Katharina Frank

Religious Education in Switzerland as a Field of Work for the Study of Religions: Empirical Results and Theoretical Reflections

The following article addresses the current state of religious education in Switzerland and the involvement of the study of religions in this field. Since the 1990s, the existence of different religions and world-views has become a politically and socially significant factor in Switzerland. Not only representatives of public schools and particularly teachers of religious education, but also scholars of the study of religions, are challenged by the consequences of this multireligious and multicultural situation. During the past few years, religious education therefore has become a scholarly issue for this discipline in the German-speaking area. The article demonstrates what the engagement of the study of religions in the practical field of religious education should be like and how this has already been worked out. The authors differentiate between basic research, applied research and application, referring to their own research and practical experience. Based on empirical data, two basic forms of religious education are generated: religioser Unterricht, which treats objects of religious traditions in a religious manner, including a dogmatic and a life-world sub-type, and religionskundlicher Unterricht, which treats objects of religious traditions in the scholarly way of the cultural studies. In the last part of the article some cornerstones for the implementation of the school subject Religionskunde and for the development of an applied didactics in the perspective of the study of religions are presented.

Das religionswissenschaftliche Dreieck

This article discusses the present situation of the scientific discourse in Religionswissenschaft, focused on German speaking academic contexts. Referring to Talcott Parsons’ theory of agency systems, the article develops a general concept in order to integrate theories and research topics into a triangle, constituted by different objects of research: ‘stock of symbols’, ‘individual’ and ‘community’. The sides of the triangle represent reciprocal processes of interconnection between the (individual and collective) actors and the stock of symbols. Finally, the article argues how the different elements of the triangle interact with *Kontaktperson: Christoph Bochinger, Fachgruppe Religionswissenschaft, Universität Bayreuth, D-95440 Bayreuth, Email: christoph.bochinger@uni-bayreuth.de Katharina Frank, Religionswissenschaftliches Seminar, Universität Zürich, Kantonsschulstrasse 1, CH-8001 Zürich, Email: katharina.frank@access.uzh.ch ZfR 2015; 23(2): 343–370

Das religionswissenschaftliche Dreieck. Elemente eines integrativen Religionskonzepts.

This essay reflects on time and religion in historiography, in particular on semantics and contexts of the present in Study of Religion frameworks concerned with history and historicity. Referring to ongoing historiographical debates about the formation of historical time in modern European intellectual history, this category is treated in a twofold way: On the one hand by means of certain objects discussed in the historiography of religion in European contexts; on the other hand as a discourse about temporality that organizes relations between historiography and present times. The data basis for my analysis is provided by a typological approach dealing with experiences of time and structures of religion in European history from a sociological perspective (Wolfgang Eßbach 2014). Preliminary remarks concern general reflections on a future history of religion *Kontaktperson: Dr. phil. Lorenz Trein, Assistent am Lehrstuhl Religionswissenschaft, Fakultät für Philosophie, Wissenschaftstheorie und Religionswissenschaft, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, 80539 München, Email: Lorenz.Trein@lrz.uni-muenchen.de ZfR 2016; 24(1): 1–16