A group of theologians and professors from Stellenbosch University and Åbo Akademi University gathered around Dr Isaac H. T. Balie, who was sitting in the yard of the Moravian missionary station under a big tree. Dr Balie told us about the history of the station and the story of Moravian missionary Georg Smith, and a Khoi woman named Magdalena. On July 9, 1737, a young Georg Smith came to Cape Town to work with the indigenous Khoi people. He settled in the Glen of the Baboons, later known as the Valley of Grace, where he established the first mission station in South Africa. Sadly, he witnessed the mistreatment of the Khoi people by white colonists, who operated within a barter system, leading to widespread impoverishment. Despite these challenges, young Smith taught the Khoi to read, write, and cultivate crops to improve their living conditions. During this era, the Dutch East India Company employed slave labour in South Africa, and the colonizers associated with the Dutch Reformed Church in Cape Town. When Moravian missionary Smith began baptizing his first twenty-eight converts in the Valley of Mercy, the clergy of the Dutch Reformed Church expressed disapproval, believing that Moravian missionaries were not authorized to administer sacraments. This forced him to abandon his work among the Khoi and depart from South Africa.

Dr Balie guiding the group in Genadendal. Photo: Kim Groop

Georg Smith never returned to Africa, but after 48 years, three new Moravian missionaries arrived to carry on Smith’s legacy. They encountered Vehettge Magdalena, who had been baptized by Smith. The young missionary had taught her to read and write, and before his departure, he gifted her a New Testament. Magdalena proudly presented her book to the missionaries and asked a young Khoi girl, whom she had instructed in reading, to read a passage from the New Testament. Magdalena had become one of the church leaders in the Moravian Church when Smith was forced to leave South Africa. From Georg Smith’s diary, we learn that Magdalena was a bright and eager learner. She was intelligent and likely the first indigenous woman in the early 18th century in that region who could read from the Dutch ABC-Book and the New Testament. It is said that Magdalena would gather nearly thirty converts beneath the pear tree, where she would lead them in prayer and read passages from the New Testament. Through the years, she prayed diligently for God to send new Moravian missionaries to the Valley of Mercy, and finally, on Christmas Eve 1792, three ”wise men” from Germany arrived to continue Smith’s work alongside the Khoi. Magdalena served the small congregation for 48 years, reading the New Testament to them. The story of Georg Smith and Magdalena is fascinating but nevertheless true. Could there be more fitting words in the Gospel of Matthew for anyone other than Magdalena: ”Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful and trustworthy over a little, I will put you in charge of many things (Matthew 25:23, AMP).

Marja Segerholm

The theological course Abraham Goes Global is a cooperation between Åbo Akademi University and Stellenbosch University (South Africa) funded by the Finnish National Agency for Education and The Polin Institute 2023-2024 and 2024-2025. The aims are to widen the perception of theology to cross boundaries of religion at both universities, to exchange expertise on contextualised forms of religion, and to deepen the students’ and teachers’ understanding of interreligious and intercultural dynamics in religions. This blog text is the last of six blog texts to present reflections of the Finnish students visiting South Africa in February-March 2024. 

In the image below, you can see a picture of a mosque and this mosque is Mosque Shafee which is situated in the Bo-Kaap area of Cape Town. I found the mosque to be beautiful and it was interesting to see the building because in Finland mosques are not recognisable in the same way from the outside. The land for the mosque was acquired by Imam Hadjie in 1859 and it became the fifth mosque to be built in the Bo-Kaap area. The Bo-Kaap area is an area which previously was called the Malay area and was a racially segregated area for Muslims in Cape Town. I happened to be in Cape Town as a part of a university course but my going to Mosque Shafee was done in my free time.

Mosque Shafee in Cape Town. Photo: Henrik Wallén

We were supposed to eat dinner at the restaurant Biesmiellah in the evening but were given free time until then. I wanted to visit a mosque and talk with an imam and Mosque Shafee was the closest one I and my friend could find. The Imam was not around but the caretaker of the mosque told us about the building and the congregation of Muslims that worshipped there. The congregation were followers of the Shafi school, of thought and practising the Sufi mystic methods was not common which surprised us because we had visited a kramat earlier and been told that Sufi practises were common among the Muslims of Cape Town. It is however not too surprising that a leader would deny mystic practices among his congregation and instead suggest that standard Hafi practices were the norm in the congregation.

The caretaker of the mosque also showed us where the Muslims wash before prayer and told us how the arms, feet, hands, nose, and mouth had to be washed before prayer so that a Muslim’s words and actions during prayer were clean and not tainted. We were also told of the education that the children were given in the evenings in Arabic and The Quran. It is always interesting to hear about religious education because in Finland where I am from Sunday school is very rarely something that children partake in. We even observed some of the children leaving the mosque after receiving their teachings and teasing one another. Their behaviour was what I would have considered normal and childish even in my home country and it was nice to see that children seemed the same the world over even if these children were living in quite different conditions from what I had during my childhood.

Finally, the caretaker also told us a little about how members of the congregation would go to Egypt to study and how he had partaken in the Hajj. The bulletin board in the mosque gave some instructions on what to do should one want to partake in the Hajj. The caretaker told us that he had to wait a couple of years after putting down his name on a list because only a limited number of Muslims from each country can partake in the Hajj. He also told us emotionally how much joy he had felt when he walked around and touched the Kaba. The emotion with which he spoke of this experience seemed genuine to me and very much seemed to indicate that this man was a true believer. It was also a little sad to hear him talk about Mecka and the Kaba since I will certainly never see the city as I am a Christian.

Henrik Wallén

The theological course Abraham Goes Global is a cooperation between Åbo Akademi University and Stellenbosch University (South Africa) funded by the Finnish National Agency for Education and The Polin Institute 2023-2024 and 2024-2025. The aims are to widen the perception of theology to cross boundaries of religion at both universities, to exchange expertise on contextualised forms of religion, and to deepen the students’ and teachers’ understanding of interreligious and intercultural dynamics in religions. This blog text is the fifth of six blog texts to present reflections of the Finnish students visiting South Africa in February-March 2024. 

Walking along the streets of Cape Town you can see a beige building with shops on the street level. Only a star at the gate will indicate what can be found inside those walls. We are being greeted by a woman, perhaps in her fifties. Her hair had traces of a life lived. But what she was going to tell us, I couldn’t have even imagined. The synagogue belongs to the Sephardi Hebrew congregation. Many of the congregation members are the descendants of the Jews who lived on Rhodes. I felt compelled to tell these people’s story, because I haven’t heard about it before, and I can imagine that many people haven’t either. We have the obligation to keep the memories of victims of genocide alive. The story of the people who travelled the longest to their death.

Photo: Kim Groop

This is a story about the Jews from Rhodes. Rhodes is an island in the Mediterranean Sea outside Turkey. The island of Rhodes was under the Italian government during World War II until 1943 when the Nazis came to the island. It would take til 1944 until the deportation of the Jews from the island. When the Nazis came, they didn’t realize that Jews were living on the island. One of the things we found out was that the Rhodes Jews didn’t look like other Jews and that is the reason it would take years for the Nazis to destroy the Jewish community on Rhodes. The Jews didn’t speak the same language as many other Jews, they spoke their own language, Ladino.

On 18 July 1944, around 2000 Jews were loaded onto cattle trains and boats bound for Auschwitz. The group consisted of 1973 Jews from Rhodes and 100 Jews from the island of Cos. Some Jews were saved by the Turkish Consul because they had (or had previously had) Turkish citizenship. The youngest survivor Stella Surmani, and her mother Mathilda Hassan, who had an American passport, were not sent to Auschwitz.

When they arrived at Auschwitz, only approximately 500 people from the island of Rhodes survived the first selection. Only the ones that could be in use. At the end of the war, only 105 Jews from the island of Rhodes survived. Some of the survivors had been terrorized by the doctor of death and had to live their lives with the constant reminder of their time in Auschwitz with different scars. One of the survivors, Violette Fintz said that she had defeated Hitler because “I survived, I had children, my children had children…”.

Violette Fintz and other survivors. Photo: Sofi Laakso

The survivors spread across the world after the Second World War, for example, to Kenya and Zimbabwe and from there, to South Africa. Some of the survivors would settle down in Cape Town in South Africa and found a Sephardi Hebrew congregation.

The first Jews had come to South Africa in the 1820s and in the 1880s the development of Jewish life in South Africa began. After World War II, the infrastructure on Rhodes was down and therefore prospects were few. Some people saw the opportunities in Africa and some of the Jews of Rhodes moved to South Africa. To make a living, they worked as traders, e.g. they traded in District 6 in Cape Town. 

The Sephardi Hebrew congregation was founded in 1960 and is named in memory of the Congregation of Rhodes, which has the same name. The synagogue that belongs to the Sephardi Hebrew congregation was consecrated on 17th September 1980. You can find unique Jewish customs in this congregation.

Sofi Laakso

The theological course Abraham Goes Global is a cooperation between Åbo Akademi University and Stellenbosch University (South Africa) funded by the Finnish National Agency for Education and The Polin Institute 2023-2024 and 2024-2025. The aims are to widen the perception of theology to cross boundaries of religion at both universities, to exchange expertise on contextualised forms of religion, and to deepen the students’ and teachers’ understanding of interreligious and intercultural dynamics in religions. This blog text is the fourth of six blog texts to present reflections of the Finnish students visiting South Africa in February-March 2024. 

What constitutes a religion is a frequent question with many aspects to bear in mind, and it is a question that has been spinning in my head for a long time as well. So, having first visited different religions steaming from the Abrahamic faith in Finland we had a solid foundation to compare, and contrast what the religious communities with roots in the Abrahamic faith experience to be the focal point of lived religion in Finland and after our trip, in South Africa or at least the Western Cape area.

As we started to visit churches, synagogues, and mosques in South Africa a pattern swiftly emerged where many noticed that the focal point when presenting themselves and their faith was focused on the building and its history whereas the Finnish mind (and group) was seeking answers for the practices and place for the individual, what does the individual believe and practice?

Seeing this tension of what was presented and the questions in the minds of at least the Finnish group led to seeds being planted in my mind that would not sprout until the end of the trip. During our trip, we took part in the South African communities and the traditions they valued, and this is what watered the seedling of my mind. As the seeds sprouted into ideas, I realized that we were approaching community-centred religiosity with our quite individualistic-centred religiosity. As a pastor presents a church and its history it is not a cold building that individuals gather in to grow in their individual faith. It is a building with a pulse, it is alive, and the community is its spirit and blood. This is the space where the I become us, the individual spiritual walk becomes a lived religion for and by the community. This gave me a new lens from where I could observe what religion is in South Africa, but it is also a useful tool in approaching religion in general.

This is however not only sunshine and rainbows. Something very visible is the heritage and still open wounds of apartheid, colonization and the segregation that came with it. The people within the religious communities are consequently very homogeneous, what we saw of the Dutch reformed church was that there had been no black pastors in the church (as I understood it), and in the Anglican church we visited, the white people slowly disappeared as the black members became more present, the churches in the townships were as I observed almost completely black or coloured. Saying this I don’t know if this is a result of areas already being segregated by race or if there is a deeper (if it goes deeper?) issue in that adding the wrong “blood group” to the church, going back to the community being the spirit and blood of the church, would cause “sickness” or issues for the living and breathing church. What I am coming at here is if the segregation that has happened in history is still so fresh that people would rather keep the segregation that has already occurred when it comes to churches in order to minimize the risk of an infection in the body of Christ streaming from unresolved hurts within the congregation.

The South African and Finnish group in Turku in August 2023.

These observations can of course be circumstantial and/or limited to the area that we as a group were visiting. Even so, some thoughts that arose within me were, to start with how some church leaders in America historically condoned racial segregation in the church because it would help people keep their minds on God and not the struggles of the time. Here (in South Africa) the praxis looked similar, but I don’t think anyone would explicitly say it out loud. In connection to this, I started to think of the orthodox church in Finland and how both Russians and Ukrainians have the same buildings to visit for worship. I know of some Ukrainians already avoiding going to church in order not to dig around in their existing trauma from the ongoing war. With these two in mind, we can ask whether there is ever a need for any form of segregation within the Church, be it by race or country of origin for people to be able to worship their God in a safe space and keep the body of Christ free from tearing of wounds.

Keeping the above in mind we also visited mosques and synagogues that separate men and women while they take part in their holy traditions. This was explained as necessary for especially men to be able to focus on God, and the separation was on many occasions discussed as uncomfortable as women were stuck somewhere out of sight.

Tying this together, did we as a group react more strongly towards the separation of gender in the mosques and synagogues because it was directly visible to our group in the sense that we were separated in contrast to the churches where we sat together as a group? Is there an underlying expectation of what some churches will look like and therefore we do not react to how homogenized the group really is? Are some forms of separation better than others (less bad) and is there a benefit to be found in certain forms of segregation? This trip left me with many questions, a sign that much has been learned and observed.

Going back to my initial thought, what constitutes a religion, is a question that can be answered in as many ways as there are people if not more. What I did learn however is that there are similarities in differences and differences in similarities and, as we visit “the other”, “the I” get an opportunity to reflect on its own definition of religion.

Jonathan Stipesevic

The theological course Abraham Goes Global is a cooperation between Åbo Akademi University and Stellenbosch University (South Africa) funded by the Finnish National Agency for Education and The Polin Institute 2023-2024 and 2024-2025. The aims are to widen the perception of theology to cross boundaries of religion at both universities, to exchange expertise on contextualised forms of religion, and to deepen the students’ and teachers’ understanding of interreligious and intercultural dynamics in religions. This blog is the third text of six blog texts to present reflections of the Finnish students visiting South Africa in February-March 2024. 

Historical, Contemporary, and Comparative Perspectives

Research conference in Turku/Åbo, 29-30 January 2025

It is our great pleasure to invite you to the first conference in Finland on antisemitism, organized by the Antisemitism Undermining Democracy Project and the Inez and Julius Polin Institute for Theological Research.

In a time where Jewish communities and individuals around the globe encounter with hate, combating and preventing antisemitism is a priority. Actions for combatting antisemitism however cannot be efficiently planned without knowing and understanding the different manifestations of the phenomena in our diverse societies. The objective of this conference therefore is to facilitate the knowledge exchange between researchers and policy makers, and open the dialogue between them as well as the general public in order to increase the possibilities of creating effective counterstrategies against antisemitism.

The conference will take place between the 29– 30 January, 2025 in Åbo (Turku), Finland at the premises of Åbo Akademi University in Finland. The goal of the conference is to promote cross-disciplinary dialogue, and to explore and discuss the phenomena of antisemitism in diverse societies.

We welcome papers that reflect on the social and political implications of antisemitism (both historical and contemporary), including antisemitism in the press, media, and among different groups in diverse societies. We also encourage participants to submit papers connected to antisemitism in historical and contemporary settings, to the effects of antisemitism on education, democracy and democratic values, religious lives of Jewish individuals, as well as papers on proposed methods and good practices in researching as well as in combatting antisemitism.

The closer programme of the conference will be prepared later, but the invited esteemed keynote speakers have already been confirmed:

Izabella Tabarovsky (Wilson Center)

Vibeke Moe (Norwegian Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies)

Please send your paper proposal (with max. 300 words) before 31 August 2024 here. Letters of acceptance will be posted no later than 30 September 2024.

Please register via this link. If you do not wish to present at the conference but would like to attend, please register under the same link until 30th December.

Do you have any questions? Please send them to debunkingantisemitism@abo.fi. The conference is held at Åbo Akademi University in Turku (Åbo), Finland.

After the conference, the presenters will be given an opportunity to have their papers peer reviewed, and – if approved – published in an edited volume. A conference fee of 40€ will be collected to cover costs for a conference dinner, coffee breaks, and running costs. Optionally, participants may choose to attend the conference dinner, for an additional cost of 50 Eur. Registration for the conference dinner is done via the same link as the registration.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Åbo / Turku.

Organising committee:

Mercédesz Czimbalmos, Åbo Akademi University

Dóra Pataricza, Åbo Akademi University

Nóra Varga, Åbo Akademi University

“The situation in South Africa is complex.” was said by just about everyone who had a speech of any kind during the days of our course in South Africa. The complexity was also often used as an answer to questions. “Well, you know, that’s very complex here.” And those answers that referred to the complexity were, as I perceived it, not to be open for further questions. Things, relations, and the nation being complex was something peculiar to South Africa. I didn’t during my stay figure out if the complexity was something to be proud of or something to be ashamed of because the word was used in a way that it could often be understood – with complexity! 

South Africa has undergone periods of being colonialized by the European settlers which included slave labour and oppression for some and success and wealth for others. From 1948 to the early 1990s the nation had a political system called apartheid which is a system of institutionalized racial segregation. The system ensured that the nation’s political, social, and economic domination was in the hands of the nation’s minority white population. The effects of colonialization and apartheid continue to the present day and are reasons for the visible inequality – in general, I could see the “whites” being much more economically wealthy than the “ones with more colour on their skin”. For me, as a European who has been living, studying, working, and travelling in most of the continents on the planet Earth (but this was my first time in Africa) and due to having friends of all kinds, it was challenging to see or notify the colour of the skin of the persons. As I understood I should have thought about my skin colour and of the person I talked to because my words are (were) probably understood in the context of history and the context of the colour of my skin. Those contexts made being, speaking and relations very complex! And to be honest, even if the complexity was almost tactile, it was still difficult to understand it and during our relatively short course I didn’t completely get to understand the complexity of that land, but I got to experience a hint of it.

The experience of everything being complex was definitely something to learn of, even though the complexity made me feel uncomfortable most of the time. Segregation is still, although apartheid is history, part of the daily life for every South African. As a Finn, I found somehow more difficult the experiences of segregation in Finnish faith communities than the experiences of segregation as “an outsider” in South Africa. The segregation by colour, religion, and gender, as I assume, were the main obstacles to fluent communication. Without fluent communication, the risks of misconceptions and rumours have tended to flourish. Misconceptions and rumours easily lead to hatred and hatred easily leads to racism and even more segregation – and the situation gets even more complex!

One of the main themes of the course Abraham Goes Global was interfaith dialogues. As the communication itself seemed to be a demanding task, the interfaith dialogue was not merely practised within most of the faith communions we visited. I sometimes got a feeling that the concept of “interfaith dialogue” was not familiar to the ones who contested our questions. Well, many said that all are welcomed to their church, as an answer to our question about the interfaith dialogue. Opening the door to everyone can be an invitation to a dialogue but it’s not yet a dialogue. As I understand it, a proper dialogue needs also listening to each other and an attitude that each one can enrich his understanding of himself and the other due to the dialogue. Dialogue is a reciprocal activity. On some occasions, the complexity of the nation was (as I interpreted it) also used as an excuse not to go into dialogue and not to communicate with those of other kinds of faiths (or colours).

There were some actors who were more active in the interfaith dialogue, for instance, Rev Riaan de Villiers, in the Dutch Reformed Church and International Peace College of South Africa. I had a feeling that they really made an effort to make the dialogue take place and grow and make everyone participate in the dialogue equally.

But to be realistic the nation has issues such as inequality and poverty which stand in the way of a dialogue that can include everyone. I was told that many persons in the townships live day by day in extreme poverty without a home and promise of the next meal. Dialogue with others, or with other religions, is not probably in their minds when the survival of the day is the main concern. Anyhow, dialogue is important – for one to be heard and to hear. Dialogue is something that can be trained and practised. In the township of Langa, a large number of its inhabitants live in poverty. In their Sunday service, I could however experience a wonderful dialogue – between the members of the congregation and Gud – the dialogue was powerful, respectful, joyful, and grave, all at the same time; it was a very complex dialogue indeed! Complexity doesn’t have to be an obstacle; it can also be used as a resource in a dialogue, a dialogue which enriches the life of its participants.

(Langa Baptist Church in Cape Town. Photo: Kim Groop)

Teresa Haapasaari

The theological course Abraham Goes Global is a cooperation between Åbo Akademi University and Stellenbosch University (South Africa) funded by the Finnish National Agency for Education and The Polin Institute 2023-2024 and 2024-2025. The aims are to widen the perception of theology to cross boundaries of religion at both universities, to exchange expertise on contextualised forms of religion, and to deepen the students’ and teachers’ understanding of interreligious and intercultural dynamics in religions. This blog text is the second of six texts to present reflections of the Finnish students visiting South Africa in February-March 2024. 

The theological course Abraham Goes Global is a cooperation between Åbo Akademi University and Stellenbosch University (South Africa) funded by the Finnish National Agency for Education and The Polin Institute 2023-2024 and 2024-2025. The aims are to widen the perception of theology to cross boundaries of religion at both universities, to exchange expertise on contextualised forms of religion, and to deepen the students’ and teachers’ understanding of interreligious and intercultural dynamics in religions. This blog is the first of six to present reflections of the Finnish students visiting South Africa in February-March 2024.  

It had been six months since the diverse group of students and professors from Finland and South Africa had seen each other in Helsinki, the capital city of Finland. Summer was over and the farewells were real: the depth of emotions that were shared embodied a level of ecumenical understanding. Even though the course wasn’t supposed to be so homogeneous in its religious landscape, most of the participants held Christianity as their “to-go” religion. Or “from where they ascended”.

Photo: Kalervo Kirveennummi.

It’s difficult to say whether it was the welcoming African cultural atmosphere, the warm weather and delicious breakfast combined or the more or less Christian-based understanding of belonging to the same moral and ethical body, but the gap in time felt more of six hours than months. We were on a mission, not as missionaries, but as a group of individuals who were sent to involve, investigate, and understand.

It never stops to amaze me how intelligent theologians are.  I do not count myself as one of those. Intelligent I mean, surely, I’m still a theologian. The level of curiosity and will to participate in one another’s cultures was phenomenal: never did I feel like an outsider.

The day in Langa Township opened my eyes to the subtlety of our group when it came to respecting other religious traditions. Long story short: the minister and his wife described the church’s history and its struggle to purchase land from the city. Again, the discussion found its way to the social justice issues, only this time it was more powerfully expressed than earlier. At the end of the gathering, one of our students suggested we pray for the congregation.

This one time I noticed some kind of “public” religious activity from our group. It should be noted that we had already attended other churches and met other representatives. This one time was nevertheless so empowering that our group felt the urge to participate in a religious manner.  I considered this to be respectful when taking into consideration how careful our group was to not express our own religious thoughts in Jewish synagogues or Muslim mosques. Within the field of scientific, theological research is of course expected to be respectful towards others, but also the ecumenical nature of our visits was, to a positive surprise, phenomenally embedded to these visits.

Andrew Murray Centre for Spirituality, in Wellington. Photo: Kalervo Kirveennummi.

Culture is a phenomenon that should be emphasized while travelling. For me, I considered it of high importance to realize the historical burden that I brought with me from Europe and to acknowledge how I might be seen in an African country. The latter were the thoughts I carried with me from my trip to Kenya in 2014, only to realize that academics are hard-boiled bodies of respect and understanding.

On the last day of our visit, I had the honour of filming one of our fellow students who had to leave before saying goodbye to the group. I urged him to grab one book, whatever book and first read a sentence or two to get into the proper mindset. He chose a book called “The Spiritual Mandela” by Dennis Cruywagen and a sentence that really embodied, not only his own personal views, but to my consideration a silent ideal behind each and every one of our minds:

“By openly aligning himself with one specific religious belief, Mandela knew that he would be giving the impression that he was aligned with a particular group of people, and this was not the kind of exclusivity that he sought to promote in a multiracial post-apartheid South Africa.”

Opinions, whether religious or not, are the most dangerous. They shape our world; they can take us further from one another. When they are expressed, they should first go through a hard-boiled, academic, and heartwarming examination that our group seemed to be initiated to.

Kalervo Kirveennummi

Need time to finalize a book manuscript? Research stint at the Polin Institute for theological research within Åbo Akademi University, Finland

The Polin Institute is a growing international center of theological research in Finland. We announce two research stints of maximum six months between the beginning of March 2025 and the end of August 2025 for researchers coming from abroad.

Polin monographs-fellowship provides you the following:

-travel costs

-housing

-research infrastructure: desk, internet access, library services, printing, scanning

-monthly tax free (in Finland) scholarship between 2400 and 3000€ depending on your career stage

Eligibility

-all doctors in any field of theology who work to finalize a monograph or other substantial publication within theology

-applicants should come from abroad (Finland-based researchers are not eligible)

Publishing policy

-The Polin Institute is mentioned in publications and presentations that have been worked upon during the time of the stint

-Åbo Akademi University prefers open access publication

Assessment criteria

-your research track record in relation to your career stage

-balance of realism and ambition in your work plan

-the academic quality of your ongoing research and its contribution to academic theology

-relevance of your planned research for the ongoing theological research at the Polin Institute and Åbo Akademi in general

Application should be sent by e-mail to mika.vahakangas@abo.fi by the 31^st of August 2024 and contain the following:

-application letter stating how long and when would you wish to stay and whether the dates are flexible or not as well as pointing out how you see your research in relation to the ongoing PI & ÅAU research in theology

-work plan of one page

-CV of maximum 3 pages

-list of publications

-sample chapter and table of contents or other documentation that facilitates the assessment of the quality of the ongoing research and whether it is realistic to finalize it in the given time

An international conference organized by the Polin Institute of Åbo Akademi University

Espoo, Finland, 27^th-30^th August 2024

Pentecostalism is one of the most dynamic and influential forms of Christianity in contemporary Africa. It has been variously described as a response to modernity, a postmodern phenomenon itself, a revitalization movement, a return to the fundamental theology embodying the Third person of the Trinity, a source of hope, empowerment, a vehicle of social transformation, a challenge or concession to the postcolonial state, a recalibration of public religion, a power behind spiritual and socio-economic development in Africa today. Pentecostalism also reflects and mirrors the complex and often contradictory interactions between Christianity, African cultures, traditions, identities, and the very idea of the Church as a historic faith community.

This conference, aiming at producing an edited volume, invites contributions that explore the dialectics of Pentecostalism and Christianity in the postcolonial context of Africa. We are interested in papers that address questions such as:

• How does Pentecostalism relate to the historical and contemporary expressions of Christianity in Africa, such as African Instituted Churches, revival movements, mainline denominations, and ecumenical initiatives?
• How does Pentecostalism engage with postcolonial Africa’s political, economic, social, and cultural realities, such as democracy, development, poverty, gender, health, violence, migration, and media?
• How does Pentecostalism articulate and negotiate its identity and mission in relation to other African religious traditions and movements, such as Islam, African traditional religions, new religious movements, and secularism?
• How does Pentecostalism shape and challenge the theological and ethical discourses and practices of African Christianity, such as pneumatology, eschatology, soteriology, ecclesiology, spirituality, morality, and social justice?

This is an interdisciplinary project, and we welcome papers grounded in different disciplines and employing diverse methods and sources. We especially encourage papers based on empirical research and offering critical and constructive insights into the phenomenon of Pentecostalism in Africa.

Abstract submissions was due 30 April 2024 and is now closed. The deadline for preliminary papers (drafts) is 31 July 2024, and for full chapters (6000-8000 words, ready for submission to the publisher), it is 30 October 2024.

To register for the conference, please use this link. To submit your preliminary paper, please use this link.

The conference will be held at Backby Manor, Espoo, Finland https://www.backby.fi/en/

The conference fee, 580€, covers accommodation and full board during the conference.

Editors of the planned volume:

• Elias K. Bongmba – Rice University
• Martina Björkander – Åbo Akademi University
• Peter White – Stellenbosch University

Program

27^th August

5 pm-7 pm  Arrivals and dinner

7 pm  Welcoming session: working methods, aims

Keynote: Prof Chammah Kaunda: The Charismatization of African Christianity: Challenges and opportunities for mission, theology and ecumenic

8 pm  Social evening

28^th August

9 am-10:30 am  Session 1

Papers presented by Nimi Wariboko & Evelyn Mayanja & Devaka Premawardhana

10:30 am -11 am Coffee break

11 am-12:30 pm Session 2

Papers presented by Peter White, Francis Benyah & Itohan Idumwonyi

12:30 pm-2 pm  Lunch

2 pm-3 pm  Keynote: Prof Elias Bongmba: Living in a complex world: How Pentecostalism intersects with and affects the socio-political and religious realities of contemporary Africa

3 pm-3:30 pm  Coffee break

3:30 pm-5 pm  Session 3

Papers presented by participants through the call of papers

6 pm-7 pm  Dinner

8 pm  Social evening

29^th August

9 am-10:30 am  Session 4

Papers presented by participants through the call of papers

10:30 am-11 am  Coffee break

11 am-12:30 pm Session 5

Papers presented by participants through the call of papers

12:30 pm-2 pm  Lunch

2 pm-3 pm  Keynote: Prof Maria Frahm-Arp: Decolonising the Self: Pentecostalism as a framework for self-reformulation and reconstruction in post-colonial South Africa

3 pm-6:30 pm  Helsinki sightseeing

6:30 pm-7:30 pm  Dinner

30^th August

9 am-10:30 am  Session 6

Papers presented by Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu (online) & Mika Vähäkangas & Martina Björkander

10:30 am-11:00 am Coffee break

11 am-12:30 am Publishing workshop & closing session  

12:30 pm Lunch and departure