Volkhard Krech
Volkhard Krech, born in 1962, is professor of the Study of Religion at Bochum University, Germany, and director of the Center for Religious Studies (CERES). His main research interests cover the theory of religion and history of religions, religious pluralisation and globalisation, processes of sacralisation, religion and violence, religion and art, and history of the Religious Studies. His publications include Georg Simmels Religionstheorie (1998) Religionssoziologie (Bielefeld 1999), Wissenschaft und Religion. Studien zur Geschichte der Religionsforschung in Deutschland 1870-1933 (Tübingen 2002), “Sacrifice and Holy War: A Study of Religion and Violence” (p. 1005-1021 in W. Heitmeyer and J. Hagan [eds.]: International Handbook of Violence Research. Kluwer Academic Publications: Dordrecht/Boston/London 2003), “The Religious Field between Globalization and Regionalization: Comparative Perspectives” (with Stefan Huber, in: Bertelsmann Stiftung [ed.], What the World Believes: Analysis and Commentary on the Religion Monitor 2008, Gütersloh 2009, 53–93), a commentary on Georg Simmel’s Die Religion (Reihe Die Gesellschaft, Neue Folge, hg. von Hans Diefenbacher, Bd. 6, 2011), and Wo bleibt die Religion? Studien zur Ambivalenz des Religiösen in der modernen Gesellschaft (Bielefeld 2011).
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In seiner Analyse zur Ausdifferenzierung des Religiösen, die Bezug auf die Evolutionstheorie, Systemtheorie und eine semiotisch informierte Kommunikationstheorie nimmt, bewegt er sich in der Zirkularität von Gegenwart und Geschichte. Dabei macht er Religion als Sinnform zur Bearbeitung unbestimmbarer Kontingenz begreifbar.
English Abstract:
Above us is the sky of ideas, in us the consciousness, and in between: religion as a component of socio-cultural reality. In his sociological outline of religious evolution, Volkhard Krech unfolds the understanding of religion as communication that arises and takes place between people.
In his analysis of the differentiation of religion out of societal processes, which refers to the theory of evolution, systems theory, and a communication theory informed by semiotics, he moves in the circularity of the present and history. In doing so, he makes religion understandable as a form of meaning for dealing with indeterminable contingency.