Between Pilgrimage and Climate Protest. Pilgrims Walk For Future and Slow Resistance

In recent years, the Lutheran Church of Sweden (the former state church) has taken an active stance in climate politics, joining the many religious communities worldwide that are reconsidering their role in the escalating climate crisis. A recent initiative is Pilgrims Walk for Future, a collaborative project with Fridays for Future, and other environmental groups. Pilgrims Walk for Future represents a new ritual-political form that combines inward reflection and prayers with outward political protest and petitions. The Swedish pilgrim spirituality celebrating nature, slowness and silence takes on new meanings that can point towards sustainable modes of living. I argue here that the climate pilgrimage creates and exists within a ritual interface alongside new forms of slow and silent resistance in the climate movement. In my talk, I discuss the shifting meanings of slowness and the prefigurative dimension of slow resistance, i.e. an activism capable of realizing “real utopias”.

Lena Gemzöe…