This first volume of the series Dynamics in the History of Religions reviews the opening conference of the Kate Hamburger Kolleg at the Ruhr-University Bochum. The first section concentrates on the formation of what later come to be termed world religions through inter-religious contact, the second part focuses on the significance of interreligious contacts also during their expansive phase. Methodological problems of multi-perspective research and especially the lack of a general religious terminology are discussed in the third chapter, while the final papers outline various aspects of secularization and (re-)sacralisation in the age of globalisation as an effect of multicultural contacts in a world wide web of religious interferences.