Sacred Music as a Form of Resistance
Women’s Sacred Music from the Protestant Reformation to Contemporary Global Contexts
Abstract
This article examines women’s sacred musical composition from the Protestant Reformation to the present as a form of performative resistance that challenges theological, artistic, and social hierarchies. Through analysis of key figures, from Elisabeth Cruciger to contemporary artists such as Lauren Daigle, we explore how women’s sacred performance creates transformative ritual languages that mediate between individual and collective divine experience. The study reveals how women in different global contexts, from the Corn Ditties of enslaved American communities to contemporary gospel, use sacred performance to build cultural counter-narratives that resist marginalisation and create new spiritual epistemologies. Drawing on performance studies, ritual theory, and feminist musicology, this research demonstrates that women’s sacred music functions both as devotional practice and as sociopolitical intervention, transforming traditional liturgical spaces into places of empowerment and theological re-imagination.
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