When I was 6 years old, soon after the birth of my sister, I went with my mother to the local parish, The Church of Our Merciful Saviour, where the rector read the office, The Churching of Women. I think she was required to undergo it to resume service on the Altar Guild. In 1954, women were permitted behind the altar rail only to clean it. That liturgy was rooted in the reason Mary is going to the temple today. The Churching of Women assumed that childbirth, among other things, made women ritually unclean, and they had to have a special ceremony to become clean and be readmitted to the church. Fortunately, this liturgy does not occur in the current BCP. Giving birth and any number of other conditions do not make women ritually unclean. But they did in the first century and as recently as my childhood.
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