Shock horror - an idea. Currently studying for my MA in Liturgical Studies. I have a 6000 word essay due in on Valentine's Day and a dissertation to dream up and complete before I finish my curacy (because I just wont do it otherwise). I've been flailing wildly because I'm one of those people who wants inspiration to strike if I'm going to spend hours researching something and writing about it. I suddenly thought that doing some stuff on men's ways of worship might be really interesting.
I have a lot of books on my shelf about women's ways of worshipping, and the dynamics of departing from patriarchy and whether or not the liturgical tradition is so saturated in misogyny that you can't get away from it. But then I thought about the article I read recently about the Oxford Diocese focusing on evangelism to men due to low numbers in church etc and wondered if anyone had come at the research from a liturgical angle - has anyone asked the questions we ask with a feminist head on about how men want or need to worship God?
When we take time to de-construct what is essentially female in an approach, a style, an engagement, have we also taken time to de-construct what is essentially male, not in the stereotyped millennia of patriarchy sense - in the nurturing whole and decent human beings who are not slaves to their gender or its stereotypes sense. Could the evangelism of the Oxford Diocese be resourced by an approach to liturgy which recognises the harm done to men by patriarchal structures, and takes into account gender in a more holistic way?
1 comment:
One of the big problems is that if you even contemplate asking the question people shout the usual things at you - misogynist.
Even the use of open source self published websites comes in for that kind of criticism.
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