UnMute Yourself: Musings on the Obstacles of Worship’s Impact on Ethics

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Notes

1 Council of Trent, Session 7, “First Decree [On the Sacraments],” 3 March 1547, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner, vol. 2 (London: Sheed & Ward, 1990), 684–85.

2 See especially the second chapter of Lauren Winner, Dangers of Christian Practice: On Wayward Gifts, Characteristic Damage, and Sin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 19–56.

3 “Any prayer that is not [recited] with proper intention [kavanah] is not prayer” (Mishneh Torah, Tefilah and Birkat Kohanim 4:15. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/920166/jewish/Tefilah-and-Birkat-Kohanim-Chapter-Four.htm).

4 Mishneh Torah, Tefilah and Birkat Kohanim 4:16.

5 Quoted in Adin Steinsaltz, Guide to Jewish Prayer (New York: Schocken Books, 2002), 34. The quote is often attributed to eleventh-century philosopher Bayha Ibn Pakudah.

6 Robert W. Hovda, Strong, Loving, and Wise: Presiding in Liturgy (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1976), vi.

7 Here I am drawing on James White’s discussion of sacramentality vs. sacramental minimalism in Introduction to Christian Worship, 3rd ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 2000), 200–201.

8 Or, as Michael B. Aune notes, “[I]t is important to remember that what worshippers experience is strongly conditioned by what they bring with them—beliefs and doctrines—and it is such beliefs and doctrines that are also present in the rite that they celebrate” (Liturgy and Theology: Rethinking the Relationship,” Worship 81, no. 1 [2007]: 53).

9 Paul F. Bradshaw, “Difficulties in Doing Liturgical Theology,” Pacifica 11, no. 2 (June 1998): 191. Quoted in Aune, 53.

10 James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation, Vol. 1 of Cultural Liturgies (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009).

11 Aune, “Liturgy and Theology: Rethinking the Relationship (II),” Worship 81, no. 2 (2007): 152–55.

12 Smith, 207–14.

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Notes on contributors

David Bjorlin

David Bjorlin is assistant professor of worship at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, the pastor of Worship and Creative Arts at Resurrection Covenant Church, and a hymnwriter.