| dc.description.abstract | 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. | en_US |
