Sabbatical Reports

Lutheran, Ecumenical, and Interreligious Conversations

by WANDA DEIFELT, Professor of Religion A s it often happens in the academic world, a sabbatical is a time not only to start a new project but is also an opportunity to finish old ones. So I spent the first months of my year-long sabbatical, beginning in the fall of 2018, completing activities related to the Roverud Endowment Fellowship (2017-2019), with the project “Luther’s Theology in the Public Square.” The topic of the sabbatical proper was “Religious Pluralism, Hybrid Identities, and the Postcolonial Religious Other,” and this work was carried out through a research fellowship at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS), in Stellenbosch, South Africa, from January-June 2019. Although it does not seem obvious, both projects are connected.

Luther, the Roverud Fellowship, and the ecumenical movement

Since the 500 th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017, there has been a heightened awareness that Luther’s theology can be translated anew by addressing contemporary challenges ranging from climate change to gender violence and economic inequality. Even if Martin Luther had not explicitly addressed these topics, in my research (“Luther’s Theology in the Public Square”) I propose that his insights can serve as hermeneutical lenses through which we can critically evaluate and propose alternatives to current challenges. Solidarity: Global Women’s Voices on Christian Doctrine and Climate Justice” (American Academy of Religion, Boston), “Luther and the Catholic Church” (Gettysburg, PA), “Protestant Theology and Medieval Art” (Mexico City), “Can Religion Foment Human Rights?” (Bielefeld, Germany), and “Reforming Church for an Inclusive Community: Revisiting the Reformation” (Chennai, India). While the themes were specific for each audience and addressed their curiosities, I identified a common thread: a willingness to engage the novelty of the Reformation (and Luther’s key theological discoveries) with queries that occupy our current mindset. In wrapping up the Roverud Endowment Fellowship, I spent the first months of the summer and fall of 2018 polishing three presentations that became published essays (as book chapters). The first came under the rubric of women in the Reformation, comparing two key female figures – Katharina von Bora and Katharina Schütz Zell.1 The second was geared toward the role of compassion and advocacy on behalf of those who have been historically disenfranchised, using the care for bodies as a catalyst for an ethic of care.2 The last one was a theological reflection on the nature of the church and its call to be a voice for those who are at the margins of society.3 These publications are in line with previous works in which I used Luther’s theology to reflect on the implications of public policies on human trafficking,4 related his two kingdoms theory to Michael Foucault’s writings to further conversation on citizenship,5 and connected Luther’s theology of the cross with current environmental crisis and climate change.6

This time also brought to a closure my tenure as a member of the international bilateral dialogue between Roman Catholics and Lutherans (formally known as the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity, appointed by the Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity), on which I served from 2008-2018. Besides the publication in preparation for the 500 th anniversary of the Reformation,7 a new document titled “Baptism and Growth in Communion” is forthcoming.

18 Agora/Spring 2020 In 2017 I had been asked to do several lectures on topics related to the Reformation in the United States and elsewhere. In my presentations I addressed themes as diverse as “Yesterday you were Catholic and today you are Lutheran” (La Crosse, WI), “Here We Stand: Top 10 Reasons for Being Lutheran” (Rochester, MN), “Reclaiming an Ethic of Care in Luther’s Theology of Embodiment” (Washington, DC), “Planetary

From Ecumenism to Interreligious Dialogue

My understanding of ecumenism (the promoting of unity among Christian churches) shares similar principles with interfaith/interreligious dialogue: to emphasize what unites us instead of what divides us. The effort to stress commonalities is necessary – especially in light of xenophobia and violence fueled by religious discourse – but this approach might overlook the uniqueness of different religious traditions. For instance, in recognizing that Christianity in Latin America and the Caribbean is deeply influenced by indigenous and African cosmologies, there is a potential of subsuming these influences into the narrative of Christianity, without recognizing the specificity of these religious expressions. Prior to my sabbatical, I had already worked on this idea in a few lectures and published a book chapter on the topic, analyzing the concept of Christian inculturation.8 In mapping the encounters between different worldviews and religions, I realized that I needed to spend a substantial amount of my sabbatical revisiting the theories of colonialism, post-colonialism, and decoloniality, since they help explain the construction of hybrid identities and are instrumental in elucidating patterns of racial prejudice, economic inequality, gender stratification, and socio-political dependence. For my sabbatical, I received financial support from the Paideia program to investigate these approaches and eventually use this information for the research unit in the Paideia 112 course that I teach in the spring semester, titled “Iberian Conquest of the Americas.” To pursue this research, I spent a semester as a research fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies (STIAS), where a cohort of 25 other scholars from around the world engaged in an interdisciplinary exchange of research. Some of the interests of my colleagues overlapped with mine, since they covered varied topics such as human rights in the global south, African literatures of resistance, theories of complexity, philosophical justifications for enslavement, etc. The focus of my research was religious pluralism and hybrid identities, particularly the construction of religious identities resulting from the African diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean – a topic that will I will continue to work on in the next years. Some preliminary results of my sabbatical were already presented,9 but my ongoing involvement with an international network of scholars has become a venue for collaboration, exchange of ideas, and further dissemination of my work. For example, two forthcoming book chapters are closely related to my sabbatical research project: “La Morenita: The Hybrid Identity of Our Lady of Guadalupe” and “The Construction of Religious Hybrid Identities Resulting from Colonial Occupation.”10 All in all, this was a productive sabbatical, and I am grateful to Luther College for the opportunity. Wallenburg Research Center, Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study in South Africa IMAGE COURTESY OF STIAS/ANTON JORDAAN

Notes

1. “Duas Catarinas: Papeis Femininos na Reforma do Século XVI” In Ecologia, Economia, Ecumenismo: Celebrando os 500 Anos da Reforma: V Congresso Latino-Americano de Gênero e Religião, edited by Marcia Blasi et al., 29-43, São Leopoldo: CEBI, 2018. 2. “Reclaiming an Ethic of Care in Luther’s Theology of Embodiment.” In The Forgotten Luther II: Reclaiming the Church’s Public Witness, edited by Ryan P. Cumming, 55-68. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2019. 3. “Ecclesiology from the Margins: The Power and Authority to Define the Church’s Identity.” In The Diaconal Church, edited by Stephanie Dietrich et all, 112-123. Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2019. 4. “Hiding in Plain Sight: Lutheran Reflections on Human Trafficking.” In On Secular Governance: Lutheran Perspectives on Contemporary Legal Issues, edited by Ronald W. Duty and Marie A. Failinger, 160-181, Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, U.K: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2016. 5. “Heterotopic Citizenship: Luther’s Two Kingdoms Theory in a Globalized Age.” In Radicalizing Reformation: North American Perspectives, edited by Karen L. Bloomquist, Craig L. Nessan, Hans G. Ulrich, 265-282, Zurich: LIT Verlag, 2016. 6. “Out of Brokenness, a New Creation: Theology of the Cross and the Tree of Life.” In Eco-Reformation: Grace and Hope for a Planet in Peril, edited by Lisa E. Dahill and James B. Martin-Schramm, forward by Bill McKibben, 55-70, Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2016; “And G*d Saw That it Was Good – Imago Dei and Its Challenge to Climate Justice.” In Planetary Solidarity: Global Women’s Voices on Christian Doctrine and Climate Justice, edited by Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Hilda P. Koster, 119-132, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017. 7. The document is available online at https://www.lutheranworld.org/content/resource-conflict-communion-basis-lutherancatholic-commemoration-reformation-2017. 8. See “Inculturation in the Catholic Church in Latin America and the Caribbean” In Reform im Katholizismus: Traditionstreue und Veränderung in der römisch-katholischen Theologie und Kirche, edited by Bernd Oberdorfer and Oliver Schuegraf, 433-450, Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2018. 9. I offered a keynote address at the conference of the International Academy of Practical Theology (IAPT), under the broader theme (De) Coloniality and Religious Practices: Liberating Hope. The title of my presentation was “Decoloniality, Ecology, Sustainability.” São Leopoldo, Brazil, April 4, 2019. 10. An example of the work produced by this network is my contribution “Bodies, Identities, and Empire.” In Vulnerability and Resistance: Body and Liberating Theologies, edited by Jione Havea, 107-122. Lanham/Boulder/New York/ London: Lexington Books/Fortress, 2020.