Lyrisch glauben. Dem Unsagbaren auf der Spur

Jörg Seiler, Thomas Sojer and Konstantin Stawenow (eds.)
lyrisch glauben
Dem Unsagbaren auf der Spur
Herder publishing house, 2026
ISBN: 978-3-451-02510-5
280 pages
28 EUR

Faith. A word that sticks to the tongue like old wax on a church floor. Too many lies, too much dogma, too much of everything. But what if faith is something else? Something that does not preach, but asks questions, and commits itself to the question. Something that does not stand still, but breaks apart and reassembles itself. ‘Lyrical faith’ means giving voice to precisely these moments and nuances – the doubt, the rebellion, the silence that follows. 1,700 years after the Great Creed was formulated in Nicaea in 325, the ‘lyrisch glauben’ project launched a large-scale appeal to find new words for old questions. The resulting book brings together 123 texts in which people express their personal faith in a poetically condensed form. With great linguistic diversity and expressiveness, the reality of life and faith for people from the German-speaking world is poignantly articulated. These striking testimonies are complemented by in-depth accompanying texts by experts in theology, book studies and Literary Studies.

The editors

• Jörg Seiler has been Professor of Medieval and Modern Church History at the University of Erfurt since 2015. Together with Thomas Sojer, he heads the research unit “Sprachkunst und Religion” there.
• Thomas Sojer studied Catholic Theology and Religious Education in Erfurt, Graz, Innsbruck and London. He has been Head of the Hohenems Library (Vorarlberg) since 2024 and, together with Jörg Seiler, heads the “Language Arts and Religion” research unit at the University of Erfurt.
• Konstantin Stawenow has been studying at the Swiss Literature Institute of the Bern University of the Arts in Biel/Bienne since 2024. He has been a member of the “Language Art and Religion” research unit at the University of Erfurt since 2023. He is also a prize-winner of the Young Literature Forum of Hesse-Thuringia and the Young Authors’ Meeting.