Ann Loades’s sense of the sacramental

Abstract

ABSTRACT Ann Loades’ exploration of sacramentality is extraordinarily wide-ranging in its sense of where the sacramental is to be discovered. It is also rigorously theologically discerning. The matters to which she paid attention may seem unconventional at times, but they are always to be referred to the doctrinal criteria which became most significant in her work: creation, salvation, the communion of saints, the incarnation, and the Trinity. This article considers two sets of evidence – a video interview conducted near the end of Ann’s life in which she meditates on aspects of embodiment through the governing metaphor of dance, and those examples of her writing explicitly addressed to sacramental concerns – as important sources for illuminating her distinctive approach to sacramentality.