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Gustaf Forsell

Researcher

Department of Theology and Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism, Uppsala University, Sweden 

Contact
gustaf.forsell@teol.uu.se 

Webpage
Søgeresultater | Roskilde University (ruc.dk)

Bio

Gustaf Forsell is a researcher in Church History at the Department of Theology and at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism (CEMFOR) at Uppsala University, Sweden, with an expertise in Swedish fascism and historical and contemporary intersections between religion and fascism. Forsell wrote his doctoral dissertation on Christian national socialism in Sweden from 1925 to 1945, which is the first in-depth study on how Swedish national socialist ideas of Christianity contributed to their aspired political project in the interwar and wartime periods. Forsell has previously published on race and Christian theology in the 1920s Ku Klux Klan, “clerical fascism” in interwar Sweden, and notions of Atlantis in interwar esoteric fascism. Forsell is a research fellow in the Network for the Historical Study of National Christianities, an interdisciplinary network involving historians, church historians and historians of education at Uppsala University.

Research interests 

  • Fascist Christian theology 
  • Esoteric fascism 
  • Fascist ideas of a Nordic race 
  • Conflations of Christian and esoteric thought 
  • History of racism 

Featured publications 

Forsell, Gustaf. 2022. “Hidden Knowledge and Mythical Origins: Atlantis, Esoteric Fascism, and Nordic Racial Divinity.” In Nordic Fascism: Fragments of an Entangled History, edited by Nicola Karcher and Markus Lundström, 114–137. Abingdon: Routledge. 
Forsell, Gustaf. 2020. “Blood, Cross and Flag: The Influence of Race on Ku Klux Klan Theology in the 1920s.” Politics, Religion & Ideology 21 (3): 269–287. 
Forsell, Gustaf. 2019. Race and Liberal Theology: Sveriges Religiösa Reformförbund in Interwar Sweden. Uppsala: Department of Theology, Uppsala University. 
Forsell, Gustaf. 2017. “’I tro på släktets framtid’: klerikal fascism, Sveriges Religiösa Reformförbund och den svenska kulturens förfall.” CHAOS: skandinavisk tidsskrift for religionshistoriske studier 68 (2): 171–199.