Mrs Murphy's Arising from the Pew - feminist theology

Ecumenical Review, The, Jan, 2001 by Ninna Edgardh Beckman

Ecclesiological Implications

"Mrs Murphy" and many of her sisters have risen from the pew, and are today constructing Christian liturgy in ways which they feel suit them, rather than gracefully partaking in ritual patterns handed down from the fathers of the church. This is the content and meaning of the feminist liturgical movement, as documented by several feminist theologians during the last 20 years.(1) The feminist liturgical movement is "women claiming responsibility for their own spiritual lives", sometimes within a specific religious tradition, sometimes outside, and sometimes across traditional confessional borders.(2)

"Mrs Murphy" has become famous as a symbol for the ordinary Christian churchgoer. She was invented by the liturgical theologian Aidan Kavanagh to represent the practitioners of what Kavanagh and other liturgical theologians call "primary theology", that is, theology as the practice of Christian worship rather than as academic endeavour.(3)

In many ways, Mrs Murphy was; already revolutionary in Kavanagh's imagery. Even to move our conceptions of theology away from the shelves of academic libraries, and towards the practice of ordinary Christians in liturgy, may be quite demanding for academic theologians. For feminists the contribution of Kavanagh and other liturgical theologians has been an important step away from the androcentric bias inherent in a modern Western intellectual apprehension of Christian faith. The fact that theology has, to such a degree, been reserved for male intellectuals has no doubt made much of women's -- and also many men's -- experiences of God, the church, and life in the world invisible, and therefore to a large degree unavailable for the growth of the spiritual life of the church as a whole. If theological space would primarily be understood to be the liturgy, where Christians share the word and the meal on equal terms, this would surely be revolutionary.

However it is obvious that Kavanagh and most of his colleagues have not drawn the full implications of their theoretical move. The theories of liturgical theologians have so far failed to explain what happens when Mrs Murphy "rises from the pew" and questions what is going on. During the Ecumenical Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women, women's ways of being church have become apparent in new ways. The inherent potentials and challenges from women organizing themselves and claiming space as fully able members of the one body have shaken many a church leader.(4)

One area where women have made use of their capacities in new ways is in liturgy. As priests and as lay liturgists women have, during recent decades, challenged old patterns of gender -- but also of beliefs -- in liturgy. I am currently analyzing acts of worship where women have been active agents in the context of the Ecumenical Decade in Sweden.(5)

The aim of my analysis is to probe the potential of a feminist ecclesiological perspective for the ongoing feminist renewal of Christian liturgy. In which way can feminist ecclesiology contribute to solve the problems inherent in a feminist Christian liturgical project? What does a feminist ecclesiological perspective make visible, in contrast to other perspectives?

Ecclesiology and feminist visions

When I started my doctoral work five years ago I sometimes felt like a living anomaly. Whenever I read a book on ecclesiology, or attended a seminar or conference, the people I met were men (and usually rather conservative men, at least with regard to gender issues). Ecclesiology has, until very recently, been an almost completely male-dominated area. This may in part have to do with a lack of interest on the part of feminist theologians. Often when I told my feminist friends that I was going to work in the area of ecclesiology, they looked at me in a strange way and muttered something about Christian identity being about the gospel, or the reign of God, and not about "the church".

It is, however, my conviction that, just as with other issues of justice, the challenge of feminist theology can only be fully met if the feminist agenda is reinterpreted as having to do with the self-understanding of the church and this self-understanding is, in turn, reinterpreted as having to do with feminist visions.(6) I was therefore happy to learn that the WCC will continue the Ecumenical Decade for Churches in Solidarity with Women by relating the issues arising Decade to ecclesiology.

I will use the rest of this article to develop this further, using my doctoral work as a case study. My aim is to demonstrate the potential of feminist ecclesiology to act as a cohesive agent between issues of Christian, and feminist, identity.

The Swedish ecclesiological context

The Church of Sweden is an Evangelical Lutheran church, inspired ecclesiogically during the last century mainly by the idea of a "folk-church". This concept has been interpreted in several different ways, but one of the most influential has been the "religiously motivated folk-church" of Bishop Einar Billing (1871-1939). According to this, the existence of the church is motivated by its mission and responsibility to deliver the gospel of divine grace to each citizen in the Swedish nation.(7)