Facchini, Cristiana
Senior Fellow: July–August 2023
Research Project: Questioning God? Jewish and Christian Responses after Auschwitz
This research project aims to analyse responses to the Shoah that were elaborated by both Jewish and Christian intellectuals in the immediate aftermath of the war. In doing so, it will attempt to focus on the relationship between theology, philosophy, and history, which was especially relevant among French and German intellectuals. The project aims to test the hypothesis according to which the second half of the twentieth century witnessed a deepening of the path of secularisation that ran parallel to the sacralisation of the Holocaust. However, as suggested by scholars specialising in different fields, it may be appropriate to redefine the chronology of these responses and to look at a period that includes the dramatic political changes that began in the 1930s up until the impact of the relevant events of the 1960s, the Second Vatican Council and the Eichmann trial.
On the one hand, this project will detect the “effects that terror can have on the interrogation of Jewish questions” (Nirenberg 2013, 461), whilst on the other, it will unearth how Christian intellectuals positioned themselves on controversial themes, such as the demise of liberal democracy, state racism, and the persecution of the Jews. The different types of crises enhanced by state racism in the 1930s and the persecution and genocide that followed challenged forms of theological and historical representations. This project aims to discuss some of these, focusing primarily on those attempts that aimed to redefine the study of ancient Judaism and the rise of Christianity, hence influencing the rise of sceptical attitudes in the study of religion, whilst a discourse about the “sacralisation” of Auschwitz was emerging in theological discourses. This interaction needs to be analysed and further discussed.
Cristiana Facchini is a professor of the history of Christianity and religious studies at Università di Bologna.