sempozyum_bildiri_kitabi

(1) polemics and apologetics between different and opposing confessional groups; the agents of
this type of discourse were male theologians and clerics, mostly scholars, who addressed other
scholars and from the enlightenment onwards also an educated lay public;
(2) internal identity politics of a confessional group: the Lutheran literature on the parsonage; the
agents of this type of discourse were still theologians, pastors, teachers, and leading church officials,
now and then also women making themselves heard with their own voices, all of them addressing an
educated public mostly inside the Lutheran churches;
(3) a spiritualist revelation where Bora is seen as a religious authority, transmitting her spiritualist
message through a female line of tradition via a spiritualist medium to a male person, who is
responsible for writing down the message, for its publication and for trying to found a new religious
group on this basis; the male agent is a lay person who tries to win over women and men from a
Lutheran and German background in the USA around 1900;
(4) a discourse of reform in two versions: one is between the formerly opposing confessional
groups of Catholics and Lutheran Protestants, holding on to Katharina von Bora as the mistress of a
traditional open household, but developing this into a shared oecumenical model; and the other is
feminist critique and re‐writing of history and religion, representing Bora as a model woman in
popular fiction and religious literature, or undertaking scholarly analysis and de‐construction of
former constructions (Roland Bainton, Sabine Kramer).
The contexts of these discourses are different: For the first type it is Christian religion or
denomination; religious truth is seen as a given entity that has to be preserved, handed down to the
next generation intact and to be defended against attacks and any kind of diminishment. For the
second type the context is the nation, and religion is adapted into the frame of this newly installed
super‐category. For the third type the context is post‐Christian new religiosity. For the fourth type
the context is society. Views of religious truth as stable and unchangeable are not any more plausible
against the background of society. Religion is recognized as culturally entangled and in need of
critical re‐thinking, especially in respect of basic differences, hierarchies and gender structures.
Still, across all the differences these four types of discourse have some things in common.
Katharina von Bora has been firmly established as part of a canon of persons invested with general
importance. Writing about Bora means to select and to confirm her as part of a long‐lasting “great
tradition” for trans‐generational transmission. Whatever the gender concepts associated with her,
however belittling the strategies of representing her person may be – she has gained a place of
relevance: a precondition for investing highly different religious discourses and gender concepts with
the value derived from this status. A concept often used to conceptualize this status of religious
relevance is saintliness: As a Lutheran saint, Bora provides changing models for imitation and
identification through the ages.
In all these types of discourse, a community is also involved and constituted. History is conceived
as a wealth of resources, as a common property that has to be organized for the uses of the
community – a group that can be shaped according to variable versions in a fluid way. 4 The options of
how to manage these common funds of history and how to distribute the authority of dealing with
its treasures, however, vary widely. For the first two types of discourse the notion of a stable
religious truth that has to be handled by some male authority is characteristic. The third type aims at
creating a new religious sect outside traditional truths and authorities, using history for anchoring
truth along a female line of authorities. Only for the fourth type of discourse it is thinkable and
recommendable to discuss the issues among all participants, to include religion into history as a
common property of society, and of running this common property in an open and democratic way.
To sum up: People were engaging with Bora through the centuries, producing various adaptations
for their own contexts and projects, ranging from creative re‐shapings through pure fictional
imaginations to historiographical constructions and re‐constructions, raising far‐reaching claims for
universal significance. The discourses around this central female character show a picture that seems