Faith, Truth, and Freedom

Faith, Truth, and Freedom Synopsis

Examines the expulsion of Professor Gerd Lüdemann from the Theology Faculty at the University of Göttingen.

Faith, Truth, and Freedom: The Expulsion of Professor Gerd Lüdemann from the Theology Faculty at Göttingen University sets forth the documentary record of a signal, significant event in the academic study of religion in the universities of the West. That event is the expulsion of Professor Gerd Lüdemann from the Theology Faculty at the University of Göttingen by reason of the content of his academic writing and lecturing on the history and theology of earliest Christianity.

He was expelled from his post as professor of the New Testament and assigned a professorship of the history and literature of Early Christianity, thereby losing all his academic rights and being forced into a ghetto existence within the theological faculty. The expulsion of a professor from his academic post, because of the public consequence of his scholarship for an academic and also a religious body, raises a variety of issues for the academy and for the Church as well as for public policy.

What is at issue is the academic study of religion and theology, specifically, the possibility of an authentically academic theological enterprise: can religion be studied by the rules of the academy? This book collects not only Professor Lüdemann's account of matters, but also the response of the Dean of the Protestant Theological Faculty at Göttingen, a score of comments by colleagues originally writing in the Anglo-American journal, Religion, newspaper reports and commentary, with all sides of the debate being represented.