Teresa Berger receives the Berakah award for contribution to liturgical studies
Yale University’s Teresa Berger is this year’s recipient of the Berakah Award, given to liturgists or persons of an allied vocation in recognition of distinguished contribution to the professional work of liturgy. Berger is professor of liturgical studies and the Thomas E. Golden Jr. Professor of Catholic Theology at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School.
Recipients of the award are normally members of the North American Academy of Liturgy (NAAL). Nominations come from the membership at large, and the Academy Committee makes the selection. The award has been given each year the academy has met since 1976.
Berger has long been at the leading edge of liturgical scholarship, always among the first calling for attention to the liturgical work done in places and among communities that are underrepresented in our scholarship. Perhaps her best claim to prescience comes from publishing her still-essential study of worship in digital environments, @worship, in 2017. Yet her attention to gender in the history of liturgical practice has also been of enduring importance, centering the liturgical work of women (Women’s Ways of Worship, 1999) and later the broader significance of gender in its various forms not captured by simple binaries (Gender Differences and the Making of Liturgical Tradition, 2011). Her publications in sum call attention to how our scholarly presuppositions, like any uncritical assumptions, can reinforce problematic power dynamics—even when we believe we are offering liberation.
Berger’s current work lifts up an especially important set of marginalized worshippers: the non-human, non-angelic creatures who praise and lament, and into whose praise and lament we human creatures are invited (Psalm 148; Romans 8:22). This is both a reclamation of earlier Christian patterns of prayer and belief and a necessary response to the current ecological crises. Her Berakah address, at the upcoming meeting of the North American Academy of Liturgy, promises to bring both past and future to bear on our tumultuous present.
In her teaching and in her work supporting other scholars (both in her teaching positions and in her professional institutions), Berger is unfailingly generous. Kim Belcher, president of the North American Academy of Liturgy, stated, “I am deeply thankful for Teresa’s contributions to the academy, and I look forward to hearing her address.”
Berger’s award will be formally presented at the annual meeting of the NAAL in Indiana in January.
Photo credit: Kyung Min Kim