Body as Temple: Jamaican Catholic Women and the Liturgy of the Eucharist

Abstract

ABSTRACTWithin the historical formation of Jamaica, Christian rhetoric and rhetorical practices ritually exiled African Diaspora/Black Atlantic women and their bodies from essential human and feminine value systems. However, there were other scripts brought to the island in the bodies of African peoples who arrived as captives in a pernicious Christian project. These scripts promote, value and affirm the bodies of African peoples as sacred and divine. This article presents an ethnographic exploration of Jamaican Catholic women’s bodily presence and performance at the Liturgy of the Eucharist, highlighting critical spiritual practices around the notion of body as temple. In the enlivened space of contemporary Jamaican Catholic Christianity, Jamaican women participate in ongoing rituals of body reverence, the claiming, re-claiming and repossessing of body-selves, in order to become dynamic crossroads spaces where human and divine regularly encounter and intermingle.