Religionizing Christianity: Towards a Poststructuralist Notion of Global Religious History

Abstract

By relying on poststructural theory, this article will demonstrate how a consistent historicization can help us increase our understanding of how religious contexts changed in light of colonialism and globalization during the nineteenth century. While it is well known that such changes took place in non-Western regions, the article will show – by example of German liberal theology – that it was also in the so-called West that common systems of knowledge were transformed against the backdrop of global entanglement. On the basis of some prominent protagonists of so-called Culture Protestantism (Kulturprotestantismus), I will demonstrate how global debates led to a certain re-conceptualization of Christianity as a world religion in the late nineteenth century. By identifying different traditions such as Christianity or Buddhism as equivalent, those theologians supported the emerging global awareness of religion as a universal aspect of human life and a category sui generis.