Plenaries

Following the birth of a child, family members may reach out to a congregation for the first time — or the first time in a long time — with a request for baptism. Drawing on qualitative research with both clergy and occasional religious practitioners, this presentation explores the tensions associated with the occasional practice of baptism. Is baptism giving the child a choice, or making a choice on behalf of the child? Is being a godparent a spiritual role, or a family responsibility? Does baptism locate the child at the threshold or the center of the church community? Is this sacrament covenantal or kenotic?

Speaker Bio:
Sarah Kathleen Johnson serves as Assistant Professor of Liturgy and Pastoral Theology at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, Ontario. She is a practical theologian who studies Christian worship in the context of a changing North American religious landscape. Her research at the intersection of liturgical studies and the sociology of religion employs qualitative methods that value everyday religious experience. Commitments to interrogating the relationship between liturgy and ethics and engaging ecumenically across Christian traditions ground her research, teaching, and church leadership. Sarah is ordained for ministry in Mennonite Church Canada.

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Death is personalized in contemporary Western societies, and this also affects the way people ritualize it. In the Netherlands, one of the most secularized countries in the world, the ecclesial liturgy surrounding death has a totally different character than just a few decades ago. The assemblies gathering around a dead body are mainly non-church members. What can liturgy offer in these situations? One key element in how to deal with liturgical tradition is ritual creativity (Ronald Grimes). Presiders in funerary liturgy stress the continuing bond with the deceased. When it comes to belief, research shows that people who are non-believers in their everyday life, do enact religious rites, which might be a form of situational belief (Martin Stringer). In this lecture, we will explore some major theoretical concepts from ritual studies, present empirical material, and ask what ritualizing can mean in ecclesial liturgy, from a theological and a pastoral perspective. 

Speaker Bio:
Thomas Quartier, OSB, (1972) is a benedictine monk and full professor of ritual and liturgical studies at Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands. He is the head of the Department of Comparative Religion and director of the Benedictine Center for Liturgical Studies at the same university. He did research on funerary liturgy and new ritualizations of death in the Netherlands and liturgical spirituality in monasteries.

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In moments of crisis, we often discover that we need to pray together and that we don’t know how to pray together. Rituals during or following a crisis often call together an assembly with a wide variety of religious beliefs. This presentation will uncover some of the reasons people seek out rituals in moments of crisis, outline some features of crisis rituals that set it apart from ordinary Sunday worship, and discuss examples of rituals that are evolving to meet crises in North America and beyond.

Speaker Bio:
Kimberly Hope Belcher, Ph.D., serves as Associate Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame and 2025 President of the North American Academy of Liturgy. She researches liturgical theology, ritual studies, and ecumenism. Kimberly also serves on the Vital Worship, Vital Preaching Board of the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship and represents the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on the Methodist-Catholic, Episcopal-Catholic, and Pentecostal-Catholic dialogues in the United States. Recent publications include: “Ritual Techniques in Affliction Rites and the Lutheran-Catholic Ecumenical Liturgy of Lund,” 2016;  “Yearbook for Ritual and Liturgical Studies,” 2022; and “Eucharist and Receptive Ecumenism: From Thanksgiving to Communion,” 2020.

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