Embodying Tradition: Liturgical Performance as a Site for Interreligious Learning

Abstract

Embodying Tradition: Liturgical Performance as a Site for Interreligious Learning Emma O'Donnell Theological discourse has traditionally been cognitive and verbal from start to finish; as indicated by its etymology, it communicates through the word, and these words are themselves commentary on other words. For the most part, this is also the case in interreligious theological ventures such as comparative theology, which is often based on textual studies, and in interreligious dialogue, which is generally understood to be an oral or textual communication. Yet, despite the seemingly circular entrapment of theology within propositional language, systematic verbal discourse represents only a fraction of religious faith as it is experienced by practitioners. Faith is more than intellectual assent to propositions; faith is experiential. For this reason, a theological mode or “language” that expresses a religious tradition as it is experienced may be capable of penetrating elements of faith that are not readily accessible through the traditional propositional mode of theology. A context for such a theological language is found in liturgy, where the full content of liturgical performance is not communicated by words alone, but is both formed and enacted ritually, through physical gesture, vocalization, repetition, and an engaged involvement of the person acting in time. I argue in this essay that a theological mode rooted in liturgical performance—that is, a mode that “reads” the symbolic, embodied language of liturgical performance, and that seeks to grasp and communicate its complex extra‐verbal content—has much to offer interreligious theological ventures. If liturgy is a fertile ground of religious formation and expression, it follows that situating comparative theology and interreligious dialogue in liturgy may open the door to new directions in interreligious learning. Yet, the full content of liturgy cannot be readily accessed by one outside of the religious tradition, as liturgical performance is by nature an activity bounded by tradition and the specificity of religious identity. In the pages that follow, I will talk about how this very quality paradoxically may lead to interreligious learning. The limits to understanding reveal to us something of the nature of liturgical experience, and of the incommensurability and dignity in difference of religious traditions. The implications of Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi for interreligious learning The mode of liturgical theology proposed here differs from the more widely used historical and textual methods of liturgical studies. Maintaining that the meaning of liturgical performance exceeds its verbal content, and that its full significance comes to be in the enactment of liturgy, this approach uses the experience of liturgical performance as its data. Rather than reading only the liturgical text, it reads the “text” of the performance or enactment, allowing the liturgy itself to speak theologically. The notion of letting liturgical performance speak for itself rests on the idea that liturgy does not merely express previously developed theological views, but forms these views through its enactment. This is expressed by the ancient adage lex orandi, lex credendi, originally formulated by Prosper of Aquitaine as ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi. While the adage in its original context was intended against Semi‐Pelagians and referred specifically to liturgical intercessions, in later usage, the phrase was reworded as lex orandi, lex credendi and took on a broader meaning, signifying the more general idea that belief is formed through liturgy. According to this concept, the voice of religious belief is spoken first in liturgical performance. In other words, liturgical performance forms belief and cultivates it through the enactment of believing. The adage implies that liturgy may be seen as a sort of catechism in action, and this bears an important implication for interreligious learning: if liturgy forms and speaks belief, liturgical performance may be a voice in dialogue, speaking our belief for us. The suggestion that a ritual might speak for us, or that “we” could be considered a collective that may be spoken for as a whole, may initially seem to rob the individual of uniqueness and to replace the free individual with a codified type or a mute participant. However, the idea that liturgical performance speaks belief for us implies less a loss of uniqueness than it does a sense of interconnection, through awareness of the continuity of tradition, transmitted...