Short Abstract: 'Interreligious Dialogue and Control in Two German Cities'
Over the last few years there have been reports by geographers on interreligious dialogue initiatives in Erlangen and Osnabrück. [In my published version I will contrast these with a report from interreligious experts in Hamburg.] The geographers ask the question: what is the purpose of city-specific interreligious dialogue initiatives? Their answers are complex. On the one hand the geographers are suspicious that the purpose is to create compliant German Muslim communities, and they describe the ways in which civil, religious, and educational institutional power conspires to 'subdue' (in the words of one geographer) minorities. On the other hand they observe that these attempts are failures, and even fail in absurd and comical ways. They achieve something real but different: a self-congratulatory rhetoric that celebrates the city as a unique (another comic aspect: several cities do this) achievement of interreligious harmony. This rhetoric is emphatic, but its insistent narrative of success is somewhat divorced from reality. These narratives of success are often proudly published in local newspapers. Perhaps it is not Muslim minorities that end up being controlled, but narratives. The geographers do not say it, but I do: it is possible that these interreligious dialogues exist primarily to produce narratives of urban interreligious success.
Short Bio: Nicholas Adams is Professor of Philosophical Theology at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of two books on German philosophers, one on Jürgen Habermas, the other on GWF Hegel, as well as several articles exploring the ways in which interreligious engagement prompts puzzling philosophical questions. His main thematic concerns are questions of plurality and questions of truth, often in relation to each other. His next book, to be published with OUP, is /Reparative Reasoning: Philosophy and Theology Entangled/.
Convener: Anne Hege Grung