Crises and Preaching

Is preaching consubstantial with crisis? Did the different religious traditions present in the Middle East come to grip with the notion of crisis during the contemporary period? This workshop examines the similarities and divergences between preaching endeavours by the different religious traditions and the transformations in religious discourse in the Middle East from the end of the 19th century onwards. Through a comparative and diachronic analysis, it aims to identify what "constitutes a crisis" for particular religious actors at a given moment in the contemporary history of the Middle East (e.g. military defeat, feelings of inferiority vis-à-vis Europe, demographic decline of a given religious group, secularisation of institutions, rise of atheism, etc.)