Religion

Denmark has been characterized by US scholar Phil Zuckermann as the most thoroughly secularized or ‘godless’ country on earth. Despite the fact that 73% of the population are paying members to an established Lutheran-Protestant Church, called ‘Folkekirken’, i.e. ‘Church of the People’. This lecture, with ample use of Danish newspaper cartoons, the Muhammad-cartoons included, will draw a picture of how the majority religion and the ‘significant other’, the minority religion, Islam, is viewed and handled in Denmark. Likewise, also with the help of cartoons, the lecture looks at ways in which religions in Denmark have been employed, inter alia by the WWF and the lecturer, to help pave the way for awareness of the climate crisis and alternative ways of ‘seeing’ nature, – and we shall look at some of the problems that the established church has had and still have in that regard. Finally, based on the lecturer’s own experiences as a consultant to the WWF and an expert to the media, a question will be raised: what roles can an engaged religion scholar play in all of this, and what are the potential gains, what the risks and losses?