Liturgy in Migration Conference

Event time: 
Thursday, February 24, 2011 - 9:30am
Event description: 

Liturgy in Migration

Cultural Contexts from the Upper Room to Cyberspace

February 24-27, 2011

Yale Institute of Sacred Music

409 Prospect Street, New Haven


 Divine Myster IV, 1995, 52" X 73", mixed media on paper

This international conference seeks to examine the migration, past and present, of liturgy – that is, liturgical practices, forms, and materials – across boundaries, whether geographic, ethnic, ecclesial, chronological, or other.  The key question which frames this conference pertains to the nature of liturgical migrations and flows, their patterns, directions and characteristics.  Since liturgical migrations are never divorced from their social and cultural contexts, the conference will recalibrate for the twenty-first century the older work on liturgical inculturation, and bring insights on historical migrations to bear on contemporary globalizing liturgical flows.

 

 

Schedule:

Thursday, February 24

Sterling Memorial Library Auditorium 
120 High Street, New Haven (direct access from side entrance on Wall Street)

 

2:30pm | Conference check-in begins

3:15 - 4:30pm | The Immigrant Liturgy: Greek Orthodox Worship and Architecture in America, Vasileios Marinis (Yale) and Kostis Kourelis (College of Franklin and Marshall)

5:00 - 6:15pm | KEYNOTE PRESENTATION: Liquid Church and Liquid Liturgies, Graham Ward (U.K.)

6:30pm | Reception followed by dinner on your own

 

Friday, February 25

Yale Institute of Sacred Music Great Hall

409 Prospect Street, New Haven

 

8:30am | Van service from downtown hotel to ISM

9 - 10:15 am | Rituals and Customs on the Move Between Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity - Theories and Case Studies, Clemens Leonhard (University of Münster, Germany) 

10:30 - 11:45 am | Migrating Nuns – Migrating Liturgy? The Context of Reform in Female Convents of the Late Middle Ages

Gisela Muschiol (University of Bonn, Germany)

Lunch break (box lunches)

Afternoon

1:1 5- 2:30pm | Sounding the Challenges of Forced Migration: Musical Lessons from the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Diaspora
Kay Kaufman Shelemay (Harvard University, USA)

2:45 - 4pm | Hispanic Migrations: Connections between Mozarabs and Hispanic Devotion to the Cross as Seen in Good Friday Processions, Raul Gomez Ruiz (Sacred Heart School of Theology, USA) 

4:15pm | Van service downtown. Dinner on your own.

 

Saturday, February 26

Institute of Sacred Music Great Hall
409 Prospect Street, New Haven

 

8:30am | Van service from downtown hotel to ISM

9 - 10:15am | Methodism’s “World Parish”: Liturgical and Hymnological Migrations in Three Ecclesiastical Generations, Karen Westerfield Tucker (Boston University, USA)

10:30 - 11:45am | The Eucharistic Rite of the Russian Church: Then and Now, Michael Zheltov (Moscow Spiritual Academy, Moscow)

Lunch Break (box lunches)

1:15 - 2:30pm | PANEL: Contemporary liturgical migrations

  • Alternative Worship: kids playing church, or re-inculturation? An outline assessment of liturgical and cultural authenticity, Paul Roberts (UK)
  • Asian American Catholics and Contemporary Liturgical Migrations from Tradition-Maintenance to Traditioning: Shaping Asian American Liturgies for the Twenty-First Century, Jonathan Tan (Xavier University, USA)
  • Vintage Liturgy in A New Homeland: The Case of the Armenian Church, Daniel Findikyan (St. Nersess Armenian Seminary, USA)

2:45 - 4pm | Soundings from the Liturgical Ecumene: liturgical migration, Christian mission, and mutual conversions, Charles Farhadian (Westmont College, USA)

4:15pm | Van service downtown.

Evening: Conference Dinner Gathering (optional)

 

Sunday, February 27

Sterling Memorial Library Auditorium 
120 High Street, New Haven

 

Morning: Free for worship

11:15am - 12:30pm | Worship in the Digital Age, Shane Hipps (Mars Hill Bible Church, Grand Rapids, MI)

12:30 - 1pm Concluding Remarks: Teresa Berger and Bryan D. Spinks

1pm Conference ends


Biographies and Abstracts:

 

Teresa Berger
Professor of Liturgical Studies

Originally from Germany, Professor Berger holds doctorates both in liturgical studies and in constructive theology. Her scholarly interests lie at the intersections of these disciplines with gender theory, specifically gender history. Her most recent book, titled Gender Differences and the Making of Liturgical History, was published in the Ashgate series Liturgy, Worship and Society in 2011. Previous publications include Dissident Daughters: Feminist Liturgies in Global Context(2001); Fragments of Real Presence: Liturgical Traditions in the Hands of Women (2005); and a video documentary, Worship in Women’s Hands(2007). Professor Berger has also written on the hymns of Charles Wesley and on the liturgical thought of the nineteenth-century Anglo-Catholic revival. She coedited, with Bryan Spinks, the volume The Spirit in Worship: Worship in the Spirit(2009) and is editor of the volume of essays from the most recent ISM Liturgy Conference, titledLiturgy in Migration: From the Upper Room to Cyberspace (2012).

An active Roman Catholic, Berger has produced (with MysticWaters Media) a CD-ROM, Ocean Psalms: Meditations, Stories, Prayers, Songs and Blessings from the Sea (2008); and she contributes to the liturgy blog Pray Tell. Professor Berger has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Mainz, Münster, Berlin, and Uppsala. In 2003 she received the distinguished Herbert Haag Prize for Freedom in the Church.

L.Th. St. John’s College, Nottingham; M.Th. Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz; Dr.Theol. Ruprecht Karl-Universität, Heidelberg; Dipl.Theol. Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz; Dr.Theol., and Habilitation Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster.

Charles Farhadian

Charles Farhadian is associate professor of world religions and Christian mission at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California. His interests and research focus on the relationship between religions and cultures, particularly Christianity in non-Western contexts. His fieldwork has been in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, where he has investigated such themes as worship, social history, and nation making. Farhadian is author of Christianity, Islam, and Nationalism in Indonesia (Routledge), editor of Christian Worship Worldwide: Expanding Horizons, Deepening Practices (Eerdmans) and The Testimony Project: Papua (Deiyai, Papua). He is currently finishing Introducing World Christianity (Blackwell) and World Religions for Christians (Baker Academic), and, with Lewis Rambo, is co-editing Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion (Oxford). 

Soundings from the Liturgical Ecumene: liturgical migration, Christian mission, and mutual conversions

Long before the term globalization was fashionable among social scientists and media researchers, Christian missionaries were active carriers of liturgical forms that sought to connect local liturgical distinctiveness and global liturgical generality. In doing so, missionaries were contributing to what scholars of globalization have called the shrinkage of time and space. As the church crosses cultural and linguistic boundaries, liturgy becomes a site of competing claims and orientations as local people are drawn into a world religion that spans the entire globe. Liturgical flows are inherently complex as they seem to consist not only of movement, but of directionality and trajectory. Liturgies as itineraries of embodied travel help us see our situatedness, one another, our communities, and God differently. 
This paper first suggests that processes of liturgical domestications exhibit both selective acceptance and resistance of imported liturgies. Liturgies worldwide appear to mark boundaries and promote crossings between local and spatially remote centers, yet in unpredictable ways. Second, the paper reflects on the developing side of liturgy under conditions of globalization and missionization, exploring some of the current liturgical practices and artifacts of various churches worldwide.

Daniel Findikyan 

An ordained priest and vartabed of the Armenian Church, Daniel Findikyan is Dean and Professor of Liturgical Studies at St. Nersess Armenian Seminary in New Rochelle, New York, of which he is also a 1989 alumnus. Rev. Findikyan earned his doctorate in Liturgical Studies from the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, where he studied under Robert Taft, SJ. He had previously earned a Master’s degree in musicology from the City University of New York and an M.Div. from St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. Rev. Findikyan has published and lectured widely on the liturgical rites of the eastern churches, especially the Armenian Church. He serves as recurring Visiting Professor of Liturgical Studies at the University of Notre Dame and is a member of several liturgical and ecumenical commissions..

Vintage Liturgy in A New Homeland: The Case of the Armenian Church

Throughout its history, and perhaps more so than other ancient Christian traditions, the liturgy of the Armenian Church has been forced to reckon with almost perpetual migrations as her people have been repeatedly displaced from the coveted but geopolitically precarious territory that is their historical homeland. The consequences of this itinerant existence have certainly challenged the prosperity and well-being of the church; a petition for the “stability of the holy church” is found in nearly every Armenian Church service. On the other hand, over the centuries the Armenians have developed the capacity, contrary to the conventional inertial instinct of all worshipping communities, to adjust their worship according to changing environments and exigencies, often betraying an extraordinary openness to the liturgical usages of others. It remains to be seen, however, how the Armenian Church will respond to the unprecedented challenges of its twentieth-century migrations–geographical and cultural.

Pastor Shane Hipps

Shane Hipps, an ordained Mennonite minister, currently serves as teaching pastor at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, MI. Prior to this he worked in advertising as a strategic planner. Shane spend the majority of his time developing the communications plan for Porsche Cars North America, where he gained expertise in understanding media and culture. Shane speaks nationally and is author of Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith (2009) and The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church (2006).

Worship in the Digital Age

As our culture adopts new forms of media and technology for entertainment, productivity, and communication, it fundamentally alters the ecology of entire cultures. These cultural changes inevitably rupture traditional worship patterns which are often born of an earlier communication era. This presentation explores the major historical shifts in technology and their dramatic impact on worship in the church. The digital age immerses us in a state of phenomenal complexity, and it is radically shaping the present and future of worship. The gains and losses of such shifts are substantial. Most of us are completely unaware of these effects. And if we continue to ignore them we will forever encounter our technologies with the proverbial slip on the banana peel.

Kostis Kourelis

Kostis Kourelis is assistant professor of architectural history at Franklin & Marshall College. Kourelis specializes in the archaeology of the medieval Mediterranean, as well as the relationship between medieval material culture and the construction of modernity. His archaeological fieldwork in Greece, Italy, Tunisia, and Ukraine focuses on settlements, urbanism, ecology and domestic architecture. His publications include a co-authored volume, Houses of the Morea: Vernacular Architecture of the Northwest Peloponnesos (1205-1955), and articles such as, “Urban Legend: Architecture in Lord of the Rings,” “Byzantium and the Avant-Garde: Excavations at Corinth, 1920s-1930s,” and “The Archaeology of Xenitia: Greek-American Material Culture, 1873-1924.”

The Immigrant Liturgy: Greek Orthodox Worship and Architecture in America

This paper examines the migration from orthodox liturgical life in Greece to the liturgy of the Greek American community in terms of language, setting, and material culture. Leaving a home country where Greek Orthodoxy was the denominational and linguistic mainstream, as well as the national church, Greeks found themselves in a position of religious minority with rites and customs that appeared unconventional to the host population. Throughout the twentieth century, Greek American liturgical practices were formed by the juxtaposition of rigid structures largely unmodified since the late Middle Ages, on the one hand, and the influence of other Christian denominations that were dominant in the religious marketplace of the United States.

At the same time, the cultural and administrative distance from the national church led to an environment of liturgical freedom rarely experienced by Orthodox populations in the Old World. Outside the radar and control of the Patriarchate in Constantinople, Greek Americans deviated in creative ways, most notably in the appropriation of preexisting buildings and the design of new paradigms. The theological justifications for Byzantine church typology held little sway in ad hoc solutions. After an initial period of spatial fluidity, Greek American churches assimilated elements of Modernism that embodied attitudes of progress totally foreign to the post-Byzantine tradition. The dome remained an essential part of Greek American churches but often incorporated new elements. Traditional Byzantinizing iconography in fresco and mosaic was complemented with stained glass windows. Concomitantly, changes in worship practices reflected comparable trends. Small organs and mixed choirs were introduced into worship. The congregation, and especially women, were encouraged to participate in chanting and reading. In addition to the Bible and the text of the sacraments, hymns were also translated and sung into English, not without resistance from conservative parties within the community. More controversial were the unilateral modifications in the forms of rites: a brief “ceremony of vows” was sometimes appended before the sacrament of Marriage in order to give the ritual a more recognizable form. Lengthy services, such as the Matins of the Paschal Vigil, were shortened. Others, such as the Christmas Matins and Divine Liturgy, were moved to more “convenient” times, namely on the eve of the feast to allow for family time on Christmas day.

We approach these phenomena not as a result of binaries–“East vs. West,” “Greek vs. American,” “Orthodox vs. Catholic.” Instead we consider them as manifestations of complex processes pertaining in essence to constructions of identity, both religious and ethnic. Greek American churches were and still are primarily social and cultural rather than religious organizations. They are often charged with defending and upkeeping Greekness and Orthodoxy for a variety of communities that cannot agree on the definition of the former and care little about the finer points of the latter. Oddly, the migration of the Greek Orthodox liturgy to America and its subsequent development had little to do with theology, dogmatics, or the orthopraxy of liturgical practices themselves. Rather, the liturgy and its setting became a signifier of ethnic, racial, economic, and cultural identity. The Orthodox liturgical space in American, therefore, has become the central platform to resolve different identities within the Greek community and to negotiate difference or similarities outside the immigrant enclave.

Clemens Leonhard 
Professor of Liturgy, Catholic Theological Faculty

University of Münster

Clemens Leonhard was born in Vienna in 1967 and studied theology, Near Eastern studies, and Jewish studies between 1985 and 1999. He wrote his Doctoral thesis on the history of the exegesis of the Psalms in the Apostolic Church of the East (2001). His second book discusses the origins and early history of the Jewish Pesach and the Christian Easter (2006).

Rituals and Customs on the Move Between Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity - Theories and Case Studies

Similarities and conspicuous differences between Jewish and Christian liturgies as well as bits of 1their interpretation require explanations. Furthermore, a reconstruction of migrations of elements and bits of interpretation of rituals between Judaism and Christianity challenges or supports concepts of the relationship between the two religions in general. The paper first examines implications of recent theories that provide a background for the evaluation of migrations between Jews and Christians. Second, it evaluates these theories by studying certain examples mainly from the history of Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity on their basis.

Vasileios Marinis 

Vasileios Marinis is assistant professor of Christian art and architecture at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and the Divinity School. Marinis’s research focuses on the art and architecture of early Christianity and the Middle Ages. He has a particular interest in the ritual, liturgical arts, representations of women and children, as well as the material culture of these periods. Marinis has been the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including the Aidan Kavanagh Prize for Outstanding Scholarship at Yale and the S.C. and P.C. Coleman Senior Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has published on a variety of topics ranging from early Christian tunics decorated with New Testament scenes to medieval tombs and Byzantine transvestite nuns. He is currently preparing a monograph on the interaction of architecture and ritual in the medieval churches of Constantinople.

The Immigrant Liturgy: Greek Orthodox Worship and Architecture in America (see Kostis Kourelis)

Gisela Muschiol

University of Bonn

Professor Mushiol studied Catholic Theology, Medieval History, and European Ethnology in Münster, Germany. Her research focuses on: medieval liturgy among female convents; medieval history of female convents; female convents in 16th century; history of female Catholics in 20th century.

Migrating Nuns - Migrating Liturgy?
The Context of Reform in Female Convents of the Late Middle Ages

In the late Middle Ages, reform in female convents followed certain rules, irrespective of the order to which the convent belonged. At the same time, reform was often connected with liturgical change. These alterations might concern the language, form and frequency of the liturgy of the hours, but also the Mass. The implementation of an altered liturgy and of the reform as a whole usually followed a specific pattern: sisters left their original convents and migrated into the convents that were to be reformed. They brought with them a way of life and a liturgy that were - or were supposed to be - truer to the rules. This paper will consider the conditions and forms of these migrations of liturgy (or maybe ‘liturgical migrations’) in order to examine their impact on the social/cultural identity of the convents being reformed.

Paul Roberts 
Director of Anglican Formation

Trinity College, Bristol, U.K.

Dr. Paul Roberts has taught liturgy in Britain for over twenty years and is currently Director of Anglican Formation at Trinity College in Bristol. He has planted two fresh expressions of Church and was one of the pioneers of alternative worship in the UK. He has also been a parish priest and served on the Church of England’s Liturgical Commission from 2001 to 2006.

Alternative Worship: kids playing church, or re-inculturation? An outline assessment of liturgical and cultural authenticity.

Alternative worship emerged as a liturgical phenomenon in the 1980s, beginning, almost simultaneously in the UK, Australia and New Zealand before being adopted by many US-based Emerging Churches from the mid-1990s. It claims to be an authentic expression of liturgical inculturation for a postmodern/contemporary/post-Christendom generation. Yet it is difficult to draw clear lines of distinction between pre- and post-modern expressions of Western culture and behind the phenomenon itself can lie often-unasked questions of cultural and liturgical authenticity. This presentation will seek to identify what is ‘genuinely’ alternative worship and to open lines of enquiry over whether Christians in the West today can self-define their culture or whether this merely short-circuits into classical consumerist narcissism.

Raul Gomez Ruiz
Professor of Liturgical Theology and Sacrements

Sacred Heart School of Theology, Hales Corner, WI

Raúl Gómez Ruiz, SDS, a Salvatorian priest, has been on the faculty of Sacred Heart School of Theology, Hales Corners, Wisconsin, since 1988. He received a PhD in Liturgical Studies from The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC in 2001. Father Gómez serves as Vice President for Academic Affairs and holds the rank of Professor. He teaches courses in liturgical theology and Sacraments.

Hispanic Migrations: Connections between Mozarabs and Hispanic Devotion to the Cross as seen in Good Friday Processions

I address the topic of “Liturgy in Migration” by examining devotion to the cross through the phenomenon of processions in both the liturgical and popular realms, focusing on processions that take place on Good Friday in Toledo, Spain and which form part of the Hispano-Mozarabic liturgy and the popular piety practiced by the Mozarab community of Toledo. I also describe a Good Friday Procession witnessed in San Antonio, Texas that incorporates liturgical and popular elements and reveals parallels to the Toledo events. This will be the starting point for some thoughts regarding devotion to the cross by means of processions and how the processions themselves might have migrated between the liturgical and popular realms by means of what Jan Assman calls “cultural memory.” This will lead to some thoughts about how and why Good Friday processions migrated to the US and took on certain traits that have migrated back to Spain, and what this means in terms of devotion to the cross. To help put this into context I will give brief descriptions of is the nature of liturgy, popular piety, and the relationship between them. I will also articulate some questions outside the scope of this presentation raised by the phenomenon of Good Friday processions in both the liturgical and popular realms.

Kay Kaufman Shelemay
Professor of African and African American Studies atHarvard University

Ethnomusicologist Kay Kaufman Shelemay, the G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, is the author of numerous books and articles. Shelemay’s Music, Ritual, and Falasha History (1986/1989) won both the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award and the Prize of the International Musicological Society. Other major publications include A Song of
Longing: An Ethiopian Journey (1991); Ethiopian Christian Chant: An Anthology (3 vols., 1993-1997 ), co-authored with Peter Jeffery; Let Jasmine Rain Down: Song and Remembrance Among Syrian Jews (1998, finalist for the National Jewish Book Award); and Soundscapes: Exploring Music in a Changing World (2000/2006).

Sounding the Challenges of Forced Migration: Musical Lessons from the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Diaspora

The 1974 Ethiopian Revolution set into motion a series of political, economic, and religious changes that dramatically altered the status of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in its historical homeland and drove large numbers of Ethiopian Christians into exile abroad. This paper draws on recent research among Ethiopian Christians now resettled in the United States in order to “sound” the depth and breadth of challenges to the transmission and performance of their liturgy in post-migratory settings. The paper draws on this case study in order to explicate more broadly ways in which liturgical musics flow across geographical boundaries, travel through various media, and, in the process, reshape both themselves and other repertories.

 

Bryan D. Spinks
Bishop F. Percy Goddard Professor of Liturgical Studies and Pastoral Theology, and chair of the program in liturgical studies; Fellow of Morse College.

Professor Spinks teaches courses on marriage liturgy; English Reformation worship traditions; the eucharistic prayer and theology, Christology, and liturgy of the Eastern churches; and contemporary worship. Research interests include East Syrian rites, Reformed rites, issues in theology and liturgy, and worship in a postmodern age. His most recent books are Early and Medieval Rituals and Theologies of Baptism: From the New Testament to the Council of Trent (2006); Reformation and Modern Rituals and Theologies of Baptism: From Luther to Contemporary Practices (2006); and Liturgy in the Age of Reason: Worship and Sacraments in England and Scotland, 1662–c. 1800 (2008). The Worship Mall: Liturgical Initiatives and Responses in a Postmodern Global World was published by SPCK (London 2010; New York 2011). He coedited, with Teresa Berger, The Spirit in Worship: Worship in the Spirit (2009). Other recent publications include “Liturgical Theology and Criticism—Things of Heaven and Things of the Earth: Some Reflections on Worship, World Christianity, and Culture” in Christian Worship Worldwide: Expanding Horizons, Deepening Practices; “Renaissance Liturgical Reforms: Reflections on Intentions and Methods” in Reformation & Renaissance Review; “Eastern Christian Liturgical Traditions, Oriental Orthodox” in The Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity; and “The Growth of Liturgy and the Church Year” in The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. II: Constantine to c. 600. He is currently writing a book on the eucharist and working on the Syriac Liturgy of St. James. Professor Spinks is coeditor of the Scottish Journal of Theology, a former consultant to the Church of England Liturgical Commission, president emeritus of the Church Service Society of the Church of Scotland, and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of Churchill College, Cambridge. He is a regular Sunday Presbyter in the Middlesex Area Cluster Ministry. Professor Spinks is a fellow of Morse College. B.A. (Hons), Dip.Th. University of Durham; M.Th. University of London; B.D., D.D. University of Durham.

Jonathan Tan 
Assistant Professor of Religion and Culture, Xavier University

Jonathan Y. Tan holds a MA in Liturgical Studies from the Graduate Theological Union and a PhD in Religion and Culture from the Catholic University of America. He is the author of Introducing Asian American Theologies (Orbis Books, 2008) and numerous essays and book chapters in a wide range of topics, including World Christianity, Asian and Asian American Christianity, liturgical studies, missiology, religion and migration, comparative theology, and interreligious dialogue.

Asian American Catholics and Contemporary Liturgical Migrations from Tradition-Maintenance to Traditioning: Shaping Asian American Liturgies for the Twenty-First Century

In an increasingly global, interconnected, yet fragmented world, age-old understandings of what it means to be Asian, American, and Catholic can no longer be uncritically assumed to hold true today. I want to argue that the ahistorical essentialism of early theologies of liturgical inculturation emphasized the ideals of cohesive group identity, overarching harmony, and unity subsuming differences to the exclusion of the particularities, hybridities, and conflicts that are generated by generational shifts, multiple belongings, and multiple border crossings. This means that the essentialized categories of racial-ethnic, cultural, and faith identities have to be deconstructed, challenged, contested, and finally, remixed in new keys and forms to address the implications of hybridities, multiple belongings and multiple border crossings within the contemporary Asian American Catholic communities. In response, I would like to propose that Asian American Catholic liturgical ministries are beginning to move away from classical tradition maintenance to the creative remix of traditioning, from liturgies that uncritically reinscribe the past to liturgies as creative and dynamic endeavors that seek to encompass the multiplicity of pluralistic, hybridized, and conflicting constructions of faith and identity.

Karen Westerfield Tuker

Karen Westerfield Tucker is a United Methodist elder (presbyter) and is Professor of Worship at the Boston University School of Theology. A graduate of the doctoral program in liturgical studies at the University of Notre Dame, she was on the faculty at Duke University for fifteen years, and has taught seminary and continuing education courses throughout the United States and Canada, and in Asia, Pacifica, and Europe. Her academic and research interests include North American liturgical history and theology, Methodist/Wesleyan liturgical history and theology, liturgy and pastoral care, and hymnody.

Dr. Westerfield Tucker is the author of American Methodist Worship (Oxford University Press, 2001). She conceived and edited The Sunday Service of the Methodists: Twentieth-century Worship in Worldwide Methodism (Abingdon/Kingswood, 1996), and with Geoffrey Wainwright edited The Oxford History of Christian Worship (Oxford University Press, 2006). She is a writer for the Wesley Works Project (Abingdon Press), and is finishing a book on the theological and cultural dynamics of hymnals drawn from her research as a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology (2002-2003).

Currently the President of the international and ecumenical Societas Liturgica, Dr. Westerfield Tucker is also editor-in-chief of the society’s journal Studia Liturgica. She serves on the Executive Committee of the World Methodist Council, relates to the Council’s Committee on Ecumenics and Dialogue, and is a member of the international dialogue between the World Methodist Council and the Roman Catholic Church. She is also a member of the national dialogue between the United Methodist Church and the Roman Catholic Church.

Methodism’s “World Parish”: Liturgical and Hymnological Migrations in Three Ecclesiastical Generations

Methodism emerged in the 1720s as a reform movement within the Church of England, but its fires of revival quickly spread outside of England to the rest of Britain and Ireland and also to the “New World.” Distinct Methodist denominations were born beginning in 1784, first in the United States and then in Britain and Ireland. By the mid-nineteenth century, these churches of the first generation assisted in the establishment of new Methodist/Wesleyan congregations in other parts of the world which, in many cases, eventually led to the formation of new denominations. The missionizing and church-planting efforts of these second generation denominations led, in turn, to the creation of a third ecclesiastical generation.
In this paper, a three-generation lineage is examined in order to identify what “Wesleyan” genetic material (liturgical and hymnological) persists and what has mutated as the result of geographic, cultural, and generational circumstances. The results of this case study will then generate discussion regarding the constituent elements of Methodist/Wesleyan liturgical identity that are particular to context but also global in scope.

Graham Ward 

Graham Ward is the Samuel Fergusson Professor of Philosophical Theogy and Ethics at the University of Manchester and Head of the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures. He is the author of Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology (CUP), Critical Theory and the Study of Theology (Macmillan),Balthasar at the End of Modernity (T.&T. Clark), Cities of God (Routledge), True Religion (Blackwell), Cultural Transformation and Religious Practices (CUP), Christ and Culture (Blackwell) and The Politics of Discipleship (Baker Academic). He is also the editor of The Postmodern God (Blackwell),The Certeau Reader (Blackwell), Radical Orthodoxy (Routledge), The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology(Blackwell), and, with Michael Hoelzl, The New Visibility of Religion (Continuum). He is currently working on two volumes concerned with the doctrine of God, entitled Ethical Life.

Liquid Church and Liquid Liturgies

This paper will examine the cultural changes that are occurring with the increasing development of mobility encouraged by globalisation and advanced telecommunications. It will focus on the new ecclesiologies emerging from network societies, their hybridity, their internationalism and the deterritorialisations that occur in a space of flows. Such ecclesiologies are fostering new ways of believing without belonging that critique, even undermine, traditional senses of sacred space, and the traditional important liturgical notions of location and the physical co-presence of participants. Indeed, the fundamental liturgical notion of ‘participation’ is morphing with respect to these new practices of piety and the manner in which these new ‘technologies of self’ inform identity and a sense of belonging. This paper will examine the possible consequences of these changes, the theologies they announce and both the dangers and liberations of liquid church and liquid liturgy.

Michael Zheltov 
Professor of Liturgy
Moscow Spiritual Academy

Michael Zheltov was born in 1976 and studied physics, computer science, theology and Byzantine studies between 1993 and 2003. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the history of liturgy of the Russian Church (2004). His scholarly interests are: Greek and Slavonic liturgical manuscripts, Byzantine Eucharistic theology, Christian ecclesiastical poetry. A full list of his publications is accessible here: http://mzh.mrezha.ru/works.htm

The Eucharistic Rite of the Russian Church: Then and Now

The paper focuses on the history of the development of the Eucharistic rites in the Russian Church from the earliest times to the present. As I have shown elsewhere, the oldest Russian manuscripts maintained a Eucharistic formulary, which is basically Constantinopolitan, but which in its details reflects a somewhat variant practice. It is possible that this practice follows the usage of the Thessalonician Archbishopric or of the Metropoly of Dyrrachium. These details include an entire series of prayers that are not witnessed to in purely Constantinopolitan sources: preparatory prayers of the celebrant before the beginning of the service, Great entrance prayers, Communion prayers, and prayers at the end of the liturgy, among others. It is particularly interesting that the lengthy apologies of the priest before the beginning of the celebration, similar to the numerous Communion prayers, have parallels in Latin medieval Missals, raising the question of Western influences (albeit indirect) on Old-Russian usage.
Another interesting topic is the attitude toward the Eucharistic bread. The Russians from the very beginning had a very particular attitude toward the Eucharistic elements. The liturgical bread was not bought at the ordinary market as in Byzantium, but rather baked by specially designated people (mostly women), who were even considered members of the lower clergy. Conversely, in Byzantium the necessity to use regular (i.e., leavened) bread in the Eucharist was considered so important that the tragic separation of the Byzantine and Roman Churches in 1054 AD occurred precisely over this question.

One more topic of note is the perception of the Eucharistic action. It is evident from the Old-Russian sources that Russian laity never practiced frequent Communion. The norm was to partake once a year. And the liturgy itself was understood as an oblation for one’s neighbors and family, and as an eschatological vision. This is evident from the popularity of the Old-Russian liturgical commentary, “The Service Interpreted,” which is based on the Byzantine text in which Gregory the Theologian describes his vision of angelic participation in the Divine liturgy.

At the end of the 14th century completely new translations of the liturgies came to Rus’. These were based on a purely Constantinopolitan tradition and upon the Diataxis of Philotheos Kokkinos, Patriarch of Constantinople, which was compiled in the same century. These translations were introduced into the Russian Church, supplanting the older texts. However, the older material from an earlier tradition was not entirely forgotten. According to manuscripts from the 15th to 16th (and, to some degree, the 17th) centuries one can observe how the above mentioned special prayers were eventually absorbed into the post-Philothean text of the liturgy. “The Service Interpreted” also was not forgotten. Quite the contrary, in many manuscripts citations from “The Service Interpreted” are integrated directly into the liturgical formulary. 
An attempt to change the liturgical practice and theological attitude towards the Eucharist took place in the middle of the seventeenth century, when the liturgical formularies were translated anew from Greek into Slavonic, a. redaction that is used to this day. Parallel to this reform, the Russian Church adopted a new theological system, developed by Kievan scholars and based to some extent on Tridentine doctrine of the Latin Church. From this time the perception of the Eucharist in the Russian Church becomes more dogmatically nuanced. But at the same time the laity continued to communicate but once a year, which paved the road to a somewhat pietistic approach to Church life.

Th? Eucharistic life among the Russian Orthodox people underwent substantial changes in the 20th century. After a bright flowering in the first fifteen years of the 20th century of ecclesiastical scholarship and a growth of hope that the age-old problems of the Russian Church might finally be resolved (including reconciliation with the old-believers, establishment of a more correct order of church government, etc.), the normal course of Orthodox life in Russia was tragically interrupted by the Communist terror. Most bishops, and many thousands of priests, monks, and ordinary believers were arrested and executed during the period of 1920-1940, and even afterwards to be a believer remained difficult. As a result, the Eucharist, once a daily service of the official Church of the Russian empire, became an extraodinary event, and a risky one for participants. Another phenomenon was the Eucharistic life of the Russian emigrants in the West. Their changing circumstances affected their way of performing the Eucharistic celebration, and gave an impetus to a re-evaluation of Eucharistic practice and theology. Theological insights of Nicholas Afanasyev, Alexander Schmemann, and other Russian emigrant theologians had everything to do with this process. Since the fall of the Soviet regime, Orthodox liturgical life in Russia has experienced an unprecedented revival, far beyond a mere restoration of pre-Communist practices. The 20th century taught Russian Orthodox Christians to become much more Eucharist-centered than they had been. The Byzantine liturgical and theological heritage, shared by all Orthodox Churches, is for the Russians a matter of great interest and popular debate. The ancient liturgy has migrated through a troubled age to re-establish itself at the center of spiritual life.