Bible Performances: An Empirical-Qualitative Study about the Use of the Bible in Christian-Religious Practices

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Karin Birkner; Professorin Dr. Ursula Roth
• Subject Area: Protestant Theology ; Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 509489319

In scripture-based religions, religious identification, meaning-making, and orientation is achieved by using and referencing ,sacred texts’. Fuelled by religious transformation (secularisation, pluralisation, individualisation, re-sacralisation) those practices and the ways that they provide identities and orientation are changing. Our project will analyse contemporary manifestations and significance of those practices within the context of Christianity. Research will focus on performances of “Bible”-books as material objects (materiality), and on acts of referencing texts and their Christian traditions (text-referentiality). Three contexts will be scrutinised: ‚ritual’ (worship services), ‚religious education’ (church based education), and small bible groups (collective religiosity). Data will be generated by the study of Roman Catholic, Lutheran/Reformed and Free-Church/non-denominational communities in Switzerland and Germany. For the first time new methods of videography and ethnography, informed by transdisciplinary analyses will be applied to actual uses of the bible in different contexts. Unpacking confessional and cultural idiosyncrasies, will allow for a more profound and comprehensive theorisation of material manifestations, signification, and effects which performances of using and invoking biblical texts entail. Thus, a comprehensive taxonomy of Bible performances can be generated and their denominationally and culturally determined facilitation can be collated. In order to analyse ‘Bible performances’, we will show the interpenetration of (im-)materialities, i.e. in verbal reference, with different corporalities, i.e. in the use of books, tablets, or video projections. Rather than dismissing digital transformations as mere de-materialisation, our analysis sees all practices of text-referentiality and mediatisation as equally pervasive. Working from the intersection of Practical Theology and Interactional Linguistics, we will explore and develop data collection, triangulating methods used in videography and contribute to the visual, performative, material, and practice turns in theological research. An inductive-descriptive and multiperspective approach will reveal the state and shape of contemporary Bible performances. Analysing biblical texts within acts of speaking and physical performances will be combined with research into the cultural processes of constructing and dispensing (Bible-book-)knowledge. This will create insight into Bible-based education and religious (group-)identities. The project will address debates concerning religious material culture and the socio-religious impact of ‚sacred texts’ in contemporary culture. Systematically contrasting the individual projects and comparing different contexts, whilst generating fresh data, will provide access to different forms of contemporary bible performances in diverse religious traditions, producing a prevailing theorisation of the relevance of the Bible today.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Switzerland
• Partner Organisation: Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF)
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. David Plüss