Table Of ContentHeinz Streib · Constantin Klein Editors
Xenosophia and
Religion. Biographical
and Statistical Paths for
a Culture of Welcome
With a Foreword by
Andreas Zick
Xenosophia and Religion. Biographical
and Statistical Paths for a Culture of Welcome
Heinz Streib • Constantin Klein
Editors
Xenosophia and Religion.
Biographical and Statistical
Paths for a Culture of
Welcome
Editors
Heinz Streib Constantin Klein
Research Center for Biographical Studies Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität München
in Contemporary Religion München, Germany
Bielefeld University
Bielefeld, Germany
ISBN 978-3-319-74563-3 ISBN 978-3-319-74564-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74564-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018944134
© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information
storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the
editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors
or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims
in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Printed on acid-free paper
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part
of Springer Nature.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Foreword
“… there is something about religion that makes prejudice, and something about it
that un-makes prejudice”, assumes Gordon Allport in his well-known paper on the
The Religious Context of Prejudice, which was published 1966 in The International
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. The most important question is not
whether religion makes prejudices or not. Wars kill many millions of people in the
name of religion, religious sects and terror groups legitimize violence by religion,
women are marginalized with reference to religious books and writings, groups
have been exploited, tyrannized, and ostracized by religions. On the contrary, reli-
gions have rescued lives, supported peace and empathy, and are a cultural memory
of human rights. This has been true since religions appeared in the evolution of
humankind. Religion will make prejudices and it will unmake prejudices. Religion
rests on prejudices, and it liberates from prejudices. Religion is a sphere of conflict
and violence. People are interested in conflicts about the questions of whether and
which religion is more or less prone to prejudice, racism, and discrimination. Even
in recent modern and Western societies, conflicts stem from religion, rise within
religions, and are carried about religion. This all is reflected in the current book, but
it is not the most challenging scientific question of this book.
The most important word in Allport’s assumption is the little indefinite pronoun
something. This single word asks for the mechanism and dynamics that transfer
religion into hate or love. Why do some religious individuals and groups open their
minds, overcome feelings of threat and inscurity, and welcome those who seem to
be different, deviant, and strange, whereas other religious persons close their
minds, set boundaries between US and THEM, and try to displace, discriminate, or
injure others? What is this something within religion and within religious individu-
als and groups?
Heinz Streib and Constantin Klein face this challenge together with their team of
young scientists in this outstanding book on Xenosophia and Religion. They furnish
this brilliant overview with theoretical reflections, empirical qualitative and quanti-
tative research, and political discourses from many years of exploring, developing
empirical measures, testing and interviewing, and debating their approach within
the scientific community. This book is not an end of an innovative approach on the
v
vi Foreword
“religion-discrimination-link”, but it is an outcome of years of reviewing research
and researching in the field of religious studies, prejudice and racism research, and
social sciences.
It started years ago when the editors discovered that some relevant phenomena
linking religion to prejudices and discrimination are not answered reliably in
research. They especially started to flip the focus of traditional research and took the
positive side of religion more seriously into account. They focused on xenosophia
and asked: Where does xenosophia stem from, what is xenosophia, how can we
make it empirically accessible, and which emotions, cognitions, and behaviors can
occur when individuals and groups are xenosophic? This surprised us, i.e., the tra-
ditional researcher like me, focusing on the black side of religion and developing
the concept of group-focused enmity.
The present book, which readers finally hold in their hands, offers many urgent
answers to recent scientific questions on the link of xenosophia and xenophobia to
human thinking, feeling, and behaving, and it also offers critical questions and ways
to run more sophisticated research. It takes us into a scientific journey on the bio-
graphical, inter-personal and, collective roots of ingroup love and outgroup love or
hate. By a mixed-method approach taking a rich amount of qualitative and quantita-
tive data into account, the authors as a real cohesive team offer insights into the
philosophical, psychological, and social roots from faith to social realities. I love
this book. It is not easy and fast to read like many faster and easier written essays,
which dominate the public and even scientific debate. This book is a voice for com-
prehensive empirical research on a difficult issue. Only this sophisticated view can
offer evidence, which readers might not have expected so far.
This book offers a research compendium of theories on the link between faith
and discrimination, measurements of xenosophia, enmity, and biographies. It takes
many facets of the phenomena into account so that every reader who is interested in
issues of religion and prejudice will find ways into evidence-based discourses.
Readers should be open to being surprised. When reading books can make us wise,
this is a book on which we should take a chance. We will not be more or less reli-
gious, xenosophic, or xenophobic after reading. But we will be cleverer and more
prepared for the pitfalls of discourses.
Institute for Interdisciplinary Research Andreas Zick
on Conflict and Violence, Director
Preface
This book presents the results of the Bielefeld study on xenosophia and religion in
Germany. The research has been carried through by a research team at Bielefeld
University, Germany, under the leadership of the first editor of this volume, Heinz
Streib, and with the second editor, Constantin Klein, as primary researcher. The
team has cooperated in designing research, collecting data, evaluating quantitatively
and qualitatively, and finally in designing and writing the chapters of this volume.
Thus, many people have contributed to successfully complete research and writing,
and this book is truly the result of effective teamwork. And here is the chance to
mention team members and say thanks.
We thank Anne Swhajor-Biesemann, Uwe Drexelius, and Sven Luhmann for
assisting in questionnaire construction in the first phase of the project. Special
thanks go to Ramona Bullik, who joined the team in the second phase of the project
and has been engaged in interviewee selection and invitation, in interviewing itself,
in interview evaluation, and in organizing and administering the qualitative part of
project. For interviewing and/or evaluation, we would like to thank Arne Scheunchen,
Martin Hornshaw, Tobias Stacke, and Joana Butenaite, who joined our team for a
couple of months as an Erasmus intern from Lithuania. Further thanks go to Corinna
Beuchel who has transcribed all the interviews.
After the completion of fieldwork, the intense phase of statistical analyses began.
Then, Matthias Lühr joined the team as a postgraduate intern, and we thank him for
his contributions to our statistical analyses and his authorship of Chap. 7. We also
thank Carsten Gennerich, who is a professor of religious education at the University
of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt, for contributing his expertise in value research
and for authoring Chap. 9.
For the qualitative work such as interview evaluation and case study writing,
Ramona Bullik continued in the team; we thank her especially for her contributions
to Chaps. 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14. We are grateful also to Barbara Keller, a licensed
psychotherapist for psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapy and the primary
researcher in previous and current Bielefeld-based projects, to accept our invitation
to join the team, contribute her experience to the qualitative part of the study, and
engage as (co-)author in several chapters. Finally, we thank Sakin Özışık and Tobias
vii
viii Preface
Stacke for their contributions to the case studies in Chaps. 13 and 14. For language
editing and proofreading, we would like to thank Stephanie Hauser.
We also express our thanks to Springer publishing house to include this volume
in their collection of psychological works and especially we thank the senior pub-
lishing editor in philosophy and religious studies, Cristina Alves dos Santos, for her
kind support.
We are very grateful to the German Research Foundation/Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft for funding the research, and thank Bielefeld University
for hosting it.
And last, but not least, we want to thank all our research participants who
accepted our invitation to take part in the surveys and answer a comprehensive ques-
tionnaire. Special thanks go to those participants who have shared their thoughts
and reflections about their lives in personal interviews. Without their participation,
this study would have never been possible.
Bielefeld, Germany Heinz Streib
München, Germany Constantin Klein
Introduction
Xenosophia is a term that needs explanation, because it is new to empirical research.
The Ancient Greek word xenos means the stranger or foreigner—as in today’s
meaning of ‘xenophobia;’ and the Ancient Greek word sophia means wisdom. Thus
‘xenosophia’ means the wisdom that might emerge from the encounter with the
strange and the wisdom of adequately responding to the strange. While we are prob-
ably the first to introduce this term in empirical research, we are not the first to use
the word. We have, as detailed in Chap. 1, been inspired by Waldenfels’ (2011)
philosophy of the alien and by Nakamura’s (2000) book with the title Xenosophie,
in which he presents “building blocks for a theory of alienness.” Inspired by these
philosophers, we propose as decisive characteristic of ‘xenosophia’ a specific kind
of responsivity that resists hastily putting the strange in a box and making it an other.
In other words: xenosophia is characterized by hermeneutic humility. In this under-
standing, we regard xenosophia being the opposite of xenophobia. Thus we decided
to put xenosophia to the fore in this book.
In the following, Chap. 1 explains the theoretical background of a salutogenic
perspective and gives details about our understanding of ‘xenosophia’ in relation to
‘tolerance;’ and Chap. 2 relates our study to previous research on prejudice and
religion. Then, Chap. 3 presents methodological considerations about our instru-
ment for qualitative analysis, the faith development interview, and Chap. 4 describes
our research design, instruments and sample characteristics in detail.
When we were preparing our Bielefeld Study on Xenosophia and Religion, we
could not foresee that the publication of its results would take place at a time of an
epidemic global increase of prejudice and xenophobia, particularly against immi-
grants and refugees, an epidemic that obviously has infected also political leaders.
But in view of these changes, we think, the results of our study may be read as being
even more provocative—and hopefully inspire reflection and research on prejudice
prevention.
Our research portrays critical times in Germany (see Chap. 5). It documents atti-
tudes in the German population in the time of massive refugee immigration into our
country. We were online with a survey in August 2015, when the first large refugee
migration wave along the Balkan route arrived in Germany, and we were online
ix
x Introduction
with a questionnaire again in March 2016, when the discussion about the “refugee
crisis” dominated the political discourse in Germany and other European countries.
Thus, our results address questions like this: does a culture of welcome and dialog
have a chance in times of massive refugee migration?
Germany may be regarded by many, not only by the refugees, as being a heaven
for the culture of welcome. And surveys, including our own, document indeed that
a majority of Germans agree that war refugees should be welcome. But survey
results also indicate that Germany is not an isle of the blessed. Data from our
research document, for the relatively short time of half a year, a considerable
decrease of agreement to the welcoming of war refugees and an increase of xeno-
phobia and other prejudices, especially in East Germany. These are indications of
developments in the German population that must evoke the concern of all who
support an open society that includes diversity.
In light of these developments, scientific research has the task of not only moni-
toring prejudice and xenophobia, but also of exploring the factors that support and
reinforce prejudice and xenophobia. Moreover, scientific research has the task of
investigating the forces at work for prejudice reduction and identifying factors that
may nurture the culture of welcome and xenophilic attitudes. To take up the meta-
phor again: we need to know what makes people “diseased” with prejudice and
what spreads the xenophobic epidemic. But we also want to know how people
regain their “health;” research should aim at identifying the healing powers for the
xenophobic epidemic. In other terms: besides a pathogenic perspective, scientific
research should also aim at profiling a salutogenic perspective (Antonovsky, 1979;
1987; Mittelmark, et al., 2017).
In our research we have thus included a focus on the exploration of potential
healing powers and pay special attention to the examination of the psychological
and religious constituents that may support positive attitudes such as the culture of
welcome or the appreciation of religious diversity. In comparison with extant preju-
dice research (see Chap. 2, for details), the unique feature of our research is special
attention to religion and world view in relation to prejudice. Thereby, our research
design includes a differential assessment of religion and thus attends to difference
in religious styles and religious schemata (see Chaps. 3 and 6). In agreement with
Allport (1954), we believe that religion can “make” and “unmake” prejudice, and
that it is a religion “of an ethnocentric order” that makes prejudice, and a religion
“of a universalistic order” that unmakes prejudice. The assessment of religious
schemata in our study accounts for this double-edged effect of religion.
Our research included the examination of paths to xenosophia—as a step to pro-
file the salutogenic perspective. And the main parts of this book are about these
paths. Thereby, ‘path’ is used for both the modelling of quantitative data and the
biographical-reconstructive interpretation of interviews. This is supposed to express
our expectation that both versions of paths complement each other and that, even in
respect to differences between qualitative and quantitative results, their triangula-
tion may yield a more comprehensive picture.
Quantitative analyses are presented in Part II of this book. It begins in Chap. 5
with a comprehensive documentation of xenophobic and xenophilic attitudes in
