![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
2 Two valuable anthologies celebrate a number of key figures: How Firm a Foundation: Voices of the Early Liturgical Movement, ed. Kathleen Hughes (Chicago, IL: Liturgy Training Publications, 1990) and How Firm a Foundation: Leaders of the Liturgical Movement, ed. Robert L. Tuzik (Chicago, IL: Liturgy Training Publications, 1990).
3 See Frank Senn, The People’s Work: A Social History of the Liturgy (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006), 308–11; also https://liturgicalconference.org/about. The year 2005 saw the journal find a particular alliance with the Association of Reformed Liturgy and Worship (ARL&W), from issue 20.2. Several subsequent issues over the next years include the documentary records of the ARL&W (e.g., 23.1; 24.2, 25.2, 26.3, etc.), and there is a notable focus (e.g., in 21.2) on the pairing “Reformed and liturgical” which characterises the advocacy of ARL&W.
4 For a longer view, see The Landscape of Praise: Readings in Liturgical Renewal, ed. Blair Gilmore Meeks (Valley Forge, PA: TPI International, 1996). This gathers many excellent pieces previously published in Liturgy, reaching back to Volume 1 in 1980. It is notable that the very first volume included an article on Cambodia (though it is not included in The Landscape of Praise), suggesting that the journal always had at least an openness to a purview beyond the borders of the US: Miriam Therese Winter, “The Liturgy in Sa Keao, Cambodia,” Liturgy 1, no. 3 (1981): 32–7. Issue 17.4 (2002) recapitulates aspects of the journal’s history with the Liturgical Conference, considering some of its people, Eleanor Bernstein, Therese Mueller, Virginia Sloyan, and Robert Hovda among them—notably all of Roman tradition (and for that matter, all “white”), though juxtaposed with an article considering an “ecumenical future” as part of the Conference’s work. See Jeffrey Vander Wilt, “The Future of Worshiping Ecumenicall,” Liturgy 17, no. 4 (2002): 56–60. Concern continues through to the present with the vitality of the heritage of Roman Catholic liturgical renewal, and of the Liturgical Conference in particular (notably in an issue on presiding much indebted to Robert Hovda and edited by Don Saliers (22.2 in 2007): “The Spirituality of the Presider”). Another important focus that receives ongoing attention over time is that of children in worship (e.g., 17.4, 18.1, 18.4, 19.1, etc). Among many possible examples, Gabe Huck, “Understanding Liturgy: Notes for Those Who Work with Children,” Liturgy 18, no. 4 (2003): 3–10.
5 “Renewals in Retrospect: Fifty Years of Worship Scholarship Amidst the Changing Worlds of Worship,” Liturgy 36, no. 4 (2023), eds. Melinda A. Quivik and Andrew Wymer.
6 John G. Flett, “Plotting an Oceanic Voice: A Longitudinal Review and Analysis of Regional Theologising,” Colloquium 54, no. 1 (2022): 5–60. Page references in my text are to this. Find at https://interculturaltheology.com/theology-in-of-oceania/.
7 Epeli Hau’ofa, “Our Sea of Islands,” The Contemporary Pacific 6, no. 1 (1994): 148–61.
8 Uniting Church in Australia, Basis of Union ¶2, https://uniting.church/basisofunion/#whole.
9 For example, Sea of Readings: The Bible in the South Pacific, ed. Jione Havea (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2018); Theological and Hermeneutical Explorations from Australia: Horizons of Contextuality, ed. Jione Havea (Lanham: Fortress Academic, 2020); Theologies from the Pacific, ed. Jione Havea (New York: Palgrave, 2021).
10 Frank C. Senn, “From Ashes to Fire 2002,” Liturgy 17, no. 3 (2002): 0–3 (0: the next page is marked as p. 1).
11 See Fully Conscious, Fully Active: Essays in Honor of Gabe Huck, eds. Bryan Cones and Stephen Burns (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 2021).
12 Gabe Huck, “Introduction to the Lenten Handouts 2002,” Liturgy 17, no. 3 (2002): 13–16.
13 Huck, “Introduction,” 16. The handouts which follow do not have page numbers, as they were meant to be photocopied and distributed.
14 Ron Anderson, Tercio Junker and Karen Hetrick, “For the Healing… of Our Communities,” Liturgy 18, no. 2 (2003): 53–5 (55).
15 The volume also includes a possible or partial counterpoint in an article on “diaspora” (in 20.2). Yet it is striking that over time the word “diaspora” is used more frequently to refer to movement of persons out of one kind of ecclesial context to another [e.g., David Batchelder, “To Those of the Liturgical Diaspora,” Liturgy 20, no. 2 (2005): 23–9; Lester Ruth, “The Hidden Diaspora of Mainline and Evangelical Adoption of Contemporary Worship,” Liturgy 37, no. 1 (2022): 15–22] than to the movement of persons around the world as in Jan Ngoya Kidula, “A Slice of Home: African Music in North American Churches,” Liturgy 33, no. 3 (2018): 46–53.
16 D. Stephen Long, “AND GOD BLESS AMERICA: Introduction,”Liturgy 20, no. 1 (2003): 1. I am not sure of the intended significance (or otherwise) of the curiously capitalised title.
The reverently circumspect “naming towards God” is Catherine Vincie’s suggestive term in her Celebrating Divine Mystery: A Primer in Liturgical Theology (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2015), 81–100. I think of Augustine: “If you are comprehending what you are saying, you are not talking about God” (Sermons on the New Testament), cited by Gail Ramshaw, God Beyond Gender: Christian Feminist God-talk (Minneapolis,. MN: Fortress Press, 1995), 7.
17 Debra Dean Murphy, “Identity Politics: Christian Baptism and the Pledge of Allegiance,” Liturgy 20, no. 1 (2005): 5–10.
18 Marvin M. Ellison, “The Queering of Marriage,” Liturgy 20, no. 3 (2005); 61–70 was the first article to foreground the term “queer”; cf. James L. Empereur, “Healing: The Focus of Gay/Lesbian Spirituality,” Liturgy 22, no. 3 (2007): 57–63.
19 For example, Gabe Huck, “Implementing the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy: Forty Years is a Start,” Liturgy 19, no. 2 (2004): 11–22.
20 Frank Senn, “The Constitution and the Lutheran Book of Worship,” Liturgy 19, no. 2 (2004): 23–32; Leonel Mitchell, “The 1979 Prayer Book and Liturgical Change in the Episcopal Church,” Liturgy 19, no. 2 (2004): 38–42.
21 Liturgy 26, no. 4 (2011), edited by Todd Johnson.
22 For example, Susan Henry-Crowe, “Emory University’s Cannon Chapel as Interreligious Space,” Liturgy 26, no. 3 (2011): 42–5. See also: Lorraine Brugh, “Communal Formation at the Chapel of the Resurrection at Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Indiana,” Liturgy 33, no. 4 (2018): 13–20; Tripp Hudgins, “Liturgical Cosmopolitanism in Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto,” Liturgy 33, no. 4 (2018): 37–42.
23 Kenneth G. Davis, “Dead Reckoning or Reckoning with the Dead: Hispanic Catholic Funeral Customs,” Liturgy 21, no. 1 (2006): 21–7; Kenneth G. Davis, “Concentrate Consecrate: Hispanic Home Rituals and the Liturgy of the Catholic Church,” Liturgy 21, no. 4 (2006): 53–60. It should, though, be noted that as early as 1983 the journal carried Juan J. Sosa, “Let us Pray… In Español,” Liturgy 3, no. 2 (1983): 62–7. A moving contribution, Tito Madrazo, “Preaching and the Wounds of Migration,” Liturgy 36, no. 2 (2021): 45–50, refers to Miguel de la Torre and Edwin David Aponte’s work to assert that the term Hispanic “exists only in the United States,” is a “government construction” that lumps together persons from different language groups, and (then in Madrazo’s own voice) marginalizes Latin American immigrants (50).
Complements to focus on marriage and funerals come in another issue on healing and anointing. See Liturgy 22, no. 3 (2007), edited by Bruce Morill.
24 Primary Sources in Liturgical Theology: A Reader, ed. Dwight W. Vogel (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2000). For example, Lutherans Gordon Lathrop and Gail Ramshaw, the writers who produced the first and second articles in the very first issue: Gordon Lathrop, “Tree of Death, Tree of Life,” Liturgy 1, no. 1 (1980): 2–9; Gail Ramshaw Schmidt, “When the Cross Tells the Story,” Liturgy 1, no. 1 (1980): 10–13. Among later examples of their work: the former in ecumenical collaboration with, amongst others, Brazilian Anglican Jaci Maraschin and Australia’s Uniting Church’s Robert Gribben (18.3 in 2003); Ramshaw’s “Triple Praise” eucharistic prayer which appeared in the United Church of Canada’s Celebrate God’s Presence now reprinted south of the border (18.3 in 2003). So far as I know, Primary Sources in Liturgical Theology includes three contributions by persons from visible ethnic minorities: Anscar Chupungco, Justo González, and Harold Dean Trulear, the latter of whose Chapter (263–272) is drawn from The Landscape of Praise and, prior to that, Liturgy.
25 I deliberately use a term—BAME (Black and Asian Minority Ethnic)—in common parlance in the UK, and not so much in the US, so far as I know.
26 Joseph Donnella II, “Called and Sent,” Liturgy 17, no. 1 (2002): 32–6; Donella, “A Lenten Pilgrimage: Doing the Stations of the Cross,” Liturgy 17, no. 3 (2002): 75–9; and Donella,“Let the Blessings Flow: Liturgy and Race in the Last Fifty Years,” Liturgy 37, no. 4 (2022): 22–7. Issue 37.4 and 38.1 (2023) are part of a joint initiative with the North American Academy of Liturgy. (For transparency, I contributed to 38.1 in 2023.)
27 An example is Keun-Joo Christine Pae, “We are Asian and Asian-American Women: Generation X: A Postcolonial Feminist Liturgy in North America,” Liturgy 23, no. 1 (2008): 65–9. This contribution is notable as the first to foreground the term “postcolonial.”
28 Joan R. Harrell, “A Womanist Perspective: Imago Dei in Black and White,” Liturgy 23, no. 3 (2008): 15–24. The term “womanist” had otherwise been used only somewhat in passing in a 2022 article listing “edgy” theologians.
29 James Abbingdon, “Music Wars: A Perspective from the Black Church,” Liturgy 24, no. 4 (2009): 40–7.
30 E.g. Luther E. Smith Jr., “Spirituality and Social Freedom,” Liturgy 5, no. 3 (1986): 46–57; Wyatt Tee Walker, “The Soul of Black Worship,” Liturgy 7, no. 3 (1988): 34–41; Riggins R. Earl, “The Black Church, Black Women and the Call,” Liturgy 7, no. 4 (1988): 86–95; and William D. Watley, “The Theological Foundations of Black Worship,” Liturgy 8, no. 1 (1989): 58–63.
31 Cláudio Carvalhaes, “Worship: Loving Madly,” Liturgy 29, no. 3 (2014): 55–63.
32 HyeRan Kim-Cragg, “Through Senses and Sharing: How Liturgy Meets Food,” Liturgy 32, no. 2 (2017): 34–41. Note that in contrast to the multiple foregrounding of the US it takes until 2018 for Canada to appear in an article title: Lizette Larson-Miller, “Dying in the Lord: Theology, Pastoral Care, and Legislation in the Example of a Canadian Context,” Liturgy 31, no. 1 (2018): 34–40.
33 Kristine Suna-Koro, “Confession of Sin and the ‘Sinned-Against’: An Enquiry from a Lutheran Perspective,” Liturgy 34, no. 1 (2019): 21–9. On “off white” designation, see Kristine Suna-Koro, In Counterpoint: Diaspora, Postcoloniality, and Sacramental Theology (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2017), 17.
34 Gerald Liu, “Christian Worship and the Question Concerning Technology,” Liturgy 30, no. 2 (2015): 36–44.
35 Paul Junggap Huh, “John Calvin and the Presbyterian Psalter,” Liturgy 27, no. 3 (2012): 16–22. And despite a close alliance with ARL&W from 2005, the first time Calvin’s name appeared in the title of an article in Liturgy since 1982.
36 Scott Haldeman, “Liturgy, Culture and Race: An Introduction,” Liturgy 29, no. 3 (2015): 1–2.
37 W. Scott Haldeman, Towards Liturgies That Reconcile: Race and Rites among African American and European American Protestants (Farnham: Ashgate, 2007).
38 Richard McCarron, “Kingdom Play? Striving Against Racism Through Worship in a Postcolonial Mode,” Liturgy 29, no. 3 (2014): 47–54, significant as a rare engagement by a Roman Catholic liturgist. For a timeline on postcolonial liturgical work, see also Michael N. Jagessar, “Decolonial Challenges and Opportunities,” Liturgy 37, no. 4 (2022): 28–34.
39 Mark R. Francis, “The Future of Liturgical Inculturation and the Contribution of Anscar J. Chupungco, OSB,” Liturgy 29, no. 3 (2014): 3–10.
40 See also Jagessar, “Decolonial Challenges and Opportunities.”
41 Andrew Wymer, “‘Either a Killer or a Suicide’: White Culture, Anti-Cultural Preaching and Cultural Suicide,” Liturgy 35, no. 3 (2020): 45–53.
42 “Bibliography: Race, Liturgical Studies, Preaching and Music,” Liturgy 35, no. 3 (2020): 54–61.
43 Scott Haldeman, “Worship That Does Justice and Makes Peace,” Liturgy 17, no. 1 (2002): 3–13.
44 Mark R. Francis, “The Challenge of Worship in a Multicultural Assembly,” Liturgy 14, no. 4 (1998): 3–9.
45 James Notebaart, “Hearing the Ancient Song: Drinking the Holy Nectare,” Liturgy 14, no. 1 (1998): 11–22.
46 Scott Haldemann, “American Racism and the Promise of Pentecost,” Liturgy 14, no. 4 (1998): 34–50.
47 Karen Westerfield-Tucker, “Creating Liturgies ‘in the Gaps,’” Liturgy 22, no. 3 (2007): 65–71.
48 Carvalhaes, Kim-Cragg, Suna-Koro and Liu earned their doctorates at Union Theological Seminary (New York), Emmanuel College (Toronto), and Emory (Atlanta) and Vanderbilt (Nashville) universities, respectively.
49 C. Michael Hawn, “Praying for the World: Global Singing in Worship,” Liturgy 17, no. 2 (2002): 18–30.
50 Tim Witt, “Singing with the Earth and the Global Church,” Liturgy 27, no. 2 (2012): 17–30.
51 Liturgy 27, no. 2 (2012), edited by Benjamin M. Stewart.
52 Julie Buckley-Farlee, “Sent as Host and Guest in Little Mogadishu,” Liturgy 35, no. 2 (2020): 11–17.
53 Donald Wagner, “No Peace in Jesus’ Homeland,” Liturgy 18, no. 1 (2003): 29–31.
54 Mary W. Anderson, “Ritual Remembrances of Bethlehem,” Liturgy 18, no. 1 (2003): 6–10 (9).
55 Nathan Nettleton, “Free-Church Bapto-Catholic,” Liturgy 19, no. 4 (2004): 57–68.
56 Fraser Watts, “Experiencing Liturgy,” Liturgy 21, no. 3 (2004): 3–9, alongside another British Anglican, Leslie Francis, “Psychological Types and Liturgical Preaching: The Sift Method,” Liturgy 21, no. 3 (2006): 11–20. Further British and Australian contributions come with Anita Monro, “Experiencing Good Worship,” Liturgy 29, no. 2 (2014): 9–13 in the same issue with Andy Lyons, “What Makes Good (British, Methodist) Worship?,” Liturgy 29, no. 2 (2014): 14–19. Another voice from overseas is sounded from Singapore by Simon Chan, “The Holy Spirit as the Fulfillment of Liturgy,” Liturgy 30, no. 1 (2015): 33–41. I highlight such writers because they are exceptional in the context of the journal.
57 Doug Gay and Ron Rienstra, “Veering Off the Via Media: Emerging Worship, Alternative Worship and the New Media Technologies in the United States and United Kingdom,” Liturgy 23, no. 3 (2008): 39–47.
58 Both terms appear in Gay and Reinstra’s article (above). “Alternative worship” prevails in the contribution by another representative of the British scene in Jonny Baker, “Curating Worship,” Liturgy 26, no. 2 (2011): 12–19 (12).
59 L. Celeste Gardner, “Choosing a Tongue: Language, Justice and Liturgy in the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti,” Liturgy 25, no. 2 (2009): 12–21.
60 Dirk G. Lange, “Rediscovering Communal Prayer: The Witness of the Community of Taizé,” Liturgy 30, no. 4 (2015): 28–35. Taizé had first featured in Gordon Truitt, “Lessons from Taize,” Liturgy 6, no. 4 (1987): 84–6.
61 Jennifer L. Lord, “Walking the Camino,” Liturgy 32, no. 3 (2017): 3–13. Note, however, mention of another Santiago (in Chile) in the insightful article: Gerhard Cartford, “Public Prayer and Culture: An Ecumenical Journey,” Liturgy 11, no. 3 (1994): 31–7. He explores “begin[ning] to learn who I was as a North American and to face the reality of being a Lutheran with roots in the cultural ambience of northern Europe…” (his emphasis).
62 James F. White, Protestant Worship: Traditions in Transition (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1989), 171–91.
63 Nicholas Denysenko, “Orthodox Confession: Receiving Forgiveness for the Life of the World,” Liturgy 34, no. 1 (2019): 3–11. Other traditions in the minority in terms of representation in the journal include the Quakers, who surface in Peterson Toscano, “Quaker Liturgy in a Rural Context,” Liturgy 32, no. 4 (2017): 20–4.
64 Liturgy 33, no. 3 (2019), edited by Ed Philips and Tanya Riches; see also 37, no. 3 (2022), edited by Matthew Sigler.
65 Tanya Riches, “Liturgical Inculturation in Urban Aboriginal Pentecostalism,” Liturgy 33, no. 3 (2018): 54–62.
66 Riches is Australian (though having been a student in the US). Her co-editing alongside Ed Philips was rare because she is not in the US. (For transparency, I may have been among the first to edit entirely from beyond the US, in 34.2 in 2019, on postcolonial perspectives on liturgy.)
67 Liturgy 33, no. 2 (2018), edited by Katharine E. Harmon.
68 Curiously, statistics for North America are not given in the same place. Tricia C. Bruce, “A Pope, A People, and a Parish: How Changing Demographics are Changing Catholic Communities,” Liturgy 33, no. 2 (2018): 28–36.
69 Jerusha Matsen Neal, “Preaching Migrations: An Introduction,” Liturgy 36, no. 2 (2021): 1–2. See also Kristine Suna-Koro, “Liturgy and Lament: Postcolonial Reflections from the Midst of a Global Refugee Crisis,” Liturgy 34, no. 2 (2019): 31–40.
70 Seforosa Caroll, “Displacing Liturgy: A Pacific Exploration,” Liturgy 36, no. 2 (2021): 26–35.
71 In Liturgy 37, no. 1 (2022), see Maria Eugenia Cornou, “Liturgical Inculturation and Popular Protestantism in Argentina: The Musicking and Rituals of the Evangelical Crusades of Carlos Annacondia,” (39–46); Ching-Yu Huang, “Ongoing Liturgical Contextualization: A Discussion of Liturgical Contextualization Through Duan Wu Festival in Taiwan” (47–54); Kuzipa Nalwamba, “Singing in a Strange Land: Echoes of the Singing Tradition of Migrant Mineworkers of the Copperbelt in Zambia” (73–80); Ester Pudjo Widiasih and Rasid Rachman, “Reshaping Liturgy in Postcolonial Indonesia” (55–63).
72 Aziz Halaweh, “Liturgy of Jerusalem from the Fourth to Fifth Centuries,” Liturgy 37, no. 1 (2022): 6–14.
73 John F. Baldovin, “Fifty Years of Worship Scholarship Amidst the Changing Worlds of Worship (1972–2022),” Liturgy 37, no. 4 (2022): 11.
74 Engagement with first peoples of the land and waters around what some of them call Turtle Island is, however, only at a most minimal level. Stephen Burns, “A Postcard from Narrm,” Liturgy 38, no. 1 (2023): 11–17 may be the next with a focus on indigenous people, though not by a first nations author, and with Australia not Turtle Island in mind.
75 Layla Karst, “A New Creation: Translating Lourdes to America,” Liturgy 32, no. 3 (2017): 29–37.
76 See note 1. Grateful thanks to John Flett for conversations towards and reading of a draft of this essay.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Stephen Burns
Stephen Burns is professor of liturgical and practical theology, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity, Melbourne, Australia. His publications include Conversations about Divine Mystery: Essays in Honor of Gail Ramshaw (co-edited with HyeRan Kim-Cragg; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2023); Explorations in Twentieth Century Theology and Philosophy: People Preoccupied with God (Ann Loades, ed. Stephen Burns; London: Anthem Press, 2023); Feminist Theologies: Interstices and Fractures (co-edited with Rebekah Pryor, Lanham: Fortress Academic, 2023), and From the Shores of Silence: Conversations in Practical Feminist Theology (co-edited with Ash Cocksworth and Rachel Starr, London: SCM Press, 2023).