Kerstin Söderblom

Kerstin Soederblom 2017

Kerstin Söderblom (born May 29, 1963 in Darmstadt ) is a German Protestant pastor . She was ordained in Frankfurt am Main in 1999 . She has been active in the church women's and lesbian movement since the 1980s. Since 1990 she has been a member of the Labrystheia network , an ecumenical network for lesbian theologians. Since 1996 she has also been a member of the European Forum of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Christian Groups (European Forum).

childhood

Söderblom grew up with a sister and two brothers in Bensheim an der Bergstrasse. One brother died in 2009. Her parents are both from Hamburg . Her mother Christa Söderblom was a housekeeper until she retired. Her father Klaus Söderblom was a businessman of Jewish origin.

Studies, doctorate and vicariate

After graduating from high school, Söderblom first studied English and French for one year at Concordia University in Montreal (Canada). After returning to Germany, she studied pedagogy and Protestant theology in Heidelberg , Montpellier (France) and Hamburg . She successfully completed both courses. From 1988 to 1996 Söderblom was active in the Göttingen women's research project on the history of women theologians. It was headed by the late professor Hannelore Erhart . The research project hosted several research symposia. Söderblom published two books together with members of the research project. She herself did research mainly on the two theologians Klara Hunsche and Sophie Kunert-Benfrey.

From 1993 to 1996 she did her doctorate at the University of Hamburg on the importance of Christian religion in the life stories of lesbian women . Fulbert Steffensky was her doctoral supervisor. Her dissertation was funded by the "Large Luther Scholarship" of the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau EKHN . She was also a scholarship holder and fellow in the doctoral program of the German Research Foundation (DFG) Religion in the Modern World in Marburg under the direction of Professor em. Karl-Fritz Daiber and Professor em. Siegfried Wedge .

After her PhD she completed her Vicariate in the Evangelical Church in Hessen and Nassau EKHN on. She completed it in the Frankfurt Nordend in the then Epiphany community, today Petersgemeinde. Her mentor was Pastor Lisa Neuhaus. She then went from 1998 to 1999 for a Vicariate Abroad in New York City at the Office of the Lutheran World Federation at the United Nations .

Professional background

After her time in New York City, Söderblom worked for four years in Frankfurt-Griesheim in the blessing parish as a parish priest. The beginning of her work was accompanied by controversies about her way of life. A minority in the community spoke out against their election. After a test phase of three months, she was ordained on December 19, 1999 by the then provost Helga Trösken in the Blessed Church in Frankfurt-Griesheim. Söderblom moved into the rectory with her then partner Randi O. Solberg from Norway.

From 2003 to 2008 Söderblom worked as a research assistant in the church service at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main . She was a member of the Society of Practical Theology, which was headed by Hans-Günter Heimbrock . She offered numerous basic and advanced seminars in the field of religious education and in the field of practical theology .

Her academic work focuses on intercultural and spatially sensitive pastoral care and counseling, empirical theology and queer theology . In these areas she co-edited three monographs and published numerous articles. She herself has done phenomenological field research on the front and back of Frankfurt Airport and examined the role of pastoral care both in the passenger area and in the area of ​​refugee accommodation at the airport.

During this time, Söderblom completed further training as a community advisor and organizational developer at the Institute for Personnel Consulting, Organizational Development and Supervision (IPOS). She is also a certified mediator , supervisor and coach according to the standards of the German Society for Supervision (DGSv) and the German Society for Coaching, of which she is also a member. Since 2003 she has been working part-time in these areas. In 2009 she took on a full-time project position at the institute in the field of regional church development. She accompanied three deaneries in pilot projects in their attempt to network regionally and to raise their profile in terms of content.

From 2014 to 2019 Söderblom worked as a study director and pastor at the Evangelisches Studienwerk eV in Villigst in Westphalia. There she was responsible for church contacts and the spiritual program. Pastoral care and counseling for the scholarship holders were also the focus of their work.

She has been the university pastor at the Evangelical Student Community (ESG) in Mainz since 2020.

Volunteering

Since the 1980s, Söderblom has been committed to the legal equality and recognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual ( LGBT ) lifestyles and gender identities on a voluntary basis . She is mainly active in the field of church politics and theological at home and abroad. In the 1990s she worked with other members of church LGBT networks such as the Ecumenical Working Group on Homosexuals and the Church (HuK), the Ecumenical Working Group on Lesbians and Church (LuK), the Ecumenical Network Labrystheia , the Maria and Martha Network (MuM) and the Catholic Lesbian Network (NKaL) participated in various synods (church parliaments) in order to promote the equality of lesbians and gays in the churches and to enable church blessing and wedding services in the Protestant churches . Söderblom has published numerous articles in this area since the 1990s. She went to schools with other members of the aforementioned networks in Göttingen and Frankfurt am Main to provide information about sexual identity and different gender identities and to talk to students.

As part of her membership in the European Forum of Christian LGBT Groups (European Forum), she and her then partner Randi O. Solberg from Norway developed a three-module training “ Safe Space ” to strengthen LGBT people in Central and Eastern Europe. The modules were carried out between 2006 and 2007 with ten lesbian and gay participants from Latvia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Romania, Moldova, Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia in Riga, Strasbourg and Sofia. The Safe-Space modules became the blueprint for all further training projects in Central and Eastern Europe that the European Forum has carried out to this day, for example the Eastern European mentoring project. Söderblom works as a mentor.

As part of her membership in the European Forum, she was a member of various international teams. You have held workshops at the General Assemblies of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 2006 in Porto Alegre / Brazil and in 2013 in Busan / South Korea on the equality of Christian LGBT people in the churches. In 2011 she also represented the European Forum in an international team at the International Peace Convocation in Kingston / Jamaica. As part of the closing event of the Decade to Overcome Violence, you offered the only best practice workshop on combating homophobic and trans-hostile violence.

Since the 1990s, Söderblom has been involved as a speaker, preacher, panelist and moderator at numerous church congresses. From 2011 to 2017 Söderblom worked as a lesbian theologian and pastor in various project managements for gay and lesbian events and since 2013 for planning the program of the so-called Rainbow Center at the church days in Hamburg, Stuttgart and Berlin.

Since 1987 Söderblom has been a regular participant in the lesbian conferences of the Evangelical Academy in Bad Boll , which were founded by Herta Leistner , Monika Barz and Ute Wild. Between 1998 and 2011 she worked with interruptions as a volunteer team leader in the planning and implementation of the conferences. Since 2013 she has been offering workshops there for queer re-reading of biblical texts.

life and work

The loss of his brother in 2009 had a major impact on Söderblom. An intensive examination of death and grief has been part of her basic approach to theology and pastoral care since then, personally and professionally . Söderblom has been a certified dying companion since 2014 .

Not only because her father is of Jewish origin, Söderblom has been involved in Jewish-Christian dialogue since her studies. As a theologian, she also takes an active part in interreligious dialogue and campaigns against anti-Semitism .

The main focus of her work is her commitment to respect and legal equality for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, transgender, intersexual and queer ( LGBTTIQ ) in the church sector and beyond. She combines her engagement against homophobia and trans-hostility with clear positions against anti-Semitism , racism and Islamophobia .

For many, Söderblom is a role model and contact person for questions about queer Bible reading and queer theology in German-speaking countries. She is asked for lectures, pastoral care and advice from LGBTTIQ at home and abroad. Since 2015, Söderblom has regularly published blog entries on the Kreuz & Queer page of evangelisch.de. Since 2016 she has also been a theological advisor and speaker at the Evangelical School Foundation in the Evangelical Church in Berlin, Brandenburg and Silesian Upper Lusatia (EKBO) . Together with other specialists, she offers lectures and workshops on diversity issues and on an inclusive and diversity-sensitive school.

Söderblom has been a member of an expert consultation of the Comenius Institute since 2015 . She is also a mentor in the mentoring project of the European Forum. The program is funded by the Arcus Foundation .

As a theologian, she also takes an active part in interreligious dialogue and campaigns against anti-Semitism. She has been the religious companion of the Dialogue Perspectives program since 2019. Religions and world views in conversation. It is a program of the Leo Baeck Foundation realized by the Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Studienwerk to develop and establish new and innovative forms of interreligious and ideological dialogue.

theology

Söderblom was shaped early on in his theology studies by theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth , who linked their very different theological approaches to life-history-relevant decisions during the National Socialist era and lived accordingly. Theology must speak into everyday life and everyday life into theology. That is one of the main concerns of the theologian Söderblom. In her writings and sermons she endeavors to interweave theological content concretely and critically with current challenges, socio-political questions and everyday life. Söderblom received theological inspiration during his studies from various representatives of the theology of liberation . Since the 1970s, this theological approach has included experiences of oppression, violence and poverty of Latin American, later also Asian and African smallholders and other marginalized groups in theology. Theologians like Gustavo Gutiérrez , Leonardo Boff and Ernesto Cardenal saw the disenfranchised as responsible subjects of theology. Biblical stories were related to the living situation of the common people and discussed in grassroots churches. For Söderblom, however, these theologians hardly had the situation of women and minorities in mind. Therefore, she looked for theologians who used the liberation theological approach and developed it further from a feminist , womanist and later from a lesbian or gay perspective. They include theologians such as Elisabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza , Carter Heyward , Bernadette Brooten , Marcella Althaus-Reid , Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and, in German-speaking countries, Dorothee Sölle , Luise Schottroff and Bärbel Wartenberg-Potter . In the next generation, it is Isolde Karle , Andrea Bieler, Claudia Janssen and others who inspire Söderblom and with whom she sometimes works intensively. Söderblom read publications by the older generation of women in autonomous feminist and lesbian-feminist working groups during her studies and transferred them to the German context. Söderblom has been working on approaches from queer theology since the 1990s . To do this, she studied various English-language discourses and publications in this area. Söderblom was one of the first German-speaking theologians to research and publish on these approaches.

Theology of diversity

Since around the year 2000, Söderblom has understood her theological work as an intersectional connection of topics that critically and from an intercultural perspective reflect the various dimensions of diversity such as origin , skin color , gender , sexual orientation , gender identity , religious affiliation , age and qualifications . The aim is to actively involve those affected as participants in theological reflection and to let them have their say in theology and pastoral care as experts in their life stories. Based on these considerations, Söderblom presented the first approaches to a theology of diversity in lectures and articles.

In addition to liberation theological, feminist , intercultural and queer approaches, Söderblom is primarily interested in theological contributions that deal with the fragmentarity of life and the challenges of life on the border. These topics are important to her in her pastoral work as a pastor, grief counselor and supervisor (DGSv).

Since 2013 Söderblom has been a member of the International Society for Intercultural Pastoral Care and Counseling (SIPCC) and the European Society of Women in Theological Research (ESWTR).

Publications

Monographs

• Introduction to Empirical Theology. Experiencing Lived Religion , (= USB textbook) (ed. With Astrid Dinter / Günter Heimbrock), Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8252-2888-0 .
• "Lived Religion." Conceptual - Empirical - And Practical Theological Approaches (ed. With Heinz Streib / Astrid Dinter), Leiden - Boston 2008, ISBN 978-9-0041-6377-5 .
• From logos to myth. "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter" as central basic narratives of the 21st century , (ed. With Astrid Dinter), Münster 2011, ISBN 978-3-8258-1587-5 .
• Church regional development in the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau using the example of three model projects , Frankfurt 2013. Website Kerstin Söderblom. Retrieved January 18, 2018.
• Multi-tone. Sermons in the context of the Evangelisches Studienwerk , (ed. With Friederike Faß), Stuttgart 2019, ISBN 978-3-8717-3529-5 .
• Queer Theological Notes , Esuberanza (The Netherlands) 2020, ISBN 978-9-0888-3039-6 .

Article (selection)

• Other invocations. Lesbian and gay theologies in dialogue , (together with Michael Brinkschröder), in: Wacker, Marie-Theres / Rieger-Goertz, Stefanie (ed.): Mannsbilder. Critical research on men and theological research on women in conversation, Berlin 2006, pp. 135–158, ISBN 978-3-8258-9267-8 .
• The Phenomenon of Mobility at the Frankfurt International Airport - Challenges from a Theological Perspective , in: Bergmann, Sigurd / Sager, Tore (eds.), The Ethics of Mobility. Rethinking Place, Exclusion, Freedom and Environment, Hampshire (GB) - Hurlington (USA) 2008, pp. 177-193, ISBN 978-0-7546-7283-8 .
• Religious Education of Diversity. Challenges beyond heteronormativity , in: Arzt, Silvia / Jakobs, Monika / Pithan, Annebelle / Knauth, Thorsten (ed.), Gender Religion Education. Contributions to a religious pedagogy of diversity, Gütersloh 2009, pp. 371–386, ISBN 978-3-579-08093-2 .
• Between boundaries and moments of transcendence - a case study about the perception of the other in the refugee accommodation at the international airport in Frankfurt , in: Heimbrock, Günter / Wyller, Trygve (ed.), Perceiving the other: case studies and theories for respectful action, Göttingen 2010 , Pp. 128-153, ISBN 978-3-525-57008-1 .
• Strange skin - under the skin. Aspects of a queer theology , in: Lanwerd, Susanne / Moser, Marcia (eds.), Frau Gender Queer, Gender Theoretical Approaches in Religious Studies, Würzburg 2010, pp. 273–284, ISBN 978-3-8260-4003-0 .
• Harry Potter in Religious Education , in: From Logos to Myth, "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter" as central basic narratives of the 21st century, Practical theological and religious didactic analyzes, Vol. 2, Münster 2011, pp. 269–297, ISBN 978-3-8258-1587-5 .
• The dream of India - a coaching trip , in: Göpferich, Susanne / Kucharska-Dreiss, Elzbieta / Meyer, Peter (eds.), Moving with language (= commemorative publication for Professor Michael Thiele's 65th birthday), Insingen 2012, p 239-256, ISBN 978-3-8461-1005-8 .
• Fighting a queer god? in: Schmelzer, Christian (ed.), Gender Turn. Society beyond the gender norm, Bielefeld, 2013, pp. 173–187, ISBN 978-3-8376-2266-9
• Lifestyles in the rectory , in: Mantei, Simone / Sommer, Regina / Wagner-Rau, Ulrike (eds.), Gender relations and the changing profession. Irritations, Analyzes and Research Perspectives, Stuttgart 2013, pp. 135–146, ISBN 978-3-17-022957-0
• Between the worlds. Airport chaplaincy , in: Merle, Kristin (eds.), Kulturwelten. On the problem of understanding others in pastoral care, Münster 2013, pp. 205–224, ISBN 978-3-643-11629-1
• School pastoral care for lesbian girls and gay boys as a contribution to a pastoral theology of diversity , in: Breckenfelder, Michaela (ed.), Homosexuality and School, Fields of Action - Approaches - Perspectives, Opladen - Berlin - Toronto 2015, pp. 259-269, ISBN 978 -3-8474-0615-0
• Homophobia and group-related hatred of people , in: Strube, Sonja (ed.), Right-wing extremism as a challenge for theology, Freiburg - Basel - Vienna 2015, pp. 223–241, ISBN 978-3-451-31270-0
• Conflict counseling in organizations , in: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Coaching (DGFC) (ed.), Consulting Practice at the Interface of Coaching and Organizational Development, Dresden 2016, pp. 68–83, ISBN 978-3-930829-33-0 .
• Can it also be colorful? Same-sex lifestyles as challenges in religious education of diversity , in: Loccumer Pelican (1/2017). Retrieved January 18, 2018.
• Gender identities and ways of life. Evangelical controversies , in: Labouvie, Eva (ed.), Faith and Gender - Gender Reformation, Berlin 2019, pp. 283–302, ISBN 978-3-412-51251-4 .
• Queer theology as a dimension of an inclusive religious education of diversity , in: Knauth, Thorsten / Möller, Rainer / Pithan, Annebelle (eds.), Inclusive religious education of diversity. Conceptual foundations and didactic concepts, Münster - New York 2020, pp. 147–157, ISBN 978-3-830-99186-1 .

Web links

• Homepage of Kerstin Söderblom (accessed on January 18, 2018)
• Literature by and about Kerstin Söderblom in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ European Forum of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Christian Groups (European Forum) . Retrieved January 22, 2018.
2. ↑ Large Luther grant . Retrieved January 22, 2018.
3. ^ Petersgemeinde Frankfurt . Retrieved January 22, 2018.
4. ↑ Blessed Community Frankfurt-Griesheim . Retrieved January 22, 2018.
5. ↑ Introduction to Empirical Theology . Retrieved January 22, 2018.
6. ↑ Refugee accommodation at Frankfurt Airport ( Memento of the original from January 25, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved January 22, 2018. 
7. ↑ Institute for Personnel Consulting, Organizational Development and Supervision (IPOS) . Retrieved January 22, 2018.
8. ^ German Society for Coaching (DGfC) . Retrieved January 22, 2018.
9. ^ Protestant student community (ESG) in Mainz . Retrieved August 7, 2020.
10. ^ Ecumenical Working Group on Lesbians and the Church (LuK) . Retrieved January 22, 2018.
11. ^ Maria and Martha Network (MuM) . Retrieved January 22, 2018.
12. ↑ Network of Catholic Lesbians (NKaL) . Retrieved January 22, 2018.
13. ^ European Forum of Christian LGBT Groups (European Forum) . Retrieved January 18, 2018.
14. ^ International Peace Convocation . Retrieved January 24, 2018.
15. ^ Center Rainbow on the Ev. Kirchentag. Retrieved January 22, 2018.
16. ^ "In the sign of the rainbow" website evangelisch.de . Retrieved January 18, 2018.
17. ↑ "How to learn foreign languages ​​..." website evangelisch.de. Retrieved January 18, 2018.
18. ↑ Lesbian conferences in the Ev. Bad Boll Academy. Retrieved January 18, 2018.
19. ↑ Would you have thought we were so many? Lesbian women in the church of Barz, Monika / Leistner, Herta / Wild, Ute, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 978-3-7831-0849-1
20. ↑ Workshops for queer re-reading of biblical texts at the lesbian conferences of the Ev. Bad Boll Academy . Retrieved January 18, 2018.
21. ↑ Kreuz & Queer page from evangelisch.de . Retrieved January 22, 2018.
22. ↑ Mentoring project of the European Forum . Retrieved January 22, 2018.
23. ^ Leo Baeck Foundation . Retrieved August 7, 2020.
24. ^ Andrea Bieler, Professor of Practical Theology, University of Basel . Retrieved January 22, 2018.
25. ↑ Theology of Diversity . Retrieved January 22, 2018.
26. ^ European Society of Women in Theological Research (ESWTR) . Retrieved January 22, 2018.