Dorothea Erbele-Küster | Volker Küster (Eds.): Between Pandemonium and Pandemethics (Leseprobe)

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8 Introduction clined to support this project. We want to thank students and colleagues for their great enthusiasm and contributions who have made it possible nevertheless to counteract scientific mainstreaming and articulate the voices of the margins. A second output of this discursive practice is a German book “Theologie infiziert” 1 that we wrote together with our colleague at the Protestant Theological Faculty of the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz Michael Roth. Many thanks also to you Michael for our weekly teams-meetings with shared screen, discussing the pieces we put together during the week. As we are surfing the fourth Delta-wave into the fifth Omicron-wave our theology is evolving. “Covid theologies need to be in waves because the pandemic comes in waves. And as surfers go back to catch the next wave, so could Covid theologies go back onto the horizons of theology”, as Jione Havea puts it in his contribution to this volume. The CWM (Council for World Mission) e- Dare 2020 to which we both had the pleasure to contribute masterminded by Jione was the third stream of inspiration for our reflections. 2 This book is divided into two parts that represent different dimensions of Intercultural Theology. The first part brings together multiple voices of contextual theologians from glocal Christianities. Common generative themes are: • The socio-economic dimension of the pandemic: injustice, poverty and the intersectionality of different forms of oppression caused by neoliberal capitalism; • The pandemic in the context of the global ecological crisis; • The relation between religion and state. Paul Leshota writes back against the “single story” of Africa being the dark continent of disease and backwardness. He identifies poverty caused by colonialism and global capitalism as the root cause. This resonates with Jione Havea’s reflections from Pacifica on Covid, Climate and Colonialism, starting with a close reading of ‘Amelia Kami’s poem “Dear White Consultant” (2018). In “How the Pandemic will Change Minjung Theology”, Jin-Kwan Kwon reflects on earlier concepts of this liberation theology made in Korea in order to reshape them under the current circumstances. He discovers the embodiment 1 Dorothea Erbele-Küster, Volker Küster, Michael Roth, Theologie infiziert. Religiöse Rede im Kontext der Pandemie, Stuttgart 2021. 2 Jione Havea (Ed.), Doing Theology in the New Normal. Global Perspectives, London 2021.
Between Pandemonium and Pandemethics 9 of the subjects of history and also turns toward ecology. Korean American theologian David Eunil Cho analysis how old Anti-Asian resentments like “yellow peril” or “perpetual foreigner” are revived in the pandemic due to Anti-Asian racism. He also exposes the myth of the “model minority” as an instrument of white supremacists to play out one ethnic group against the others. Cho sees Asian American churches as agents that provide refuge, respect and resources for their members. Juan Floyd-Thomas also turns to past experiences of the Black community in the US during the Spanish flue pandemic that resemble appallingly the current Covid-19 pandemic. Black Lives Matter still less. As alternative source he turns to the cultural memory of the blues. Poverty, racism or colonialism are classical generative themes of liberative theologies. At the same time the pandemic has drawn the attention to new generative themes like body and ecology. The aesthetic perspective shared by several authors becomes most obvious in Helmut Renders article, who relates classical genres like dance of the death or vanitas with visual depictions of the SARS- CoV-2 virus. Sigurd Bergmann likewise emphasizes the tradition of memento mori. The two contributions from European contexts by German émigré Bergmann and the newly elected Bishop of the Protestant Church in Baden Heike Springhart reflect on Sweden’s so called “exceptionalism” and the role of the churches during the pandemic in the two countries. They raise issues of human dignity and human rights but also point to the vulnerability of human life. Springhart opts for a vulnerable church: “The church as the body of Christ is a bodily church, sensually perceptible and valuing the importance of the physical and the lived body.” The second part is orchestrating interreligious contributions that broaden the perspective on how other religious communities have tried to cope with the challenges that the pandemic caused for their religious practices by searching their particular traditions for possible means to interpret and counteract the crisis. The Covid-19 pandemic is a challenge to religious practices and beliefs, affecting the life of individuals and religious communities alike. The way religious communities and their proponents respond to the pandemic reflect last but not least as well their relation to the society and its legal authorities. Mainly three issues are discussed: • How does a particular religious tradition or community perceive the Covid-19 pandemic and how are religions, belief systems and religious practices affected by the pandemic?
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Dorothea Erbele-Küster | Volker Küster (Eds.): Between Pandemonium and Pandemethics (Leseprobe)

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