Extract

Abstract The main topic of theology is God or the Holy while the topic of the Study of Religions as a cultural discipline is the religious human being. This holds also true for its two main subdisciplines: Sociology of Religion and Psychology of Religion. The former studies religiously motivated acts and the influence of religion(s) on society while the latter concentrates on the individual and its behaviour and thinking. This anthropological turn lets religious dogmas aside but is, in its empirical approach, often not free from theories that may have an impact on the results of research. The article gives two examples from each of these subdisciplines to show how interest-related those studies can be: in Sociology of Religion, reference is made to French, English, and German approaches to the relationship between religion and modernity as well as to the discourse on religion which in Europe mostly emphasizes its role in conflicts while in America religion is often seen as faith-based social capital; in Psychology of Religion, a big-brother-is-watching-you concept of God can hinder the individual from developing a psychologically free personality, and cultural presumptions can decide on how to interpret deviant human behaviour, namely as holy in one cultural context and as abnormal in another.

Theologie ist die „Rede von Gott“. Gegenstand der Theologie ist somit Gott, das Heilige und die jenseitige Welt, neben allen Auswirkungen des göttlichen Handelns auf die Schöpfung, d.h. die Welt und den Menschen. Dabei geschieht die Auslegung...