Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
The VU-Faculty of Religion and Theology reflects Amsterdam’s multicultural, multilingual, and multi-confessional reality. Once founded as a private university by the Gereformeerde Kerk in Nederland (Dutch Double-Reformed Church), the need was felt, some twenty years ago, to rearrange the theological agenda. Chris Doude van Troostwijk, professor at the LSRS, remembers having been involved at that time in the development of a new educational format for the faculty. Things have progressed since then. One could compare the faculty to a “caravanserai”. On a large inner court travelers and explorers from all kinds of religious horizons meet. Each of them is hosted, according to his or her spiritual background, in private apartments: the confessional or religious “seminaries”. At the same time, its gates are open to society, most concretely to the fast-growing international business area in which the University is located. On Thursday 19th of November 2020, the three directors and deans of the LSRS, the Faculty Religion and Theology (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and the Mennonite Seminary attached to this faculty, signed a framework agreement in which they express their common vision on further cooperation. After some months of preparatory discussion and not wanting to delay their agreement for Corona-reasons, professor Jean Ehret (LSRS), professor Ruard Ganzevoort (VU) and minister Alex Noord (Mennonite Seminary) decided to meet in Zoom-context. The framework agreement confirms what has been already informally the case, since LSRS-professor Chris Doude van Troostwijk was nominated ‘visiting professor’ on the chair for Liberal Theology of the Dutch Mennonite Seminary. The LSRS and the VU-faculty share the conviction that nowadays postmodern society should avoid to neglect, for whatever ideological or political reasons, the importance of religious forms of life. She has the responsibility to create open spaces of sense-making interaction and non-prejudiced communication between the members of various belief-groups. Academics should critically develop religious literacy, in order to prevent believers to withdraw in bastions of non-communicative truth claims. Doude van Troostwijk’s research project Ars Bene Credendi, developed both in Amsterdam and Luxembourg, focusses on the rhetorics of various belief-regimes, whether religious, financial, scientific or other. Within this methodological framework, a lexicon project on “Inventive Theologies” is in progress.