Establishing Difference: Religious-Political Conflicts and Efforts to Create Consensus

The mutual permeation of politics and religion developed in the early modern period a productive dynamic which lasted into the 20th century, and which saw "Europe" develop into a laboratory for a consensus-building approach to the treatment of religious-political difference. This research area investigates the basic process through which the religious-political diversification in the aftermath of the Reformation changed into the basic format of European life-worlds by gradually taking on concrete institutional form, though it continued to be repeatedly contested.

These processes are reinterpreted as transformations of the continuing interconnection between religion and politics, as the general trend was initially determined by the continuing desire of the actors to (re)create a unified order in the face of religious-political differences. The failure of all efforts to this end made necessary the development of new procedures, which were often only intended as temporary arrangements, for the resolution of conflicts and for ordering the polity. However, these gradually established themselves as a generally-accepted basis for social and political stability. The idea of an overarching "pax et concordia" could only have a future if the ideal of religious "unitas" was relinquished. The development of the knowledge cultures, cross-border, trans-European contact, an increasingly unbiased perception of other religions, and other trends which would previously have been labelled heterodox set in motion a process of profound change. Traditional ideals were relinquished, or reinterpreted and transferred into new, supposedly more robust concepts for ordering the daily relationship between religion and politics.

The aim of this research area is to reconstruct this process of change in the life-world interconnections between religion and politics in a history of conjunctures which spans the usual time period boundaries within the modern era. This trend history is investigated in three modules. These concentrate on

1. the justification and critique of religious-political differences, as manifested in the emergence of a culture of confessional controversy – which was reflected in theological debate – and in the critical relativisation of this culture in informal and university-based scholarly networks;
2. attempts to regulate religious-political differences, which manifested themselves in the development of religious settlements and social orders, but also in the development of a practise of social protest;
3. the representation of religious-political differences and the resolution of these differences in the visual, linguistic and musical media.

Each module includes fundamental and evaluatory projects which deal with the overarching topic of the module on the basis of sample topics.