Public Lecture
Religion as Communication
Speaker: Dr. Dimitrios Methenitis
Time: 7-9 pm | 7 May 2024 (Tue)
Venue: CBA, G/F, Chow Yei Ching Building, HKU
Conducted in English | Free admission | All are welcome
About the speaker
Dimitrios Methenitis is a Doctor of Sociology from the University Humboldt of Berlin in the Department of Asian and African Studies. He has two Master Degrees in the fields of Religious Studies (University of Padova) and Global Studies (University of Freiburg) and a Bachelor Degree in East Asian Studies (University of Sheffield). He has spent two years in the University of Nanjing to study the Chinese language (scholarship). His field of study is the Global South and more particularly the societies of East and Southeast Asia. He has conducted fieldwork in China, Thailand, Argentina and Greece. He is author of the book: Globalization, Modernity and the Rise of Religious Fundamentalism, (Routledge 2019).
Lecture Abstract
In this lecture, in order to observe the religious function from a sociological perspective, religions will be regarded as a particular form of communication, as a mechanism that brings in communication the invisible world with the visible world. By examining religions from their very birth in this lecture, it will be demonstrated how a religion is formed and more specifically what was a religion before it became one. To do that we will look upon the salient role of the founding father of a religion, his teachings and his impact on his community but also the issue of the succession of charisma. Finally it will be demonstrated how a religion becomes an autonomous and complex system of communication. This lecture will use concrete historical examples from different world religions in order to show how Systems Theory can be applied for the analysis of religious traditions.
Organizer HKU Centre of Buddhist Studies
Sponsor Tung Lin Kok Yuen