"These days, we should send our missionaries to Europe" - Tanzanian Lutheran Counter Narratives to Homonationalism

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Abstract

“These days, we should send our missionaries to Europe” – Tanzanian Lutheran Counter Narratives to Homonationalism Many African politicians, governments and church leaders have positioned themselves against sexual minorities in the past, through statements, legislature, and/or physical persecution. In Western media discourse, Africa has repeatedly been called ‘the continent of homophobia’, employing narratives of homonationalism (Puar) and sexual exceptionalism (Dietze) and portraying Western sexuality as enlightened and ‘African sexuality’ as inherently backward. I argue that in order to overcome this racist dualism, one has to examine the transnational, postcolonial entanglements between race, religion, politics and sexuality. I will attempt to do so by looking at the specific case of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT), which has repeatedly declared homosexuality to be ‘un-African’ and ‘un-biblical’. The ELCT was founded by German missionaries at the end of the 19th century and is the second largest Lutheran church in the world. It is a powerful religious and political actor in Tanzania and highly globally integrated. In this paper I will analyze Tanzanian Lutheran counter narratives to Western homonationalism and sexual exceptionalism. Through these counter narratives the ELCT subverts long-standing global power relations, by portraying Western sexuality as degenerated and its former missionary churches as morally corrupted, while at the same time declaring itself as the defender of Christianity. These counter narratives are formed through engaging in relations with its Western partner churches as well as the general national discourse. I argue that through the public employment of these counter narratives, the ELCT actively promotes and takes part in the construction of a Tanzanian ‘anti-homonationalist’ citizenship.

Speakers from the University of Münster

Weber, Charlotte

Cluster of Excellence "Religion and Politics"