TA 3/2019 (124. vuosikerta)

Money and Spirit: Discourses on Religion and Capital in the Language of the Leaders of Finnish Economic, Spiritual, and Cultural Life — This article explores the two prevalent discourses that emerge from the interview material (N 21) conducted with the leaders of the Finnish economy, the Finnish Orthodox Church, and Finnish culture as a whole. These discourses reflect the trends of post-secularization and the pluralization of the religious field. The first, entitled “First Money, then Spirit,” is one in which economic discourse overruns religious discourse, with leaders casting religion in consumerist terms. The second, entitled “Warm Othering,” is one that constructs orthodox religion as a positive, exotic belief that can be taken up without making any serious commitments, reflecting individualistic, eclectic, and noncommittal new spiritualities.

Shame as a Systematic-Theological and a Christian Anthropological Question — Shame has, since the 1980s, been a major topic in research in psychology and pastoral psychology. The latter in particular has probed how the modern understanding of shame relates to Christian doctrines and theological anthropology. The purpose of this article is to examine the premises of and possibilities for a systematic-theological approach to shame by analyzing fundamental theological questions, including the doctrine of creation and the concept of sin, through three works by leading theologians on the issue of shame. The thesis of this article is that shame poses a major challenge to the dogmatic tradition of Western Christianity, as the role of shame in Christian doctrine and anthropology has thus far not been systematically studied. Specifically, a systematic-theological analysis of shame require first a thorough understanding of shame on the basis of the psychodynamic and relational nature of the human being.

Criticisms of the Church by LGBTQ Individuals: Two Stories — Questions related to LGBTQ individuals have recently been prominent in the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Finland, though the voices of LGBTQ Christians themselves have often been dismissed. In this article, the lived experiences of Finnish LGBTQ Christians with connections to Finnish Pietism are analyzed using autobiographic letter material. In these narratives, the Church is criticized for its insensitiveness towards LGBTQ individuals, and questions are often raised about the legitimacy of LGBTQ church membership. These narratives are analyzed using church sociology, previous studies on revivalist movements and LGBTQ Christians, and queer perspectives.