Lectures by Christine Helmer and Robert Orsi

On 23 September, 2025, 10:00–12:00 at Lund University's LUX building, room 339, Professor Christine Helmer will deliver a public lecture titled “Sacramental Religion in Apocalyptic Times.” In the same room and on the same day, 13:00–15:00, Professor Robert Orsi will deliver a public lecture titled “The Gods of the Contemporary Far-Right.” Abstracts are forthcoming.

Christine Helmer is the Peter B. Ritzma Chair of Humanities at Northwestern University (USA), where she is also Professor of German and Religious Studies. Helmer is a theologian of Christianity, with a special focus on German intellectual history from the sixteenth century to today, including the theology and philosophy of Luther and Schleiermacher. She is the author of five books: The Trinity and Martin Luther (1999); Theology and the End of Doctrine (2014); How Luther Became the Reformer (2019); A Constructive Theology in Conversation with Christians in Tainan (2020); and (with Amy Carr), Ordinary Faith in Polarized Times: Justification and the Pursuit of Justice (2023). At present, Helmer is completing a book in constructive theology, Theology: Explorations of World, Self, and God, and is co-editing (with Jacqueline Mariña) a volume on Schleiermacher and democracy. 

Robert Orsi is Grace Craddock Nagle Chair of Catholic Studies at Northwestern University (USA), where he is also Professor of Religious Studies, History, and American Studies. Orsi studies modern and contemporary religion, with a special focus on Catholic practices and ideas, from both historical and ethnographic perspectives. He also researches and writes on theory and method in the study of religion. His books include The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1959 (3rd ed., 2010); Thank You, Saint Jude: Women’s Devotion to the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes (1996); Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (2005); the edited volume, Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape (1999); and History and Presence (2016).