Worship and Culture

Foreign Country or Homeland?

Glaucia Vasconcelos Wilkey

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781467442275
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Rituals & Practice

How are we to proclaim Christ in different cultures? This question was central to a landmark study on worship and culture conducted by the Lutheran World Federation between 1992 and 1999. Much has changed in the years since then: the world today more than ever is a multicultural global village. Worship and Culture revisits that LWF study and publication, shedding new light on the question from recent theological and sociological scholarship to expand and enrich the texts in the original three-volume work.This book includes texts from the main statements that came out of the original project as well as updated essays from some of the original contributors. It also adds new essays, prayers, and hymns to the conversation, inviting readers to consider what the life of the church should look like in today's hybrid, multicultural world.

• Contributors
• Julio Cezar Adam
• Scott Anderson
• Mark P. Bangert
• Thomas F. Best
• Stephen Burns
• Anscar J. Chupungco, OSB
• Joseph A. Donnella II
• Norman A. Hjelm
• Margaret Mary Kelleher, OSU
• Dirk G. Lange
• Gordon W. Lathrop
• Anita Monro
• Martha Moore-Keish
• Melinda A. Quivik
• Gail Ramshaw
• S. Anita Stauffer
• Benjamin M. Stewart
• Glaucia Vasconcelos Wilkey
• Joyce Ann Zimmerman, CPPS

Part I

Worship and Culture in Dialogue

The Cartigny Statement on Worship and Culture:
Biblical and Historical Foundations

Lutheran World Federation, 1993

Preface

This statement was prepared at the first consultation of the Lutheran World Federation’s study on “Worship and Culture” held in Cartigny, Switzerland, in October 1993. Those invited to participate make up the LWF’s ongoing international study team for the project; the participants represent all continents of the world. At this initial consultation, the study team focused on the biblical and historical (early church and Lutheran Reformation) foundations of the relationship between worship and culture. The study team met again in March 1994, in Hong Kong, to explore contemporary issues and questions of the relationship between culture and liturgy, church music, and church architecture. Following the Hong Kong consultation, it is envisioned that the study will move into a regional phase, in which regional study teams will encourage and assist in the identification and exploration of particular issues related to worship and culture as they exist in the LWF’s regions, subregions, and member churches; this exploration is to be at the pastoral as well as the theological level. Phase III of the study is to synthesize and reflect globally on the regional findings. Phase IV is to conclude the study with a wide variety of seminars and workshops to implement the explorations of the study, as each region and LWF member church decides is helpful.

Therefore, the contents of this Cartigny Statement are conclusions only of the study team’s initial consultation, with its specific focus on biblical and historical foundations; it is not a final statement on the topic as a whole.

1. Introduction

1.1. With gratitude to God, the LWF study team on Worship and Culture acknowledges the efforts of the church throughout the ages to adapt to current and local situations. We ourselves are also particularly grateful that the LWF and its member churches have given us a mandate to begin a new study of this central aspect of our Christian life.

1.2. We began our work with the conviction that, even during our own times, the Word of God must be interpreted within the context of a changing world. Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ is present in our own diverse cultural contexts today, just as his presence was incarnated in the life situation of the first century.

1.3. We acknowledge the need in our time to make worship both authentic to the Word of God and relevant to given cultures. The church is called upon to continue the ongoing task of reformation so that the gospel might faithfully be proclaimed among the various cultures of today’s world. In the final analysis, the church is an assembly of believers in a given place and time where the Word of God is preached according to Scripture and the sacraments administered following the letter and spirit of the gospel (cf. Augsburg Confession 7). It has been our Lutheran tradition — indeed, it belongs to the Christian tradition as a whole — that the Word of God should be rendered understandable to all and that the sacraments should be accessible to all believers. This is understood in the context of God’s grace and what Christ does for us.

1.4. In the incarnate Christ the witness and service of congregations become meaningful to our societies. The church — in its worship, which is the central expression of celebrating our life in Christ — should be seen as an ongoing incarnation of the gospel.

2. First Questions

2.1. As member churches of the LWF from across the world begin to explore how the gospel can be rooted in cultural patterns, it is clear that such an exploration is not a luxury, but an imperative. Further, it is clear that the process of localizing worship is not something new, but rather is an age-­old ecclesial inclination attested by well-­known examples from the past.

2.2. But the rich and complex record of the faith compels us to take more than a cursory look at the past. It seemed right, then, to engage ourselves in a more comprehensive search for the roots and methods that could provide directions and energy for present opportunities and challenges.

2.3. The process for the first consultation grew from a profound recognition that Jesus Christ himself is God incarnate in human culture. This preeminent inculturation led us first to the New Testament, where we could discover how the liberating Word for the world met culture. Then we were propelled into a study of the early church, where the Word continued to be incarnated in several different cultures. And, finally, the consultation focused on the Lutheran Reformation as a particular time when that creating Word was experienced anew, challenging and transforming culture. The ecumenical importance of this process led to several non-­Lutheran participants being involved in our deliberations.

2.4. A sense of the dynamic life-­giving relationship between worship and culture derives from more than an examination of theological development. Therefore, this study by definition searches for illumination from the histories of liturgy (text and action), church architecture, and church music as well, giving the study the kind of breadth required by current cultural contexts.

2.5. The deliberate intent to discover how the church in the past has sorted out the issues and processes amending the worship/culture dynamic has yielded considerable insight and prospects for future fruitful interaction. Examples: (A) The church, as a continuing incarnation of Christ in the world, is always taking root in culture as that place where Christ can be experienced anew. To recognize the cultural component of the church’s worship, however, is to reckon with the rich presence of God’s diverse creation in the references and materials of Christian worship. A focus on the cultural leads the church toward a more responsible relationship with creation itself. (B) Asking inculturation questions of the church’s history has made it clear that there are identifiable core elements of baptism and Eucharist that perdure through nearly every time and place. (C) The church’s liturgy is most authentic when it resists crystallization by permitting the gospel to interpret and direct the contextualization process.

2.6. The focus on history, therefore, quite naturally draws attention to contemporary issues, as Christian communities live the gospel in worship in their various cultures. At the Hong Kong consultation in 1994, the study team turned toward specific contemporary concerns, seeking to find common methods and mutual encouragement as the churches carefully attended to the issues.

3. Models and Methods

3.1. An examination of the history of the church, from its inception in the Hellenistic-­Jewish milieu to the current modern contexts, reveals that it has struggled continually with how to relate Christian worship to the cultures in which it is located. The process of understanding and answering this question has been alternately called contextualization, indigenization, localization, and inculturation. Each of these terms has been used in different ways, in different places in the world; it should be noted that no one single term adequately expresses the process.

3.2. Nonetheless, it remains the case that the Christian assembly for worship, with its music and its spatial environment, stands at the intersection of Christian faith and cultural patterns. Out of this complex interplay of Christianity and culture, three areas for consideration readily become apparent — the cultural, the countercultural, and the transcultural. The task of relating worship and culture, then, involves asking the following three questions:

3.3. First, what are the cultural elements in Christian worship (including liturgical texts, gestures, vestments, furnishings, art, music, and architecture) that give expression to the particularity of the gathered people? Cultural elements have been used in worship throughout the history of the church (e.g., the adaptation of basilican architecture in the Constantinian church) to help engage Christian worship with a particular context, while yet remaining faithful to the gospel. In the same way, the churches in every generation and in every context must ask what cultural elements can/should be used in their worship in order to help locate the worshiping community in its particular cultural context.

3.4. Second, what are the countercultural elements in Christian worship that challenge the culture in which it is located? Throughout its history the church, by its faithful proclamation of the gospe...

Table of contents

• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Introduction
• PART I: Worship and Culture in Dialogue
• PART II: Christian Worship: Unity in Cultural Diversity
• PART III: Baptism, Rites of Passage, and Culture
• Appendix: Participants in the Original LWF Project
• A Selected Bibliography on Worship, Culture, and the Unity of the Church
• Index