Panel: CHRISTAN WORSHIP - A UNIVERSAL PHENOMENON WITH LOCAL MANIFESTATIONS



798.6 - LITURGY AS PROTEST: ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCACY AND RITUAL TRANSFORMATION

AUTHORS:
Lund A.J. (VID Specialized University ~ Stavanger ~ Norway)
Text:
Liturgy is usually conceived of as practices that are shaped by ecclesial spaces, authorised leadership, and relatively stable ritual frameworks. Yet, within contemporary environmental advocacy, Christians are employing liturgical texts, forms, and actions in contexts and sites that are explicitly political and contested. In this paper, I explore how Christian liturgical practices are transformed when they are moved from their traditional authoritative ecclesial spaces, and into the realm of protest and politics. Using ritual transfer theory, I analyse selected instances of liturgical protests, investigating how the transfer of liturgy to such spaces affects the liturgical rites, how they are performed, and how they are interpreted. I argue that these practices should not be understood as the instrumentalisation of liturgy for political ends, but as a mode of theological action that renegotiates the boundaries between worship, witness, and ecological responsibility. Liturgy, in this way, becomes a countercultural mode of protest, that eschatologically imagines the world as it ought to be, and objects to the destructive forces that would oppose this.