Schleiermacher Unit

Schleiermacher as Innovator: New Horizons for Research

Recent scholarship on Schleiermacher has increasingly moved away from the earlier one-sided caricatures of his thought to recover the central significance of Schleiermacher’s writings in shaping the modern study of religion, philosophy, and the humanities. The newly published volume The Oxford Handbook of Friedrich Schleiermacher (2023) reflects this wide-ranging influence of Schleiermacher's thought and highlights the ongoing importance and constructive promise of Schleiermacher’s writings in the contemporary study of religion, theology, and philosophy.  

This session encourages papers or panels that engage this Handbook or the various themes treated within it, including: influences on Schleiermacher and his engagement with contemporaries; Schleiermacher’s innovative treatment of various university disciplines, such as dialectic, hermeneutics, pedagogy, or psychology; Schleiermacher’s innovative vision of theological study and creative recasting of traditional theological themes; and the ongoing constructive significance of Schleiermacher’s work. We especially encourage proposals that point to new avenues of research or interpretation, or which highlight original research into Schleiermacher’s thought.

Co-sponsored with the Christian Systematic Theology Unit and the Reformed Theology and History Unit

Though freedom has long been a focus of Christian theological reflection, it has gained urgency in contemporary theologies such as liberationist, emancipatory, and other perspectives. Reflecting on the AAR’s 2025 presidential theme of freedom, we invite proposals that engage its theological developments broadly, as well as proposals that address concept of freedom in Friedrich Schleiermacher’s work. Subtopics may include:

• sin, individual and social, as bondage/un-freedom
• redemption (Erlösung) as freedom or liberation from bondage
• human freedom as communal and individual 
• religious freedom and pluralistic society
• freedom and religious communication in Schleiermacher’s Speeches and Soliloquies
• freedom/dependence, activity/receptivity, and redemption in Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre
• human freedom and divine election; are human beings free to say no to God?

“Is there such a thing as a Christian Nation?” Cultural Christianity and Historical Progress

(Co-sponsored by the Kierkegaard, Religion, and Culture Unit)

The idea of “cultural Christianity” as a social good has seen a resurgence among contemporary nationalists who see the active promotion of Christian culture or society as an important aspect of social progress. This notion of a culturally normative Christianity, together with the idea of Christian society in advancing historical progress, also plays a prominent role in the works of both Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Schleiermacher. Kierkegaard’s penetrating criticism of cultural Christianity aims to reintroduce Christianity into Christendom and nominally Christian society. And while Schleiermacher is often described as founding the cultural Protestantism (Kulturprotestantismus) that dominated late nineteenth-century theology, his own writings recognize the inescapable tensions and dangers in the concept of the modern Christian nation-state.

This session calls for proposals, for individual papers or panels, that engage these complex themes in the writings of Kierkegaard and/or Schleiermacher. Topics for proposals might include (but are not limited to) the following:

• The notion of historical progress in the writings of Kierkegaard and Schleiermacher
• The theme of ‘Christian society’ in the work of Kierkegaard and Schleiermacher
• The role of subjectivity in the life of faith
• Kierkegaard’s critique of ‘Christendom’
• Schleiermacher on the ‘Christian state’
• The influence of Luther on Kierkegaard and Schleiermacher in their responses to questions of church, society, and state
• Kierkegaard and Schleiermacher on Hegel’s treatment of religion and the Christian state
• Cultural Protestantism and the comparative study of religion
• Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard as resources for critiquing contemporary expressions of cultural Christianity and Christian nationalism

The Schleiermacher Unit is committed to diversity and inclusivity. Pre-arranged sessions or panel proposals should reflect diversity of gender and/or race and ethnicity. Diversities of rank, method, and sub-discipline are also highly encouraged.