Intercultural‐Biblical Reflections on Christian Identity 

New International Research Project

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ABOUT THE PROJECT:

The project deals with "identity conflicts" and the formation of "identity markers" in early Christianity. Why do biblical texts come up with the idea of mediating between the social context and the Christian message or working on tensions in this regard? How did New Testament authors manage to inculturate the Christian message? How do they communicate? What can we learn from them? How did the Biblical authors, apostles, and missionaries manage to maintain a balance between adapting to the found culture and preserving the Christian heritage? What actually constitutes Christian identity? Is there a standardised Christian identity for all cultures? Are there different expressions of Christian identity among women and men? How does Christian identity develop in Early Christianity? Finally, can the modern question of contextualisation in a post‐ colonial period be transferred in exactly the same way to early Christian times?

WORKING STEPS:
Phase 1: International conference (2024) with presentations that cover the thematic field as broadly as possible. The contributions will be included in a scientific publication. The lecturers will accompany the second phase with their expertise. The conference date (late summer 2024) and venue is yet to be decided based on where the majority of participants will be travelling from.

Phase 2: Formation of working groups during the conference. These will continue to work (online) on biblical pastoral materials for intercultural training based on the scientific contributions of the conference. The results will be made widely available open access.

Registrations for papers prolonged until the end of September.

Email adress: Beate.Kowalski@tu‐dortmund.de