More on inclusive language and public prayer

Re: the post below and its many comments (read it and them first), it turns out I had posted a little piece of the Jaci Maraschin essay a little over a year ago.

You can read that post here.

For another Brazilian perspective, from Silvia Regina de Lima Silva, posted around the same time, see here. (Tracie, this may speak to you, though Silvia doesn't use "Goddess." But she is a radical woman after your own heart, and full of passion and fire.) It is important to listen to this voice from a Black woman of the Southern Hemisphere.

For the struggle to come to words we barely know are within us, especially if we are women, see here. (Nelle Morton's classic essay on "Hearing to Speech.")

One among many examples of the beautiful Anglican, inclusive prayers by Janet Morley of England.

I've got a chapter on language in When in Doubt, Sing: Prayer in Daily Life, as I mentioned in the Comments section of the post below. Thought I had posted part of it once to this blog, but perhaps not. It's not showing up in two searches I just did in the archives. I'll look again later. Some of you have the book, anyway. (The rest of you should buy it ;-) - just sayin'. And thank you.)

Lots more on language, prayer, and gender in the church in the archives of Acts of Hope.

For instance, Julian of Norwich (14th century) on the Trinity. Today some of us would find the language less than satisfying but in the context of the 14th century, it's marvelous. So, as many pointed out when our Presiding Bishop began to use mothering language for Jesus and some got their knickers in a knot about it, this is not exactly a newfangled idea. Even earlier in Christian history, there were maternal images for Godde. There are also such images in the Hebrew Bible, though the patriarchal images dominate.

I thank you all for your courtesy and honesty in this conversation. Let it continue, and do share resources with us.

Speaking of the Daily Office: the St. Helena Breviary - and some musings on inclusive language in liturgy

I want one of these (the full monastic edition) in the worst way. I think that part of what keeps me from praying the Daily Office when I don't pray it is the language.

Interestingly, sexist language bothered me less when I went to pray with the monks in Berkeley (they've now closed their Priory and merged with the two other houses in the U.S.), the brothers of the Order of the Holy Cross, Anglican Benedictines. Perhaps because of the chant, perhaps because there isn't much macho-ness or hierarchy there. I miss those times of going up the street for Vespers.

In Berkeley, I worshipped at a congregation that had done a thorough revision of the liturgy, under the careful shepherding of a liturgical scholar who is also a priest and a feminist, and it was the first time I didn't have what I call "the cringe reflex," both because there were women clergy (and men clergy too) and because of the language. Female clergy alone won't do it, friends. What words do we use to talk about God and about each other?

It really is possible to name God and to preserve the Holy Trinity without being male-dominant. It takes work and mindfulness. I am always amazed that the conversation about inclusive language, which began when I was in divinity school 35 years ago and which we took to congregations and judicatories of many denominations and communions, is still in its infancy in some parts of our church -- and invisible in others. It's as if our conversations of the 1970s (and 1980s, and 1990s), with some serious thoughtful work and plenty of theology and poetic compositions by now) had never happened.

This is true in other communions, but I wonder if in the Episcopal Church it has to do with a certain literalism of the Prayer Book and the way we use the book. Is the Prayer Book a springboard or a stranglehold? Discuss.

The New Zealand Prayer Book is beautiful and many of us use it. But we are mostly not authorized to use it in public worship, e.g. for the Eucharist. And it is inculturated for Aotearoa New Zealand, not for the U.S. The issue isn't only language that is gender-inclusive (or, as some in the Episcopal Church formal commissions and publications name it, expansive language) but also language that includes images of nature and creation and that is rooted in the life of our local church, in the country or rather countries of the Episcopal Church.

In any event, as soon as I have a bit of disposable income I am going to invest in a St. Helena Breviary and Psalter.

Note: The great irony is that there is sometimes more linguistic change going on in Roman Catholic churches than in Episcopal churches, because parish priests sometimes just go ahead and change the language. Because hierarchy in the Episcopal Church is in some ways more functional than it is in the Roman Catholic Church, it has more of an influence on whether or not folks change language at the local level. I have seen far more Episcopal churches not change the language "because the bishop won't allow it" than Catholic churches; the Catholic churches just go ahead and do it. The bad side of this being that often it's spontaneous and less studied and thoughtful, with a few exceptions. In the Episcopal Church, when the language changes, it's often after a lot of work. (Note: when we changed the language in Berkeley after all the scholarly and pastoral study, it was with the bishop's permission and blessing.) But does this also hold us back?
Yes, we have Enriching Our Worship. But if it's not in regular use at Sunday Eucharist and other public prayer of the church, what use it is?

You want to start a firestorm in the church? Never mind the discussion on lgbt people (well, do mind it) - try changing the language.

And these discussions are not unrelated. They all upset people's cosmologies -- the way they view the order of the universe and who decided and decides what it should be. (Certain blog sites that will remain nameless, in fact, are as upset about language as they are about gay bishops.)

Also, remember, the Daily Office isn't everyone's way of praying. Just a reminder brought to you by When in Doubt, Sing. ;-)

Photo: Sr. Cintra Pemberton, OSH, with the Breviary.

A note on the reactions to the death of John Updike (R.I.P.)

This isn't really about John Updike, may he rest in peace, but about the descriptions of John Updike on the radio.

I found myself yelling at the radio this morning. Yes, me, yelling at my blessed NPR shows in the car on the short drive to work.

Updike was a great writer, no doubt about it, and an art critic and thinker and many other things. So this isn't a dissing of Updike.

What is getting to me is how everyone is speaking of him as a writer about (the United States of) America, American post-war life, the American middle.

Excuse me?!

Updike wrote about white American post-war life.

Of course, he wrote about other things too. I have had his novel about a fictional African country, The Coup, on my shelf for years and have been meaning to read it, and I will read it in memory of him. Updike was, as one critic said, kaleidoscopic.

But Rabbit is not (the U.S. of) America.

Is Rabbit a part of it? Of course. A significant part of it? Of course. The whole story? No. "Representative" (of the whole story)? No.

We are so (as the kids would say) not out of the era of white privilege.

If we're going to name the fact that people are chroniclers of Jewish life or Black life in these United States, then let's name the fact that people are chroniclers of White or White Protestant life in the United States. (Or, for that matter, of the U.S. white middle class, or of middle-class Northern men.)

Either that or I want the obits for Toni Morrison (long may she live and continue to write) to say as much as the obits for Updike that she wrote the Great American Novel.

'Cause if you think that slavery and its aftermath or love and work in Harlem or the U.S. South have not been as American as apple pie and as the life of suburban white businessmen, you are still thinking of white America as normative --as the rule, the standard, the "normal"-- and the rest of these United States as the exception or the other.

White privilege is not just present in what we do or in what happens to us, but in how we think and how we speak. *

Think about it.

*See, for instance, re: the American novel, item 7 in the list on the document at the "white privilege" link above.

Spirit, Structure, and Flesh: my friend Deidre Crumbley's new book

I am just back from the book party for my friend Deidre's new book, held at St. Ambrose, Raleigh, a historically African American Episcopal church. The publisher (a university press) priced the book high and it's a hardback, but I am happy to say that Deidre's friends showed up and bought a lot of books -- and the founder of the church's Jazz Mass Quartet came and played the saxophone! There was food, particularly some excellent spinach balls. And a big cake saying "Congratulations." Here's a reproduction of the book cover.


It's a fascinating book and Dr. Crumbley (that's Deidre) has worked on it for something like 20 years. Four years of field work in Nigeria, countless rewrites, and the search for a publisher, plus illness and search for funding and all manner of obstacles. I gather there was also a cat involved at some point. Of course.

Rejoice with Deidre in her great achievement!

By the way, there are now members of African Initiated Churches, including the Aladura churches in this book, here in the U.S. -- including here in North Carolina. As Deidre noted in her short talk at the party, the African Diaspora did not end with slavery; indeed, our President-Elect is a child of this diaspora. So the African Initiated Churches, which began in the 20th century as indigenous African forms of Christianity, have migrated to other continents and are undergoing changes there.

More on the book on the publisher's website here. The full name of the book is Spirit, Structure, And Flesh: Gendered Experiences in African Instituted Churches among the Yoruba of Nigeria.

No more Opus :-(

Click to enlarge.

Salon has an interview with Berkeley Breathed, creator of Opus the Penguin and his band of friends, on why he's ending his strip. It has something to do with the quality (if you can call it that) of our national discourse.