With this book we are entering an area of public controversy: the field of museums. The focus
is on a topic that is equally the subject of much critical reflection in the academic arena:
religious things and how they are handled in museums. Museums are receiving currently a lot of
public attention with regard to the material objects they host and the historical and
contemporary handling of these objects. There are global public debates about the origins
paths and futures of museum things. Since at least 2018 with the report on the restitution of
African cultural heritage which Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy presented to the French
president the legitimacy of objects from colonial contexts in museums and collections in the
global north has been widely debated. Furthermore disciplines within cultural studies
including the study of religions have taken a material turn and now focus on the material
and thus also on museum things. This has brought the material dimension of religion into the
focus of research in various disciplines. Studying materiality can thus open a pathway for
potential critique of established patterns in research historiography and society widening
our perspective.
