CO-SPONSORSHIP: Schleiermacher Unit and Teaching Religion Unit

Teaching the Canon: Schleiermacher

The Teaching Religion Unit and the Schleiermacher Unit invite papers for a possible co-sponsored session on the topic of “Teaching the Canon: Schleiermacher.” What does it mean and what might it look like to teach "canonical" texts and figures in religion today? This session explores this question through a reexamination of F.D.E. Schleiermacher's place in the religion and theology curriculum. Whether as a lead-up to Barth's "No!" to natural theology, as a founder of the academic study of religion, or as early textual critic, Schleiermacher has long been a mainstay of the theological curriculum and courses on theory and methods in the study of religion. Generations of scholars have been exposed to debates over whether or not Schleiermacher's definition of religion's essence as lying in "feeling" rendered it beyond the scope of conceptual analysis and Schleiermacher's role in formulating the hermeneutic circle. The Reden and Glaubenslehre remain required readings in many religion classrooms. Yet many of the assumptions that have undergirded Schleiermacher's place in the curriculum have been complicated or challenged. Reception histories that have highlighted the distance between Schleiermacher and his appropriators, greater access to a wider breadth of Schleiermacher's intellectual production, increased attention to the historical and political context of Schleiermacher's work, and genealogies that have recontextualized the task of studying religion itself all have enormous implications for how Schleiermacher can (or whether he should) be taught today.

This session calls for proposals for individual papers, presentations, or panels that address the practical task of engaging F.D.E. Schleiermacher in the context of undergraduate programs, theological education, graduate school, preaching or public scholarship, engaging with recent research on Schleiermacher and exploring the place of historical context, close reading, genealogies, or lived religion in the classroom. Topics for proposals might include (but are not limited to) the following:

• The (ir)relevance of Schleiermacher's understanding of religion and approach to theology for introductory courses and graduate theory and methods seminars
• Exploring the way that historical narratives about the development of modern theology, the academic study of religion, or the rise of the modern university shape the way that Schleiermacher is presented and alternatives to situating Schleiermacher's project as a foil or as a stepping stone to Ritschl / Troeltsch / Barth, the history of religions school / Otto / Eliade, or Dilthey / Gadamer
• How confessional and non-confessional institutional locations shape the reception of Schleiermacher's theological and academic project
• Teaching Schleiermacher as a social activist whose life and thought holds constructive potential for ethical and political issues
• Teaching Schleiermacher in a post-colonial and gender- / race-conscious way or in non-Western spaces.