Academics and scholar-practitioners alike find themselves living in the midst of a “crisis of engagement” vis-à-vis large global crises, intractable geopolitical conflicts, and waves of global migration. Because these situations are creating greater social and cultural instability and intercultural stress across many regions of the world, the academic fields of “Politics and Religion,” “Religions and International Relations,” “Conflict and Peace Studies,” and “Intercultural Theology and Interreligious Studies” have received renewed attention. This conference brought these fields into conjunction with discourses of engagement developed by academics and scholar-practitioners working to understand and confront the intertwinement of religion & politics in areas of global crises, migration, and intercultural stress, as well as the fields of trauma, conflict transformation, and peacebuilding. Drawing on the insights gained, the conference sought to reflect on and foster new engaging intercultural theologies and interreligious studies.

At the sixth ESITIS conference about 80 participants spent three days attending sessions with stimulating papers that ignited lively discussion. The six plenary sessions addressed the following issues:

1. The future of political theologies and discourses of engagement
2. Facing new politics and religion entanglements: critical study of religion perspectives
3. Migrants, refugees and religion: negotiating intercultural stress
4. Religions engaging trauma, conflict, and peace;
5. Making peace with Islam: Islamic approaches to peacemaking;
6. Towards engaged intercultural theologies and interreligious studies.

• Program
• Poster
• Paper Presentations Abstracts
• Photos