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Abstract While many scholars insist that liturgical theology emerges from the vital plurality of a diversity of people who worship God together, much writing about Christian worship is animated by the “normate,” an elusive universal human that does not actually exist but for whom Christian liturgical ideals are conjured. In this article, I describe temptation by this figure that I experience in my own teaching and writing, a seduction that occurs even within a profound conversion to the vital importance of human difference in worship. I then suggest reflexive ethnographic fieldwork as a way of summoning “the holy many,” disclosing and turning from the normate, and practicing anti-ableism in both worship and liturgical writing. I offer ethnographic teaching and writing as a resource for shaping a pluralistic and liberatory imagination in liturgical studies and argue that recursive practices of seeking out the presence of the many in fieldwork, in writing, and in teaching ethnographic methods are necessary for disclosing the normate and for continuous conversion to the many.
Rebecca F. Spurrier (Wed,) studied this question.