Worship Revised: Thoughts on Feminism and Worship

This past quarter, having taken a required worship class, I spent a good deal of time thinking about feminism as it relates to how people formally worship G*d. Part of this reflection played out in a worship service that I was required to help plan at Bond Chapel (at the UofC Div. School). The service I helped plan was based around the themes of the sermon on Thecla found in an earlier post. Through confession, it took into account women's oppression and violence against women; through a litany, it highlighted the major roles women have played and continue to play in the church. The following is a broader reflection on what it means to bring feminist thought into the realm of worship.

The ultimate goal of bringing feminism and worship together is not to create “feminist liturgy” that is a distinct category from all other worship nor is it to merely "add women and stir" (a phrase taken from theologian Susan Ross). The goal is that liturgy will incorporate contributions from feminist ideology in order to make the liturgy more egalitarian. Our Bond Chapel service can serve as an additional resource for considering how to authentically bring feminist thought and women’s issues to worship, but more work must be done in order to fully bridge the gap between traditional liturgy and feminism. Traditional liturgy follows a form and structure created and written by men of privilege; a liturgy that “bridges the gap” does not entirely abandon the thought and theology that informs the traditional liturgy. However, this traditional thought and theology has to be reevaluated and its dominant role must be decreased in order that new ideas—such as feminist theology and ideology—have an equal role in the shape of liturgy. Like the new vision of spatial arrangement discussed above, an egalitarian liturgy that takes feminist ideas into account will differ significantly from traditional liturgy: new words and prayers will be introduced, and some liturgical pieces may be revised or removed while new pieces are added. Ideally, this new liturgy will take contributions from a multiplicity of voices and ideological perspectives and backgrounds while leaving open space for the addition of new voices.