Helgon, familjen och världen. En hagiografisk studie av efterföljelse som världstransformerande kraft

Abstract

This hagiographical study deals with Christian saints, in the broad sense of the word, who, in the pursuit of following Christ, have transgressed the will of their biological family. By employing the historical narrative and theory of the philosopher Charles Taylor and the sociological theory of David Martin the question is asked if these hagiographical cases should be seen as radical breaks with the social imaginaries of their respective times or whether they rather should be seen as in line with tendencies toward individualization and a more disembedded worldview. The three saints surveyed are Clare of Assisi, the Anabaptist martyr Elizabeth Dirks and the founder of the Swedish Free Baptist Movement Helge Åkeson. From a constructive theological standpoint and in line with the historical study, the thesis also wishes to, begin to make reflections on Christian discipleship as a theological locus. The study shows that the saints, as presented in the hagiographical material, can be said to destroy their social world, in the sense that in not following the wish of their families they tend to disrupt a world where political power and personal relations are closely intertwined. On the other hand, their wish to follow Christ also, unwittingly, secularizes the world in that it makes the modern, disembedded individual a possibility. Yet, when breaking with a social world where the political and the personal are not differentiated something of the personal is preserved within the communities of the saints, there is a renovating tendency to the old social world. For a radical discipleship in a Western European context, the essay suggests a re-evaluation of sectarianism, a starting point to think about God’s activity in a secular age, and a suggestion to return to determinative personal relations as a way to resist the impersonal order of modern society.