Feminist Studies

The issue of Liturgy entitled “Renewals in Retrospect: Fifty Years of Worship Scholarship amidst the Changing Worlds of Worship,” was co-edited by Andrew Wymer, vice-president of the Liturgical Conference board and professor of worship at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, and me.

We solicited essays from a range of members of the North American Academy of Liturgy (NAAL) looking at what has changed in liturgical scholarship and liturgical practice in the years since NAAL was founded in response to the Second Vatican Council.

Here is an excerpt from an essay by Janet Walton who taught liturgy at Union Theological Seminary in New York for many years and was a founding member of NAAL’s seminar on feminist studies. She is describing the questions women were asking of liturgical scholarship and teaching that resulted in the creating of their seminar.–– Melinda Quivik

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Three women, Mary Collins, Nancy Swift, and Jeanne Marie Heisberger, were members of the North American Academy of Liturgy from its beginnings in 1973. As teachers of theology, religious education, and music, they were deeply involved in bringing the insights of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (a document which endorsed significant changes in the liturgies of the Roman Catholic Church) into the public worship of the church.

Eight years later, in the early 1980s, Mary Collins, Kathleen Hughes, Marjorie Procter Smith, and I were walking along the hall together at a meeting of the North American Academy of Liturgy asking each other about women’s roles in public worship. What were we teaching about the contributions of women to the liturgical life of churches? What resources were available? What were feminist liturgical scholars publishing? What methods of teaching were we using? What changes were we imagining in our liturgies that included women’s insights and participation?

Marjorie Procter-Smith was in the early stages of writing a book about constructing feminist liturgical tradition. A friend, Ann Patrick Ware, and I had started a women’s liturgy group in 1981 in New York City. The church where they were members (the Woodstock Roman Catholic Community on the Columbia University campus) had rejected all their suggestions to include women’s experiences in our liturgies. Each of these scholars was already publishing and speaking about possibilities for women’s active participation in liturgy.

The Feminist Studies seminar at the North American Academy of Liturgy began at this time to talk to each other and to gather materials for teaching and research about feminist liturgical contributions in various institutions. Then and now, that work includes a combination of study, conversation, and liturgical experimentation.

Today, as feminist liturgical scholars we depend on contributions from many perspectives: feminist theologians, feminist biblical scholars and historians, poets, dancers, actors, as well as the responses of women and men in congregations. Together with them we name stories, prayers, and hymns where women’s experiences have been included or overlooked or rejected. Together we support each other to take some risks, primarily to make space for what is true. Feminist studies in every academic discipline challenges long held beliefs and invites detailed research. The Feminist Studies seminar has been a place to name what is good for women and to call attention to what diminishes or harms us. At our meetings, members share new ideas about images and symbols, objects and words, stories and actions that connect and call attention to the realities of women’s lives. Everyone is expected to be an active learner every time we gather.

The first year of the seminar focused on a draft of Marjorie Procter-Smith’s book. She began with this pivotal question: Is what we do in liturgy “true for us” or is the liturgy, in poet Adrienne Rich’s words, a form that “reorganizes victimization… translating violence into beautiful forms, disguising its danger for women?”1 This fundamental question—“Is it true for us”—has shaped the work of our seminar from then until now.

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The rest of this essay is available in the full digital and print editions of Liturgy. All of the essays in Liturgy 37, no. 4 are available by personal subscription and through many libraries.

Janet Walton is a professor emerita at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, liturgical consultant for synagogues, and founder of the Women’s Liturgy Group in New York.

Janet Walton, “What Is True for Us: Feminist Contributions to Liturgical Experiences,” Liturgy 37, no. 4 (2022): 52–56.