Enriching Our Worship 5: Liturgies and Prayers Related to Childbearing, Childbirth, and Loss

by Church Publishing Incorporated

This unique new service book includes liturgies for blessing and healing as related to childbearing and childbirth. It includes prayers, Scripture readings and hymn suggestions organized around the blessing of a pregnant woman; loss of a pregnancy; repentance and reconciliation for an abortion; difficult decisions, unexpected or unwanted pregnancy, loss of a child, termination of pregnancy, infertility, sterilization, and adoption.

90 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Resources to support The Episcopal Church and beyond—from official worship materials, such as hymnals and prayer books, to professional resources for clergy, lay leaders, and the wider church community.

Headquartered in New York City, New York, U.S.A.

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the seminary I used to go to, the Every Moment Holy books are all the rage: a series of liturgies for all moments, both mundane and momentous. While I appreciated the intent, for some reason these liturgies rubbed me the wrong way. Part of the reason is that they are just too verbose and like the elegant simplicity of the best liturgies. Part of it is that seem inspired by but not rooted in the ancient liturgies that our church has been practicing for almost 2,000 years—like a cosplay imitation. Still, these “artisan, hipster liturgies” seemed to be meeting a need to bring liturgy into the moments which formal liturgy ignores.

This volume from the Episcopal Church, alongside their Book of Occasional Services (and the Anglican Church of Canada’s Occasional Celebrations book), fills that need. This book in particular features sensitive, spacious, and deeply thought through collects and liturgies related to all kinds of reproductive celebration and loss. There are services to honour miscarriages, collects before surgeries, services of blessing for new pregnancies, and prayers and services to accompany adoption and (even) regrets over abortion. These prayers and services rooted in older prayers, psalms, and liturgies. It’s an astonishing resource. (The Book of Occasional Services features a wide range of liturgies to accompany many other life events.)

If I had more influence in the Episcopal Church, I would recommend writing more of these kinds of prayers and services and publishing them in beautiful, illustrated editions. They should be more widely known.