Some Contemporary Issues in Liturgical Theology Feminist and Decolonial Perspectives. Seminar session with Prof Stephen Burns, University of Divinity, Melbourne/Australia

Seminar with Prof Stephen Burns, Professor of Liturgical and Practical Theology at Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity, Melbourne, Australia — an extraordinary opportunity to reflect on the theology of worship as the core of Christian Theology in contemporary perspectives.

A migrant from the UK, Prof Stephen Burns is an expert in the field of Liturgical Theology post Vatican II. He is an ecumenical minister in placement in the Uniting Church in Australia. He is research coordinator for Australian Collaborators in Feminist Theology; a current member of faculty for the Global Theology Institute of the World Communion of Reformed Churches; and a member of the new American Academy of Religion seminar on studies in Anglicanism.

In his paper he will introduce us to important issues of contemporary Liturgical theology, a discipline established in the academy in parts of mainland Europe and North America if not always so well known in the UK. Liturgical theology explores an ecumenical agenda about the meaning and practice of Christian assembly. Growing from both the twentieth-century Liturgical Movement and Ecumenical Movement, each with their centres of gravity in the North Atlantic, it is fraught by various challenges not only to do with disaffiliation from Christian institutions in the contexts from which it grew but from voices it has failed to include both within and beyond such contexts. The paper will explore such issues according to feminist and decolonial perspectives.