TY - JOUR A1 - Hafner, Johann Evangelist ED - Raja, KCR T1 - The abrahamic religions JF - Being an Becoming : Festschrift in honour of Prof. Dr. Mathew Chandrakunnel KW - Religion KW - Christentum KW - Islam KW - Judentum Y1 - 2023 SN - 978-81-7026-542-9 SP - 119 EP - 124 PB - Heritage Publishers CY - Neu Dehli ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Becci, Irene A1 - Hafner, Johann Evangelist T1 - A New Synagogue, a Garrison Church, and a Mosque BT - how religious (re)building animates religious and secular life in postsocialist Potsdam JF - Space and Culture N2 - In postsocialist Potsdam, religious diversity has risen surprisingly in public life since 1990 although more than 80% of the residents have no religious affiliation. City and state authorities have actively embraced issues around immigration and integration as well as the promotion of religious diversity and interreligious dialogue and have linked this to the agenda of rejuvenating the city’s religious heritage. For years, negotiations have been going on about the need of a mosque, the reconstructions of a synagogue and the so-called “Garrison Church,” a landmark military church building. These initiatives have been dominating the public space for different reasons. They implied, beyond religion, questions of memory, identity, immigration, and culture. This article puts these three cases into perspective to offer a nuanced understanding of the importance of religious spaces in secular contexts considering city politics. KW - religion KW - Potsdam KW - postsocialist city KW - religious buildings KW - cultural diversity KW - Islam KW - Judaism KW - Protestantism Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312221134572 SN - 1552-8308 SN - 1206-3312 VL - 26 IS - 2 SP - 215 EP - 228 PB - Sage Publications CY - Thousand Oaks, Calif. ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Hafner, Johann Evangelist T1 - The will of the masses BT - Der Weg vom Theologiestudenten zum Guerillero am Beispiel von Conrado Balweg. (1942-1999) T2 - "Mit Gott auf unserer Seite". Religiöse Aufrufe zur Gewalt und ihre Gegenreaktionen N2 - This article describes the way of Conrado Balweg from the Tingguian-tribe in the Cordillera mountains/Philippines, who was educated in Catholic seminaries, entered a missionary congregation, was ordained priest and joined the communist insurgency New People’s Army. There he quickly attained the rank of a political officer and military commander. Balweg held teachings on Marxism in remote villages, he organized several ambushes on government troops and conducted people’s courts against traitors. Over time he developed a special indigenous Maoism and broke away from the party-line and, which was the reason why he was killed by the NPA in 1999. In a contextualized biographical portrait we track the question: How did Maoist thought become part of Balweg’s conviction? As a hypothesis we assumed, that Maoist thought was integrated in Catholic tenets (e.g. interpreting God’s will as the will of the masses). After a close analysis of intellectual backgrounds and political events it turned out, that Maoist ideology superseded religious motives instead. This is crucial to understand if violence was justified in the name of God or in the name of the people. Y1 - 2020 SN - 978-3-95650-664-2 SN - 978-3-95650-665-9 SP - 163 EP - 204 PB - Ergon CY - Baden-Baden ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Hafner, Johann Evangelist T1 - From indoctrination to testimonials BT - The book gifts for Jugendweihe in the GDR and reunified Germany T2 - Communicating Religion and Atheism in central and eastern europe N2 - This book brings together case studies dealing with historical as well as recent phenomena in former socialist nations, which testify the transfer of knowledge about religion and atheism. The material is connected on a semantic level by the presence of a historical watershed before and after socialism as well as on a theoretical level by the sociology of knowledge. With its focus on Central and Eastern Europe this volume is an important contribution to the research on nonreligion and secularity. The collected volume deals with agents and media within specific cultural and historical contexts. Theoretical claims and conceptions by single agents and/or institutions in which the imparting of knowledge about religion and atheism was or is a central assignment, are analyzed. Additionally, procedures of transmitting knowledge about religion and atheism and of sustaining related institutionalized norms, interpretations, roles and practices are in the focus of interest. The book opens the perspective for the multidimensional and negotiating character of legitimation processes, being involved in the establishment or questioning of the institutionalized opposition between religion and atheism or religion and science. Y1 - 2020 SN - 978-3-11-054637-8 SN - 978-3-11-054655-2 SP - 121 EP - 144 PB - De Gruyter CY - Berlin ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hafner, Johann Evangelist A1 - Zimmermann, Matthias A1 - Rost, Sophia A1 - Sütterlin, Sabine A1 - Kampe, Heike A1 - Horn-Conrad, Antje A1 - Jäger, Sophie A1 - Eckardt, Barbara A1 - Mangelsdorf, Birgit T1 - Portal Wissen = Believe BT - The Research Magazine of the University of Potsdam N2 - People want to know what is real. Children enjoy listening to a story but when my children were about four years old they started asking whether the story really happened or was just invented. Likewise, only on a higher level, our academic curiosity is fuelled by our interest in knowing what is real. When we analyze poetic texts or dreams we are trying to distinguish between the facts (e.g. neurological ones or linguistic structures) and merely assumed influences. Ideally we can present results that were logically understood by others and that we can repeat empirically. But in most cases this is not possible. We cannot read every book and cannot look through every microscope, not even within our own discipline. In the world we live in we depend on trusting the information of others, like how to get to the train station or what the weather is like in Ulaanbataar. This is why we are used to believing others, our friends or the news anchors. This is not a childish behavior but a necessity. Of course, it is risky because they could all be lying to us, like in a Truman Show situation. The only time we are able to know that we are in reality is when we transcend our selfconsciousness and when we accept two propositions: first, that we are not only objects but also subjects in the consciousness of others and second that our dialogic relations are again observed by a third party that is not part of this intersubjective world. For religious people this is “belief” - belief as the assumption that all human relations only become real, serious and beyond any doubt if they know they are under the eyes of God. Only before Him something is in itself and not only “for me” or “among us”. That is why biblical language distinguishes between three forms of belief: the relationship with the world of things (“to believe that”), the relationship to the world of subjects (“to believe somebody”) and the assumption of a subjective supernatural reality (“to believe in” or “faith”). From an academic point of view belief is a holistic hypothesis. Belief is not the opposite of knowledge but it is the attempt to save reality from doubt by comprehending the fragile empirical world as an expression of a stable transcendent world. When I talk to students they often ask not only about what I know but what I believe. As a professor for Religious Studies and a believing Catholic I am caught in the middle. On the one hand, it is my duty as a professor to doubt everything, i.e. to attribute each religious text to its historical context and sociological functions. On the other hand, I, as a Christian, consider certain religious documents, in my case the Bible, an interpretable but nevertheless irreversible, revealed text about the origin of reality. On weekdays the New Testament is a collection of ancient writings among many others, on Sundays it is the revelation. You can make a clear distinction between these two perspectives but it is difficult to decide whether doubt or belief is more real. This issue of “Portal Wissen” explores this dual relationship of belief. What is the attitude of science towards belief – is it a religious one? Where does science bring things to light that we can hardly believe or that make us believe (again)? What happens if research clears up erroneous assumptions or myths? Is science able to investigate things that are convincing but inexplicable? How can it maintain its credibility and develop even so? These questions appear again and again in the contributions of this “Portal Wissen”. They form a manifold, exciting and surprising picture of the research projects and academics at the University of Potsdam. Believe me, it will be an enjoyable read. Prof. Johann Hafner Professor of Religious Studies with Focus on Christianity Dean of the Faculty of Arts T3 - Portal Wissen: The research magazine of the University of Potsdam [Englische Ausgabe] - 01/2014 Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-441461 SN - 2198-9974 IS - 01/2014 ER -