konfliktkræfternes kreativitet og alvor i folkekirken - fire-sogne

SUMMARY
The Master-dissertation ”The Creativity and Seriousness of Conflict Forces within the Danish
Church” has it’s offspring in a survey showing that the Danish Church and prisons are the
institutions in Denmark with the worst psychical working environment. The dissertation is
first and foremost about how the conflict forces can be used in a mutual learning process for
the involved parties and their surroundings, making possible an improvement of the working
environment. Furthermore, the dissertation covers the problem of priests avoiding conflicts –
a why, as I have the hypothesis that the way priests are trained, with forgiveness and
reconciliation as the most important keywords, actually makes us more conflict avoiding than
conflict resolving.
To illustrate this, the dissertation discusses and defines what Evaluative Conflict Resolution
and Facilitative Mediation actually are, according to Riskin, Kovach, Love and Vindeløv.
Essentially they belong to two incompatible paradigms, and I argue why the two ways of
handling conflicts cannot be mixed. Along with these two ways of handling conflicts, I also
include the judicial method, and all three methods will be illustrated by a biblical tale.
My how and why will, alongside the theories, be clarified through empirical data, which
consist partly of a quantitative questionnaire, implying all rural deans and representatives of
Århus Diocese, partly of a number of qualitative interviews with working conflict resolvers
and a single conflict part. From this empirical work I believe I can claim that the Facilitative
Conflict Mediation can contribute to the solution of conflicts within the Danish Church in a
dynamic and progressive way, showing that the parties come out of the conflict stronger and
with the ability to see new possibilities. Furthermore, the empirical work gives me a clear
confirmation of my hypothesis that priests avoid conflicts, and regarding this matter I discuss
how we priests can overcome this problem by distinguishing between Christian and human
reconciliation.
At the end of the dissertation, I include a thesis by Terje Torkelsen focusing on his
conclusions regarding both the problems that the Christian background causes in the initial
state of a conflict (what I have called the problem of priests avoiding conflicts) and the
dangers of mixing the Christian message with conflict-handling and the possibility of using
Facilitative Conflict Mediation, when the conflict is characterized by his so-called
”Pathological Dynamics”.
From my dissertation it appears that a conflict carries strong forces that can either cause vast
damage or initiate creative changes, and it is my conclusion that the method of Facilitative
Conflict Mediation (provided that it can be used in the given situation) is the method that
offers the biggest advantages towards initiating creative changes, i.e. that the conflict is
solved in a dynamic and progressive way. It is vital to be able to see and acknowledge both
the possibilities and the dangers of a conflict, i.e. to see the creativity but certainly also the
seriousness of the conflict forces.
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