Interreligious Hermeneutics in a Plural Society

Foundations, Challenges, Opportunities and Limits

In a secular, yet religiously plural society, the peaceful coexistence of people with different religious and ideological convictions is becoming increasingly important. For this reason, interreligious dialogue has recently gained relevance and spread nationally and internationally. This is especially true for classes that have become heterogeneous and for religious education in immigration societies.

The Department of Islamic-Theological Studies at the University of Vienna is organising an online lecture series in the summer semester 2023, which will focus on interreligious hermeneutics. The reasons, challenges, opportunities and limits that shape our theological-interreligious actions and thinking will be discussed in conjunction with a wide range of academic positions.

All lectures, supplemented by further written contributions, will be published by Springer-Verlag in the series Wiener Beiträge zur Islamforschung.

We invite all colleagues who deal theoretically or practically with one of the topics listed be-low to enrich the planned publication with a contribution in German or English. We are looking for theoretical contributions as well as practical reports and research results on the topics mentioned.

The planned publication is dedicated to theological justifications of interreligious hermeneu-tics, which are still in their infancy. The authors will reflect from both a theological and a phil-osophical-hermeneutical perspective.

In particular, but not exclusively, it is about contributions to the following aspects:

  • What interreligious approaches do the world religions offer to the challenging devel-opments of plural societies?
  • What theological foundations, positions and perspectives can advocate interreligious dialogue?
  • Can an interreligious hermeneutics be derived from the sacred scriptures and if so, how? If not, how does this relate to the religions' view of themselves?
  • Which philosophical-hermeneutical models can be applied to the theological justifica-tions of interreligious dialogue?