Gender Differences and the Making of Liturgical History: Lifting a Veil on Liturgy's Past

Liturgy, Worship and Society

by Teresa Berger

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.

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Teresa Berger is professor of liturgical studies at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School.

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book on the recent-acquisitions shelf at the Mount Angel Abbey Library in Oregon just a year ago while I was there making a retreat. The library supports both a four-year college and a four-year seminary and is therefore wonderfully complete. The title caught my attention, for better or worse, but a quick look at the scholarly depth of her study convinced me that this was not strident polemic bur rather a careful, responsible and intelligent work in an important but underserved area of study. Using the tools of gender history, Berger examines modern questions of liturgical space, liturgical presidency and Eucharistic imagery and practices by tapping historical sources too little used by conventional historians. The result is readable (for those accustomed to academic language), interesting and edifying.

[Pishowi · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.