The Religious Studies Program (RSP) is a research program and an academic forum at CEU fostering the academic study of religion. The mission of the program is to initiate and to coordinate research, academic events, and publications that address in critical ways religion-related questions in critical ways.
The RSP is integrated into the School of History and Interdisciplinary Historical Studies and collaborates with relevant departments and academic units at the CEU. It crosses the borders of academic disciplines, confessional and geo-political categorizations. With an international advisory board and contacts with institutions throughout the region, as well as worldwide, the RSP provides an important site in Eastern Europe for academic research and communication on religion.
The Religious Studies Program: CEU as a place for the study of religions
The interest of the CEU in the history of religions is motivated not by purely academic or antiquarian interests alone, but also by concerns that arise from the University’s public mission. The university, like its local and international environments, finds itself in a situation when the idea that the disappearance of religion and the disenchantment of the world were of necessity correlative with modernity is being subjected to increasingly intensive questioning by a number of developments in countries East and West. The realization that, whatever the reason, religion, on its own or enmeshed in politics, is going to be with all of us for a long time to come, sometimes in very obvious and indeed archaic forms, makes it appropriate to think of religious phenomena in new ways, religious phenomena being understood as at once individual sentiment, collective representations, scriptural texts, theologies, and social and political forces.
The study of religion, therefore, appears of interest not only to historians of religion, theologians, or experts in particular religious traditions, but is a matter of general public interest. It is also the case that the study of religious traditions is helpful in the clarification of notions of tradition overall, that the intellectual history of religion is an important chapter in the intellectual history of humanity, and that a variety of mythological and ideological aspects of religion are of invaluable use in illuminating the study of public mythologies and ideologies, which they represent in accentuated and sometimes almost paradigmatic form.
It therefore appears to us that the best approach to the study of religion at the CEU starts from the interfaces between religion and other social and historical phenomena. It is also clear, however, that this in itself would be insufficient to give an adequate impression of the historical and social amplitude of religion, and that religious studies at the CEU should have an institutional form which is not only derivative of disciplines with which it interfaces and which it crosses, but also one which brings to bear a considerable amount of expertise in the disciplines of the history of religions and comparative religion as such. The study of religion is a self-contained discipline in the humanities and social sciences, and has distinctive paradigmatic elements, some deriving from historical and philological studies, and some from anthropological and sociological studies, which need to be fully taken on board. In the present format, the thematic purview of the Religious Studies Program (RSP) takes up principally the three monotheistic religions, but would include civil religions as well (be they American or Roman). Other religions will need to be brought in the context of more general methodological, conceptual and comparative discussions.
Institutional structure and profile
As an independent unit, the RSP is integrated in the History Department and works most closely with the Medieval Studies Department, with the first academic appointments made in these departments. The Program thus works through and supports the existing tissue of the university, while at the same time, it seeks to reach out to other institutions and organizations world-wide and to extend the present potential of CEU.
With a generous grant of seed-money from the Carnegie Corporation that has been offered to the CEU, it has become possible to bring the RSP to life, after several years of discussions and various levels of preparation. The Program is managed by its Director, in consultation with an executive committee, and advised by a board of internationally renowned scholars.
The RSP converges with and strengthens the particular profile of the CEU, and does not intend to duplicate religious studies as instituted in a variety of universities worldwide. The CEU finds itself in a region which was at the confluence of a variety of histories, religious and otherwise, and at the intersection of Ottoman (predominantly Muslim but by no means exclusively so), Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and Jewish religious cultures. It would therefore seem appropriate to structure thinking about religious studies at the CEU from this confluence, working backwards into matters historical, and forwards into society and polity. In all cases, it should be understood from the beginning that an initiative like the one envisaged is not designed to promote interfaith or inter-denominational or intra-denominational dialogue (the last being significant for the Orthodox churches), but to undertake academic study.
In terms of cooperation with other institutions and universities, much was learnt from a round-table meeting with representatives from various related disciplines in the US and the Vice-President of the Carnegie Corporation, which was convened at the Corporation’s headquarter in New York on November 12, 2004. During this meeting, it was stressed that, not least after “9/11” and for security, political, as well as academic reasons, religious studies at CEU would be something to look forward to. With regard to the possibilities and perspectives afforded by the location of the CEU at the crossroad of major religious and political histories and lineages, it was thought possible to create some new vectors of activity, and develop synergies that are able to work in three directions: 1) in-depth engagement with religious history and traditions, 2) focusing mainly on the three monotheistic religions in a historically and conceptually grounded way, and 3) reconsidering the development of social and political thought and activity of these religions. Institutional and personal collaboration with the participants at the New York meeting was assured, including possible collaboration for the exchange of students and of expertise.
Governance
Director
Matthias Riedl (Department of History)
Executive Committee
Aziz Al-Azmeh (School of History)
György Geréby (Department of Medieval Studies)
Gábor Klaniczay (Department of Medieval Studies)
Vlad Naumescu (Department of Sociology and Social Anthopology)
György Endre Szőnyi (Department of History/Medieval Studies)
Nadia Al-Bagdadi (Department of History)
Volker Menze (Ex officio) (Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies)
Program Assistant
Esther Holbrook
Advisory Board
José Casanova, Department of Sociology, New School for Social Research, New York
Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions and Director of the Martin Marty Center, Divinity School, University of Chicago
Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, Institut für Systematische Theologie und Ethik, Ludwig-Maximilians- Universität München
William Graham, Dean of the Divinity School, Harvard University
Mushirul Hasan, Director, Academy of Third World Studies and Vice-Chancellor of the Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi
Danièle Hervieu-Léger, President and Director of Studies of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris
Moshe Idel, Institute of Jewish Studies, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Andrei Pleşu, Rector, New Europe College, Bucharest
Tilo Schabert, Professor of Politische Wissenschaft at the Erziehungswissenschaftliche Fakultät, Friedrich- Alexander-Universität Nürnberg
Brian Stock, Department of English, University of Toronto