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Feminist Studies in Liturgy

Convener

Dr. Deborah Sokolove
Director, Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion
Wesley Theological Seminary
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www.wesleyseminary.edu/LCAR.aspx

Mission Statement

The Feminist Studies in Liturgy Seminar examines existing and new liturgies from a feminist perspective, and invites participants to explore new metaphors and new styles of liturgical expression and leadership.  Our commitment to inclusiveness leads us to consider not only texts but also gesture, environment, music and all aspects of embodied worship.  Our studies include the connections among formal worship, the academy and the larger society.

2012 Academy Meeting Agenda

CAROL COOK MOORE – Opening Ritual

SUE MOORE – Lifting Up Our Hearts: Weekly Eucharist for a Reluctant Congregation

SUSAN ROLL – The Implementation and Reception of the New Roman Missal

SYLVIA SWEENEY – Claiming the Vision: Baptismal Identity in the Episcopal Church

MARTHA ANN KIRK – Reconciliation in Stories from Iraq: Invitations to Reconciliation in Worship

HEATHER ELKINS – Genesis of Sacrament

JANET WALTON – Authority and Agency in Congregational Worship

MARTHA MCAFEE – Healing Rituals: Domestic Violence and Communities of Faith
Open discussion with experiences of interfaith worship

HYE RAN KIM-CRAGG – Closing Ritual

 

2010 Academy Meeting Agenda

Theme: “Practicing what we teach: principles and practices of feminist liturgy.” This year’s seminar will be a combination of papers/presentations and a session on pedagogy that will explore such questions as: how to teach worship in a flexible, diverse manner (leadership, principles, course design, content); what do you do the first day of class?; “When a rite goes wrong” (tools for analysis); and teaching the principles of feminist liturgy. An opening and closing ritual are a part of this seminar’s practice.

Friday, January 8

Morning Session

  • Gathering Ritual by Deborah Sokolove
    “Re-minding the Body”: reflections on professional and personal development

Afternoon Session

  • Mary E. McGann, “Blessed Is She Among Women!” paper/presentation on Mary of LaVang, Quan Âm, and the Cult of the Mother Goddesses in Vietnam
  • Open session presentations, “When a rite goes wrong” (tools for analysis); and “Practicing what we teach: principles and practices of feminist liturgy”

Saturday, January 9

Morning Session

  • Ruth Duck, "Marriage and Covenant Services," (presentation from her new basic textbook on worship)

Afternoon Session

  • Heather Murray Elkins, “Mountain Mamas and Mountain Top Removal: Appalachian Studies”
  • “Imagining the Future and Re-membering the Saints” — Planning for 2011 and Closing Ritual

2009 Academy Meeting Agenda

Theme: Metaphors, Rites and Blessings Around Birth and Life-Giving.

Papers and Presentations:

  1. Heather Murray Elkins, “Conceiving with Spirit and Truth”           
  2. Martha Ann Kirk, “‘Magnificat’: Women Bearing Life and Hope”           
  3. Sylvia Sweeney, “Blessing Babies Immediately After Birth”
  4. Karen Westerfield Tucker, “When the Cradle Is Empty.  Rites Acknowledging Stillbirth, Miscarriage and Infertility”           
  5. Susan Roll, “To Bless or Baptize a Stillborn Baby?”
  6. Deborah Sokolove, “Rituals and Metaphors for Ongoing Life in the Face of Challenge”

2008 Academy Meeting Agenda

The research and discussion theme of the Feminist Studies in Liturgy seminar group will be "Metaphors, Dying and Rising: how to claim, and how to create, living metaphors."  Presentations will include:

  1. Sylvia Sweeney, "An ecofeminist hermeneutic of death."  There are many different kinds of end of life experiences we have clumped together under the heading of death, and as a result of different vantage points in relation to the death experience death means different things to men and women.  The concept of death is itself a kind of metaphor that is not nearly as hegemonically interpreted as our Western Christian religious tradition might sometimes suggest.
  2. Susan Roll, "Metaphors in Christian worship: the quick and the dead." Several categories of nature metaphors common to Christian worship language and imagery have long been superceded by scientific knowledge. At best they reflect a prescientific level of perception that patronizes educated Christians, at worst they function to legitimize oppressive cultural, social, even economic relations.  Deconstructing them is easy, even fun: but how shall newer, creative, authentic, living metaphors be sought out and integrated into worship?

Number of participants: 18-20