Prof. Kajsa Ahlstrand

Professor of Theology, Church and Mission Studies, World
Christianity and Interreligious studies at Uppsala University, Sweden

Biography: I am fascinated by what people do in different situations with the complex phenomena
that have been called ‘religions’ since the European Enlightenment. Especially exciting, I think it is to
understand what happens when different religions meet. It is primarily questions of how Christian
groups and thinkers relate to religious diversity in which I am interested and also in how religious
groups and individuals have tried to create understanding and tolerance and how they have
combated each other. In addition, I have researched the religious change processes that contradict
fundamentalism: how is Christianity in many ways ‘softer’ and ‘milder’ and what is sometimes called
religious multilingualism: what can it mean if you say be both ‘little Christian’ and ‘little Buddhist’?
Another aspect of religious meetings I study is the importance of religions in conflicts and as
peacekeepers.

‘Praying with candles and beads in a Post-Lutheran society’

Abstract: In July 1968 the General Assembly of the World Council of Churches met in Uppsala,
Sweden. One of the scheduled keynote speakers was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, but he was
assassinated in April of the same year. To mark his absence a sculptor, Olof Hellström, was
commissioned by the then dean of the cathedral, Dr Martin Lönnebo, to make a giant bronze
candleholder shaped as a tree – the tree of reconciliation. The candleholder was placed at the
entrance of the Cathedral and people soon caught on to the habit of lightening candles and placing
them in the tree. This was the first such candle holder in a Church of Sweden church, but it did not
take long before churches in the diocese and beyond installed their own candleholders, some made
by local blacksmiths, some in the form of trays filled with sand. Today most Church of Sweden
churches and quite a few Free churches (Uniting Church) have candleholders at their entrances. It
has become a common practice to light a candle when you visit a church, and to teach children to do
it. In the mid-1990s Martin Lönnebo, who was then a retired bishop, invented a new kind of rosary
inspired by the Greek kombologia. It consists of eighteen beads and can be worn as a bracelet. It is
today used by thousands of people and has spread to other parts of the world. In the UK it is called
the Wreath of Christ or Pearls of Life. In my paper I discuss the practices of lighting candles in
churches and wearing the Wreath of Christ bracelet. I propose that the position of supplicant is a
difficult one in a late modern society, and that forms of prayer that presuppose a supplicant position
are disappearing. Instead we see prayer in the form of embodied and external practices where the
individual takes a more active but less articulated role.