On 27 April of this year, the Faculty of Theology of the University of Latvia, together with the Ministry of Welfare of the Republic of Latvia, organised an international interconfessional conference titled “Sex and Gender: a Theological Perspective”.
The conference was opened by Minister of Welfare Jānis Reirs (photo on the right), Dean of the UL Faculty of Theology Dace Balode (photo on the left), and Kārlis Žols, Provost of the Latvian District of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia Abroad.
At the start of the conference, the Hungarian theologian Rita Perintfalvi, a researcher at the Faculty of Catholic Theology of the University of Vienna, gave a theological lecture online. The topic of the researcher’s paper was “(Re)learning to be human in Central and Eastern Europe. When political authoritarianism flirts with religious fundamentalism”.
In the introduction to her topic, the theologian drew on the definitions of fundamentalism by Stefan Gärtner and Thomas Meyer. Further in the presentation, Rita Perintfalvi (pictured below) put forward the thesis of the Catholic Church’s long-standing flirtation with anti-liberal authoritarianism. First, referring to Gärtner, the author reminded those present that fundamentalism, which the church officially supported in the period from 1850 to 1950, declined only after the Second Vatican Council. Before that, the Catholic Church had supported long-lasting authoritarian Catholic regimes, such as the Franco dictatorship in Spain, the Tiso dictatorship in Slovakia, Salazar in Portugal, and the so-called Christian corporative state in Austria (1934–1938) and the Horthy era in Hungary (1920–1944).
The reason why, in the author’s opinion, the Catholic Church supports Viktor Orbán’s anti-democratic political direction today is to be sought in the historical experience of the Catholic Church. The Second Vatican Council introduced a turning point in theological views in Western Europe, namely, terms such as “the people of God” and the signs of the times appeared, greater emphasis was placed on the gospel, and inclusive theological ideas were recognised. Unfortunately, both the period of the Second Vatican Council and the years that followed overlapped with the time when communist dictatorship ruled in Central and Eastern Europe, blocking church life and the development of theology. Because of this, pluralism in the church’s thinking has not reached this region of Europe even to this day.
The second presenter at the conference was Doctor of Philology Agnese Irbe (photo on the right), with a paper titled “Old Europe versus the Council of Europe. Some notes, explanations, and forecasts in connection with recent ethical and legislative conflicts in the Western cultural area”. At the start of her presentation, Agnese Irbe recalled how universal human rights came into being in post-war, devastated Europe. When the Nazi criminals of the Second World War stood before the Nuremberg war tribunal, they were tried not in accordance with the national legislation of states, but in accordance with supranational principles of ethics and morality, in the development of which several philosophers and theologians had also taken part. Such was “Old Europe”, which strove for unity and values that, in the author’s opinion, cannot be applied to what is currently happening in the Council of Europe, the quality of whose work has reportedly declined.
The author believes that the terminology of the Istanbul Convention, specifically the concept of gender, and the documents appended to the Convention, would introduce three understandings of gender in Latvia and create confusion, but that our task is also to think about future generations and to be aware that ancient social assumptions, culture, and the structure of society must not be disrupted.
The third invited lecturer to speak was Peter-Ben Smit, professor and priest at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, with a paper titled “Constructions of masculinity in New Testament texts”. The presenter pointed out that in the ancient world, gender was determined not by what form the biological body had, but by what the body does. There is indeed a range of stereotypical descriptions of characteristics regarding what a man is and what a woman is, yet the primary determinant was the functionality of the body. To illustrate his thesis, the lecturer cited two texts – the 4th Book of Maccabees and Paul’s Letter to Titus. In the first text, a woman who heroically fought against tyrants was, alongside her sons, equated with a man. The analysis of the text leads to the conclusion that femininity or masculinity did not depend on each person’s self-understanding, but rather on what others said about the person. Likewise, in the Letter to Titus, for example, the discussion is not about biology, but about salvation. From this it follows that a self-disciplined way of life leads to an autonomous life, based on faith, that does not depend on what a given society considers natural or biological.
The conference continued with two panel discussions.
The first discussion was attended by Sandra Dzenīte-Cālīte, head of the association “Zvannieku māja”, Linards Rozentāls, chaplain of the Parents’ House at the Children’s Hospital, and Rudīte Losāne, President of the Latvian Association of Lutheran Women Theologians and chaplain of the women’s prison; the second panel discussion was attended by Bishop emerita Jāna Jēruma-Grīnberga, LALWT website editor Aļesja Lavrinoviča, and publicist Iļja Marija Boļšakovs. The conference was moderated by Nils Sakss Konstantinovs, scientific assistant at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Latvia, theologian and psychotherapist.
Note:
The conference was organised on the basis of a proposal by the Catholic Church priest Ilmārs Tolstovs to University of Latvia professor Laima Geikina, following a discussion on the television programme “Точки над i” (“Dotting the i’s”) about the Istanbul Convention in the LTV7 studio, to come together and discuss intelligently questions of gender and sex in connection with the differing views on the terms used in the Istanbul Convention. For this purpose, representatives of the University of Latvia and the Ministry of Welfare chose a “neutral discussion space” in the UL library on Kalpaka Boulevard. However, neither the Roman Catholic Church nor the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia had responded to the proposal expressed by priest Tolstovs and to the invitation of the conference organisers. The conference’s initiator, I. Tolstovs, was also not among the conference attendees. The Latvian Association of Lutheran Women Theologians experienced a similar attitude when, over the course of several years, it invited the Bishops’ College and Chapter of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia to resume discussions on the theological aspects of women’s ordination.
LALWT editorial team