Bavarian Research Center for Interreligious Discourses
In October 2020, the Bavarian Research Center for Interreligious Discourses (BaFID) was founded at FAU. The Bavarian State Government funds it and it replaced the previous research unit “Key Concepts in Interreligious Discourses” (KCID). The central goal of BaFID is to investigate the fundamental contents and key concepts of the monotheistic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam about each other and taking into account their intellectual contexts in a discursive manner. In addition to basic research, BaFID also has a social concern: the transfer of knowledge. The knowledge gained is to be effectively communicated to society to promote mutual understanding among religious communities and social cohesion. In this way, our research center contributes to peaceful coexistence and mutual recognition among people of different religious affiliations.
In November 2021, the newly founded “Erlanger Jahrbuch für Interreligiöse Diskurse” was published for the first time (the first volume can be purchased here). One year later the second volume with the title “Interreligious Discourses: Perspectives and Topics” (it can be bought here) was also published. In fall 2022 the volume on Human Rights in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the KCID series appeared. The first episode of our newly designed video series “Briefly Explained” deals with purity and the second episode with the preciousness of time.
Selected publications of the BaFID team members as well as of the doctoral fellows of the Hanns-Seidel-Foundation participating in BaFID can also be accessed on our homepage.
The interreligious calendar of BaFID presents the central festivals in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam including their interreligious references (here you can find a blog article on the Jewish “Tu bi-Schewat”), since September 2022 the interreligious calendar “Faces of the Region – Interreligiously through the Year 2023” was also available in print. Since fall 2022, the calendar pages have also been available in the Intercultural Calendar of the Bavarian Integration Commissioner.
