What is the Handbook of Religions?

A peer-reviewed serial as a digital knowledge database — ISSN 2510-6740

Articles are published in German. From supplement 57 they carry English titles, abstracts and keywords; earlier articles are being supplemented. This information page is available in multiple languages.

The Handbook of Religions is a unique, scientifically grounded reference work — unparalleled in scope and comprehensiveness — covering the entire spectrum of religions in Germany and the German-speaking world.

The Handbook of Religions is a peer-reviewed serial (ISSN 2510-6740) published as a searchable knowledge database: full texts in German; from supplement 57 with English titles, abstracts and keywords (earlier articles are being supplemented). Bibliographic metadata, subject headings and DOIs are publicly discoverable; the full text sits behind campus, subscription or individual access. The current version of each article is the canonical reading text; earlier scholarly versions are retained as versioned records once they are available digitally. Citation follows the usual formats (including BibTeX and RIS).

The handbook describes lived religions in the German-speaking world from the standpoint of the academic study of religions, and without dogma — without prescribing denominational teaching. It is written for those who deal daily with religion, faith, and moral and social norms: teachers and student teachers, early-childhood educators, social work, counselling, public authorities, journalism, politics — and anyone who needs orientation in a society that is both religiously plural and secular, including work with refugees, migrants and non-religious ways of life. Theologians are of course addressed as well. The work is not a teacher-training manual and not a denominational textbook.

As a work in the academic study of religions, it does not rank religions as “true” or “false”: it describes structures, practice and lived reality — without confessional judgements of truth.

Subject Spectrum

It provides authoritative and up-to-date information on:

  • The Orthodox Churches
  • The Roman Catholic Church
  • The Protestant Churches
  • Other transdenominational movements
  • Ecumenical efforts
  • Christian faith communities outside the major churches
  • Judaism
  • Islam
  • Communities that have emerged from Islam (e.g., Ahmadiyya, Alevis, Baha'is)
  • Other smaller religions (e.g., Yezidis, Mandaeans)
  • Buddhism
  • Asian groups and movements, or those originating in Asia
  • Other new movements (e.g., Grail Movement, Fiat Lux, Scientology, etc.)
  • Sikhism
  • Jainism
  • Ethnic religions (e.g., Neo-Germanic groups, Neo-shamanism, Wicca, etc.)
  • Ethics

Scope and Currency

  • 704 Scholarly articles
  • 10.878 pages Scope
  • EL 89 Current supplement
  • 4 × approx. 160 pages/year Supplements

The work provides comprehensive information across 10.878 pages on history, core religious tenets and authorities, organization and dissemination, religious practice, relations with the state and other religions.

Four supplementary issues are published annually, each containing approximately 160 pages. These provide ongoing updates on new developments and address changes.

Digital knowledge database

Distribution is moving from the print loose-leaf collection to handbuch-der-religionen.de. The work remains the same serial with an ISSN: updated four times a year, with full-text search, an HTML reader and PDF. Print is still supplied in 2026; digital terms apply from 2027. Libraries that already hold the print basic work keep it when switching. They secure continuity through a campus licence (IP, HAN, EZproxy). Personal subscriptions and purchase of individual articles are available as well.

Campus access and pricing

Research Capabilities

To meet the need for guidance in both practice and academia, the handbook provides references to important literature, new publications, and addresses, including web links for contacting organizations. It enables research into topics such as:

  • Requirements and challenges regarding immigration and integration
  • Dangers posed by certain groups and "sects"
  • Dealing with believers in distress, illness, and dying
  • Heaven, hell, and reincarnation
  • The role of women in religious communities
  • Fundamentalism and violence
  • Religious socialization
  • Core values
  • Ecumenical bridge-building
  • Statistical data and facts

Scientific Quality

The result is a practical handbook that — authored by a team of competent experts — provides scientifically grounded guidance.

Michael Klöcker (University of Cologne) · Udo Tworuschka (Friedrich Schiller University Jena) · Martin Rötting (University of Salzburg, since 2024)

About the editors and their scholarly approach

  • All contributions undergo a peer-review process.
  • Articles receive a DOI; it is shown once Nomos has confirmed it.
  • ISSN 3056-5081 (Online) · ISSN 2510-6740 (Print)
  • From supplement 57: English titles, abstracts and keywords; earlier articles are being supplemented. Bibliographic metadata and DOIs are publicly discoverable.
  • The current corpus is searchable in full text.
  • Citation in the usual formats, including BibTeX and RIS.
  • The current version of each article is the canonical reading text. Earlier scholarly versions are retained as versioned records once they have been prepared digitally.

Founded in 1997 by Klöcker and Tworuschka, the handbook is a serial reference work on religions lived in the German-speaking world — that remains its distinctive focus. Martin Rötting has been a co-editor since 2024. All contributions are peer-reviewed; final responsibility rests with the editors. It is a reference work with an ISSN, not a closed 2012 book and not a denominational textbook.

Editors and their place in the field

The handbook stands in the academic study of religions in the German-speaking world: a historian of religion and society, a scholar of lived perception, and a scholar of interreligious presence. The editors bear final responsibility for conception and quality.

Prof. Dr. Michael Klöcker

Gründungsherausgeber · em. · Universität zu Köln

Prof. Dr. Michael Klöcker (b. 1943) is a historian of religion, education, society and culture. He taught modern social history and the didactics of history at the University of Cologne (associate professor, retired 2009). From 1982 to 2004 he co-directed the Interdisciplinary Institute for the History of Religions in Bad Münstereifel/Cologne with Udo Tworuschka. In 1997 the two founded the Handbook of Religions.

Scholarly approach

Michael Klöcker regards religion primarily as a historical and social reality. For him, religion is visible not only in doctrines and religious institutions, but also in how people shape their lives and how religious communities act within a society.

His scholarly focus therefore lies especially on the connection between religion, history and social change. Taking German Catholicism as an example, Klöcker examines religious milieus, social formations, education, political and social developments, and changing church affiliations. Religion thus appears as part of a society that is continually changing.

Methodologically, Klöcker understands himself as a critical rationalist, while also drawing on phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches. Religious phenomena are to be described as comprehensibly as possible, placed in historical context, and examined critically.

In short: Klöcker asks how religion takes shape in history and society, how it forms people and social milieus — and how it changes under changing social conditions.

Further links: Wikipedia · GND

Prof. Dr. Udo Tworuschka

Gründungsherausgeber · em. · Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

Prof. Dr. Udo Tworuschka (b. 1949) is a scholar of religion. After work in religious education at the University of Cologne he held the chair of religious studies at Friedrich Schiller University Jena from 1993 to 2011. He is regarded as a pioneer of practical religious studies (Praktische Religionswissenschaft) and understands the study of religions as a science of perception (Wahrnehmungswissenschaft). In 1997 he founded the Handbook of Religions with Michael Klöcker.

Scholarly approach

For Udo Tworuschka, the study of religions as a “science of perception” (Wahrnehmungswissenschaft) means roughly the following:

Religion should not be studied only through doctrines, dogmas, sacred texts or institutions. Equally decisive is how religion is perceived, experienced and lived in everyday life. Tworuschka therefore turns to “lived religion”.

He is particularly interested in how religion shapes the elementary domains of human life: eating, clothing, family, sexuality, work, health, notions of time and space, feelings, gestures or bodily conduct. Religion is examined where it becomes concretely experienceable for people.

“Perception” has two sides: the scholar of religion asks how religious people perceive their world, and must also reflect on how he or she perceives and describes religion. That distinguishes this approach from a merely external classification of religious systems.

A clear example is Tworuschka’s “auditive turn”: religion is accessed not only through texts and images, but also through sound, voice, noise, silence, atmosphere and listening. This too shows his broadened understanding of perception.

In brief: Religion is for him not first a system of propositions, but a reality perceived and lived by human beings. The study of religions examines how this reality shapes human perceiving, feeling and acting.

Further links: Wikipedia · GND · Wikidata

Prof. Dr. Martin Rötting

Herausgeber · Paris-Lodron-Universität Salzburg

Prof. Dr. Martin Rötting (b. 1970) is a scholar of religion and a religious educator. He is associate professor of Religious Studies at Paris Lodron University of Salzburg and heads the Centre for Intercultural Theology and the Study of Religions. He co-founded OCCURSO, an institute for interreligious and intercultural encounter, and chairs its board. He has been a co-editor of the Handbook of Religions since 2024.

Scholarly approach

Martin Rötting regards religion especially under the conditions of a religiously and ideologically diverse present. He is interested in what happens when people of different religious traditions encounter one another, and when religious convictions, personal experience and new forms of spirituality meet.

A focus of his research is therefore interreligious learning, dialogue and spiritual identity. Religious identity does not appear as something given once and for all. People develop and change their religious and spiritual orientations over the course of a life, through experience, encounter and engagement with different religious traditions.

Rötting also studies these processes empirically. His attention is thus on lived religious diversity: on individual religiosity, spaces of interreligious encounter, and the question of how people in a plural society find their own religious or spiritual position.

In short: Rötting asks how religion changes in encounter with other religions and worldviews — and how people develop from this their own religious and spiritual orientation.

Further links: Wikipedia · Universität Salzburg · Homepage

Subject editors

The subject editors are responsible for individual religions, denominations and cross-cutting themes. They secure the scholarly depth of the serial and work with the editors-in-chief on acceptance, review and the ongoing updating of articles.

Not to be confused with

The Handbook of Religions (Westarp Science, ISSN 2510-6740) is not the Handbuch der Religionen der Welt (Porsche-Ludwig/Bellers, Verlag Traugott Bautz, 2012). That work is a closed, country-by-country print survey. This handbook is a continuously updated scholarly reference work on lived religions in Germany and the German-speaking world.

Who is the handbook indispensable for?

Religion is a question of society, not a niche subject.

Religious belonging is often a stronger rule of orientation in human life than many other bonds: people have been willing to die for their God and to wage war. Understanding the religion of others is a precondition of peaceful coexistence. The handbook is for anyone who needs well-founded knowledge of lived religions — in education, counselling, administration and public life, not only in theology.

This shows in topics from social practice: sexual abuse in religious communities, Islamic early-childhood centres, care for Muslim residents in nursing homes, prison chaplaincy, antisemitism, migration and interreligious learning — alongside the foundations of history, teaching and organisation.

  • Libraries
  • Teachers and student teachers
  • Social work, counselling and integration practice
  • Scholars of religion
  • Pastors and military chaplains
  • Sociologists
  • Early-childhood educators
  • Psychologists and psychotherapists
  • Those working in adult education
  • Government agencies and counseling centers in social services and healthcare
  • Politics and public administration
  • Physicians and healthcare professionals
  • Journalists and newsrooms
  • Those interested in culture

For libraries and readers outside the German-speaking world

Articles are published in German. From supplement 57 they carry English titles, abstracts and keywords; earlier articles are being supplemented. This page explains the work in several languages. Libraries in Europe, North America, Japan, India and elsewhere license it when they need well-founded knowledge of religions lived in Germany and German-speaking Europe — migration, Islam in Europe, new religious movements, religion and the state, integration. It does not replace a world encyclopedia of religions. Institutions access the full text via IP, HAN or EZproxy, as with other specialist databases.

In brief

What is the Handbook of Religions?
A continuously updated scholarly reference work on churches and religious communities lived in Germany and the German-speaking world. Not a denominational textbook, not a closed 2012 book.
Is it only for theologians?
No. It is for anyone who deals daily with religion, faith, morals and living together — schools and teacher education, counselling, social work, public authorities, journalism. Theology is included, not the frame.
Is it the same as the Handbook of the Religions of the World?
No. The 2012 Bautz work is a static country survey. The HdR (ISSN 2510-6740) is a DACH serial on handbuch-der-religionen.de.
Does the handbook continue when print ends?
Yes. It remains the same serial (ISSN 2510-6740), as a digital knowledge database with campus access. Print is still supplied in 2026; digital terms apply from 2027. Details are on Purchase options & pricing.
In which language can it be used?
Full texts in German; from supplement 57 English titles, abstracts and keywords. Campus access via IP/HAN/EZproxy; personal subscriptions and individual article purchase without a library account.
How do catalogues and researchers find the articles?
Through DOIs, bibliographic metadata, subject headings and full-text search. Metadata are publicly discoverable; the full text sits behind campus, subscription or individual access. Citation including BibTeX and RIS.
What scholarly approach do the editors take?
Udo Tworuschka understands the study of religions as a science of perception: religion as a lived and perceived reality, not first as a system of doctrine. Michael Klöcker studies religion as a historical and social reality — milieus, education, social change. Martin Rötting asks how religion changes in encounter with other religions and worldviews, and how people develop spiritual identity from that encounter.

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