A Conversation on “Queer Futures for Liturgical Studies”

The issue of Liturgy entitled “Future Renewals: Looking Toward the Next Fifty Years of Worship Scholarship and Practice,” 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 the transcript of a conversation between four liturgical scholars: Scott Haldeman, Stephanie Budwey, Jason McFarland, and Lis Valle-Ruiz. They were convened by Dr. Haldeman to discuss “queer futures for liturgical studies” in a wide-ranging focus on how inclusion of LGBTQIA+ changes the field of liturgy. This excerpt responds to a question about new projects and teaching and enacting ritual. –– Melinda Quivik

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SCOTT: An exciting thing that happened recently is that I created this new course called “Feminist, Womanist, and Queer Ritualizing,” and I offered it first as a January intensive, and I thought, oh, well, we’ll be together and we’ll have a lot of fun. We’ll get down to the floor and figure this out. Then, the pandemic hit, and it had to go online. So, abruptly, I’m doing a new course, an online course, and an intensive—all together for forty hours on Zoom—and it seemed impossible. How is this going to work? But the students were great. They were amazing! I put them in small groups, and they spent half the day working on a liturgy or ritual for the next day. It was an entirely queer class, all kinds of traditions represented. Other kinds of demographic diversities and stuff like that. And they got along. They trusted each other. They brought completely new ideas.

Another thing I think we have to talk about as an academy is multiple religious belongings. They’re becoming more and more visible, as so many other things are becoming more and more visible. But I was amazed that it worked at all.

JASON: Another hopeful thing or an opportunity is that human beings will always be ritualizing beings. Right? No matter what context, we know how to do it kind of instinctually, and for the Academy [North American Academy of Liturgy], too, that’s a huge challenge—opening up to this different sort of ecclesiology, or multiple belongings. What it means to belong. . .

A project I’m working on is about the critical edge in liturgical studies. That’s a huge challenge for Roman Catholic liturgical studies because in my view the critical edge has just kind of been silenced over the last couple of decades. So, either you research some obscure liturgical manuscript, or you have to be very vanilla in your theologizing about liturgy if you want to keep your job. . .

STEPHANIE: I’m thinking of a friend whose child is wanting to start taking testosterone, and they said their child is not very religious, but they want to ritualize it. I suggested they reach out to a transgender friend who might have a ritual for that. As you said, we’re humans. We want to ritualize everything, and I think we are finding more folks who might not call themselves religious, but in instances like this they’re still wanting ritual to mark something like the beginning of taking hormones.

SCOTT: Spiritual, but not religious doesn’t mean not ritual. We need to wrap our heads around that. I think there’s a denominational question that is important, too, because I think we’ve gone as far as we can—probably too far—looking for the common order, common prayer voice, and that kind of thing. And it’s time to focus more on our denominational distinctiveness. At the same time, people don’t choose their church by either the theology or the liturgy. They choose a congregation because it has a good program for their kids and a parking lot. . .

The full essay including references is available now in the digital and print editions of Liturgy. All of the essays in Liturgy 38, no. 1 are available by personal subscription and through many libraries.

W. Scott Haldeman serves as associate professor of Worship at Chicago Theological Seminary. He was the founding convener of the Queering Liturgy seminar of NAAL.

Stephanie A. Budwey is the Luce Dean’s Faculty Fellow assistant professor of the history and practice of Christian worship and the arts at Vanderbilt University Divinity School in Nashville, TN. Her teaching and research focus on the relationships between social justice issues, liturgy, and the arts.

Jason J. McFarland teaches theology and philosophy at The Australian Catholic University (Sydney). He did his postgraduate work in Liturgical Studies at The Catholic University of America. Jason’s work focuses on liturgical theological method, processes of liturgical change, and ritual/liturgical music.

Lis Valle-Ruiz is assistant professor of homiletics and worship and the Director of Community Worship Life at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, Illinois. Her teaching and research focus on the intersection between performance, justice, worship, and preaching.

W. Scott Haldeman, Stephanie A. Budwey, Jason J. McFarland, and Lis Valle-Ruiz, “Contemplating Queer Futures for Liturgical Studies: A Conversation,” Liturgy 38, no. 1 (2023): 24–32.