More recently, Bergmann is focused on the amalgamation of “space and religion” (explored in a broad range of sites and fields such as Asian geomancy, Mayan sacred geography, urban spirituality, theology in built environments, and the “aesth/ethics of space”); sacred architecture as critical place in urban environments, and interaction of religion with images and practices with regard to weather.
In December–February 2011/2012 he worked as a visiting research fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society founded by the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Deutsches Museum.
[2] Apart from ministerial and teaching work, Bergmann also conducted field and site studies in the Sámi Arctic, Peruvian Andes, Aboriginal Australia, Mayan Yucatan, Korea, Kyrgyzstan and Tanzania, and has published more than 300 publications since 1985, including a number of Nordic anthologies on the themes of diaconia, power, autonomy, ordinary life culture and pluralism.
The book, resulting from this research, was published in German by Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag (1995), in Russian (Arkhangelsk 1999), and in English in the series Sacra Doctrina by Eerdmans, USA (2005).
Jürgen Moltmann characterized its content as “an extraordinarily expansive work whose wealth of material links quite disparate fields and whose surprising associations open up completely new vistas”, lauded its “ingenuousness” and the “exemplary structural clarity”, “alongside the enormous wealth of the material”, and praised the author who “rather than moving about in the uncontested theological mainstream, he delights in transgressing boundaries”.
As the theoretical reflection of this field appeared as fragmentarily one-eyed, this research led Bergmann also to a specific investigation, published in a dense monograph In the Beginning is the Icon (2003, 2009), which has generated extensive comments in several international reviews, and which distinguished philosopher of religion Nicholas Wolterstorff (Yale), declared “a breakthrough in theological aesthetics”.
Bergmann has conducted field and site studies in the Sámi Arctic, Peruvian Andes, Aboriginal Australia, Mayan Yucatan, Korea, Kyrgyzstan and Tanzania, and he has published more than 300 publications since 1985, including a number of Nordic anthologies on the themes of diaconia, power, autonomy, ordinary life culture and pluralism.
Furthermore, Bergmann serves as member of the Board of Advisors for the “International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture”, University of Florida (2005- ), as member of the steering committee for the international network “Christian Faith and the Earth”, headed by E. Conradie, University of Western Cape, and as cooperating partner in the Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies.
This has transformed the study of architecture and urban space in cooperation with scholars in other disciplines by mining deeper the religious dimension of human spatial design.
One of its publications was described by Peter Scott as “fresh, pioneering (...) Introducing new questions and methodologies, this ‘must-read’ volume marks an important contribution to the bourgeoning scholarly discussion of mobility".
He has appointed and supervised three post-doc-scholars, who now hold assistant professorships in sustainable education, comparative religion, and ethics in global political studies, respectively.
: Verlag für interkulturelle Kommunikation 1997) -God in Context: A Survey on Contextual Theology, (Aldershot: Ashgate 2003, with a preface by Mary C. Grey) -Architecture, Aesth/Ethics and Religion (ed.)
with D. Gerten, New York and London: Continuum 2011) -Religion, Space & the Environment, (New Brunswick NJ: Transaction Publishers 2014/2016) -Christian Faith and the Earth: Current Paths and Emerging Horizons in Ecotheology, (ed.