Lecture: Buddhism Queerversity and liberation theology
An "archaeology" (in Foucault's sense) of "queerversity" (Engel 2013) within Buddhist traditions yields a complex and contradictory picture (Scherer 2021). In this talk I will present some major lines of Buddhist queerness and queer Buddhism and discuss hermeneutic strategies for Buddhist intersectional-queer liberation "dharmology" (theology).
Biogram:
Prof.*in Dr.*in Bee Scherer is a trans*, non-binary scholar in religious studies and gender studies with a focus on queer theory and Buddhist theology (dharmology). Scherer is the editor and organizer of the long-running book and conference series Queering Paradigms (Oxford, Peter Lang). Scherer currently holds the Chair in Buddhist Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Free University Amsterdam, VU) with direct responsibility for the Dutch National Buddhist Seminary (Buddhist Counseling).
This lecture is an historical reflection on the preaching of Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray, a queer African American poet, attorney, professor, and Episcopal priest who lived from 1910 to 1985. Murray delighted in being a “pixie priest” who was committed to breaking the church out of its “cocoon into Christian joyousness.” Yet Murray’s understanding of the preaching vocation was informed both by joyful intimacy with God and personal experiences of doubt, loss, and grief after the death of a life partner, Irene Barlow. The consolations that helped Murray move forward after Barlow’s death were woven into sermons on personhood, joy, imagination, and faithful risk-taking. This lecture will examine the theology and homiletical strategies used in Murray’s sermons and illumine helpful approaches for practitioners today.
Biogram:
Donyelle McCray serves as Associate Professor of Homiletics at Yale Divinity School. A teacher, writer, and Episcopal layperson, her scholarship focuses on ways African American women and lay people use the sermon to play, remember, invent, and disrupt. Her current research projects include a volume on sermon genre and an examination of the preaching and spirituality of the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray. Before becoming a homiletics professor, Donyelle served as an attorney focusing on wills, trusts, and estates. This work raised existential questions that led her to seminary and then into ministry as a hospice chaplain. Human finitude, compassion, and interdependence remain central theological concerns in her scholarship.
Lecture: Queering Theology and Pastoral Care - A Transformative Power
In this lecture I talk about my new book about queer sensitive pastoral care and counselling. I reflect more than 25 years’ experience of pastoral care giving in parishes, religious communities and in my university chaplaincy work at the University of Mainz.
My focus is on how securing respectful and welcoming safe(r) spaces for queer people and other minorities is creating welcoming and inclusive learning communities which can touch hearts, minds, and souls of many.
Take queer people´s experiences seriously, and you will be exposed to expert knowledge from the margins. You will learn from people who try to bridge the so called impossible: being queer and being religious. By telling their stories they widen hearts and horizons. In other words: They offer transformative power to religious communities that are in danger to alienate themselves from daily lives by building up walls and defending traditional values against anything and anyone who seems to be different. I will present some examples from my case studies and outline criteria for queer sensitive pastoral care.
Biogram:
Kerstin Söderblom is an ordained minister of the Protestant Church in Germany. For the time being she is serving as a university chaplain at the University of Mainz. She is author of two books about queer theology. She blogs on a regular basis about the intersection of queer, religion and civil society in a German online magazine evangelisch.de.
Lecture: Clergy Sexuality: An Invisible Influence in Deployment
For a range of reasons church denominations have neither systematically acquired nor recorded information about the sexual orientation of clergy. In some cases, where sexual orientation has been stated (or discovered) that information may have been recorded as part of disciplinary processes.
This lack of information has made it impossible to assess with accuracy the effects of negative attitudes in shaping the deployment of clergy. In the Church of England, anecdotally, many people have realised that clergy may elect for a ministry that means they can live in a private home (as opposed to a rectory).
In 2007 a study of Church of England hospital chaplains explored the reasons for the move from parish life to sector ministry. There was no intention in this survey to develop a theme around sexuality and relationships, but this emerged through a series of demographic questions asked at the start of the survey.
This paper revisits this study and brings it into discussion with more recent research on sexuality and the clergy. It concludes that more gay clergy are able to live openly in church accommodation, but that concerns about advancing to senior appointments in the church may still hamper an approach that is fully inclusive and unbiased.
Biogram:
Chris Swift is Director of Chaplaincy at Methodist Homes (MHA). He is a visiting professor at the Staffordshire University and has an extensive range of publications, mainly focused on the practice, research and development of chaplaincy.
Lecture: Queer in the pastoral profession - empirical insights and diversity policy perspectives
The assignment of office and person in the pastoral profession, with its profession-specific behavioral demands, poses no small challenge in view of the increasing plurality of ways of life. The keynote addresses this question with a view to an as yet unpublished empirical study that deals with queer people in the rectory. The result is a finding that seems paradoxical at first glance, namely that the question of lifestyle in the pastoral profession is both: important and unimportant. A further result is that pastors use very different strategies with regard to the expectations placed on them. In addition to the empirical insights mentioned, Isolde Karle, who is also Prorector for Diversity, asks about the diversity policy perspectives for the church and the pastoral profession that result from this: How can the pastoral profession be designed or changed? And what does the plurality of identities mean for the church and the pastoral self-understanding?
Biogram:
Prof. Dr. Isolde Karle (Protestant Theological Faculty of the Ruhr University Bochum), is director of the Institute for Religion and Society at the Ruhr University. Since 2001 she has been a professor of practical theology, especially homiletics, liturgy and poimenics, at the Ruhr University Bochum. Her research focuses on religion and society, professional and church theory, sociology of religion, pastoral care and spiritual care as well as gender, sexuality and physicality. Isolde Karle has been Vice President for Diversity, Inclusion and Talent Development at the Ruhr University since November 2021.
Lecture: Queer empathy as pastoral competence. Perspectives for the education and training of pastoral professions
The pastoral field increasingly requires the ability to deal sensitively with the most diverse forms of life, sexual identities and orientations and at the same time to shape processes of queer-sensitive art of living in parish and supra-parochial contexts. How and where are the necessary skills acquired? Which substantive and structural specifications are needed in order to be able to carry out pastoral work in a queer-sensitive manner and to be able to accompany educational processes that promote diversity? Together we ll develop ideas and perspectives for training and further education and discuss opportunities and limits of queer-sensitive pastoral theological educational processes.
Biogram:
Prof. Dr. Peter Bubmann was born 1962 in Augsburg. He studied Protestant Theology (and church music) in Munich and Heidelberg. He did his Promotion to Dr. theological with a fundamental ethical work in Heidelberg after pastoral education and school chaplaincy. He initially worked from 1999-2002 as a professor for ethics, community education and musical education at the Protestant Nürnberg University of Applied Sciences; Since 2002 he is Professor of Practical Theology at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU). His research focuses on clarifying the relationship between music and religion, on basic questions of congregational education and congregational theory and on pastoral-theological questions of professional and voluntary work in the church. Homepage: www.bubmann.de
Workshop: The dark side of pastoral care. Dealing with queer people in church documents
The needs of LGBTI* people, which have not previously been adequately addressed by church activities, should also become an explicit topic with the conception of a queer-sensitive pastoral care. As welcome as this development is, it should also be remembered about the downsides of pastoral care. For example, in the EKD memorandum on sexual ethics (1971), pastoral care and counseling were established as a means of power with which queer people were to be marginalized and discriminated against. Later documents are more reserved on this point, but nevertheless convey deficit-oriented and not always unproblematic understandings of pastoral care. In this workshop, the functions of pastoral care towards LGBTI* people, as they became and are visible in the public communication of the Protestant Church, will be traced and the potential for pastoral care to be misused will be worked out.
Biogram:
Dr. Elis Eichener is a research associate at the Institute for Religion and Society / Chair of Practical Theology (homiletics, liturgy, poimenics) at the Ruhr University in Bochum. He did his doctorate on the concept of the soul in pastoral care and is currently researching the church-world relationship in the public communication of the EKD. His research focuses on pastoral care and church theory.
Workshop: About "Tonkeln und Väterinnen" - blessing ceremonies for transgender people
In this workshop, different blessing ceremonies for transgender people will be presented. Baptism reminders, naming, marriage renewal - there are no limits to the individual occasions. The timing of the celebration also determines its character: is it a departure with a travel blessing? Is it a refreshment along the way, a reassurance that G*d is going with you? Or will it be a "thank you party" at the end when everything is done? Together we will track down the common denominator, anthropology - how is it expressed in which form of celebration? And which theologumena also have to be considered practically and theologically and then concretely implemented? An exciting search for traces and, for those who like, also a laboratory: What can prayers be called, which formulas carry them?
Biogram:
Theodor Adam is a pastor and as such a regional church representative for queer-sensitive pastoral care and counseling at the Center for Pastoral Care and Counseling of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. State Church of Hannover. His studies in Protestant theology and Christian journalism took him to Münster, South Africa, Erlangen-Nürnberg, Berlin and Göttingen. After vicariate and secondment service, he was able to pursue his special interest in practical theology as a research assistant and chair assistant in practical theology at the Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel with Prof. Dr. U. Pohl-Patalong with a focus on queer theory and gender studies before taking up his current position.
Workshop: „Queer Grief – Potentials of Queer Pastoral Care”
In my research queer pastors reported that marginalized people came to them based on a presumed similarity and therefore offered trust. When looking for a pastor to baptize their child or marry them some queer people search specifically for a known queer-sensitive pastor. When it comes to death and grief, such requests seem more intricate due to time and distance and the parochial system. However a demand seemingly exists: queer morticians who use this aspect in their public image are asked for regardless of the actual distance. Attending to the bereaved and planning a funeral could call for specific knowledge about queer life and love: different names, patterns of relationship, matters of visibility and representation come to mind. What are the needs, respectively are there special needs? Which places and persons can offer safety for the grief and mourning from and about queer people? Queer lives bring their own views and resources which lead to more perspectives on death and grief – and contribute to theology. What particular knowledge does this add to the reflection of ritual practices and pastoral care? The workshop will be an open discussion about said topics in Practical Theology.
Biogramm:
Florence Häneke, PhD at the University of Basel with an empirical research on queer pastoral identity, Pastor. Research interests: Queer Studies and Theologies, Empirical Methodology, Grief and Mourning in Practical Theology, Philosophy of Religion.
Workshop: Structural Inclusion and Individual Experiences of Queer Religiosity
Dealing with queer people shows great inter- and intra-religious variance. The perceived acceptance or rejection of a religious community can have a significant impact on the personal religiosity of those affected*. "Individual Experiences of Queer Religiosity" is a quantitative survey of Christian, Jewish and Muslim LGBTIQ* and shows from a sociological perspective what influence religious affiliation and the associated structural inclusion can have on the individual religiosity of queer people. Structural inclusion is to be understood as the offers and measures that are accepting of various gender identities and sexualities and that support equality/equality in the religious community. In addition to (pastoral) theological, canonical and pastoral offers, this also includes community-building and anti-discriminatory, enlightening offers. Within the framework of the workshop, the data collected will be used to present which offers and measures LGBTIQ* of different religions use, but also in which church areas exclusion or disadvantage was experienced. The aim is to show different needs and options for action, which take up both gender and sexual diversity and interreligious developments.
Biogram:
Nelli Fellker is a research associate at the research college “Regional Regulation of Religious Plurality in Comparison” (RePliV) and Doctoral student at the Institute for Sociology at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. In her doctoral project "Queer religiosity" she deals, among other things, with the question of the structural inclusion of LGBTIQ* in the Protestant and Catholic religious community as well as with individual experiences of queer religiosity. Her research interest is profiled by the main topics of sociology of religion, intersectionality, discrimination and methods of empirical social research.
Workshop: Queer Church Services - Linguistic Practice between Convention and Subversion
How can church services be designed in a communicative way in order to include people beyond hetero- and cis-normative life plans? In my lecture, I would like to show how various queer-Christian groups of actors are trying to find an answer to this question and what challenges are associated with the confrontation with it. In this regard, I would like to give insights into my field research stays in the context of various queer services and show what function language has in this context. The focus will be on dealing with gender-sensitive language, the subversion of liturgical language practices and the integration of linguistic categories from LGBTQIA+ contexts. Technically, my lecture can be located in the field of religious linguistics as well as discourse and sociolinguistics (cf. Liebert 2017; Spitzmüller & Warnke 2011). In this sense, both theoretically and methodologically, I understand language less as a grammatical system or lexical inventory and more as a discursive-social practice that can be broken down into different structures of power and orders of knowledge (cf. Foucault [1972] 1997). From this perspective, I would like to pursue the question to what extent linguistic practices in queer church services are restricted by the discursive rules of church discourse, or know how to shift them.
Biogram:
Jonas Trochemowitz has been a research associate and doctoral student at the University of Bremen in the field of German linguistics since 2021. Since 2022 he has also been an Associate Fellow in the DFG Research Training Group "Contradiction Studies". In his doctorate he is dealing with "Contradictory declarations in German-language debates about the relationship between religious and sexual-gender subject positions". His research interests include linguistic anthropology, discourse analysis and religious linguistics.
Münster's city history can be pretty queer! For example, the first homosexual demonstration in the Federal Republic of Germany took place in 1972 in the Westphalian metropolis and not in Berlin or Hamburg. And that's not all there is to report. Even if we go back a few hundred years into the history of the city of Münster, we can still find traces of people who fell outside the hetero-normative framework of their time. The city tour begins in front of the State Museum (opposite the Fürstenberghaus) and takes about 2 hours.
Route: Fürstenberghaus / Landesmuseum (introduction) / Petri Church (Krummer Timpen) / Department of Law / Department of Protestant Theology / Diocese archive (Georgskommende) / Schlossplatz / Frauenstrasse: KSHG
Biogram:
Sabine Heise is a historian and archivist. For over forty years she has been involved in various queer and women's projects. Making the history of LSBTIQ+ visible in Münster is one of her main concerns. That is why she has been offering queer-historical city tours on request since 2000. Sabine Heise was part of the team that developed the film "Münster 1972!" (https://www.muenster-1972.de/) on the occasion of the first homosexual demonstration in the Federal Republic of Germany in cooperation with Medienprojekt Wuppertal e.V. The film, which can be viewed on You Tube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsnz86xXw0VENaUiZsuonrQ), features old and young gay, lesbian and queer activists and sees itself as a contribution to historical educational work.
Elke Spörkel-Hänisch is a Protestant pastor and contact person for transgender people in the church district of Wesel. As part of the symposium and in cooperation with the "Cinema Münster" we are showing a documentary short film that portrays Elke Spörkel-Hänisch with a view to her being and becoming a retired transgender pastor. After the film there will be an audience discussion with Elke Spörkel-Hänisch.
