Pilgrimsvandring som verktyg för förändring. Pilgrim’s Walk for Future’s aktualisering av pilgrimsteologin under nyliberala villkor

Abstract

In the essay the author examines how pilgrimage can be used as a tool to radicalise democracy in a late modern society marked by neoliberalism. Applying a dialectic perspective on social movements the essay puts forward how the pilgrimage movement Pilgrim’s Walk for Future, administrated by Church of Sweden, is working in line with the historical pilgrimage theology - a modern critical ecclesiology- to mobilise political action to prevent climate change. The result of the study shows how PWFF meet the neoliberal hegemony with a mobilisation of alternative values beyond the order of capitalism, in line with Christian theology and tradition. The mobilisation is made possible by new forms of identifications with oneself and the social world that meet a modern power/knowledge- regime based on rational thought, and which questions norms and practises by paying attention to their negative effects on nature and on human life in general. The essay puts forward that a with-holding to PWFF: s political strategy in contact with different forms of publicities together with allowing an individual change process in line with it, meet neoliberalism’s effect on ethics and politics and changes aspects on Christian identity in line with PWFF: s political strategy.