Programme

Competing Values, Shifting Norms

Questioning the Intersection of Religion and Politics through Moral Debates

The 2025 UCSIA summer school offers an inquiry on how the intersection of religion and politics today is predominantly articulated through moral lenses and their effects. Building on the 2024 summer school on theopolitics and the theological narratives of nationalism, populism and conservatism from an institutionalized level, this year’s focus will be on the entanglements between the political and the religious via moral tensions and debates from a bottom-up perspective and their influence on different levels of (theo)political action.  

The human capacity to shape one’s life and environment has brought forward an incessant negotiation of values and norms, of definitions of the good life, shaping various philosophical and religious traditions. These traditions continue to influence the cultural, social and political spheres and inform the power dynamics between the state, religious and social institutions, and individual lives.  At the same time, we observe the channeling of religious and political frictions in (conservative) moral discourses and value conflicts and the intense moralization of for example, women’s bodies, migrants and refugees, …

In a rapidly changing world caught in overlapping multiple crises, it is crucial to analyse the historical, philosophical and theological inspirations of such moral debates and their role in (shifting) power dynamics. The shifting boundaries and frictions between public and private, secular and religious determine the intrinsic relationship of politics and religion, while simultaneously reshaping the moral vocabularies and their conflictual or emancipatory potential.

As expressions of first principles, moral values have varying and often competing sources. Consequently, the question of authority emerges, who should interpret the sources of morality and define values, norms, their scope and ensuing practices. It has a lasting impact on both the search for meaning and the expression and creation of (new) identities, as they affect the outlook of and interactions between majority and minority communities, and the self-understanding of individuals within different relational scales (family, institutions, state).

By bringing together the different disciplines of the human and social sciences, this summer school will critically reflect on historical and contemporary discourses on moral issues, their philosophical and theological inspirations, and political implications.  

Papers may address but are not limited to the following questions:  

• How do the entanglements between religion and politics take moral shape in public discourse, social life and ensuing practices? 
• How do different sources of morality compete against each other, on a conceptual, discursive and/or practical level?  
• How is moral authority negotiated in the religious and political realm, and to what ends? 
• How do shifting moral discourses influence projects of self and collective transformation and everyday practices?  
• How do moral/religious values provide scope for more just worlds, a politics of care and human aspirations?

Preliminary schedule

Programme overview