Street, Sacrament, and Sanctuary: Discerning the Body of Christ in a Downtown Toronto Church

Many recent theologians have foregrounded the social implications of the Eucharist, seeking to move from abstract theory to theology grounded in the concrete practices of Christian communities. However, even in their consideration of practices, many of these theologians continue to speak abstractly of the logic of practices rather than their enactment and instantiation in actual churches. Hence, explorations of lived theology are an important complement and testing ground for theological claims made about the Eucharist and its role in the formation of the church as a social body. This dissertation explores the inter-relationship of the Eucharist and the life of the church through the lived theology of a particular ecclesial community, Sanctuary Toronto, which self-describes as “becoming a healthy and welcoming community where those who are poor and excluded are particularly valued.” Many of the practices at Sanctuary are deliberate attempts to unsettle the habits and dispositions of societal power relations in favour of relationships which the community sees as an “expression of the good news embodied in Jesus Christ.” Rather than mirror dominant social arrangements by relegating marginalized people to the periphery of church life as objects of ceremony or charity, the Sanctuary community seeks a eucharistic practice and a shared common life which centers around their presence, gifting, and active participation. Thus, while it is no perfect exemplar of gospel community, it provides an apt site to explore the robust theological claims being made for liturgical ethics and to highlight the essential role of the “least of these” – those who are excluded or least valued in dominant social structures – in the process of liturgical formation. Through interviews and participant observation, I place the articulated theologies and collective practices of Sanctuary in conversation with Scripture, tradition, and other theological literature—particularly recent theology which gives prominence to the Eucharist as a source of a distinctive Christian ethics, politics, and witness—in order to argue for the indispensability of the materially poor and socially excluded to the shape of the church’s common life.

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.