Towards a diaconia of displacements: An empirical theological inquiry

This thesis, Towards a diaconia of displacement: An empirical theological inquiry, is a contribution to theological research on the interface between religious practices and marginality. Located both in the disciplinary fields of the study of diaconia and empirical ecclesiology, it asks how the unconventional – or displaced – use of the practices, artefacts and spaces of a religious majority tradition can become sources of various kinds of justice and possible transformation for people in marginalized life situations. It reflects theologically and ecclesiologically on such unconventional use, arguing for a theology of displacement, for ecclesiological imaginations of church as venture and for the “folk” of the folk church as an eschatological folk. The research strategy of the thesis is empirical. Its starting point is the 13th-century Church of Our Lady in Trondheim, Norway. Our Lady was a traditional parish church within the structure of the Church of Norway for five centuries, from the Reformation to the 1980s. Since 2007, Church City Mission of Trondheim (CCMT) has run the church as an “open church of care”. It engages in extensive practices of hospitality towards people in marginalized life situations. The empirical material consists of 42 interviews with guests, employees and hosts and participant observation in the community of Our Lady during the spring of 2014. Gordon Lathrop argues that at the heart of liturgical practice and ecclesial practice is the juxtaposition of different elements that produce new meaning. This thesis argues that Our Lady is indeed a place of juxtapositions. However, the juxtapositions that occur here are not limited to the elements that Lathrop has detected as being authorized by Justin Martyr. Rather, through extensive practices of hospitality, juxtaposed at Our Lady are the practices, rituals and spaces of a religious majority tradition as well as people living in situations of precariousness, alongside their various needs. The thesis argues that such juxtapositions are viii unconventional: Our Lady is thus a diaconal place of displacement, where people, spaces, rituals and practices are displaced and new meaning emerges. Drawing on the concept of “spatial justice”, popularized by the American critical geographer Edward Soja, I argue that the practices, artefacts and spaces of a traditional ecclesial space displaced in such a way may become vehicles of different kinds of justice. Examples are ritual justice, ecclesial spatial justice, facultative justice, epistemological justice and material justice. The thesis discusses the conundrums and challenges that are set in motion by displacements, like the potential instrumentalization of religious practices. The thesis shows how the question of instrumentalization is negotiated among some Scandinavian scholars of diaconia. Other examples are what the thesis terms “diaconal delays”: there is a friction between guests’ anticipated life situations and factual realities. In the case of Our Lady, the guests are found to operate in more acute situations of material and social precariousness than had been anticipated. The thesis attempts to articulate a theology of displacement. Reflecting contextually on aspects of the empirical material, it argues that displacements in diaconal practices may represent an alternative representational practice, parallel to the feminist liturgical critique of of patriarchal liturgical language. The potential epistemological justice of the diaconal displacements of traditional ecclesial space, rituals and practices spurs theological insights, through understanding the recipient of justice as the representational practices of theology, not only the marginalized person. The result of this epistemological justice can be summarized as follows. First, the clamour and messiness of the behaviour of some of the guests can be understood not only as social deviance, but as hermeneutical devices for discovering the clamour and messiness of the context of the first proclamation of the Gospel. Second, read as an alternative representational theological practice, the displacements performatively communicate the brokenness of any kind of representational practice or image. Read as a positive theological statement, this hermeneutical brokenness of acts of displacement enacts and embodies the brokenness of the Christian God as an incarnated and crucified God. Diaconal practices may thus not only be studied as practices of justice and social work, but as performative contributions to conversations in constructive theology. In the second part of the thesis, the ecclesiological reflections of the Argentinian-Scottish liberation theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid and Norwegian diaconal scholar Trygve Wyller are staged as sensitizing devices in order to attempt to articulate an “implicit ecclesiology” (Jonas Idesröm) of Our Lady. I argue that although Althaus-Reid and Wyller represent ix valuable sources, the ecclesiologies of neither conceptually grasp the hermeneutical importance of simultaneously maintaining the integrity of both street space and traditional sanctuary space. Linn Tonstad’s theology of the “surface touch” (2016 p. 243) of co-locality is mobilized in order to conceptually articulate the celebration and appreciation of both spaces in and through acts of displacement. If one is to reflect ecclesiologically on practices that make use of the displaced juxtaposition of the ecclesial space, rituals and practices and situations of precariousness, this can be read ecclesiologically as the becoming of church as venture. Church as venture may occur inside the frames of empirical ecclesial practices (like Our Lady) but it may also occur outside or partly outside the organizational boundaries of such structures, for instance as practices of activism and art. Church as venture is thus an ecclesiological reading of secular phenomena, by hermeneutically attributing ecclesiological validity to practices that make non-conventional or even indecent use of the rituals, artefacts or spaces of ecclesial practices in struggles for justice. Lastly, the thesis argues for sensitizing the conceptualization of “folk” in Scandinavian folk church ecclesiology to situations of precariousness. The thesis suggests that if diaconal practices like Our Lady are regarded as valid places of ecclesiological imagination, the discourse of the “folk” of the folk church needs to move beyond questions of cultural contextuality. Rather, “folk” should be conceptualized as a matter of eschatology, as the unknown folk who may at any point in the future be in need of practices of hospitality. Paper I: Gunnes, G. (2016). The ordo of care: A hermeneutical dialogue between Gordon Lathrop's liturgical theology and practices of care in the Open Church of Our Lady, Trondheim. Studia theologica, 70 (1), 74-96. DOI: 10.1080/0039338X.2016.1180320 Not in the file in Brage because of copyright restrictions. Paper II: Gunnes, G. (2017). Our Lady of the heterotopia: An empirical theological investigation of the heterotopic aspects of the church of Our Lady, Trondheim. Diaconia - journal for the study of christian social practice, 8 (1), 51-68. https://doi.org/10.13109/diac.2017.8.1.51 Paper III: Gunnes, G. (2020). An Ecclesiology of a Queer Kenosis? Risk and Ambivalence at Our Lady, Trondheim, in Light of the Queer Theology on Kenosis of Marcella Althaus-Reid. Feminist Theology. 28 (29), 216-230. DOI: 10.1177/0966735019889340 Not in the file in Brage because of copyright restrictions.publishedVersio

Den desentrerte kirke: Et bidrag til disability-ekklesiologien. Kap. 12

I: I. M. Lid & A. R. Solevåg (Red.), Religiøst medborgerskap: Funksjonshemming, likeverd og menneskesynThe chapter addresses the relationship between church/ecclesial practices and disability. Traditionally, disability ecclesiology focuses on how and in what way ecclesial practices contribute to the exclusion or inclusion of people living with various kinds of disability. The chapter takes as its starting point new trends in ecclesiological research by asking in what way non-ecclesial practice can be understood to be of relevance to ecclesiology. The example is Marte Wexelsen Goksøyr’s performance of the poem “Voggesang for ein bytting” at the National Theatre in Oslo. This performance can be understood as the embodiment of a physical altar piece depicting Mary and Jesus with Down syndrome. I argue that this expression can be understood as a disability-sensitive decentred church.publishedVersio

Evaluering av Kirkelig ressurssenter mot vold og seksuelle overgrep

Det er all grunn til å understreke at KRS har gjort en stor innsats for å ivareta sitt diakonale oppdrag når det gjelder forholdet mellom seksuelle overgrep og kristen tro. KRS har opparbeidet spisskompetanse og bidratt til at tematikken er satt på dagsordenen og blitt institusjonalisert gjennom den formaliseringen av ansvarsforhold som har funnet sted. Eksempelvis gjennom at kirkesamfunn og kristne organisasjoner har innarbeidet retningslinjer, og at arbeidsgiversiden og frivillighet er tematisert. Et stort flertall av informantene i denne evalueringen, både utsatte brukere og andre som har tatt i bruk tjenestene fra KRS, uttrykker tilfredshet med de ulike formene for hjelp og støtte de har mottatt. Samtidig viser evalueringen at det også er utfordringer i dette store og komplekse feltet, utfordringer som KRS ikke fullt ut kan løse. Dette kan i hovedsak sies å henge sammen med virksomhetens begrensede størrelse og kompetanse. Disse utfordringene har vi i denne rapporten beskrevet under overskriftene organisasjon, bearbeiding, håndtering og forebygging. På bakgrunn av materialet og analysene og drøftingene i denne rapporten vil vi anbefale at tiltaket KRS opprettholdes, med samme tydelighet og representative tyngde som i dag. De overordnede prioriteringene virker godt begrunnet, slik at det kan anbefales å videreføre virksomheten med de tre virksomhetsområdene bearbeiding, håndtering og forebygging, og med de forskyvningene i retning av forebygging som går frem av rapporten.publishedVersio

Den desentrerte kirke: Et bidrag til disability-ekklesiologien. Kap. 12

The chapter addresses the relationship between church/ecclesial practices and disability. Traditionally, disability ecclesiology focuses on how and in what way ecclesial practices contribute to the exclusion or inclusion of people living with various kinds of disability. The chapter takes as its starting point new trends in ecclesiological research by asking in what way non-ecclesial practice can be understood to be of relevance to ecclesiology. The example is Marte Wexelsen Goksøyr’s performance of the poem “Voggesang for ein bytting” at the National Theatre in Oslo. This performance can be understood as the embodiment of a physical altar piece depicting Mary and Jesus with Down syndrome. I argue that this expression can be understood as a disability-sensitive decentred church

Our Lady of the heterotopia: An empirical theological investigation of heterotopic aspects of the Church of Our Lady, Trondheim

Interpreting the Lutheran church of Our Lady of Trondheim Norway in the light of Michael Foucault‘s spatial of heterotopia, the article explores the capacity of a church space to become a site of ritual and spatial justice for people living in with different kinds of marginality. The article contributes to the development of the relationship between spatial theory and Christian social practice and the contextual theology arising from this relationship. While the majority of scholars of diaconia draw on Norwegian systematic theologian Trygve Wyller‘s appropriation of Foucault‘s theory, this article builds on the British sociologist Kevin Heatherington‘s elaboration of the theory. Instead of understanding heterotopic spaces as overtly ethical spaces, the article follows Hetherington in exploring how Foucault‘s heterotopic spaces are sites of unsettled and unresolved agonism. This theoretical move opens up for seeing the displacements of space, bodies and practices in the church of Our Lady as sites of ambivalence and negotiation

Towards a diaconia of displacements: An empirical theological inquiry

This thesis, Towards a diaconia of displacement: An empirical theological inquiry, is a contribution to theological research on the interface between religious practices and marginality. Located both in the disciplinary fields of the study of diaconia and empirical ecclesiology, it asks how the unconventional – or displaced – use of the practices, artefacts and spaces of a religious majority tradition can become sources of various kinds of justice and possible transformation for people in marginalized life situations. It reflects theologically and ecclesiologically on such unconventional use, arguing for a theology of displacement, for ecclesiological imaginations of church as venture and for the “folk” of the folk church as an eschatological folk. The research strategy of the thesis is empirical. Its starting point is the 13th-century Church of Our Lady in Trondheim, Norway. Our Lady was a traditional parish church within the structure of the Church of Norway for five centuries, from the Reformation to the 1980s. Since 2007, Church City Mission of Trondheim (CCMT) has run the church as an “open church of care”. It engages in extensive practices of hospitality towards people in marginalized life situations. The empirical material consists of 42 interviews with guests, employees and hosts and participant observation in the community of Our Lady during the spring of 2014. Gordon Lathrop argues that at the heart of liturgical practice and ecclesial practice is the juxtaposition of different elements that produce new meaning. This thesis argues that Our Lady is indeed a place of juxtapositions. However, the juxtapositions that occur here are not limited to the elements that Lathrop has detected as being authorized by Justin Martyr. Rather, through extensive practices of hospitality, juxtaposed at Our Lady are the practices, rituals and spaces of a religious majority tradition as well as people living in situations of precariousness, alongside their various needs. The thesis argues that such juxtapositions are viii unconventional: Our Lady is thus a diaconal place of displacement, where people, spaces, rituals and practices are displaced and new meaning emerges. Drawing on the concept of “spatial justice”, popularized by the American critical geographer Edward Soja, I argue that the practices, artefacts and spaces of a traditional ecclesial space displaced in such a way may become vehicles of different kinds of justice. Examples are ritual justice, ecclesial spatial justice, facultative justice, epistemological justice and material justice. The thesis discusses the conundrums and challenges that are set in motion by displacements, like the potential instrumentalization of religious practices. The thesis shows how the question of instrumentalization is negotiated among some Scandinavian scholars of diaconia. Other examples are what the thesis terms “diaconal delays”: there is a friction between guests’ anticipated life situations and factual realities. In the case of Our Lady, the guests are found to operate in more acute situations of material and social precariousness than had been anticipated. The thesis attempts to articulate a theology of displacement. Reflecting contextually on aspects of the empirical material, it argues that displacements in diaconal practices may represent an alternative representational practice, parallel to the feminist liturgical critique of of patriarchal liturgical language. The potential epistemological justice of the diaconal displacements of traditional ecclesial space, rituals and practices spurs theological insights, through understanding the recipient of justice as the representational practices of theology, not only the marginalized person. The result of this epistemological justice can be summarized as follows. First, the clamour and messiness of the behaviour of some of the guests can be understood not only as social deviance, but as hermeneutical devices for discovering the clamour and messiness of the context of the first proclamation of the Gospel. Second, read as an alternative representational theological practice, the displacements performatively communicate the brokenness of any kind of representational practice or image. Read as a positive theological statement, this hermeneutical brokenness of acts of displacement enacts and embodies the brokenness of the Christian God as an incarnated and crucified God. Diaconal practices may thus not only be studied as practices of justice and social work, but as performative contributions to conversations in constructive theology. In the second part of the thesis, the ecclesiological reflections of the Argentinian-Scottish liberation theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid and Norwegian diaconal scholar Trygve Wyller are staged as sensitizing devices in order to attempt to articulate an “implicit ecclesiology” (Jonas Idesröm) of Our Lady. I argue that although Althaus-Reid and Wyller represent ix valuable sources, the ecclesiologies of neither conceptually grasp the hermeneutical importance of simultaneously maintaining the integrity of both street space and traditional sanctuary space. Linn Tonstad’s theology of the “surface touch” (2016 p. 243) of co-locality is mobilized in order to conceptually articulate the celebration and appreciation of both spaces in and through acts of displacement. If one is to reflect ecclesiologically on practices that make use of the displaced juxtaposition of the ecclesial space, rituals and practices and situations of precariousness, this can be read ecclesiologically as the becoming of church as venture. Church as venture may occur inside the frames of empirical ecclesial practices (like Our Lady) but it may also occur outside or partly outside the organizational boundaries of such structures, for instance as practices of activism and art. Church as venture is thus an ecclesiological reading of secular phenomena, by hermeneutically attributing ecclesiological validity to practices that make non-conventional or even indecent use of the rituals, artefacts or spaces of ecclesial practices in struggles for justice. Lastly, the thesis argues for sensitizing the conceptualization of “folk” in Scandinavian folk church ecclesiology to situations of precariousness. The thesis suggests that if diaconal practices like Our Lady are regarded as valid places of ecclesiological imagination, the discourse of the “folk” of the folk church needs to move beyond questions of cultural contextuality. Rather, “folk” should be conceptualized as a matter of eschatology, as the unknown folk who may at any point in the future be in need of practices of hospitality. Paper I: Gunnes, G. (2016). The ordo of care: A hermeneutical dialogue between Gordon Lathrop's liturgical theology and practices of care in the Open Church of Our Lady, Trondheim. Studia theologica, 70 (1), 74-96. DOI: 10.1080/0039338X.2016.1180320 Not in the file in Brage because of copyright restrictions. Paper II: Gunnes, G. (2017). Our Lady of the heterotopia: An empirical theological investigation of the heterotopic aspects of the church of Our Lady, Trondheim. Diaconia - journal for the study of christian social practice, 8 (1), 51-68. https://doi.org/10.13109/diac.2017.8.1.51 Paper III: Gunnes, G. (2020). An Ecclesiology of a Queer Kenosis? Risk and Ambivalence at Our Lady, Trondheim, in Light of the Queer Theology on Kenosis of Marcella Althaus-Reid. Feminist Theology. 28 (29), 216-230. DOI: 10.1177/0966735019889340 Not in the file in Brage because of copyright restrictions

Evaluering av Kirkelig ressurssenter mot vold og seksuelle overgrep

Det er all grunn til å understreke at KRS har gjort en stor innsats for å ivareta sitt diakonale oppdrag når det gjelder forholdet mellom seksuelle overgrep og kristen tro. KRS har opparbeidet spisskompetanse og bidratt til at tematikken er satt på dagsordenen og blitt institusjonalisert gjennom den formaliseringen av ansvarsforhold som har funnet sted. Eksempelvis gjennom at kirkesamfunn og kristne organisasjoner har innarbeidet retningslinjer, og at arbeidsgiversiden og frivillighet er tematisert. Et stort flertall av informantene i denne evalueringen, både utsatte brukere og andre som har tatt i bruk tjenestene fra KRS, uttrykker tilfredshet med de ulike formene for hjelp og støtte de har mottatt. Samtidig viser evalueringen at det også er utfordringer i dette store og komplekse feltet, utfordringer som KRS ikke fullt ut kan løse. Dette kan i hovedsak sies å henge sammen med virksomhetens begrensede størrelse og kompetanse. Disse utfordringene har vi i denne rapporten beskrevet under overskriftene organisasjon, bearbeiding, håndtering og forebygging. På bakgrunn av materialet og analysene og drøftingene i denne rapporten vil vi anbefale at tiltaket KRS opprettholdes, med samme tydelighet og representative tyngde som i dag. De overordnede prioriteringene virker godt begrunnet, slik at det kan anbefales å videreføre virksomheten med de tre virksomhetsområdene bearbeiding, håndtering og forebygging, og med de forskyvningene i retning av forebygging som går frem av rapporten

Evaluering av Kirkelig ressurssenter mot vold og seksuelle overgrep

Det er all grunn til å understreke at KRS har gjort en stor innsats for å ivareta sitt diakonale oppdrag når det gjelder forholdet mellom seksuelle overgrep og kristen tro. KRS har opparbeidet spisskompetanse og bidratt til at tematikken er satt på dagsordenen og blitt institusjonalisert gjennom den formaliseringen av ansvarsforhold som har funnet sted. Eksempelvis gjennom at kirkesamfunn og kristne organisasjoner har innarbeidet retningslinjer, og at arbeidsgiversiden og frivillighet er tematisert. Et stort flertall av informantene i denne evalueringen, både utsatte brukere og andre som har tatt i bruk tjenestene fra KRS, uttrykker tilfredshet med de ulike formene for hjelp og støtte de har mottatt. Samtidig viser evalueringen at det også er utfordringer i dette store og komplekse feltet, utfordringer som KRS ikke fullt ut kan løse. Dette kan i hovedsak sies å henge sammen med virksomhetens begrensede størrelse og kompetanse. Disse utfordringene har vi i denne rapporten beskrevet under overskriftene organisasjon, bearbeiding, håndtering og forebygging. På bakgrunn av materialet og analysene og drøftingene i denne rapporten vil vi anbefale at tiltaket KRS opprettholdes, med samme tydelighet og representative tyngde som i dag. De overordnede prioriteringene virker godt begrunnet, slik at det kan anbefales å videreføre virksomheten med de tre virksomhetsområdene bearbeiding, håndtering og forebygging, og med de forskyvningene i retning av forebygging som går frem av rapporten.publishedVersio