Mapping uncharted territory in the study of liturgy's past, this book offers a history to contemporary questions around gender and liturgical life. Teresa Berger looks at liturgy's past through the lens of gender history, understood as attending not only to the historically prominent binary of "men" and "women" but to all gender identities, including inter-sexed persons, ascetic virgins, eunuchs, and priestly men. Demonstrating what a gender-attentive inquiry is able to achieve, Berger explores both traditional fundamentals such as liturgical space and eucharistic practice and also new ways of studying the past, for example by asking about the developing link between liturgical presiding and priestly masculinity. Drawing on historical case studies and focusing particularly on the early centuries of Christian worship, this book ultimately aims at the present by lifting a veil on liturgy's past to allow for a richly diverse notion of gender differences as these continue to shape liturgical life.

Mapping uncharted territory in the study of liturgy's past, this book offers a history to contemporary questions around gender and liturgical life. Teresa Berger looks at liturgy's past through the lens of gender history, understood as attending not only to the historically prominent binary of "men" and "women" but to all gender identities, including inter-sexed persons, ascetic virgins, eunuchs, and priestly men. Demonstrating what a gender-attentive inquiry is able to achieve, Berger explores both traditional fundamentals such as liturgical space and eucharistic practice and also new ways of studying the past, for example by asking about the developing link between liturgical presiding and priestly masculinity. Drawing on historical case studies and focusing particularly on the early centuries of Christian worship, this book ultimately aims at the present by lifting a veil on liturgy's past to allow for a richly diverse notion of gender differences as these continue to shape liturgical life.

The richness of recent research on women's worship gives witness to the scholarly interest in its contemporary practice, reflection, and construction. On the other hand, feminist scholarship has had little impact on liturgical historiography. In Women's Ways of Worship Teresa Berger reconstructs liturgical history from the perspectives of women. She shows that the invisibility of women in the traditional liturgical narrative draws into question the credibility of that narrative, especially at a time when research into women's history has unearthed much material relevant to women's liturgical lives. Berger focuses on thirteen key interpretative principles that guide the reconstruction of women at worship - from a re-configuration of the canon of sources and a re-Visioning of liturgical periodization to re-interpretation of anthropological basics and of liturgical texts. On the basis of these principles, she analyzes liturgical dynamics in two time periods crucial to the history of women at worship: the early centuries of the Christian Church and the twentieth-century liturgical renewal. Within the twentieth-century liturgical renewal, Berger focuses on two specific foci of renewal: the classical liturgical movement of the first half of the century, and - as a case of history-in-the- making" - the women's liturgical movement of the present day. Women's Ways of Worship narrates both past and present liturgical developments from the perspectives of women's lives, heeding such dynamics as the genderization of liturgical space, women- specific liturgical taboos, gender-specific devotional practices, and the emergence of feminist liturgies. An epilogue confronts the question of a future liturgy "beyond gender." Convinced that reconstructing the history of women at worship will offer a new Vision of the place of the women's liturgical movement within liturgical history as a whole, Berger puts this movement on a continuum of women at worship, which is a continuum of struggle against the historic marginalization of women in most liturgical contexts. As this struggle has come to the forefront today, Women's Ways of Worship provides a context for change, with women themselves being agents of both the questioning and the transformation. Chapters are "Reconstructing Women's Ways of Worship: In Search of Methodological Principles," "Liturgical History Re-Constructed (I): Early Christian Women at Worship," "Liturgical History Re- Constructed (II): Women in the Twentieth-Century Liturgical Movement," and "Liturgical History in the Making: The Women's Liturgical Movement." Teresa Berger is associate professor of Ecumenical Theology at the Divinity School of Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. She is the author of numerous books and contributor to a variety of journals including Worship, published by The Liturgical Press. "

This book calls attention to the importance of scholarly reflection on the writing of liturgical history. The essays not only probe the impact of important shifts in historiography but also present new scholarship that promises to reconfigure some of the established images of liturgy’s past. Based on papers presented at the 2014 Yale Institute of Sacred Music Liturgy Conference, Liturgy’s Imagined Past/s seeks to invigorate discussion of methodologies and materials in contemporary writings on liturgy’s pasts and to resource such writing at a point in time when formidable questions are being posed about the way in which historians construct the object of their inquiry.

Christian churches in recent decades have taken some steps in their practices of liturgy and worship toward acknowledging the graced dignity of human variety. But who is still excluded? What pernicious norms still govern below the surface, and how might they be revealed? How do texts, gestures, and space abet and enforce such norms? How might Christian assemblies gather multiple expressions of human difference to propose through Christian liturgy patterns of graced interaction in the world around them? Liturgy with a Difference gathers a broad range of international theologians and scholars to interrogate current practices of liturgy and worship in order to unmask ways in which dehumanizing majoritarianisms and presumed norms of gender, culture, ethnicity, and body, among others, remain at work in congregations. Together, the chapters in this collection call for a liturgical practice that recognizes and rehearses the vivid richness of God’s image found in the human community and glimpsed, if only for a moment, in liturgical celebration. They point a way beyond mere inclusion toward a generous embrace of the many differences that make up the Christian community. With contributions from Rachel Mann, Teresa Berger, Susannah Cornwall, Miguel A. DeLa Torre, Edward Foley, W. Scott Haldeman, Michael Jagessar, Bruce T. Morrill, Kristine Suna-Koro and Frank Senn. Foreword by Ann Loades.

How are we to proclaim Christ in different cultures? This question was central to a landmark study on worship and culture conducted by the Lutheran World Federation between 1992 and 1999. Much has changed in the years since then: the world today more than ever is a multicultural global village. Worship and Culture revisits that LWF study and publication, shedding new light on the question from recent theological and sociological scholarship to expand and enrich the texts in the original three-volume work. This book includes texts from the main statements that came out of the original project as well as updated essays from some of the original contributors. It also adds new essays, prayers, and hymns to the conversation, inviting readers to consider what the life of the church should look like in today’s hybrid, multicultural world. Contributors Julio Cezar Adam Scott Anderson Mark P. Bangert Thomas F. Best Stephen Burns Anscar J. Chupungco, OSB Joseph A. Donnella II Norman A. Hjelm Margaret Mary Kelleher, OSU Dirk G. Lange Gordon W. Lathrop Anita Monro Martha Moore-Keish Melinda A. Quivik Gail Ramshaw S. Anita Stauffer Benjamin M. Stewart Glaucia Vasconcelos Wilkey Joyce Ann Zimmerman, CPPS

Sacrosanctum Concilium opened the door to all Christians to understand the contemporary challenge to their life and health, and it started with the reform of the liturgy. In the words of Paul VI the liturgy is the 'first source of life communicated to us, the first school of our spiritual life, the first gift we can give to Christian people by our believing and praying, and the first invitation to the world.' That is surely true for all of us.