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At the national youth gathering held in New Orleans this past summer, “Tita” came up to me and said that she heard about the work I am doing with the ELCA Womanist Initiative. She shared that she believed other communities of ethnic women, specifically Asian women, would love to engage in this work together. With me at that conversation was a visitor from our Lutheran Seminary in Sao Leopoldo, Brazil who came to the United States to learn the English language, Professor Selenir Kronbauer. The idea of cross-ethnic relationships between women of color in the ELCA was born. While this is not the Asian/Womanist conversation as of yet, this symposium hosted by Dr. Beverly Wallace, the developer of the ELCA Womanist Initiative, will be the beginning of many new opportunities where women of color theologians in the church will reflect on and develop ways to engage in work of the church, the academy and society while discovering areas of intentional and intersectional work.
When we talk about Latine and our Latin American siblings, we often forget about Portuguese speaking communities. This symposium will use as a point of reference, the work of Professor Selenir Kronbauer, an African-Brazilian teaching theologian as we begin to explore the needed collaborative work of both Womanist and Mujerista theologians and all women of color theologians in the ELCA (a womanist is inclusive).
Selenir Kronbauer is a Professor at Escola Superiode Teologia/Faculades ESC in Sao Leopoldo, Brazil. As one of two faculty of color at EST, a Lutheran Theological institution, Professor Kronbauer teaches African Brazilian History and African History and Culture and trains teachers in the larger community Education for Ethnic Racial Relations, Pedagogical Practices, and Ethnic and Religious Diversity as well as general Religious Education. Professor Kronbauer is also the developer of the Program,” Blackness in Church and Society” working with new immigrants from Venezuela and Haiti, helping them understand their rights as new residents in Brazil and help in providing courses in English as a Second Language.
The Grupo Identidade has been an interdisciplinary and ecumenical reflection group, with the goal of strengthening dialogue between areas of knowledge with pertinent reflections in the field of blackness and interreligious dialogue. It is one of the sectors of the Faculdades EST that make up the EST Diversity Space Project, together with the Gender and Religion Nucleus and the Latin America and Caribbean Sustainability Institute. The Grupo Identidade has stood out as a space for reflection and discussion on African and Afro-Brazilian cultures and identity, producing materials that stimulate reflection on the issue of blackness, through the publications of the Revista Identidade! This peer-review journal initially produced articles in the biblical area through the work carried out by the Dr. Peter Nash, a former member of the Society for the Study of Black Religion and the Conference of International Black Lutherans – USA. Since then, the Groupo has published and worked in the areas of education, health and territoriality in partnership with groups of black social movements, quilombola communities, Christian and non-Christian religious communities, helping undergraduate and graduate students and the community in general to get to know the African and Af
