Text utan kontext : en granskning av kyrkobeskrivningar utifrån forskning om antijudiska motiv i svenska kyrkobyggnader

Sammanfattning: This study has a threefold aim:  to make a theological contextualisation of four medieval anti-Jewish motifs in Christian iconography represented in churches in Sweden and to study how these motifs has been described and contextualised in guidebooks and other material written for the interested public from post-war to recent years. The study also explores the role of heritagisation and musealisation of the church buildings in relation to how the motifs are described in the material. There is also an underlying, constructive aim: to suggest how The Church of Sweden can work with these motifs in theological reflection and historical presentations to the public concerning this part of the cultural heritage. The motifs analysed are The Judensau, Ecclesia and Synagoga, Cain and a motif illustrating a medieval legend about the funeral of the Virgin Mary. They were all painted in Swedish churches in a time when there were no Jewish settlements in the area. The study argues that the iconography can be interpreted as an expression of othering and that the four motifs can all be theologically contextualised by using Jesper Svartvik’s threefold typology of Christian anti-Jewish discourse. The study further shows that very few of the texts in the guidebooks and other books in the material describes the motifs and contextualises them theologically.  The study suggests that this can be related to the more than hundred years old heritagisation- and musealisation process in The Church of Sweden which has created a twofold and split role of the church as both manager of the religious mission and of the cultural heritage.   It has not been the primary aim of the church to theologically contextualise the cultural heritage. New questions concerning the motifs arise in today’s multicultural and multireligious society. The study suggests that the church can approach the part of the cultural heritage which today is seen as problematic from David Lowenthal’s concept of an informed acceptance and tolerance of the past in order to be able to take responsibility for the future in dialogue with others.