Sub-Project Jesuits in Asia and Europe – Transcultural Christianity and the Narratives of Orthodoxy (MC 3.2)

Project Leader: Antje Flüchter

Early modern Christianity is mostly conceptualised as a specific European religion, whereas its transcultural character, its non-European origin and its non-European forms are mostly blinded out. The project Trancultural Christianity and the Narratives of Orthodoxy challenged this traditional Western master narrative of Christianity as a purely European religion by unearthing the transcultural dimensions of European Christianity and developing an alternative model to understand a transcultural Christendom.

Conceptual Framing
The project Transcultural Christianity and the Narratives of Orthodoxy was built on a transcultural perspective. It was interested in the mingling and constructing of cultural and religious groups as well as boundaries. On a conceptual level, it pursued two central interests:
1. The Negotiating of Transcultural Dimension of Christianity:
Starting from the assumption, that everything is transcultural, the project explored, how transcultural dimensions and elements are negotiated or evolve. In the context of religion and even more evangelisation, it was necessary for the missionaries as well as for regular pastors to know and understand the beliefs of the target audience. This kind of negotiating has a praxeologic as well as a discursive layer. Therefore the project employed concepts of (cultural) translation as well as appropriation from below. The translation of spiritual and holy texts is central for all pastoral work. Therefore it was used to analyse the work and writing of the missionaries. However, evangelisation cannot be understood just as a top down process. Therefore we were also interested in the strategies of a ‘wilful obstinacy’ the ‘common folk’ used to appropriate religious beliefs and norms installed from above.
2. Talking about Transculturality under the Conditions of the Narratives of Orthodoxy:
For decades or even centuries the Western discourse was dominated by master narratives of national identity as well as religious orthodoxy. Therefore it was asked, if and how authors could write about transculturality and whether transculturality could be accepted at all as part of a cultural identity. To analyse the borders of the sayable the project combined concepts about master narratives with classic discourse analyse.