On boundaries

Having been giving conference and seminar papers for the past eight years, I am very used to speaking in front of an academic audience or at least an audience already very interested in medieval history. For the first time ever though, I gave a non-academic talk a couple of weekends ago on women and the religious life in the middle ages. What made this more interesting was that the talk was in place of a sermon at choral evensong at my local church. I was, as one might expect, very nervous, especially as there were two history professors in the congregation: how would they react to a paper on an academic subject treated in an essentially non-academic way?

The experience was strangely liberating. Part of my interest in the religious life, especially concerning how religious and laity interacts, stems from my upbringing as a daughter of the parsonage. Equally, my historical interest in the Church allows me to take a longer view and broader perspective of some of issues confronting the good old CofE currently from sexuality to the more mundane concerns of the place of pews in church. For the first time I could blur the boundaries a little and bring these two aspects of life together, making points I couldn’t get away with in an academic paper and coming to a greater understanding of how faith influences my work and vice versa. (more…)