On not playing Jesus: The gendered liturgical theology of presiding

Abstract

The male gender of the presider at Eucharist has long been a source of theological reflection both about the Eucharist and the presider’s role within it, and about ordination, particularly in relation to the exclusion of women from ordained office across Christian churches. The relatively recent admission of women and gender minorities to orders in some churches troubles the received liturgical and theological traditions in this regard. Drawing on the legacy of the 20th-century North Atlantic liturgical movement and its recovery of the assembly as the ‘primary symbol’ of the liturgy, this article explores the possible liturgical and theological ‘adjustments’ proposed by a change in the presumed gender of the presider in relation to the ‘primary symbol’ of the assembly, and suggests changes in presidential practice that cast into greater relief the liturgical theological significance of gender diversity in the assembly.

‘Evoking the Other’: Towards Feminist Gesture for Any Assembly

“…In my own estimation, the change introduced in some churches by ordaining women to something called ‘priesthood’ (particularly in Anglican contexts) has not been fully appreciated, leaving both the understanding of presiding and its practice in flux. Some (Burns, 2010; Cones, 2017) have criticized the mimicry of historic forms of presiding that tend to identify the person of the presider with the person of (Jesus) Christ, as if the presider functions symbolically in persona Christi without relation to the rest of the assembly. While I prefer to imagine the presider functioning when necessary in persona ecclesiae , as the assembly’s ‘communal person’ in those moments in which it requires a single voice or gesture, such reframing will not necessarily prevent the collapse of leadership into that person.…”