Purpose This paper aims to analyze the relationship between religious differences (i.e. religious diversity and tolerance diversity), on the one hand, and dysfunctional intergroup conflicts, on the other. Design/methodology/approach A quantitative research design is used, through which the paper examines 47 public schools in India. Findings Religious diversity, that is, the distribution of hete...

The interface of religious identities, with state and politics is creating communal, ethnic and sectarian conflicts in South Asia. In spite of its geographical vastness and thousands of communities, the region remains conceived by sociologists in terms of religious identities. By continuing to discuss religious experiences, identities and conflicts in majority-minority terms, sociological disco...

Abstract This article presents conceptual results from the Interfaculty Research Cooperation “Religious Conflicts and Coping Strategies” at University of Bern. Since 2018, researchers various academic disciplines—theology, psychology, law, religious studies, social anthropology, jewish islamic political sciences, history, communication philosophy, gender studies german studies—have been compara...

This paper focuses on the conflicts that arise in relation to “the place” of religious symbols in the public sphere, and, specifically, in State schools. Such conflicts, I believe, do not only reflect most of the dilemmas that liberal democracies face in the attempt to reconcile constitutionalism and religion through adherence to secularism in the public place—they actually challenge the very l...

What is the attitude and what are the positions adopted by the Catholic Church in Belgium vis-à-vis the family between the middle of the nineteenth century and World War I? The question is important for several reasons. Between 1750 and 1950, the family underwent impressive changes (Ariès, 1960; Burguière, 1986). The Church occupied an exceptional, and contested, place within the conjugal and f...

Some of the world’s violent conflicts are mainly economic, territorial or tribal. But many seem to come, at least in part, from conflicts between the belief systems of different groups. How far do these differences have to be accepted as a brute fact, and how far is it possible to transcend them? How far is fruitful dialogue possible between members of conflicting national or religious groups w...