“Our creator who art in heaven:” Paradox, ritual, and cultural transformation

Abstract

Contemporary organizations are typically marked by conflicting interests and contradictory demands on individuals. It is important to understand how these tensions are managed in everyday ways. Ritual, and the adaptation of official ritual is one way in which individuals may negotiate the paradoxes of their culture and accomplish cultural transformation. Analysis of qualitative data from three communities of Benedictine women reveals that by adapting ritual members resist church‐imposed identities of women as rightly excluded, subordinate, and disempowered. By resisting these identities, sisters reinforce the transformation of their own culture; and by doing so in the presence of outsiders, they make an argument for the transformation of the larger culture of the church.