"Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart" (RGG) (Religion in Past and Present ), and its first edition in particular, achieved a significant position in the history of theology like no other encyclopaedia. On the one hand, it lent expression to the dominant theological trends of its time, while on the other it provided theological impulses of its own.This study recreates the importance of the RGG for the history and politics of theology in the context of the publishing history of Protestant lexicography. Lexico-political issues are discussed with regard to aspects of academic, theological, educational and publishing policies.The study closes a gap in the research, as theological encyclopaedias have hitherto been seen as a neglected field of research.

This volume explores the socio-cultural dynamics of religious speeches through an analysis of Christian and Islamic sermons and preachers in the past and present. Part I focuses on the explicit contribution of sermons in socio-cultural transformation processes. It shows how the sermons’ connection to holy texts and religious norms of the specific group results in a tense relationship between preaching and the respective socio-cultural present. Part II intensifies this observation, analysing the dynamic tension between normativity and popularity. Rather than juxtaposing normative stances and 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 relevance of the ritual embeddedness of religious speech for the sermon as a catalyst of social dynamics and as a hybrid of normativity and popularity. It shows how speech and rituals are situated in a reciprocal relationship, where the performance of the speech, its own ritual character, and its positioning within religious practice must be individually examined.

Zweck und Ziel der christlichen Predigt sind Thema dieses Buches. Warum wird in christlichen, speziell protestantischen, Kirchen gepredigt? Welchen Zweck verfolgt die Predigt? Worauf zielt sie, und zwar als Handeln der Kirche wie auch in der konkreten Einzelpraxis? Die Frage nach Zweck und Ziel der Predigt ist grundlegend fA"r eine zukunftsfAhige Gottesdienstpraxis der evangelischen Kirche. Denn hier wird deutlich, ob die Kirche mit ihrer Predigt noch etwas will oder nur eine A"berkommene Pfl icht ableistet. In diesem Band werden rhetorische und Asthetische Perspektiven der Predigtlehre miteinander ins GesprAch gebracht.