Mrs Murphy's Arising from the Pew.

Beckman, Ninna Edgardh

Ecclesiological Implications

"Mrs Murphy" and many of her sisters have risen from the pew, and are today constructing Christian liturgy in ways which they feel suit them, rather than gracefully partaking in ritual patterns handed down from the fathers of the church. This is the content and meaning of the feminist liturgical movement, as documented by several feminist theologians during the last 20 years.(1) The feminist liturgical movement is "women claiming responsibility for their own spiritual lives", sometimes within a specific religious tradition, sometimes outside, and sometimes across traditional confessional borders.(2)

"Mrs Murphy" has become famous as a symbol for the ordinary Christian churchgoer. She was invented by the liturgical theologian Aidan Kavanagh to represent the practitioners of what Kavanagh and other liturgical theologians call "primary theology", that is, theology as the practice of Christian worship rather than as academic endeavour.(3)

In many ways, Mrs Murphy was; already revolutionary in Kavanagh's imagery. Even to move our conceptions of theology away from the shelves of academic libraries, and towards the practice of ordinary Christians in liturgy, may be quite demanding for academic theologians. For feminists the contribution of Kavanagh and other liturgical theologians has been an important step away from the androcentric bias inherent in a modern Western intellectual apprehension of Christian faith. The fact that theology has, to such a degree, been reserved for male intellectuals has no doubt made much of women's -- and also many men's -- experiences of God, the church, and life in the world invisible, and therefore to a large degree unavailable for the growth of the spiritual life of the church as a whole. If theological space would primarily be understood to be the liturgy, where Christians share the word and the meal on equal terms, this would surely be revolutionary.

However it is obvious that Kavanagh and most of his colleagues have not drawn the full implications of their theoretical move. The theories of liturgical theologians have so far failed to explain what happens when Mrs Murphy "rises from the pew" and questions what is going on. During the Ecumenical Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women, women's ways of being church have become apparent in new ways. The inherent potentials and challenges from women organizing themselves and claiming space as fully able members of the one body have shaken many a church leader.(4)

One area where women have made use of their capacities in new ways is in liturgy. As priests and as lay liturgists women have, during recent decades, challenged old patterns of gender -- but also of beliefs -- in liturgy. I am currently analyzing acts of worship where women have been active agents in the context of the Ecumenical Decade in Sweden.(5)

The aim of my analysis is to probe the potential of a feminist ecclesiological perspective for the ongoing feminist renewal of Christian liturgy. In which way can feminist ecclesiology contribute to solve the problems inherent in a feminist Christian liturgical project? What does a feminist ecclesiological perspective make visible, in contrast to other perspectives?

Ecclesiology and feminist visions

When I started my doctoral work five years ago I sometimes felt like a living anomaly. Whenever I read a book on ecclesiology, or attended a seminar or conference, the people I met were men (and usually rather conservative men, at least with regard to gender issues). Ecclesiology has, until very recently, been an almost completely male-dominated area. This may in part have to do with a lack of interest on the part of feminist theologians. Often when I told my feminist friends that I was going to work in the area of ecclesiology, they looked at me in a strange way and muttered something about Christian identity being about the gospel, or the reign of God, and not about "the church".

It is, however, my conviction that, just as with other issues of justice, the challenge of feminist theology can only be fully met if the feminist agenda is reinterpreted as having to do with the self-understanding of the church and this self-understanding is, in turn, reinterpreted as having to do with feminist visions.(6) I was therefore happy to learn that the WCC will continue the Ecumenical Decade for Churches in Solidarity with Women by relating the issues arising Decade to ecclesiology.

I will use the rest of this article to develop this further, using my doctoral work as a case study. My aim is to demonstrate the potential of feminist ecclesiology to act as a cohesive agent between issues of Christian, and feminist, identity.

The Swedish ecclesiological context

The Church of Sweden is an Evangelical Lutheran church, inspired ecclesiogically during the last century mainly by the idea of a "folk-church". This concept has been interpreted in several different ways, but one of the most influential has been the "religiously motivated folk-church" of Bishop Einar Billing (1871-1939). According to this, the existence of the church is motivated by its mission and responsibility to deliver the gospel of divine grace to each citizen in the Swedish nation.(7)

The church counts a large majority of the Swedish population as its members (fully 84 percent in 1999) and has, up until 1999, been closely linked to the state. But religion in Sweden is undergoing a process of great transition. A formerly homogeneous society, which for centuries had "one people and one faith" as its explicit motto (this was first stated in the Swedish church law from 1686!) has, during the last century, had to come to grips with a steadily growing diversity in Swedish society. A major turn in this process was marked on 1 January 2000 by the formal separation of church and state, whereby the Church of Sweden became one of many communities of faith existing in our society, rather than the privileged one.(8)

The Church of Sweden still has privileges -- that has to be admitted; but the fundamental relation of the church to the state has changed. Behind this formal change, informal transformations are taking place in belief-patterns and customs. Though a majority of the population are still church members, only a minority regularly participate in liturgical services and uphold traditional religious beliefs.

Most Swedes only go to church for baptisms and burials. Many of them have an uncertain belief in some "positive energy" which is present in all of creation. They use the church merely as a "service" institution. Sociologists of religion point to the numbers 7 and 70 as expressing the essence of this new situation: whereas only 7 percent of the population regularly takes part in the liturgy (once a month, or more), as much as 70 percent of the population regard the church as an "indispensable cultural factor" in Swedish society.

What has been left behind is mainly the role of the church as societal authority. The church in Swedish society today can be best understood as one of several cultural resources upon which the individual can draw in important life-transitions and situations of crisis, the Estonia disaster being a typical example.(9) This transference towards more individually oriented values of freedom and independence goes together with a move from outer to inner authority. The authoritative "canopy" function which the church upheld in the former agricultural society is being today largely replaced by the individual as the coordinating factor among different sectors of life, different values and beliefs. Young (and reasonably well-educated) women have, in local surveys in Sweden, been shown to constitute the main, core-group carriers of this new attitude.(10)

From an ecclesiological perspective, these changes in life-style and values imply major challenges to the church. Images of a one-way and top-down communication from the institutional church to its members make little or no sense in Sweden today. The response to the new social reality has so far ranged on the one hand from a renewed stress on differentiating identity (a renewed sort of confessionalism), and on the other hand to an increased adaptation to "what people want", a reaction which is sometimes seen as a form of inner secularization.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Church of Sweden has not yet fully come to grips with the challenges of modernity. Some would certainly wish that the church had a moratorium on change, to give time for an inner contemplation of the changes undergone in the last century. But the situation does not allow for such a retreat: the world knocks on the door, both from within and from without. It is thus within the context of increased challenges from a late-modern society, including issues of expanding globalization, growing acceptance of neo-liberal values, and a steadily increased individualization that I think we have to interpret the challenges made by the feminist movement.

The context with regard to gender

With regard to gender Sweden is a society where great efforts have been, and are being made to minimize women's subordination. In 1995 Sweden was ranked number one in gender development and gender empowerment indexes by the United Nations Development Programme, and in the same year Sweden also received a special prize for extra-ordinary contributions in this area at the United Nations' Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Gender equality is also one of the distinguishing marks of Sweden's contribution to the European Union during its presidency in 2001.

But in spite of all, this gender-division and the subordination of women prevails in Swedish society. Violence against women, segregation in the labour market (i.e. women doing the lowest-paid jobs and the unpaid housekeeping), and numerous, more subtle, forms of gender oppression survive alongside the official progressive politics.

These realities also show up in church statistics. In spite of the fact that the first ordination of women took place as early as 1960, and in spite of consistent support from laypeople, a survey in 1998 revealed that one fourth of male priests still rejected women as priests, with an additional 10 percent of male priests "unsure".(11) This aggressive work environment explains why much of women's ministry within the priesthood in the Church of Sweden has been quite defensive.

Certainly women as priests find individual ways of coping with androcentric language and with patriarchal patterns of ministry -- like the priest who told me that she suffers from a partial, but reoccurring, dyslexia when arriving at certain parts of the worship manual, especially those stressing the male and almighty lordship of the one Father. But partial dyslexia on the part of the priest -- however significant, not to say symbolic, this is -- unfortunately does not solve many problems for Mrs Murphy and her sisters. It is here that I think the importance of the feminist liturgical movement in Sweden will show.

In this movement new forms of worship are given room to grow, forms which women as priests have had difficulty establishing in their role as institutional servants. Not that women as priests are an insignificant group in this: on the contrary, my study has shown that women as priests have played a major role as providers of space, providers of elements of tradition and, not least, as authorizers of Mrs Murphy and other laywomen, in the Swedish variant of the feminist liturgical movement.

The feminist liturgical movement in Sweden

What, then, is this movement as it has manifested itself in Sweden? In my qualitative study I use 31 occasions of celebrated liturgies and three published materials as inspiration for women constructing new forms of worship. The ecclesiological framework of the liturgies has been women's intrachurch organizations, student chaplaincies, ecumenical women's organizations and also secular events such as the International Women's Day on 8 March, which has proved to be a good "excuse" for raising women's issues in church. In all these contexts the Ecumenical Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women has played an important role as a legitimizing framework.

Another ecclesiological characteristic of the Swedish liturgies is the fact that they have, to a high degree, been led by women priests, have taken place in a church building and have included a eucharistic meal. Thus the liturgies used in my study have closer connections to the institutional church than many of the liturgies documented elsewhere in the feminist liturgical movement.

Liturgical forms

In other respects, however, the worship events share characteristics with these. One which I want to stress is the fact that women in the feminist liturgical movement claim a space of their own. The importance of this space has many dimensions, one being that of a safe space. An obvious background to this is the global problem of violence against women: on one occasion documented in my material, the women saw to it that the church-doors were locked so that their persecutors would have no chance of disturbing them.

The violation of women, however, takes not only the form of physical violence. The importance of claiming a space has also to do with safeguarding one's right to define the terms of liturgical celebration. The importance of safe liturgical space thus ranges from dimensions of physical integrity to integrity with regard to images of God and the human being and, further, to integrity in the use of language and symbolism.

Another dimension of space in the feminist liturgical movement is that of egalitarian space. One characteristic is the gathering in circles, a trait which Letty Russell has developed in her ecclesiological work Church in the Round.(12) Though most of the liturgies have taken place in church buildings -- which often do not allow for gatherings in a circle -- it seems that, whenever possible, the gatherings have taken place in circles. If it has not been possible to move the pews, space has been given for gathering in a circle for dance, or at least for the preparation and celebration of the meal. The egalitarian symbolism of the circle is one reason for its frequency in feminist liturgies. Egalitarian patterns also show, for example, in the fact that many women have been active agents in both the celebration and preparation of the liturgies.

One characteristic which is, I think, related to the fact that the Swedish variant of the feminist liturgical movement is close to the institutional liturgical forms is the fact that the basic ordo for Christian liturgy has been kept in most cases.(13) Some form of the basic structure of Gathering, Word, Meal and Sending can be identified in most of my examples. As we shall soon see, however, the content of the different elements in the ordo has often been transformed.

Liturgical content

With regard to liturgical content, many of the changes being made mirror a dogmatic feminist critique. At the points where feminist theologians have concentrated their critique we will certainly find changes in the content of the liturgies, even if such a theoretical critique has not been the basis of the construction of the liturgies. One area where this is obvious is that of the relation between the human being and God. In a traditional Church of Sweden high mass, the Gathering expresses the fundamental Lutheran principle of "justification by faith alone" in the form of a clear confession of sins and prayer of forgiveness coming at the beginning of liturgy, followed by words of absolution from the priest. The Gatherings in my samples of feminist liturgies have shown quite another basic pattern. Instead of stressing the contrast between God's will and human actions, a close relation between God and human beings has been imaged. Often the prayers have expressed a concern for women not to confess false feelings of guilt. When sins have been confessed, we find many examples of "adverse" confessions, for example not of pride, but of self-denial. Sometimes also violations committed against the participants have been named and rejected as sin.

It is no exaggeration to say that the central place of justification by faith in the liturgies has been replaced by a stress on justice within the community. The people gathered, mostly women, have been portrayed as collaborators with God for the establishing of God's just reign on earth, rather than as sinners pleading for forgiveness. The names for God have evoked images of the motherhood of God's indwelling spirit, rather than images of the almighty Father on a throne in heaven.

These change are not surprising, considering the general changes in patterns of belief outlined above; but they imply major challenges to traditional Lutheran understandings. In addition to this is the feminist exegetical critique manifested in the treatment of the Bible in the liturgies. Generally speaking, we may say that readings from the Bible have a distinctly less prominent place in these liturgies than in the official liturgies of the Church of Sweden. Often scriptural passages have been juxtaposed with other elements, which have relativized the authority of the biblical text.(14) These feminist adoptions of the old liturgical principle of juxtaposition imply a rejection of the Lutheran principle sola scriptura, which in 19th-century Lutheran Protestantism was practised as an exclusive defining principle. Rather than letting scripture correct tradition, women in these liturgies have used their authority as church to correct sexist biblical passages and unjust readings of scripture.

The element of the ordo which has remained most intact in Swedish feminist liturgical adaptation is the Meal. I believe that this is because the Meal is easier to Claim as ritual enactment of just relationships than many other elements of worship. One way in which my liturgical examples differ from the usual ordinary worship in the Church of Sweden is that the eucharistic prayers used in the feminist liturgies regularly include the remembrance of women in the community -- from Mary, the mother of Jesus, to Mothers of the church throughout history.

Inherent risks

I can see an interesting potential for theology in the responses to God and society which are enacted in these liturgies. However there are also risks which, needless to say, differ according to whether they are seen from a feminist perspective (e.g., the need for a change of patriarchal patterns), or from the perspective of preserving liturgical tradition (e.g., the need to safeguard elements of Christian identity manifested in liturgy, patriarchal or not).

In our context, feminist needs challenge traditional Lutheran understandings of Bible and tradition, God and the human being. However these are matters which are already much disputed in contemporary theological debate -- the relationship between justice and justification being a good example, the relationship between scripture and tradition another.(15) Such basic theological issues are clearly in need of continual reinterpretation in each generation. Therefore I think it would be wrong to say that the liturgies which I have studied "reject" central Lutheran understandings: they rather underscore the need of an ongoing interpretation of matters of faith, and point to a lack of such a debate in the contemporary church.

I would also say that the role of women as priests in this process is essential. As priests, they have theological training and bear responsibility in dealing with matters of faith. As women, they might find it easier to understand how patriarchal patterns of liturgy may hinder a woman's development towards spiritual maturity. Women as priests' may thus be well suited to bridge the gap between the needs of women and the truths of tradition in a creative way, not least by authorizing laywomen as being capable of theological reflection. But this, of course, also presupposes a feminist consciousness.

From a feminist perspective there are obvious risks with women coming thus together to reconstruct liturgical tradition, and drawing mainly from their own experience. Feminist theologian Anne-Louise Eriksson has shown how the construction of theological ideas in the liturgy of the Church of Sweden has been closely linked with the construction of gender.(16) The idea of God as "absolutely other" has, for example, been dependent on the separation of male and female, with God as male and the congregation, at least implicitly, as female. Women coming together to construct liturgy never start "from scratch", but relate to tradition in one way or another. The risks of -- perhaps unconsciously -- taking over traditional understandings of "femininity" and "masculinity" are apparent.

Ecclesiological conclusions

The feminist liturgical movement -- in Sweden and elsewhere -- may be analyzed from many different perspectives. Up to now debate on the forms of women's liturgies has mainly focused on questions of gender symbolism and inclusive language, while the content of the liturgies has primarily been discussed in terms of heresy or orthodoxy. One major example of this type of debate is the aftermath of the global "Reimagining" conference on feminist theology held in Minneapolis in 1993. The conference, which was meant to mark the midpoint of the Ecumenical Decade, caused a verbal war in the North American religious press, with high costs (in terms of spoiled trust and relationships) paid by all parties. To meet accusations that worship al the conference was "heretical", those defending the conference had to address such questions as whether it was "Christian" or not to call God "Mother Sophia", and whether a shared meal held at the end of the conference was, or was not, a "desecration" of the eucharistic meal.(17)

The debate is an excellent example of what happens when issues of Christian and feminist identity are confronted without an integrating perspective. It is my conviction that conflicts over the feminist liturgical movement will never be solved on the level of discussions about how Christians may, or may not, speak of and to God. I want to argue instead for the benefit of a hitherto neglected feminist ecclesiological perspective. Churches, as well as other human communities, are dependant on discourses where meaning is constructed through dialectical relationships among linguistic and social communities. The feminist liturgical movement is a challenge from Christian feminists against the Christian discourses dominant in the churches today, and this challenge cannot be adequately met if it is restricted to the level of "inclusive language", or "right or wrong" beliefs.

My argument is that the challenge will be better met on the level of ecclesiology, precisely because it is a challenge to the patterns of authority expressed in the heart of the matter called "church", that is, the Christian community gathering to celebrate and to pray to the God we know through Jesus Christ. The feminist liturgical movement is multiple "Mrs Murphys" coming together to be the church and claiming authority as church, though seldom in a restrictive way, but rather from a vision that Christian faith may be manifested in manifold ways.

The feminist liturgical movement is a growing feminist ecclesiological praxis. By that I mean neither a practice without theoretical implications, nor abstract theoretical constructions without consequences for real people's real lives. A feminist ecclesiological praxis is primary theology in the meaning referred to by liturgical theologians, but also expanded to mean theology constructed "from below", with room for both spontaneous expressions of experience and tradition, and for reflection on these expressions.

Deep theological challenges are coming to the surface in the liturgies which I have studied. Patterns which minimize the role of the human being are consequently being rejected: instead women throughout history are reconstructed as mature spiritual agents, persons willing to listen to God's call for transformation of both the individual, and human community as a community of justice. The liturgical life of the Church of Sweden has, during the latter part of the 20th century, been largely influenced by the same liturgical movement which has influenced also Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions.(18) The Swedish variant of the feminist liturgical movement has, according to my study, challenged the church to extend this influence to include feminist perspectives.

One advantage of an ecclesiological perspective is that it calls women, as agents of the feminist liturgical movement, to be responsible for what, and how, they as church interpret and hand on Christian tradition through liturgy. Women as agents of the church must see the risks inherent in their actions -- but also the creative potential in what they are doing.

An ecclesiological perspective on the feminist liturgical movement also calls the church as a whole to accountability for correcting the shape of the ordinary liturgy. Neither women nor men should have to risk their integrity as equal human beings being violated by their partaking in liturgy.

An ecclesiological perspective on the feminist liturgical movement may finally have something to offer for churches -- like the Church of Sweden -- which are trying to come to grips with the meaning of being church in a rapidly changing world. Questions posed include how to deal with the shifts in perceptions of authority which challenge old, hierarchical patterns of governance. They also include how to deal with the fact that churches, in spite of their claim to be transmitters of justification and forgiveness, regularly fail in their practice to be just communities of equal and responsible citizens. Feminist reconstructions of liturgy -- the "Mrs Murphys" taking command -- might be good places to look for models of the church which are capable of holding such contradictory ecclesiological elements together.

NOTES

(1) Rosemary Radford Ruether, "The Feminist Liturgical Movement", in A New Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship, J.G. Davies, ed., London, SCM Press, 1986, pp.240f.; Marjorie Procter-Smith, In Her Own Rite: Constructing Feminist Liturgical Tradition, Nashville, Abingdon, 1990; Teresa Berger, Women's Ways of Worship: Gender Analysis and Liturgical History, a Pueblo Book, Collegeville, MN, Liturgical Press, 1999.

(2) Miriam Therese Winter, Adair Lummis and Allison Stokes, Defecting in Place: Women Claiming Responsibility for Their Own Spiritual Lives, New York, Crossroad, 1994.

(3) Aidan Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology: The Hale Memorial Lectures of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary 1981, Collegeville, MN, Liturgical Press, 1984.

(4) Living Letters; A Report of Visits to the Churches during the Ecumenical Decade -- Churches in Solidarity with Women, Geneva, WCC Publications, 1997.

(5) Ninna Edgardh Beckman, Feminism och liturgi: En ecklesiologisk studie, Stockholm, Verbum, 2001 (forthcoming).

(6) Other writers have drawn the same conclusion concerning other issues of justice. See John de Gruchy, "Church Unity and Democratic Transformation: Perspectives on Ecclesiology and Ethics in South Africa", in The Ecumenical Review, vol. 49, 1997, pp.356-65.

(7) Gustaf Wingren, Gestalt einer Kirche von Morgen: der theologische Entwurf des Schweden Einar Billing, Aus dem Schwedischen ubers. von Knut Wenzel Backe, Munich, Claudius, 1969.

(8) The transitions described in this text are documented in published and forthcoming reports from an ongoing research project called "From State Church to Free Folk Church: A Sociology of Religion, Service Theoretical and Theological Analysis in the Face of Disestablishment between the Church of Sweden and the State in the Year 2000". The project is led by the professor of sociology of religion Anders Backstrom at Uppsala University, and will be documented in a series of reports to be published by Verbum in Sweden (including my dissertation, and a final report in English by 2002).

(9) The ferry Estonia sank on its way from Tallin in Estonia to Stockholm in Sweden in September 1994. More than 800 people drowned.

(10) Anders Backstrom, ed., "Livsaskadning och kyrkobyggnad. En studie av attityder i Goteborg och Malmo", Tro & Tanke, 1997, 4, Uppsala, Svenska kyrkans forskningsrad, 1997.

(11) Anders Backstrom, Prast och Pastorsundersokningen 1998. Not yet published, Uppsala Univ., 1999.

(12) Letty M. Russell, Church in the Round: Feminist Interpretation of the Church, Louisville, Westminster John Knox, 1993.

(13) On the ecumenical reception of the idea of a basic ordo for Christian worship see Thomas F. Best and Dagmar Heller, eds, So We Believe, So We Pray: Towards Koinonia in Worship, Faith and Order Paper no. 171, Geneva, WCC Publications, 1995; and, with a focus on baptism, Becoming a Christian: The Ecumenical Implications of Our Common Baptism, Thomas F. Best and Dagmar Heller, eds, Faith and Order Paper no. 184, Geneva, WCC Publications, 1999, as well as "The Sacramental Dimension of Baptism", report of a Faith and Order consultation, Prague, 2000, FO/2000:4 (prov.), not yet published.

(14) The Lutheran liturgical theologian Gordon Lathrop has shown that the principle of juxtaposition is basic in all Christian worship. See Gordon Lathrop, Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology, Minneapolis, Fortress, 1993.

(15) Viggo Mortensen, ed., Justification and Justice, Department for Theology and Studies, LWF, Geneva, 1992; and A Treasure in Earthen Vessels: An Instrument for an Ecumenical Reflection on Hermeneutics, Faith and Order Paper no. 182, Nov. 1998.

(16) Anne-Louise Eriksson, The Meaning of Gender in Theology, Stockholm, A&W International, 1995.

(17) For an analysis of the debate see Ninna Edgardh Beckman, "Sophia -- Symbol of Christian and Feminist and Wisdom?", in Feminist Theology, 16 Sept. 1997, pp.32-54; or Elizabeth Bettenhausen: "Re-imagining: A New Stage in US Feminist Theology", in Ofelia Ortega, ed., Women's Visions: Theological Reflection, Celebration, Action, Geneva, WCC Publications, 1995.

(18) For an overview see Ninna Edgardh Beckman, "Lady Wisdom as Hostess for the Lord's Supper", in Teresa Berger, ed., Dissident Daughters-Daughters of God: Women's Liturgies in Global Context, Westminster John Knox, forthcoming.

Ninna Edgardh Beckman is the author of books on sophia/wisdom in the Christian tradition, and on the realization in Sweden of the Ecumenical Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women 1988-98.