Liturgy as Protest and Resistance — Liturgical Conference

The issue of Liturgy dealing with “Liturgy as Protest and Resistance,” guest-edited by Andrew Wymer, looks at how liturgical practices can and do subvert the status quo both societally and religiously. What follows is an excerpt from Wymer’s Introduction. –– Melinda Quivik

~~~~~

Christian liturgy has a complex history with regard to the negotiation of power; it has too often functioned to reflect or reinvigorate broad social patterns of domination. However, throughout its history, Christian liturgy has also been a resource for protest and resistance. Viewed through the lens of Obery Hendricks’s “revolutionary Jesus,” a radical activist, I argue that the roots of Christian worship are firmly grounded in aggressive resistance and protest against the dominant powers of the day (The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus’ Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted [New York: Doubleday, 2007]).

This heritage of liturgical protest has been active even in our U.S. history. Enslaved persons often worshiped in ways that both undermined the dominance of the slaveholders and empowered enslaved persons to resist their oppressors or to take revolutionary action. Because white slaveholders saw the Christian worship of enslaved persons dangerous, it was heavily regulated and, at points, outlawed. Even in the late-twentieth century, liberation movements dramatically impacted liturgical theology and practice as minoritized scholars explored how worship could serve in the struggle for liberation.

This issue contains essays that are richly informed by these historical streams of liturgical protest and resistance, breaking new ground as they call us to embody faithful protest and resistance in our worship.

In “Love Your Flesh: The Power and Protest of Embodied Worship,” Khalia Williams recounts her research with African American women who engaged in dance ministries in their local congregations. She argues that embodied liturgical participation by marginalized persons can fundamentally alter both the participants’ and the community’s perception of the intrinsic worth of socially marginalized bodies.

Lorena Parrish argues in “Dismantling Domination Through Womanist Rituals of Resistance” that churches need to replace androcentric liturgies with liturgical expressions that invite black women to tell the truth about their human experience and to be fully included in congregational life and leadership.

In “Pastoring (In the Face of) Resistance: A Tale of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Seattle,” Kristen Daley Mosier reflects on practices of worship that resist the dehumanization of homeless persons in an increasingly affluent and gentrified urban setting and the resistance these practices engender.

Andrew Scales, Klaas Walhout, and Emily Wilkes recount in “‘Christ Is No Stranger Here’: Disrupting Advent with Central American Migrant Narratives” how they utilized the season of Advent to resist xenophobia and anti-immigrant violence in contemporary political discourse and federal policies, providing an example of how a liturgical season can be enlisted in resistance to domination.

In “‘How can these things be?’: Zilpha Elaw’s Foolish Ministry,” Kate Hanch describes Elaw as an example of “foolish preaching” and calls Christian preachers today to likewise subvert and critique dominant social, economic, and political systems.

Finally, Elyssa Salinas-Lazarski, addressing “Care at the Site of the Dead,” constructs a theology that resists the dehumanizing and brutal forces that strip human dignity from persons even after death.

I hope that this issue will stretch the liturgical imagination, re-center liturgical theology, and ground liturgical practice in faithful commitment to resisting the powers that do harm, particularly along lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality.

Liturgy 35, no. 1 is available by personal subscription and through many libraries.

Andrew Wymer is assistant professor of preaching and worship, director of the chapel, and assistant dean of doctoral studies at New Brunswick Theological Seminary.

Andrew Wymer, “Introduction: Liturgy as Protest and Resistance,” Liturgy 35, no. 1 (2020): 1-2.