D046 Expansive-Language Liturgical Resources
Resolved, the House of ________________ concurring,
That the 79th General Convention authorize continuing use of Enriching Our Worship 1: The Daily Office, Great Litany, and Eucharist; Enriching Our Worship 2: Ministry with the Sick and Dying and Burial of a Child; Enriching Our Worship 3: Burial Rites for Adults together with a Rite for the Burial of a Child; Enriching Our Worship 4: The Renewal of Ministry and the Welcoming of a New Rector or other Pastor; and Enriching Our Worship 5: Liturgies and Prayers Related to Childbearing, Childbirth, and Loss; and be it further
Resolved, That the 79th General Convention encourage the use of translations of the Psalter that use inclusive and expansive language; and be it further
Resolved, That the 79th General Convention direct the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music to develop principles for the use of inclusive and expansive language in liturgical texts, to report these principles to the 80th General Convention, and to follow these principles in all revisions of liturgical resources and in the development of any new liturgical resources; and be it further
Resolved, That the 79th General Convention encourage the use of inclusive and expansive language within existing authorized resources, including but not limited to the Book of Common Prayer and Enriching Our Worship, by replacing masculine-gendered language for God with feminine or neutral language; and be it further
Resolved, That the 79th General Convention encourage the grassroots development of liturgical texts to provide expansive language resources, particularly resources that reflect the breadth of cultures, languages, and ancestral contexts already represented in The Episcopal Church; and to share those resources with the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music for evaluation for inclusion in official liturgical resources.
Explanation
Language shapes reality. Use of expansive God-language enables Christians to claim freedom and dignity as human beings created in the image and likeness of God. The predominantly masculine language of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer limits our vision and creates a context in which male dominance and power is considered normative, implicitly providing theological support for exploitation and harassment of women. The BCP could make more use of biblical texts, drawing from neglected feminine imagery in scripture. There is an urgent pastoral and evangelistic need to address the disconnect between our theology and the exclusively male God-language in our liturgies. Work on inclusive and expansive language texts began in the triennium immediately following the adoption of the 1979 BCP. Though the controversy about expansive God-language largely subsided by the mid 1990s, General Convention has continued to authorize Enriching Our Worship materials for use under the direction of the ecclesiastical authority, limiting their use in some contexts. The 1997 General Convention approved the study and occasional use of “The Liturgical Psalter: Text for Study and Comment” (Liturgy Training Publications, 1994) and “Psalter for the Christian People” by Gail Ramshaw and Gordon Lathrop (Liturgical Press, 1993) (Resolution 1997-A074). Since then, additional inclusive-language psalters have been published, including the “St. Helena Psalter: A New Version of the Psalms in Expansive Language” (Church Publishing, 2000).