Proceedings of the North American Academy of Liturgy 2022

Ecology and Liturgy Convener: Lisa Dahill (ldahill@callutheran.edu) is Professor of Religion at California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, CA. Members in Attendance: David Buley, Joseph Bush, Claudio Carvalhaes, Lisa Dahill, Mary McGann, Lawrence Mick, Ellen Oak, Susan Smith, Benjamin Stewart, Samuel Torvend, Michelle Whitlock.

Visitors in Attendance: Martin Marklin, Kristen Daley Mosier.

Description of Work: We met in fully online sessions. Several seminar members gathered in person in Kansas City but the session conversations took place via Zoom this year. We discussed (portions of) two new or forthcoming books by seminar members as well as five papers, chapters, or emerging projects from other members. We also had time for sharing of new ritual resources in the area of ecology and liturgy, including opportunities to pray together newly composed material by Mary McGann, including “Ode to the Backyard Compost,” “Lament for a Landfill,” “Grace for the Table of Resistance,” and “Ritual for the Blessing of a Garden,” as well as an Ecological Lord’s Prayer from Claudio Carvalhaes’s new book.

Papers and Presentations: • Benjamin Stewart, “The Ecosacramentality of the Funeral,” forthcoming in T&T Clark Handbook of Sacraments and Sacramentality. This chapter explores Christian funeral practices around the twin loci of the eco-fecundity and symbolic power of the human corpse, and sacramental theologies of embodiment and justice.

• Lisa E. Dahill, “Rewilding the Practice of Confession: Bonhoeffer, Eco-Systemic Crises, and in process around how climate chaos and eco-justice catastrophes shape the language and theology of Christian confession of sin.”

• Cláudio Carvalhaes, Ritual’s at World’s End: Essays on Eco-Liturgical Liberation Theology (York: The Barber’s Son, Fall 2021). We discussed the Introduction and first three chapters of this book proposing and enfleshing a fully ecological liberation theology, including questions of how both ritual and ritual/liturgical studies can more adequately enact this liberation.