the churching of women: introduction

A Woman's Solemn Churching after Childbirth by Christen Dalsgaard

Since the inception of this project, and even before, I’ve been intrigued by the historic Christian tradition known as the churching of women. I’m in the middle of researching in order to do a deeper dive on this topic for the future, but for today, I just wanted to share a brief overview.

The churching of women is a special liturgy or ritual for a mother, intended to be observed at some point (sometimes 40 days) relatively shortly after childbirth. It offers thanksgiving for the woman’s safe delivery and welcomes her back into the worshiping community after an assumed time away for recovery. Churching is distinct from the child’s baptism¹, as it is still observed in the case of a stillbirth or other loss.

What I admire about this tradition—at least from what I’ve read, since sadly I’ve not yet seen it practiced—is that it offers a specific marker and rite of passage for the journey into motherhood. It seems to me that our present-day American culture could really benefit from a rite like this; the closest thing we have is probably baby showers, which, for a variety of reasons, don’t really do it for me.

I also love that churching offers specific permission, even an expectation, of staying home to recover and adjust for a good chunk of time after childbirth. This, too, is sorely lacking in our culture, in my opinion.

It’s important to note that the tradition of churching has also been critiqued for a number of reasons. For example, the language used in some traditions draws excessively from the Old Testament legal concepts of uncleanness and ritual impurity, which is not great, both because it theologically neglects Jesus’s fulfillment of the law, and also because many women experience this as unjust judgement.²

Additionally, for some, the period between childbirth and churching is experienced not as a welcome recovery time but rather as forced isolation and separation from the life of the church. In fact, in certain Orthodox traditions, un-churched postpartum women may have to sit apart from the rest of the congregation.³ The very last thing new mothers need is to be isolated from community! And yet, sometimes, that’s what churching seems to accomplish.

Despite these issues, or perhaps in light of them, the tradition of the churching of women is fertile ground for reimagining and re-situating new motherhood in the life of the church. As I wrote above, I’m still researching, but I hope to share in the future about the history of this tradition, accounts of women’s experiences with it, its theological underpinnings, and ways that mothers and clergy are reviving/revising/practicing it today. Stay tuned! And if you have any personal experience with this tradition, I’d love to hear about it.

1. So far as I can find, churching is only observed in traditions that baptize infants, which sort of makes sense, because those traditions tend to be more liturgically robust than baptistic ones.

2. See, for example, this article by Louise Lewis.

3. This is pretty far afield of my theological knowledge, so I’m not sure I’m describing current practice accurately, but it’s mentioned in this blog post by Donna Rizk.