The IAHR 2015

It was a long ride from the farm to Erfurt that somehow, despite road construction delays and the like, we did in two days – getting to Germany a day earlier than expected and providing us time to enjoy and see much of the splendidly beautiful medieval town let alone enjoy German cuisine. The International Association for the History of Religion began two days later. This is a marvelous gathering of religious studies academics that meets every five years. I have been to previous ones in Toulouse, Tokyo, Torino, Durban and Aix-en-Provence.

I found Hubert Selwert’s opening keynote address on religion when it is not considered to be religion provocative and in line which much of my own thinking.  It also reminded me of the theme of the ISSR conference the previous month. The conference programme for the ensuing week, however, was enormous and impossible. Because the conference administration had decided to ‘go green’ (or just to save money), there was no printed programme book. We were supposed instead to go online for it, but the university’s network system would not support Macs, and even when online the sites were cumbersome and required going in-and-out again and again. Some sessions turned out (if even found since the indication of locations was meager at best – in keeping with road signage for Erfurt as a whole) uninteresting while others fortunately were engaging and fascinating.

Two things I remember specifically were Peter Beyer’s keynote talk on ‘Forms of Religious Communities in Global Society’ in which he allowed he is not optimistic concerning humanity’s future success and Jack Tsonis’ dynamic rejection of Axial Age terminology.

But of course such a gathering has much more to do with networking and reconnecting with old friends and colleagues. Among these were Vivianne Crowley, Brian Bocking, Kim Knott, Janet Joyce, Robert Puckett, Eileen Barker, Gordon Melton, Massimo Introvigne, Leon van Gulik, Kathryn Rountree, Armin Geertz, Jim Cox and many more. I also especially enjoyed meeting Donna Seamone from Canada, Shai Feraro from Israel and Pavel Horak from the Czech Republic. After the most impressive conference opening banquet, Richard and I slipped away with Amy Whitehead and had dinner at Kromer’s. This last was very good, so I selected it for dinner with Marion Bowman and Leslie Currie for our dinner together our final night in Erfurt. And of course there was the proverbial group dinner: Graham Harvey, Molly Kady, Sean and Karen Arthur, Amy, Marion, and Shai to which Eileen and Milda Alisauskiene later joined us.

Yesterday we left Erfurt by 09:15 and drove to France – traversing Belgium in the process. Exhaustedly, we stopped in Valenciennes to find a hotel with car parking. One near the train station said that they would be too noisy. I tried to find another hotel from the Michelin guide (unfortunately my mobile phone service had no more credit), but the town was in the midst of a carnival, and try that we did we could not find or reach the hotel and finally gave up and drove on – stopping next at the Chateau de la Motte-Fenelon in Cambrai. They had one room left. We took it. The Renaissance building is most handsome and set in a spacious countryside estate. The restaurant was complete as several wedding celebrations (replete with fireworks) were also underway, but we were able to get negroni and had enough food already with us. Since Le Havre is only about two and half hours from Cambrai and our ferry to Portsmouth is not until 22:30, we decided just to relax and spend two nights in this magnificent and elegant setting with a Louis XVI room and much more. So tomorrow is England and the new life there.