Offene Enden

The back­drop to this is the pro­found dis­so­lu­tion of the two major Chris­t­ian church­es in Ger­many due to the many vol­un­tary depar­tures of their mem­bers. Nev­er­the­less, it is con­ceiv­able that church build­ings in towns and vil­lages will become places where Chris­t­ian prin­ci­ples are rethought and lived anew.

OFFENE ENDEN explores the forms of com­mu­ni­ty that emerge from new, some­times hybrid, con­cepts for the use of sacred spaces — spaces that pre­vi­ous­ly served exclu­sive­ly reli­gious pur­pos­es. Will these new chal­lenges and uncon­ven­tion­al approach­es give rise to a new type of church, one that no longer relies on mem­ber­ship but on tem­po­rary par­tic­i­pa­tion? This is what we have attempt­ed to explore in this vol­ume. The numer­ous con­ver­sa­tions with key fig­ures and essays by renowned soci­ol­o­gists (Hans Joas, Clau­dia Neu, Detlef Pol­lack, and oth­ers) are framed and artis­ti­cal­ly reflect­ed by both Matthias Haman­n’s fine­ly bal­anced pho­to essay and Andrée Volk­man­n’s exu­ber­ant­ly reflec­tive comics.