Abstract
While some church bodies and denominations have taken steps towards language for the divine and human informed by feminist theological reflection and practice, the embodiment of common prayer across traditions is little changed. Feminist liturgical reflection and practice, however, offer patterns of movement and gesture, voice, and leadership that are no less critical to renewed and liberating liturgical practice in assemblies not consciously identified as ‘feminist’. The following suggests strategies for embodying in liturgical assemblies ritual patterns that would extend and develop the insights of liturgical feminism beyond liturgical texts.
Keywords
Over the past several decades, feminist scholarship has been interrogating received interpretations of Christian scriptures, doctrine, and liturgy in ways that have unveiled their patriarchal underpinnings and proposed new ways of speaking of the divine, organizing the churches, and serving the world. 1 Over time this has yielded some changes among some churches, particularly in the ordination of women and gender minorities to offices of liturgical leadership and authority alongside men, the production and teaching of theology in seminaries and other church institutions, and recognition of other ministries that do not require ordination but have long been restricted to ordained men: spiritual direction, chaplaincy, administrative or canonical leadership, and preaching, among others.
While the theological reflection and liturgical ministry of women, and particularly feminist reflection, have had some effect on patterns of common prayer, particularly in references to human persons and the divine in liturgical texts (inclusive and/or expansive language), 2 other, equally formative dimensions of liturgical prayer have been more resistant to development. If an observer hit the ‘mute’ button on many liturgical gatherings across churches, the assembly would not look terribly different than 50 years ago with the exception of some women and gender minority persons engaged in liturgical ministry: by and large, most of the assembly would be seated in the audience while a few did most of the church’s ‘public service’ or ‘people’s work’. This can be true when women preside: in my own home Episcopal Church diocese, a new female rector reversed years of the assembly’s practice by returning to presiding during the eucharistic prayer facing the ‘liturgical east’ (ad orientam, with her back to the assembly), mimicking medieval practice and its nineteenth-century recovery among some Anglicans. Whatever her reason for that reversion, 3 as a matter of ritual practice, I experience it as an irredeemably (and unfeminist) 4 clerical ‘fencing’ of the table, with the presider and vested retinue forming a wall between the church’s table and the rest of – that is, most of – the church. (I’ve yet to experience an ‘east-facing’ liturgy when the presider and vested ministers stood behind everyone else!) 5 Thus, while feminist reflection in the matter of text may have had some effect, feminist embodied practice – ritual gesture, movement, and action – has yet to crack the stained-glass liturgy, despite the shattering of some of its ordained offices. 6
I approach the question of feminist gesture in the liturgy from two ‘adjacent’ locations. First, I am ‘feminist-adjacent’ as a gay white man from the US, well aware of both male-dominant and heteronormative expectations about gender and sexuality that have been applied to both women (though in many and varying ways depending on other embodied differences) and same-gender oriented men. These expectations have, however, been both applied and experienced differently. In particular the subjective experience (speaking from my own) of having those expectations applied to me as gay is both indirect and extremely powerful, as a threat of consequences if my ‘true’ (if masked) sexuality became known, which then apply when it does. Women (who have spoken to me about it anyway) experience these expectations as more direct to the extent that many women are publicly identified as such (whether they identify that way or not), and so have little choice about compliance. Those are two very different experiences and produce different kinds of trauma. They also both coincide and follow parallel tracks. So, I am feminist-adjacent.
Equally significant, I am also feminist-adjacent as a matter of theological method: I am a presbyter, presider, and liturgical theologian whose theological lenses are formed by the reflection of women (both consciously feminist and otherwise) but whose primary hermeneutic is the gathered liturgical assembly ‘in full stretch before God’, 7 that is, in its fullest human expressions of difference, as the ‘primary symbol’ 8 expressed in and through liturgy. This hermeneutic is ‘feminist-adjacent’ for two main reasons: first, because a significant ‘difference’ that (one hopes) achieves its fullest (possible) expression in the assembly is gender in its many appearances, including its female-identified performances; and second, because a focus on the assembly contains within it resonances with feminist theological concerns. These include focused attention to relationships among members, shared structures of authority and leadership, attention to power dynamics, appreciation of actual bodies as sites of theological reflection, and ‘circular’ patterns that embody fundamental equality. 9 It remains ‘adjacent’, however, because it does not, as some feminist methods rightly do, re-centre as normative the experience and reflection of women broadly understood as both a corrective critique of patriarchal patterns and as a source of new knowledge, theological and otherwise. 10
Because of my particular focus on the assembly doing its liturgy, I am also more interested in how the assembly embodies its work rather than the words it voices. I want to know if there are feminist resonant or adjacent strategies for liturgical embodiment that might inform not only consciously feminist assemblies – that is, one in which the ‘foundational principle ... is the ritualizing of relationships that emancipate and empower women’ (Collins, 1993: 11) – but any assembly that shares a similar principle applied broadly to other dimensions of human difference. I want to emphasize the word strategy here, because it is likely that actual embodiments will (rightly) vary according to both liturgical ‘idiom’ or family and the actual assembly discerning and developing its practice.
One particular challenge worth noting here is the resistance in feminist liturgical practice to setting down ritual into text and rubrics, especially official ones. This resistance emerges from the value in feminist liturgical communities of contextual and communal preparation of ritual events geared toward the specific occasion. As Marjorie Procter-Smith (1990: 21-22) notes, The value expressed in a reluctance to publish liturgies characterizes a commitment to contextuality. Feminist liturgies and rituals are often understood to be nontransferable to other gatherings or other occasions; they rise out of the particularities of the praying communities or in response to a particular need or situation.
It also reflects suspicion that rendering any text or practice ‘canonical’ or in any way obligatory re-inscribes the relationships of power and patterns of exclusion that feminist practice is meant to resist, if not overturn. Again, Procter-Smith (1990: 33) notes, ‘The traditioning process has routinely omitted or distorted women and women’s roles and contributions. Because women have been excluded from the traditioning process, the movement is suspicious of arguments based on “tradition”’. Thus many collections of feminist liturgies or rituals tend to be highly contextual and descriptive (rather than prescriptive), and often focus on life events and passages specific to the lives and experiences of women, including those relating to empowering embodied experience of some/many women (menstruation, adulthood, pregnancy, ‘croning’), as well as embodied experiences that are more complex (rites related to the termination of a pregnancy, the end of a relationship) or related to recovery from assault or violence, especially that perpetrated by men (rites of healing from rape or sexual assault, abuse as a child or young woman, loss or denial of ‘voice’ in patriarchal contexts, such as work or church). 11 Further feminist liturgical reflection has begun to explore feminist liturgical practice beyond the North Atlantic context. 12
Some feminist reflection deals more directly with the broadly ecumenical liturgical ordo, here referring to the broad range of liturgies shared across churches, such as baptism, 13 eucharist, rites of marriage and healing, daily prayer, and funeral liturgies, among others. Such reflection has led to some – and I do mean some – changes to denominational resources reflective of feminist sensibilities, especially in the matter of the texts of prayers but not just there. In the Australian context, the Uniting Church’s Uniting in Worship 2 and the Anglican A Prayer Book for Australia include options for the inclusion of lament in liturgy, communalized options for announcements of forgiveness, and liturgies for the endings of relationships. 14 Recent moves toward recognition of same-gender relationships in many church contexts also owe debts to feminist reflection and practice, which from the beginning acknowledged relationships of love, sex, and commitment analogous or equal to marriage in their resources. 15 Still, I detect far fewer examples of feminist influence on non-textual dimensions of liturgy (symbol, action, posture, gesture, ritual pattern).
With those caveats in mind I want to explore feminist liturgical gesture through three lenses: gesture, posture, and movement in the liturgical assembly; voice in the liturgical assembly; and leadership in the liturgical assembly.
Strategies for Feminist Liturgical Gesture: Gesture, Posture, and Movement
While both the liturgical movement and feminist liturgical reflection and practice have emphasized participatio plena et actuosa, ‘full, conscious, and active participation’, among all members of the assembly 16 – whether consciously feminist or more broadly conceived – much of that participation is rendered in text, that is, more people saying more lines, often restricted to assigned, fixed texts (more on that below). How the ritual is embodied, and by whom, however, has received less attention, or, perhaps, has been actively resisted, at least in official resources. Some of them, including my own Episcopal Church’s Enriching Our Worship, nevertheless acknowledge that texts alone have limits: ‘Non-verbal language – the language of gesture, movement, sign – will always override the text of the prayer’ (The Episcopal Church, 1997: 16).
As a matter of feminist reflection, however, the engagement of bodies in liturgy is as crucial, if not more crucial, than text, because of the ways they embody relationships, especially relationships of power. Mary Collins (1991: 22), writing on principles of feminist liturgy, quotes and develops the work of ritual theorist Catherine Bell on this topic at length: [Bell] argues that communal ritualizing, and especially that ritual which is explicitly religious ... is an active negotiation, construction, and production of relationships that both empower and set limits. What ritualizers are doing in their ritualizing through symbolic transactions is producing relationships that are redeemed and redemptive for those participating in ritualizing. So ritualizing is always strategic situational practice, grounded in a community of shared faith.
This dimension is perhaps most apparent when there is a difference in posture among the assembly’s members: some kneeling while others stand, with the ‘standing party’ usually an officeholder or cleric (regardless of gender); some praying with hands held either in orans or with hands extended in blessing while others bow their heads or fold their hands; some engaging in bows or other gestures of reverence while others watch. Procter-Smith (1990: 84) makes the issue plain: Gestures of dominance, which inhibit the experience of the equality of all the members of the community, are those which are used asymmetrically. The giving of blessings by one person only, disproportionate speaking while others are silent, standing while others are sitting, and especially standing while others kneel, are gestures that by their asymmetry denote relations of dominance and submission. In their stead reciprocal gestures and symmetrical postures can be used.
Beyond unveiling imbalances of power and their effects, however, embodied ritual also has the potential to uncover new, positive patterns that linguistic texts simply cannot capture. As Procter-Smith (1995: 35) insists, expanding on ritual theorist Ronald Grimes: ‘The ‘ritualizing body’ is capable of ‘creative, cognitive, critical functions’ – that is, of revealing something new through the assembly’s practice. This may include expansion of a gesture once reserved to the ordained (hands extended in blessing), the contravening of a receive posture or gesture (standing when it has been ‘customary’ to kneel, for example), and the creation of new shared postures and gestures. Thus, ‘[f]eminist liturgies always include some kind of bodily movement: circle dance, gestures, movement from place to place, the handling of sacred objects, anointing of the body, embracing’ (Procter-Smith, 1995: 60). The challenge as described by Procter-Smith (1990: 83) is to develop ‘emancipatory body language’ that serves to eliminate gestures and symbols of dominance for the liturgy and to generate symbols and gestures of mutuality and egalitarianism ... Symbols and gestures of dominance work against the realization of this goal. The problem is how to create gestures of mutuality that can still serve the public, formal requirements of liturgical activity.
In practice, a difference in posture may be appropriate or necessary in a few cases, depending on the moment in the liturgy. At the time of the proclamation of texts, it may be necessary due to the size of the assembly or the length of the reading for most to sit while the reader(s) stand. If one member of the assembly is in need of particular prayer, that one may receive the laying of hands and prayer of others without reciprocating. Yet the basic liturgical principle that the members of the assembly share a common posture for their common action ought to apply, 17 though qualified to make room for the participation of bodies of all abilities. In short, if a posture or gesture can be communalized, then feminist liturgical principles suggest that every member of the assembly so moved ought to have access to that posture or to its analogue according to their abilities: to move from place to place in the liturgy in procession; to ‘rise’ or stand in praise or attention; to raise or extend hands; to make a sign of reverence in relation to a fellow member of the assembly; to kiss or touch the table for eucharist, the book of scripture, or image; to pour or sprinkle blessed water; to lay hands in blessing or prayer, and so on. Further, if there is a gesture or posture that is restricted to some members of the assembly, for example, by virtue of ordained office, then its use in the liturgy requires thorough questioning, if not exclusion, from the assembly’s practice.
This principle of shared access extends not only to particular embodied gestures and actions but to all the locations where those actions commonly occur, particular at the critical liturgical centres of table, font, and place of proclamation. This reflects a feminist emphasis on reversing ‘vertical’ hierarchies literally built into many places for prayer. As Proctor-Smith (1995: 56) notes, ‘In place of the patriarchal vertical orientation, feminist groups arrange their space within a horizontal orientation’. This access depends, however, on another presumption, which is that the whole assembly moves from place to place, and is free to do so without the impediment of stairs, rails, fixed pews and other obstacles. As Janet Wootton writes, reflecting on Ruether’s work, ‘A worship space that forces the participants to sit in rows, leaving any worship leaders with no choice but to be at the front, facing the others, may abnegate any non-patriarchal intention in worship’ (Wootton, 2000: 34; Ruether, 1985: 146–47). Thus, like posture and gesture, any movement ought to be communalized as well, or at least open to participation of any so moved and able.
In this, even more ‘progressive’ liturgical patterns and arrangements of space often fail. While Collins (1991: 14-15) and others note that feminist liturgies are marked by ‘circles and spirals and spheres and squares, symbols that embrace multiple energies in tension’, even arranged in a circle, an assembly that never moves will be a passive recipient of the work of those who do. Fixed circles are not necessarily any more ‘open’ than other shapes and patterns. Movement of the whole from place to place disrupts such fixedness, proposing different patterns: moving spirals, dance steps, even holy chaos – what Siobhan Garrigan (2007: 6) has described from her experience as ‘the ragtaggle group of us who process the gifts to the table and offer them during communion’. Engaging such patterns may mean relaxing an overly scripted and formalized ars celebrandi of some liturgies in favour of flexible ritual shapes and movements that blur edges and open spaces for a more expansive participatio plena et actuosa in the assembly. As Janet Walton (2000: 38) notes of her own experiences of feminist-inspired liturgy: ‘Though we may be self-conscious and awkward, we dance, we move together, we touch each other in actions of solidarity, play, and blessing. We value the revelations of our bodies along a wide spectrum of abilities and disabilities’.
Alongside the principle of access in embodied gesture is also one of reciprocity, which also emphasizes the horizontalizing insights of feminist reflection, as Walton (2000: 37) points out: ‘Horizontal gestures prevail in feminist liturgies; they suggest equality and interdependence; they affirm God known among us. Generally we do not look up to find God. We connect with each other to give and receive blessings’. Thus, while laying on or extending hands or bowing the head or body in reverence might be preserved in assemblies shaped by feminist consciousness, such gestures must be accorded to all. Some monastic assemblies maintain a practice of bowing to the ‘liturgical centre’ of the table or icon then turning to offer a similar bow of reverence to another member of the assembly. Robert Hovda, author of a widely used commentary on presiding (Hovda, 1976), included a bow of reverence to the assembly at the beginning of the liturgy, 18 which in my experience and practice – notably in an LGBTQ+ assembly of Roman Catholics – has been shared by all members of the assembly and bodily contradicted any suggestion that the presider was something other than the assembly’s delegate and servant.
While communalization of movement, posture, and gesture such as those described here in my view reflects insights of both the broad liturgical movement and feminist ritual and liturgical concerns, feminist reflection also offers a two-fold reservation in their regard. First among these is a reticence to prescribing a narrowly limited repertoire of gestures, postures, and movement that does not emerge from the assembly’s own preparation and reflection. As Proctor-Smith (1995: 48) points out, ‘Most traditional postures of prayer are postures of submission: kneeling, prostration, head bowed, eyes closed. They literally place the person in a physically vulnerable position’. This leads her to reject ‘certain ways of ritualizing the female body’, such as offering or sacrifice, submission, and ‘unqualified’ celebration (Procter-Smith, 1995: 63–64), which Walton (2000: 38) reinforces: ‘Though we presume we are safe in our gatherings, we do not repeat actions that have historically limited, demeaned, or hurt us’. Andrea Bieler and David Plüss (2010) have raised similar concerns for some regarding the ‘exposed’ orans posture for some presiders, which might be extended to all the assembly’s members. 19 Sharing such postures throughout the assembly may mitigate some of the discomfort – or it may not. The contextual concerns of feminist liturgical reflection suggest assemblies will discern the most helpful patterns of participation for their liturgical practice, which will likely become apparent over time through both ritual and reflection upon it. Second, while the group may propose or even encourage particular patterns of embodied participation, feminist reflection suggests that other possibilities are not excluded. ‘Full, conscious, and active participation’ has many embodiments. Engaging its embodiment through feminist lenses ‘will necessarily be tentative, experimental ... [F]eminist embodied prayer experiments with, explores, and discovers gestures and postures of mutuality, equality, and community’ (Procter-Smith, 1995: 64).
Strategies for Feminist Liturgical Gesture: Voice
While some denominational resources include new prayers that reflect feminist concerns, especially regarding naming the divine, though few if any have directly engaged the Christa symbol as it has emerged in some feminist reflection. 20 Yet even these more expansive compositions reflect more or less the received pattern of what Episcopal liturgist Louis Weil (1996) has called ‘presider dominant’ texts, particularly the eucharistic prayer or ‘great thanksgiving’. 21 These long texts, present across the denominational range, continue to presume that the presider does most of the talking, with occasional echoes from the rest of the assembly. In the case of eucharistic praying, these are typically limited to the Sanctus/’Holy, holy’, memorial acclamation (not always present), and Amen, sometimes with a shared doxology. The eucharistic prayer is but one example when the presider, regardless of gender, does most of the talking, but a ‘single voice’ also dominates other texts in many assemblies, for example in readings and prayers of intercession, not to mention preaching.
Feminist practice, as broadly recorded in some resources and liturgies, tends to diversify voices, with responsive proclamation between readers, common longer responses and texts read together by all present, and responsive readings between one voice and many, and shared reflection on what has been heard. These patterns appear also in some denominational resources, usually with fixed texts printed in bold with the rubric, ‘All’. While such practice expands the ‘voicing’, the assembly’s ‘lines’ remain more or less fixed, as they are with more traditional texts, a practice widely criticized by feminist reflection on liturgy. Procter-Smith (1995: 42), for example, argues that such unison texts ‘present the participants with texts which do not need to ask (‘Do you believe?’ ‘Have you sinned?’) because they begin from the presumption of consent: ‘Say what you believe.’ ‘Confess your sins.’ This is no less true of contemporary ‘inclusive’ texts than it is of older and robustly patriarchal ones.
What is generally lacking in most liturgies and liturgical resources that might disrupt the presider-centric and pre-scripted voicing of the assembly is any opportunity for members of the assembly to speak in their own voices. To use Janet Wootton’s expression in relation to the general silencing of women in the liturgical tradition, most of the assembly must remain content with ‘whispering the liturgy’. 22 At most, silence suffices for common recollection and confession of sins, laments, prayers of the people, and eucharistic thanksgiving. Yet any or all of these could be times when a hetero-glossic rumble might sound in the assembly, as ‘all-so-moved’ (rather than a flat ‘all’) speak their own confessions, laments, prayers, thanksgivings, and responses to prayer and preaching. As Walton (2000: 68) argues of the voices of the assembly, ‘The most important moments of a feminist liturgy are the occasions when each person has the opportunity to say what she is feeling or thinking in response to the ritual actions’.
Procter-Smith (1995: 30) argues that such multi-vocal prayer must do two things as once: ‘create a new language and seek legitimation for the new language alongside the old, unitary language’. This does not preclude the use of model texts, or even standard texts that can be learned by heart, yet it raises to equal significance and dignity the spontaneous ‘full, conscious, and active’ voices of the assembly as a whole, aided or encouraged by those designated to lead the assembly in its work. An expansion of ‘voice’ for the assembly might better express liturgical theologian Aidan Kavanagh’s contention that liturgy is a ‘many-to-many’ interaction (as opposed to a ‘one-to-one’ or ‘one-to-many’). 23
In terms of liturgical performance, expanding the assembly’s voicing suggests greater use of litanic or call-and-response forms of prayer, always with opportunities for assembly members to add their specific contributions, such as in the practice of Tongsung Kido (‘praying aloud’) of some Korean churches, through which members name aloud specific needs beneath the umbrella of the assembly’s prayer, often sustained by the chords of the sung response: ‘For persons driven from home, for communities drained of hope, for those we now name’. 24 Depending on the skill of leaders and musicians, even the responses themselves might be varied. These moments of openness make room for a multi-vocal ‘praying between the lines’ commended by Procter-Smith (1995: 31).
In the case of the eucharistic prayer, a place for the assembly’s specific thanksgivings for continuing divine action in their lives, along the lines of Tongsung Kido, might well also be appropriate: for example, in the preface or other remembrance of God’s works. Some assemblies may endeavour to shape their own eucharistic prayer, provision for which appears in the Episcopal Church’s 1979 Book of Common Prayer, 25 which might adopt a more participatory form. Further, however, a revision of the contemporary ‘presider-dominant’ thanksgivings as they appear in the liturgical books may also be in order to make it clearer that the prayer belongs to the whole assembly. In this, some contemporary Roman Catholic eucharistic prayers (three composed ‘for Masses with children’ 26 and others ‘for various needs and occasions’), 27 as well as a number of the eucharistic prayers in Evangelical Lutheran Worship, 28 include both additional acclamations of praise and responses to intercessions. In these instances, while the presider’s voice remains the one most often heard, the prayer achieves a more litanic shape, with repeated affirmations by the assembly that its presider is indeed voicing the prayer of the whole.
Beyond texts printed, prescribed, or presumed in liturgical books, however, feminist reflection on liturgical ‘voice’ suggests extending liturgical speech beyond those designated ‘liturgical’ in the books. Feminist concerns for gathering and hospitality, and for specific contexts, suggest that other speech also qualifies as ‘liturgical’ and deserves attention and reflection. Greetings of welcome and hospitality at the church door during gathering, often the first encounter among members of the assembly, certainly apply. Announcements of the church’s mission and business do as well. Attention to these ‘voices’ not only expands the number heard in the liturgy, it also further de-clericalizes liturgical speech. All of these offer opportunities that not only trouble previously imposed ‘silences’ but add new dimension to the assembly’s prayer.
While feminist liturgical and theological reflection widely affirms an expansion of ‘voice’ in the liturgy, caveats nevertheless apply. Marjorie Proctor Smith’s (1995) counsel to ‘bestow oneself to silence’ in the face of the textual onslaught of many liturgies applies here. Some may not wish to speak; some may be unable to do so. Others may withhold their response to a prayer to which they are not able to say ‘amen’, whether proposed by the official texts of the liturgy or voiced by another member of the assembly. Liturgy attentive to feminist reflection and critique will invite only, it will not demand, nor will it make a preferential option for the extrovert. Silence, too, whether in protest or reflective prayer, also speaks in a voice of its own.
Strategies for Feminist Liturgical Gesture:
Leading from Within
The preference for communalization commended both by some in the liturgical movement and in feminist reflection on liturgy – in posture, gesture, and movement, as well as in voice – extends also to patterns of leadership in the liturgical assembly. At the same time, given that ordination and the liturgical leadership connected to office remains a contested space, feminist gestures in matters of liturgical leadership are equally fraught. After a long period of insisting that women could lead liturgy, especially eucharistic liturgy, just as well as men, the ordination of women and gender minorities has not always led to a change in patterns of liturgical leadership. Some women, as I have argued above, preside in the liturgy exactly as men have done for centuries, choosing to ‘adapt and adopt as unisex’ 29 the practice of ordained men and inscribing similar clericalizing patterns that focus primarily on the ordained presider, often with a coterie of similarly vested assistants. This is quite understandable, given that the ordination of women in my church (Episcopal) has not yet been accompanied by a fundamental rethinking of liturgical resources themselves, 30 with their inevitably embedded presumptions about the gender of the presider.
As Walton (2000: 28-29) notes, there is an obvious connection between feminist theological concerns and expanding the gender of those ordained beyond those perceived as male: When a woman leads worship, her presence makes visible God who is not known more adequately through men. When a woman prays in the name of the community, she illustrates quite tangibly that no particular sound can be called ‘God’s sound’. When women offer their own perspectives on the living realities of faith, they reinforce the differences every person adds to the interpretation of texts, symbols and sacramental actions.
31
Yet Walton (2000: 28-29) also avers that changes in ordination requirements are also only steps toward a more broadly just and emancipatory practice of liturgy: ‘The justice expressed in a more inclusive clergy is related to the justice of a more inclusive liturgy ... But issues of ordination are only one part of the struggle to express our relationships with God, one another, and other creatures more fully and more truthfully’. The liturgical presidency of women alone will not necessarily lead to liturgical leadership informed by feminist principles and practice.
One problematic strategy for disrupting the presider-centric model of liturgical prayer in my own Episcopal context has been to divvy up the parts designated for the presider among other leaders: collects, invitations, absolution, gospel reading, preaching, eucharistic prayer, and blessing. Because many of these parts are canonically restricted to the ordained, however, the effect has been to multiply the number of clergy, usually priests but also deacons, producing a revolving leadership still largely made up of the ordained. It is, for example, not at all uncommon for almost every role at large diocesan events to be taken by ordained persons, with only readers and leaders of intercessions representing the ‘merely baptized’, a clerical display often intensified by separate seating for ordained persons. Once at the table, the eucharistic prayer itself is at times divided up among priests as a kind of ‘concelebration’ common in some Roman Catholic contexts. While this strategy may enlarge the diversity represented among the clergy in terms of gender, cultural heritage, or colour, it does little to disrupt a primarily clerical pattern of liturgical prayer. In the case of the eucharistic prayer, it further separates the assembly from its voices, reinforcing the prayer as a ‘priestly’ text offered on behalf of the ‘laity’.
Much feminist reflection on liturgical leadership suggests patterns both horizontal and communal, patterns that disrupt much of the received heritage regarding ordination and presiding, especially the connection between the presiding priest and the person of Christ. Procter-Smith (1990: 23) describes this as an ‘explicit rejection of hierarchical forms of liturgical leadership and a corresponding commitment to shared leadership’. In my own estimation, the change introduced in some churches by ordaining women to something called ‘priesthood’ (particularly in Anglican contexts) has not been fully appreciated, leaving both the understanding of presiding and its practice in flux. Some (Burns, 2010; Cones, 2017) have criticized the mimicry of historic forms of presiding that tend to identify the person of the presider with the person of (Jesus) Christ, as if the presider functions symbolically in persona Christi without relation to the rest of the assembly. While I prefer to imagine the presider functioning when necessary in persona ecclesiae, as the assembly’s ‘communal person’ in those moments in which it requires a single voice or gesture, such reframing will not necessarily prevent the collapse of leadership into that person.
One strategy to point toward more feminist leadership in the matter of presiding would be to simply omit any presidential gestures that identify the presider with the person of Christ. These include ‘manual acts’ during the eucharistic prayer, as well as the restriction of the proclamation of the gospel (and therefore any remembered words of Jesus) to the ordained. In the case of the eucharistic prayer, in the absence of manual acts, there would be little need for the presider to be closer to the assembly’s table than any other member, as Richard Giles (2004) suggests. 32 Further, any gestures and postures the presider engages would be presumed to serve as models for the participation of any member of the assembly so moved. In other words, the primary ministry of the presider is one of modelled invitation to participate. This particularly includes directing attention to the current moment in the work of the assembly, thus leading by yielding to the leadership of others, whether another ‘specialized minister’ such as a lector, or to the work of the whole gathered assembly in silent reflection or active intercession. Conscious application of the patterns described above in movement, posture, gesture, and voice as applied to the whole assembly might then draw greater attention.
Yielding to other leaders and to the assembly as a whole, however, requires further reflection on (and likely diminishment of) the role of the presider in the assembly and its description in official liturgical resources. Walton’s (2000: 46) description of leadership in feminist contexts is instructive: ‘The primary task of leaders in feminist liturgies is to set a context in which everyone can participate, to provide opportunities for a variety of kinds of participation. The goal is a spirit of celebration in which each person knows that she or he depends on another, learns from another, and evokes the other’. Mary Collins (1991: 14) further specifies feminist patterns of leadership through which ‘the actor strategically shapes polycentric forms rather than hierarchical ones, organizing ritual interactions to acknowledge that spiritual power can be found in many places. Feminist ritual action is often deliberately ‘headless’ to affirm that spiritual power and wisdom have been given to all’.
Current liturgical books across traditions make certain presumptions about what the presider does, some of which are canonical, such as some forms of absolution and leading the eucharistic prayer. The local reception of what is found in these resources may either intensify or mitigate any presider-centric tendencies. Feminist reflection on liturgy and liturgical practice suggests at the very least that the presider or any leader is never ‘alone’; such ministry always exists in relation to the assembly as a whole. The space for liturgy might well signal this by the placement of the chair for the presider being among those ‘accessible’ locations of liturgical prayer, set in horizontal relationship to the seating of the rest of the assembly. Roles not specifically assigned to the presider or ordained person would be taken up by other leaders or by the whole. And in good feminist fashion, any insistence on the presider alone assuming a particular role would be thoroughly interrogated.
Strategies toward Feminist Liturgical Gesture: Where to Begin?
The reflections above suggest to me multiple possibilities to engage feminist liturgical insights for the celebration of liturgy in more broadly representative assemblies. Yet the fact that such steps have not been widely taken leads me to wonder what is stuck. It would be easy to lay blame at the door of denominational authorities, official liturgical resources, and preparers of liturgy, including local clergy, for failing to question or disrupt a profoundly patriarchal liturgical heritage. Any limitations on these official levels likely reflect resistance in training contexts – seminaries and theological colleges – to a full engagement of feminist theological reflection and practice. 33 And yet experience also tells me that assemblies themselves are not yet prepared to engage these ritual patterns. Over 20 years of liturgical ministry in Roman Catholic, Episcopal and Anglican, and now Uniting Church contexts, I have invited assemblies to try on nearly every single strategy and pattern noted above, with extremely limited success.
On the one hand, some assemblies continue to presume – and why wouldn’t they? – that liturgy is primarily the domain of the ordained, and so those gathered (progressively smaller in number) sit passively as a single preacher delivers an expository sermon on the text of the day. In other contexts, assemblies are consigned to distant bleachers 34 as the ordained and their retinue engage in highly ritualized enactments meant to evoke awe or mystery but more often than not pantomime another (usually medieval) period. Even some contemporary ‘fresh expressions’ and neo-Pentecostal worship reproduce such patterns, updating previous forms with highly produced audio-visual experiences akin to pop concerts and TED-talk style motivational speaking. It would be hard to see how these forms reflect the deep insights of both the broad liturgical movement, with its focus on the whole assembly and its plena et actuosa participatio, or the feminist liturgical movement that emerged alongside it, with its critical focus on the embodied, ritualized emancipation of women, and by extension, other marginalized persons.
That said, it is worth noting that it has not yet been a half-century since the liturgical movement achieved widespread reception, represented in renewed liturgical books and practice across many denominations. Even less time has passed since feminist theological and liturgical reflection has begun to influence denominational bodies. The ‘processual’ nature of liturgy – the continued and developing relationships of celebrations to one another over time 35 – suggests that continued development of an assembly’s shared liturgical encounter with God, its theologia prima, needs more time to reflect the adjustments proposed by feminist practice. What is lacking, it seems, has been consistent modelling and exploration of the forms these adjustments might take, which itself requires engaging another foundational insight of the feminist liturgical movement, the matter of liturgical preparation. The conviction that those celebrating the liturgy ought also be the ones preparing and shepherding it is practically a universal norm among feminist writers on liturgy. 36 While granting the challenges of larger assemblies and denominational requirements, strategies toward communalization of movement, posture, gesture, voice, and leadership in liturgical celebration are not likely to get very far without parallel efforts at communalized preparation before and reflection after the assembly’s gathering prayer. Over time these may lead – perhaps at first gradually and sporadically, then with clear shape and consistency – to liturgies resonant with the insights of feminist liturgical reflection and practice. To quote Walton (2000: 83) again, ‘[F]or most people, such changes require a gradual process usually marked by small steps, with an occasional forward leap’. Those small steps and occasional leaps depend on continuing to engage liturgical practice that proposes new, emancipatory relationships both within assemblies and, through them, to the world.
Footnotes
Funding
The author pursued the research for this article as a doctoral student at Pilgrim Theological College – University of Divinity in Melbourne, Australia. The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided him by the University during that time.