No dia 26 de Março, Thorsten Wettich (Universidade de Bremen) será o orador convidado do seminário organizado pelo Grupo de Investigação Diversidades, com o tema Herchurch: utopian thinking at the intersection of feminism, Lutheranism and paganism. A partir das 11h, na Sala Maria de Sousa do ICS-ULisboa e online.

Resumo:

Herchurch is a San Francisco based congregation belonging to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America that decided to rename itself to “Herchurch” underlining the local meaning given to the worship of the “Divine Feminine”. Not only does the congregation experiment with feminist theology, also does it employ a “resident witch” that distributes “magical gifts” and helps discover the divine in nature. The feminist inspired approach can be described as Christo-pagan (Wettich 2022).

The intersection of feminism, Lutheranism and paganism found in Herchurch is also utopian in nature, as it is part of the mission to overcome the worship of the “cultural whitemalegod” that is dominant in most parts of Christianity, in favor of the divine principle of wisdom (Sophia) as a more encompassing advocate of all people. In situations informed by insecurity such as the passage from one life phase to another, Herchurch provides shelter through rites of passage.

The paper discusses influences of the utopian promise given by the feminist inspired Christo-pagan program such as “Thealogy” (Raphael 1999), “Christian Goddess Spirituality” (Beavis 2020), post-Christian spiritualties (Woodhead 1993), and neo-paganism in the city (Hegner 2019). It further follows the traces of the utopian dimension of “Female Spirituality” to institutions such as Sophia University San Francisco, Progressive Christianity (Flunder 2005), and “Reconciling in Christ”.

Bionote:

Thorsten Wettich is a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Religion and Related Didactics at the University of Bremen, Germany. He is currently working on his second book on transformation processes in German-speaking Lutheran congregations in the USA, Brazil and Namibia, based on extensive international fieldwork. Dr Wettich serves on the board of the Working Group on the Ethnology of Religion within the Société d’Ethnologie et de Folklore. He earned his doctorate with distinction for his study of transformation processes within the Kurdish Yezidi religious community following migration from Kurdistan to Germany, for which he received a prize from the University of Göttingen. He has over a decade of teaching experience in German and English and has been awarded for his outstanding commitment to university teaching. His publications address topics including the Yezidi religion, Lutheranism, canonisation, syncretism, and spatial theory.