change reveals about time, reflect on how it unsettles notions of the future and offer suggestions toward a theological reframing of hope.
Mayra Rivera is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion and Latinx Studies at Harvard University. Rivera works at the intersections between philosophy of religion, literature, and theories of coloniality, race and gender—with particular attention to Caribbean thought. Her most recent book, Poetics of the Flesh (2015), analyzes theological, philosophical, and political descriptions of “flesh” as metaphors for understanding how social discourses materialize in human bodies. She is also author of The Touch of Transcendence (2007) and co-editor of Planetary Loves: Spivak, Postcoloniality, and Theology (2010) and of Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire (2004). Rivera is currently working on a project that explores the relationships between coloniality and ecology through Caribbean thought.
Wendel, Saskia
Caught between Instrumentalized Religiosity and Religious Indifference: Which Theology Has a Future?
[Eingespannt zwischen instrumentalisierter Religiosität und religiöser Indifferenz – welche Theologie hat Zukunft?]
From among the tableau of diverse challenges facing theology and testing its future, this lecture focuses on two aspects: the political instrumentalization of religion(s), linked with mechanisms of exclusion and, partially, also with fundamentalist attitudes, and the constantly growing areligiosity. Both the overuse of religion and the indifference to religion have driven theology into a state of crisis, to the point of prognosticating its own end, much more strongly than explicit anti-religious sentiment. This lecture explores the question of which ways of doing theology can (still) have a future in light of this.
Saskia Wendel, Dipl.-Theol., Dr. phil., (b. 1964), is Professor of Fundamental Theology in the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of Tübingen, board member and subproject leader in the SFB project “Other Aesthetics” at the University of Tübingen.
