ABSTRACT
Martin Stringer begins by asking questions about the different ways in which we can talk about the ‘sexual body’ in worship. He proposes that a study of Anglo-Catholic worship in the middle years of the twentieth century might provide a way of doing this. The paper uses material on ‘drag’ and ‘camp’ in order to understand the ambiguous sexual roles and currents at play within Anglo-Catholic liturgy. He suggests that much of Anglo-Catholic worship can be read as ‘camp’. This is then linked into the parallel histories of Anglo-Catholicism and ‘drag’ through the twentieth century, highlighting their common origins m a working class environment. Martin Stringer aims to show that, while not being inevitable, the presence of gay men within Anglo-Catholicism, and hence the camp nature of the worship, is understandable and can be used to give us a greater insight into the worship itself.
