WOMEN?S WAYS OF WORSHIP IBD

Sinopse

The richness of recent research on womenâÇÖs worship gives witness to the scholarly interest in itsácontemporaryápractice, reflection, and construction. On the other hand, feminist scholarship has had little impact on liturgicaláhistoriography. InáWomenâÇÖs Ways of WorshipáTeresa Berger reconstructs liturgical history from the perspectives of women. She shows that the invisibility of women in the traditional liturgical narrative draws into question the credibility of that narrative, especially at a time when research into womenâÇÖs history has unearthed much material relevant to womenâÇÖs liturgical lives.Berger focuses on thirteen key interpretative principles that guide the reconstruction of women at worship-from a re-configuration of the canon of sources and a re-visioning of liturgical periodization to re-interpretation of anthropological basics and of liturgical texts. On the basis of these principles, she analyzes liturgical dynamics in two time periods crucial to the history of women at worship: the early centuries of the Christian Church and the twentieth-century liturgical renewal. Within the twentieth-century liturgical renewal, Berger focuses on two specific foci of renewal: the classical liturgical movement of the first half of the century, and-as a case of 'history-in-the- making'-the womenâÇÖs liturgical movement of the present day.WomenâÇÖs Ways of Worshipánarrates both past and present liturgical developments from the perspectives of womenâÇÖs lives, heeding such dynamics as the genderization of liturgical space, women- specific liturgical taboos, gender-specific devotional practices, and the emergence of feminist liturgies. An epilogue confronts the question of a future liturgy 'beyond gender.'Convinced that reconstructing the history of women at worship will offer a new vision of the place of the womenâÇÖs liturgical movement within liturgical history as a whole, Berger puts this movement on a continuum of women at worship, which is a continuum of struggle against the historic marginalization of women in most liturgical contexts. As this struggle has come to the forefront today,áWomenâÇÖs Ways of Worshipáprovides a context for change, with women themselves being agents of both the questioning and the transformation.