”Speaking from and into a tradition”

”Things were starting to move” — that was the theme of Ulrich Schmiedel’s inaugural lecture at Lund University in September 2024, and it also became the theme of an issue of Uppdrag Mission. ”From your perspective, what do you see starting to move?” was the question that we asked some of Ulrich’s colleagues in different countries and some parish and diocese workers in the Church of Sweden. Alana Vincent, Associate Professor in History of Religion. Modern Judaism, Interreligious Dialogue, Religion & Literature at Umeå University, sent us these impressions:

What distinguishes theology from other disciplines is our context: the consciousness we carry of speaking from and into a specific tradition. What distinguishes good theology from bad theology is the way we put that consciousness to use: do we draw on our tradition as a resource that helps us to meet together and work together in the world as it is—the world which Hannah Arendt reminds us is preconditioned on the basic fact of human plurality? Or do we use it to fence ourselves in, as an excuse to avoid honest conversation and collaboration with people who do not share our same starting points? Where do we draw the line between speaking from a tradition and epistemologically privileging arguments that favour the tradition from which we speak?  When we insist on the importance of understanding context, are we really willing to enter into the context of others? Or are we just eager to make our context understood by everyone else?  Our task is precisely not to fiddle about with the sacred, the raised above or set-apart, but rather to meet the awful, fearsome, and endless responsibility of standing accountable before one another.