Research Profile

Short Bio

I am a scholar of philosophy, particularly interested in the modern-day understandings of religion and faith in Anglo-Christian societies and their relation to the public and scientific debate. At the I Inst. for Comparative Theologies I head the research group “Religion and the Sciences” where we study the impact of systematic theology on the current scientific and political discourse.

Research Interests

• Interreligious dialogue and disagreement
• Epistemology of religious experience
• Ritual, moral formation, and forgiveness
• Hermeneutics and scriptural practices
• Religion, technology, and public life
• Postsecularism and law

Short CV

• 2021–present: Senior Research Fellow, Inst. for Comparative Theologies
• 2018–2021: Lecturer in Philosophy of Religion, Catholic LZMS Paris School of Ethics
• 2014–2018: Doctoral Researcher, Hegel von Scholz Institute Paris
• 2012–2014: Research Assistant, Hegel von Scholz Institute Paris

Affiliations

• Inst. for Comparative Theologies — Centre for Philosophy of Religion
• Centre for Ritual and Moral Psychology, Brynmere
• Network for Postcolonial Theologies, Austerleigh

Education

• PhD, Philosophy of Religion, Hegel von Scholz Institute, Paris, KAANT Group, 2018
• MA, Philosophical Theology, Hegel von Scholz Institute Paris, 2014
• BA, Alterna Hochschule Gießen, 2012

Teaching

• Comparative Philosophy of Religion
• Religion, Ethics, and Public Life
• Hermeneutics and Sacred Texts
• Religion, Technology, and Community

Awards

• Early Career Prize, Aurora Humanities Council, 2020
• Best Article Award, Comparative Theologies Quarterly, 2022

Publications

• Flavel Waseem, Plural Normativities: Moral Disagreement in Interreligious Contexts, Comparative Theologies Quarterly , 2022.
• Flavel Waseem, Testimony, Trust, and Sacred Texts in Migrant Communities, Journal of Lived Religion Studies , 2021.
• Flavel Waseem; A. Idris, Rituals of Forgiveness and Civic Repair, Interfaith Reasoning Review , 2020.
• Flavel Waseem, Digital Piety: Religious Reasoning on Encrypted Platforms, Religion & Public Deliberation Monographs , 2023.
• Flavel Waseem, The prophetic literature in the Old Testament and the representation of today’s Israel’s settlement politics in Gaza and the West Bank in French online social media - a discourse analysis, Philosophy of Religion Annual , 2019.

Abstract

Churches across the anglo-christian culture sphere experience decreasing membership numbers, especially in the group of young adults. Previous research has shown that one factor contributing to the declining number of young adults attending church services is their perception of a missing or misaligned consistency in the institution’s representation. In this paper we draw on the theory of systematic theology, which is founded in the principle of coherence and strives to deliver a logically consistent representation of the christian faith, to explore their perception further. While the general perception has been studied through various surveys and longitudinal experiments, it remains underexplored how young adults view the church’s role and responsibility (measured through perceived coherence, rationality and solidarity) specifically in political discourses which mobilise the majority of their generation. We therefore conducted two surveys (n=562) and two rounds of semi structured interviews (n=29) with young adults between 18 and 30 during the Fridays for Future protests 2019 and 2024 in Brazil, Italy and Poland. This work summarises the findings and compares the perceived coherence, rationality and solidarity of the church over time. We find significant geographical differences between Italy and Brazil where Italian young adults displayed a higher perceived coherence but lower perceived solidarity. We found the answers of most participant groups to display a correlation between perceived rationality and solidarity which leads us to propose future approaches towards young adults be rooted more closely in systematic theology.