Meeting EARS

Amongst EARS’s activities are general meetings, the development and maintenance of a religious dashboard, publications, this website and the publication of whitepapers based on roundtables.

EARS is set up to be a sounding board for politicians, decision makers and opinion leaders. In order to address some of the most urgent, relevant and pressing themes of our times, EARS organises roundtable discussions and expert meetings.
EARS focuses its roundtable sessions around three axes, representing the themes EARS considers to be highly relevant for the upcoming years. These axes also represent fields that can be connected one to another. Crossovers are possible, even desirable. In each of these axes, EARS aims to show the influence of religious aspects and make them subject for debate. These axes are:

  • Gender, sexuality and religion
    The themes of gender and sexuality have become key issues that easily favour polarisation between different groups and their sense of identity. It also touches on underlying themes such as identity, vulnerability, empowerment, minorities and discrimination.
  • Technology, genetics and religion
    Technology allows us to discover new possibilities and, for example, to eliminate deadly diseases. At the same time, however, it raises the question of the artificiality of human life. This demands a new approach to the question of the sense(lessness) of life. Furthermore, there is the question of the accessibility of modern technology. Does it exacerbate social divisions?
  • Security, economics and religion
    Economics is considered to be one of the main structures of our society, and its dynamics touch on essential issues such as democracy, education and security. Security in this case is understood as the stability of societal structures. In this field, EARS also wants to deal with the question of the viability of the multifaceted European heritage of Christianity, Humanism and Enlightenment.

In short, focusing on these three axes, EARS focuses on societal issues in which the religious aspect is a primordial one and which can be considered to be issues our society will have to deal with in the upcoming years.

  • Go to About EARS to learn more.
  • In our calendar, you can find upcoming events.
  • Publications link to our whitepapers, dossiers, and other recent publications.
  • A very useful tool to search for trends, articles about the before-mentioned axes and so on, is the dashboard. An introduction to our dashboard is available here.