DialoguePerspectives allows its participants to work across disciplines and to encounter multipliers of diverse religious and non-religious affiliations. During the seminars the participants reflect upon societal and political frameworks and their meaning for the respective religious communities in Europe. Topics include commonalities and differences in the shared lives of religious communities, constitutional prerequisites on the relationship between state and religion, the socio-political and personal implications resulting from them.
Through practical, outcome-oriented, and pluralistic dialogue processes and formats we equip our participants with concrete tools for taking on the challenges of our pluralistic and increasingly fragmented and polarized society. They learn to use their diverse sets of expertise to strengthen their communities and formulate their needs for the whole of society. They develop strategies against nationalism, right-wing extremism, anti-Semitism and (anti-Muslim) racism and for a pluralistic, democratic, society based in solidarity that they can apply and perpetuate long-term in their own alliances and in their academic and professional lives.
Religious Practice
Joint religious practice during the events is, alongside the academic work, a further focal point of the programme. DialoguePerspectives creates a space to both live out your own practices and to get to know the practices of other religious communities and worldviews. Participants create morning inputs in which they can introduce and share with each other their religious and spiritual practices. They forge shared forms of expressions that open up new religious and spiritual approaches.
The results of the participants’ collaboration are presented to a broader public at annual summits. The design of the summit and the presentation of the theses developed at the seminars are in the hands of our participants. This communicates the participatory moment that so shapes DialoguePerspectives: the participants are at the center of the programme. The summit is complemented by a guest lecture or a panel including internationally renowned experts in worldview-interfaith dialogue.
As participants in the DialoguePerspectives programme students take part in two seminars and one Annual Summit in 2023/24.
˝To be part of such a diverse group helped me realize that our goals are more similar than I used to think before.
Ben, DialoguePerspectives participant