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ABSTRACT
Given the pervasive nature of domestic violence, it is safe to say that there are women present in every Sunday service who have suffered, or are currently suffering, domestic violence. While liturgy’s ‘limits’ must be acknowledged, it is surprising that domestic violence has not received greater attention by liturgical theologians, with few liturgical resources available for use outside of women-only groups. There is a clear and pressing need for trauma-informed liturgical resources for use in regular Sunday services. This article explores the intersection between domestic violence and liturgy with a focus on the prayer of confession. Prayers of confession are explored from several angles – including the historic and the non-textual elements – to examine the ways in which each may intersect with domestic violence. In each case, a different prayer of confession is used as a ‘lens’ to view how the trauma caused by domestic violence may be compounded or reinscribed by their use. Alternatives to traditional prayers of confession are then considered, with the conclusion drawn that one of the most suitable alternatives is a prayer of lament. Using the preceding discussion as its foundation, an example of an appropriate prayer of lament is then outlined.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 United Nations, ‘Endemic violence against women “cannot be stopped with a vaccine” – WHO chief’, United Nations News, https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/03/1086812 (published March 9, 2021).
2 Australian Bureau of Statistics, ‘Personal Safety, Australia’, https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/crime-and-justice/personal-safety-australia/latest-release#experience-of-partner-violence (accessed August 15, 2022).
3 Julia Baird, ‘The Church Stripped bare: High Rate of Domestic abuse Among Anglicans Exposed’, The Sydney Morning Herald, June 12, 2021, https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-church-stripped-bare-high-rate-of-domestic-abuse-among-anglicans-exposed-20210611-p5809z.html.
4 Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker, ‘For God So Loved the World?’ in Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse: A Feminist Critique, eds. Joanne Carlson Brown and Carole R. Bohn (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1989), 26.
5 R. Powell & M. Pepper, ‘National Anglican Family Violence Research Report: Top Line Results. NCLS Research Report’, NCLS Research, 2021, 19, https://anglican.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/NAFVP-Top-Line-Results-Report-NCLS-Research.pdf.
6 David Farina Turnbloom, Megan Breen, Noah Lamberger, and Kate Seddon, ‘Liturgy in the Shadow of Trauma’, Religions 13, no. 7: 6. 10.3390/rel13070583
7 Turnbloom et al, ‘Liturgy in the Shadow of Trauma’, 5.
8 Ibid.
9 Alistair McFadyen, ‘“I Breathe Him in with Every Breath I Take”: Framing Domestic Victimization as Trauma and Coercive Control in Feminist Trauma Theories’, in Feminist Trauma Theologies: Body, Scripture & Church in Critical Perspective, ed. Karen O’Donnell and Katie Cross (London, England: SCM Press, 2020), chp. 5, Kindle.
10 Ibid., 126.
11 Turnbloom et al, ‘Liturgy in the Shadow of Trauma’, 2.
12 Stephen Burns, Worship and Ministry: Shaped Towards God (Preston, Australia: Mosaic Press, 2012), 4.
13 Stephen Burns, SCM Study Guide to Liturgy, 2nd ed. (London: SCM Press, 2018), 8.
14 Marjorie Procter-Smith, ‘“Reorganizing Victimization”: The Intersection between Liturgy and Domestic Violence’, Perkins Journal 40, no. 4 (January 1, 1987): 18.
15 Burns, Worship and Ministry, 38.
16 Ibid., 37.
17 Turnbloom et al, ‘Liturgy in the Shadow of Trauma’, 13.
18 Procter-Smith, ‘Reorganizing Victimization’, 17.
19 Ibid., 25.
20 Ibid.
21 Burns, Worship and Ministry, 39.
22 Katie Cross, The Sunday Assembly and Theologies of Suffering (New York: Routledge, 2020), Kindle, 135.
23 Stephen Burns, ‘Liturgy after the Abuse’, in Vulnerability and Resilience : Body and Liberating Theologies, ed. Jione Havea (Lanham: Fortress Academic, 2020), 181.
24 Cross, The Sunday Assembly, 135.
25 Burns, ‘Liturgy after the Abuse’.
26 Stephen Burns, ‘Confessing More than Sin’, in When We Pray: The Future of Common Prayer, eds. Stephen Burns and Robert Gribben (Bayswater, Vic: Coventry Press, 2020).
27 Anglican Church of Australia, A Prayer Book for Australia (Australia: Broughton Publishing, 1995), 4.
28 Geoffrey Rowell, ‘The Anglican Tradition: form the Reformation to the Oxford Movement’, in Confession and Absolution, eds. Martin Dudley and Geoffrey Rowell (London: SPCK, 1990), 91.
29 Frank Senn, ‘The Confession of Sins in the Reformation Churches’, in The Fate of Confession, eds. Mary Collins and David Power (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1987), 167.
30 Ibid., 107.
31 Ibid., 106.
32 Ibid., 109.
33 Ibid., 110.
34 Uniting Church in Australia, Uniting in Worship 2 (Sydney: Uniting Church Press, 2005), 133.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.
37 Burns, ‘Liturgy after the Abuse’, 180.
38 Uniting Church in Australia, Uniting in Worship: Leader’s Book (Melbourne: Uniting Church Press: 1988), 580.
39 Burns, ‘Confessing More than Sin’, 277.
40 Gail Ramshaw-Schmidt, ‘Sin: One Image of Human Limitation’, in The Fate of Confession, eds. Mary Collins and David Power (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1987), 3.
41 Burns, ‘Confessing More than Sin’, 283.
42 Ibid.
43 Beverley Gaventa, ‘The Cosmic Power of Sin in Paul’s Letter to the Romans: Toward a Widescreen Edition’, Interpretation 58, no. 3 (January 1, 2004): 231.
44 Gail Ramshaw, Worship: Searching for Language (Washington DC: The Pastoral Press, 1988), 91.
45 Pamela Cooper-White, Gender, Violence, and Justice: Collected Essays on Violence Against Women (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019), 166.
46 Joy Ann McDougall, ‘Sin – No More?: A Feminist Re-Visioning of a Christian Theology of Sin’. Anglican Theological Review 88, no. 2 (January 1, 2006): 215.
47 For why submission is an issue for women who have suffered violence, see Julia Baird and Hayley Gleeson, ‘“Submit to your husbands”: Women told to endure domestic violence in the name of God’, ABC News, July 19, 2017, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-18/domestic-violence-church-submit-to-husbands/8652028 (Updated October 22, 2018).
48 McDougall, ‘Sin – No More?’ 218.
49 Burns, ‘Liturgy After the Abuse’, 177.
50 Burns, ‘Confessing More Than Sin’, 297.
51 McDougall, ‘Sin – No More?’ 216.
52 Ramshaw-Schmidt, ‘Sin: One Image of Human Limitation’, 3.
53 Ibid., 5.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid., 6–8.
56 UiW: Leader’s Book, 583.
57 McDougall, ‘Sin – No More?’ 220.
58 Pamela Cooper-White, The Cry of Tamar: Violence against Women and the Church’s Response (Fortress Press, 2012), 251.
59 Powell & Pepper, ‘National Anglican Family Violence Research Report’, 19.
60 Stacey Wilson, ‘Theology and the Abuse of Children: A qualitative literature review of the Final Report from Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse’, Intergen, https://intergen.org.au/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Living-the-Faith-Stacey-Wilson.pdf (accessed August 15, 2022), 14.
61 Baird and Gleeson, ‘“Submit to your Husbands”’.
62 Cooper-White, The Cry of Tamar, 251.
63 Ibid., 258.
64 Ibid., 257.
65 Roger Grainger, ‘Forgiveness and Liturgy’, in Forgiveness in Context, eds. Fraser Watts and Liz Gulliford (London: T & T Clark, 2004), 69.
66 Stephen Burns, ‘Forgiveness in Challenging Circumstances’, in Forgiveness in Context, eds. Fraser Watts and Liz Gulliford (London: T & T Clark, 2004), 149.
67 Ibid., 154.
68 Cooper-White, The Cry of Tamar, 256.
69 Cooper-White, Gender, Violence and Justice, 33.
70 Cooper-White, The Cry of Tamar, 251.
71 Cooper-White, Gender, Violence and Justice, 169.
72 Burns, ‘Forgiveness in Challenging Circumstances’, 155.
73 Ibid., 159.
74 This prayer has also found its way into Uniting in Worship 2ʹs CD Rom of additional resources (Prayer 51). In the UiW2 version, it is in the form of lines of confession broken by a sung Kyrie Eleison and does not contain Morley’s original rubric.
75 Stephen Burns, ‘Ordination Services, after the Abuse: Postcolonial Proposals’, Liturgy 34, no. 2: 43. doi:10.1080/0458063X.2019.1604034.
76 Ibid.
77 See for example, resources in Sexual Assault and Abuse: A Handbook for Clergy and Religious Professionals, eds. Mary D. Pellauer, Barbara Chester, Jane A. Boyajian (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991).
78 Marjorie Procter-Smith, Praying With Our Eyes Open (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995), 48.
79 Janet Morley, All Desires Known. 2nd ed. (London: SPCK, 1992), 40.
80 Anglican Church of Australia, A Prayer Book for Australia, 201.
81 Burns, ‘Liturgy After the Abuse’, 181.
82 Ibid.
83 Ibid., 182.
84 Ibid.
85 Ibid.
86 Bobbi Salkeld, ‘Prayer of Confession’, Commons Church, https://www.commons.church/liturgy/?offset=1502679600397 (accessed August 20, 2023).
87 UiW2, 13.
88 Ibid.
89 Robert Gribben, A Guide to Uniting in Worship (Melbourne: Uniting Church Press, 1990), 16
90 UiW2, 14.
91 Burns, ‘Confessing More than Sin’, 284.
92 Ibid., 280.
93 Ibid., 299.
94 Catholic Academy of Liturgy, A Commentary on the Order of Mass of the Roman Missal: A New English Translation, eds. Edward Foley, John F. Baldovin, Mary Collins, Joanne M. Pierce (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2011), 107.
95 Burns, ‘Confessing More than Sin’, 288.
96 UiW2, 88.
97 Stephen Burns, Pilgrim People: An Invitation to Worship in the Uniting Church (Adelaide: MediaCom, 2012).
98 Ibid.
99 Gail Ramshaw, Reviving Sacred Speech: The Meaning of Liturgical Language (Akron, OHIO: OSL Publications, 2000), 141.
100 Cross, The Sunday Assembly, 135.
101 Ibid., 132.
102 Ibid.
103 Ibid., 114.
104 Ramshaw-Schmidt, ‘Sin’, 7.
105 Gail Ramshaw, Pray, Praise and Give Thanks: A Collection of Litanies, Laments and Thanksgivings at Font and Table (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2017).
106 Burns, Liturgy, 77.
107 With the caveat that the metaphors chosen require as much care as self-written words. See for example Kirsi Cobb, ‘Reading Gomer with Questions: A Trauma-Informed Feminist Study of the Experience of Intimate Partner Violence and Presence of Religion Shape the Reading of Hosea 2.2–23’, in Feminist Trauma Theologies: Body, Scripture & Church in Critical Perspective, ed. Karen O’Donnell and Katie Cross (London, England: SCM Press, 2020).
108 UiW2, 131 and 186.
109 Ibid.
110 Burns, ‘Confessing More Than Sin’, 277.
111 UiW2, 541–546.
112 UiW2, 541.
113 Monika K. Hellwig, Sign of Reconciliation and Conversion (Wilmington: Michael Glazier Inc., 1982), 112. See also Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, trans. John W. Doberstein (London: SCM Press, 1954), 89. Bonhoeffer calls this ‘brotherly confession’ and argues for a Biblical warrant in John 20:23.
114 Burns, ‘Confessing More Than Sin’, 284.
115 Paul D. Hanson, Isaiah 40–66: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 64.
116 Ibid., 19.
117 Ibid., 63.
118 Church of England, ‘18. Facing Pain: a Service of Lament’, https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/common-worship/common-material/new-patterns-0 (accessed October 13, 2022).
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Annie Brophy
Annie Brophy is a postgraduate student with specialisation in liturgy at Pilgrim Theological College in the University of Divinity, Melbourne Australia, and an ordinand in the Uniting Church in Australia.