Ulrich Schmiedel

This Festschrift in honour of Werner G. Jeanrond, currently Master of St Benet's Hall, University of Oxford, UK, investigates the challenge of alterity for Christianity, exploring and elaborating on this core concern in Jeanrond's hermeneutical theology. Blurring disciplinary boundaries, more than thirty of Jeanrond's colleagues and companions from ten countries track the dynamics of difference driven by the encounter with the self as other, the other as other, and God as the radical other. Who is my other? What do I encounter when I encounter my other? And what responses and responsibilities does the encounter with my other evoke? Grappling with questions like these, the contributions to this compilation analyse alterity in the Bible, alterity in philosophy, alterity in theology, alterity in interreligious dialogues, and the radical alterity of God. Tying in with Jeanrond's explorations of the many faces and facets of the other, this Festschrift ultimately aims to advocate openness to the other as a necessity for both religion and reflections on religion.

This study confronts the current crisis of churches. In critical and creative conversation with the German theologian Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923), Ulrich Schmiedel argues that churches need to be "elasticized" in order to engage the "other." Examining contested concepts of religiosity, community, and identity, Schmiedel explores how the closure of church against the sociological "other" corresponds to the closure of church against the theological "other." Taking trust as a central category, he advocates for a turn in the interpretation of Christianity-from "propositional possession" to "performative project," so that the identity of Christianity is "done" rather than "described." Through explorations of classical and contemporary scholarship in philosophy, sociology, and theology, Schmiedel retrieves Troeltsch's interdisciplinary thinking for use in relation to the controversies that encircle the construction of community today. The study opens up innovative and instructive approaches to the investigation of the practices of Christianity, past and present. Eventually, church emerges as a "work in movement," continually constituted through encounters with the sociological and the theological "other.".

This article assesses the tension between cosmopolitan and communitarian approaches to the ethics of migration by analysing how the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) has responded to the current so-called migration crisis in Europe. I argue that the statements of the EKD frame people on the move either as migrants or as Muslims. These frames come with competing ethical consequences. Whereas migrants are presented as passive victims in need of some form of support by Christians, Muslims are presented as active victimisers in need of some form of suppression by Christians. However, when the then chairman of the EKD shook hands with people on the move who were arriving at Munich station in the summer of 2015, the surplus of meaning communicated in this encounter demonstrated that these people cannot be reduced to their respective framing, thus resisting the construction of both the cosmopolitan migrant frame and the communitarian Muslim frame. Accordingly, I advocate for a re-conceptualisation of the theological ethics of migration which takes multi-faith practices, such as these handshakes, as a point of departure.