Ritual and Social Dynamics in Christian and Islamic Preaching

Christian and Islamic sermons from past and present, and their preachers, are analyzed to reveal the socio-cultural dynamics of religious speeches. Part I focuses on the explicit contribution of sermons in socio-cultural transformation processes. It shows how sermons connect with holy texts, religious norms of the specific group, and social-cultural contexts. Part II analyzes the dynamic tension between normativity and popularity. Rather than juxtaposing normative stances and the popularity of sermons, it shows how that normativity can itself contribute to popularity and the quest of popularity carries its own normative stances. Part III explores the ritual embeddedness of religious speech in the sermon in relation to social dynamics, normativity, and popularity, and shows how speech and rituals have a reciprocal relationship.

Ruth Conrad is Professor of Practical Theology at Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany.

Roland Hardenberg is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany.

Hanna Miethner is a research assistant for the faculty of Practical Theology at Humboldt-University Berlin, Germany.

Max Stille is Associate Researcher at the Center for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin. He received his PhD in Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures from the University of Heidelberg. Stille won an award from the European Association of South Asian Studies and is Principle Investigator in a project of the Gerda Henkel Foundation. He has published in various journals and books of South Asian Studies, Islamic Studies and History.

Max Stille is Executive Director of NETZ Partnership for Development and Justice, Germany.