A Way of Conversion: Reclaiming Eucharistic Formation and Sacramental Imagination in Aotearoa New Zealand
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Authors
Barrie, Clare Elizabeth
Issue Date
2026-05
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
School of Theology Thesis 2026 , University of the South, formation, Aotearoa,
New Zealand, Polynesia, Anglican Church
Alternative Title
Abstract
This thesis argues that the formation of priests in the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia must be reoriented around a renewed sacramental imagination because liturgical participation-especially in the Eucharist-is a primary means of Christian formation. Focusing on the Pākehā context within this three-tikanga province, the study identifies a significant misalignment between the formative work of liturgy and the emphases that tend to shape contemporary ministerial training. Methodologically, it brings ritual studies, sacramental theology, historical analysis and pastoral reflection into conversation. Engaging the work of Catherine Bell, Louis-Marie Chauvet, Mark Searle, James K. A. Smith, Bruce Morrill, Rowan Williams, Patrick Prétot, and others, it contends that Christian formation occurs not only through the transmission of ideas but through repeated embodied participation in the church's ritual life. The thesis traces the historical displacement of liturgical formation from the worshipping assembly into clerical specialisation, rubrical regulation and control, and explanatory instruction, and examines the particular outworking of this pattern of displacement in Aotearoa New Zealand. In response, drawing on the work of the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation, it proposes a framework for renewing priestly formation and sacramental imagination in this context, grounded in common prayer, sacramental theology, competence in liturgical presiding, and the extension of eucharistic ethics into diakonia. Such renewal, it argues, is essential to sustaining a more coherent Anglican identity and a more faithful ecclesial life in this context.
Description
Citation
Publisher
University of the South