Britta Richter is going to present a working paper on 'Identifying interpretations of meaning in life: religious beliefs and connectedness as a category of meaning'

My dissertation project aims to contribute to the development of a cultural theology of Lebenssinndeutung (interpretation of lifemeaning) as suggested by the theologian Wilhelm Gräb. In a Grounded Theory approach a 6-dimensional-model of „Connectedness“ was developed which allows to identify subjective constructions of life meaning by qualitative inquiry. 

The study’s objective is a typology of a variety of types of connectedness. It suggests a new approach to the study of religion in which the antagonistic semantic of religious and non-religious worldview is left behind to foster a comprising differentia specifica of a religious mode of being in the world: connectedness.