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[German Version] The Anglican Lambeth Conference passed its resolution 44 in 1988 with a call to shift from mere self-preservation to “proclamation and service.” Resolution 43 challenged every church province and diocese to cooperate with other Christians ¶ to make the 1990s a …

[German Version] I. Concept – II. New Testament – III. Practical Theology I. Concept The term “apostasy” – like faith a specific of the Judeo-Christian tradition – is rarely used today, although it has greater significance in Catholic sacramental practice and communion (Excommunication). Apostasy indicates the departure from the teaching and life of the faith community; heresy refers to the rejection of binding doctrine without renouncing the faith entirely. Idolatry, historically the veneration of other gods, can also refer to secular forms of de facto adherence. While these t…

[German Version] I. History of Religions – II. Greco-Roman Antiquity – III. Bible – IV. Church History – V. Systematic Theology – VI. Practical Theology – VII. Missiology – VIII. Judaism – IX. Islam I. History of Religions “Conversion” denotes the religiously interpreted process of total reorientation in which individuals or groups reinterpret their past lives, turn their backs on them, and reestablish and reshape their future lives in a new network of social relationships. The phenomenon was initially treated historically (Hellenistic religions and Early Church history, missionary history); later, primarily in the context of American and British sociology of religion, it was examined in more depth. The pioneering work was done by Lofland and his colleagues. Since the work of James, a total reorientation toward reality, usually called “transformation” in the technical literature, has been considered the central mark of conversion. Confessional narratives and conversion stories bearing witness to the reinterpretation of the narrator's life are understood as biographical reconstructions (Biography). They describe the unsatisfactory life before conversion as empty and unhappy, life after conversion as meaningful and happy. The reorientation of an entire life involves commitment to the religious community that made conversion possible or even served as its vehicle, matched by an enactment of membership in the community in word and deed. Despite the importance converts often ascribe to an acute crisis or a single event, conversion should be thought of not as a sudden and abrupt change but as a process taking place in a specific milieu that triggers the experience of crisis and influences the active search for a new orientation. Future scholarship must gather and analyze conversion narratives from all religions, with their own characteristic models of conversion, and engage in greater interdisci…

[German Version] I. History – II. Religious Doctrine – III. Society – IV. Hinduism and Christianity I. History 1. Historical outline Hinduism, from Persian hindu (“one who lives by the Indus River”), is a collective term for those religious communities and their systems that formed on the south Asian subcontinent (India: I) or spread there, whose social organization is characterized by particular rules of lineage and marriage (the so-called caste system, see III, 2 below; Caste: I), who primarily uphold Vedic-Brahm…