Churching of women

In Christian tradition the Churching of Women is the ceremony wherein a blessing is given to mothers after recovery from childbirth. The ceremony includes thanksgiving for the woman's survival of childbirth, and is performed even when the child is stillborn, or has died unbaptized.

Although the ceremony itself contains no elements of ritual purification, it was related to Jewish practice as noted in , where women were purified after giving birth. In light of the New Testament, the Christian ritual draws on the imagery and symbolism of the presentation of Jesus at the Temple . Although some Christian traditions consider Mary to have borne Christ without incurring impurity, she went to the Temple in Jerusalem to fulfill the requirements of the Law of Moses.

At one time the rite was practiced in both the Eastern and the Western churches. The custom is first mentioned in pseudo-Nicene Arabic canon law. The religious ceremony has largely fallen out of practice in the West, but it continues in some parts of Eastern Christianity.

The Anglican Communion offers the rite, while in the Roman Catholic Church, it is only found in the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite and in ordinariate parishes.

The custom of blessing a woman after childbirth recalls the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary mentioned in Luke 2:22. The Jewish practice was based on Leviticus 12:1-8, which specified the ceremonial rite to be performed in order to restore ritual purity. It was believed that a woman becomes ritually unclean by giving birth, due to the presence of blood and/or other fluids at birth. This was part of ceremonial, rather than moral law.

Natalie Knödel noted that the idea that a woman who has recently given birth is to be set apart and then re-introduced into religious and social life by means of a special rite is not a specifically Western, let alone Christian, idea. Such rites are found in a number of cultures. All things having to do with birth and death are understood as somehow sacred. Paul V. Marshall suggests that in an agricultural society this could have been a simple means of protecting a new mother from resuming work too soon after giving birth.

The rite became the subject of a good deal of misunderstanding as many commentators and preachers, in describing its scriptural antecedents, did not explain the concept clearly. Pope Gregory as early as the 6th Century protested any notion that defilement was incurred by childbirth and recommended that women should never be separated from the church in case it was seen as such. As a blessing given to mothers after recovery from childbirth, "it is not a precept, but a pious and praiseworthy custom, dating from the early Christian ages".David Cressy points out that the ceremony acknowledged the woman's labours and the perils of childbirth. At the conclusion of a month after childbirth, women looked forward to churching as a social occasion, and a time to celebrate with friends. For men it marked the end of a month during which they had to take care of the domestic affairs, commonly referred to as the "gander month". In thirteenth century France the rite focused on the woman's role as wife and mother.

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