When the Liturgical Conference board realized that the North American Academy of Liturgy (NAAL) was approaching a celebration of its first fifty years, the board decided to mark the event by looking at where liturgical scholarship and practice had come in that time and what might be the direction of future work. Accordingly, the board set out to publish two issues of Liturgy focused first on the past and secondly on the future. The first issue was a retrospective on the unfolding—the changing worlds—of liturgical scholarship and practice over the past 50 years. This is the second issue: a prospective reflection on the future possibilities and trajectories of worship scholarship and practice over the next 50 years.Footnote1
At each annual meeting of the NAAL in recent memory, five banners have stood behind the podium at which we conduct most of our communal work and fellowship. These banners portray the rising sun—an homage to the logo of the NAAL—behind two trees that, appropriate to our winter meetings, are devoid of leaves. The cover image of this issue pays tribute to this familiar visual, yet we selected it, as well, because it visualizes trees that rather than being in hibernation—or dead—are bursting with the lush and long-awaited greenery of spring.
This visual provides an apt metaphor for much of what we encountered in this issue marking the fiftieth anniversary of NAAL. When these two issues were originally planned, we had a very clear sense of one issue (vol. 37, no. 4) being historical in focus and the second issue (vol. 38, no. 1) being future-facing. In this issue, we encounter the complex interweaving of the past, present, and future. In the first issue, authors engaged the past but often with a vivid awareness of and concern for the present and future, and in the second issue, authors who were tasked with imagining the future were still very concerned about the past and present. As the image on the cover is intended to remind us, even as we look forward with hope and expectation for the ongoing renewal of liturgical scholarship and practice, it is certain that the past has brought us to where we are today and set us on still unfolding trajectories.
The concept for this issue was first tested in a focus group held in May 2021 that was funded by a grant from the Styberg Preaching Institute. The editors drew together a small but diverse array of liturgical scholars and practitioners—many of whom subsequently agreed also to write for this issue.Footnote2 This focus group was a generative time of sharing why liturgy matters within our individual contexts, reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of current liturgical scholarship and practice, identifying needed shifts in the study and practice of liturgy, and identifying obstacles to change within the field. This conversation provided us with rich content from which emerged some of the essays comprising this issue and through which we were able to provide initial generative questions for additional authors.
Contributors were invited to consider the following questions: Surveying liturgical practice in your tradition what strengths do you see and what opportunities for improvement/development do you see? What are the present needs or tasks that liturgical studies might helpfully address to more fully participate in the faithful practice of liturgy? Where is the field of liturgical studies headed today, and what, if any, alternative trajectories would you hope for? As we consider the future of liturgical studies what obstacles stand in the way? A rich array of responses to these and a host of other questions engaged by individual authors are manifest in this issue.
In “A Vision of What Is Possible: Orthodox Liturgy in the Future,” Nicholas Denysenko writes of Orthodox liturgy, sharing qualities that make it unique. He examines current Orthodox discourse on liturgical reform and offers some possible pathways forward. Offering focused and practical interventions for liturgical renewal, Denysenko’s envisioning of liturgical renewal reveals a rich counterpoint against other liturgical traditions in which innovation moves at a more harried pace.
“A Postcard from Naarm” by Stephen Burns explores the violent unfolding of settler colonialism that has shaped his liturgical context in Melbourne, Australia. He examines not only colonial brutality but also what might be called indigenous ritual resistance that continues to contest the land and its inhabitants. Naming possible avenues of liturgical reckoning with legacies of violence, Burns leaves us with the haunting invitation to write back, sending a postcard to Naarm regarding liturgical renewals in the context of the United States that might lead to reckoning with colonial violence and finding ways forward in mutuality with indigenous persons.
David Turnbloom’s “Mystagogy of the Unauthorized” is an insightful and practical pedagogical vision for the teaching of liturgical studies in undergraduate settings in ways that draw students from a variety of religious and non-religious backgrounds to more deeply engage their own faith or spirituality in conversation with others. In this pedagogical framework, Turnbloom argues for a shift in the teaching of liturgical studies toward respectful curiosity and the nurturing of classroom experiences that lead to encounters with diversity and individual particularity.
In “Contemplating Queer Futures for Liturgical Studies: A Conversation,” Scott Haldeman converses with members of the Queering Liturgy Seminar of the NAAL—Stephanie Budwey, Jason McFarland, and Lis Valle-Ruiz—inviting us to bear witness to an honest conversation about how liturgical scholarship and practice might be rendered life-giving for LGBTQIA+ persons. This conversation invites us to imagine a present and a future in which justice is deeply centered in liturgical scholarship and practice and our awareness of human ritual is expanded beyond the walls of churches.
Highlighting the contributions of the Liturgical Renewal Movement in “Contributions of the Liturgical Renewal Movement and Concerns for the Future Renewal of Liturgy,” HyeRan Kim-Cragg shares three concerns for the future study and practice of liturgy that envision a more just and decolonial future for liturgy. She encourages us to imagine clergy roles and leadership in ways that push beyond white, cisgender, male dominance and to continue to center justice and the active involvement of the laity.
Marcia McFee’s “Metamorphosis Moment: Ritual Artistry and the Work of the People” casts an imaginative vision of liturgical renewal that expands our awareness of what liturgy might be and our sensitivity to the ritual needs of all human beings. She challenges liturgical scholarship and practice to encompass the new realities of our post-pandemic era.Footnote3
Sketching a brief survey of Pentecostal engagement with worship, in “Renovating the Building Versus Restoring the Foundations: The Need for Pentecostal Liturgical History,” Jonathan Ottaway explores the possibilities of shifting Pentecostal worship scholarship and practice from a focus on excavating past practices to more intentionally attending to present-day Pentecostal worshipers. His work suggests that this will provide a rich and complex foundation from which to anticipate future renewals of Pentecostal worship.
In “Is it a Tenebrae Moment Again?: On Crisis in Liturgical Theology as an Opportunity for Renewal,” Kristine Suna-Koro examines the crises which shape the ecclesial and social context of liturgy today. Her work is a reminder to liturgical scholars and practitioners of the need for decolonial engagement, and she soberingly names the costs to the status quo that this will necessitate. She asks whether or not decolonial horizons might also bring forward new ways of doing liturgical theology.
In “To Serve This Present Age”: The Future of Worship in the Baptist Church,” Lisa Weaver examines the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on worship in Baptist churches and the new liturgical realities that have profoundly altered worship in irreversible ways. Weaver engages how technological changes alter understandings about church authority in light of the priesthood of all believers. She envisions active engagement of lay persons, integrating worship with social realities and concerns, and the need for mutual respect among clergy over the next fifty years of liturgical change.
Richard Vosko’s “Moving Forward: Liturgical Transformations in the Roman Catholic Church” grapples with the challenges of religious shifts and decline in Catholic contexts, offering practical liturgical insights into how churches might respond in creative and bold ways. He proposes a time in the next 50 years in which congregations across denominational and even religious boundaries will share resources to live out their faith and to minister to their communities.
Building upon an engaging sketch of the biblical and philosophical frameworks that situate religion in the modern world as well as present-day Jewish and Christian liturgical scholarship, in “Liturgy’s Ethical Dilemma” Lawrence Hoffman invites liturgical scholars to locate ourselves in the midst of a second Reformation (and Counter-Reformation) in which religious truth is pluriform and interreligious harmony is possible. In the midst of increasingly visible antisemitism and Christian domination in the United States, Hoffman’s vision is compelling and haunting. He asks: Might we be able to reform the singularity of truth in a manner that leads to interreligious respect and cooperation? And if so, will this Reformation hold?
As you read these essays, you—like many of the contributors to this issue—may have found the present challenges that face liturgical scholarship and practice to be weighty. You have born witness to how each contributor grapples with the past and present. The challenges are sobering. Yet as each of these contributors has done in their unique way, we encourage you not only critically to take stock of the past and present but to imagine ways in which you and your communities of faith might continue to renew your liturgies, theologies, rituals, or pedagogies to embrace future possibilities.
Fifty years is a long time. It is highly likely that most, if not all, of the contributors, editors, and those who read this issue when it is “fresh off the presses,” will have passed on to glory fifty years from now. We give thanks to those faithful who will come after us, seeking to renew liturgical practices and to center justice in our communities of faith. May you witness vistas of possibilities that we cannot imagine and be faithful in ever new ways.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Melinda Quivik
Melinda Quivik is an ordained ELCA pastor (who served churches in Montana, Michigan, and Minnesota) and former professor of worship and preaching, is the Editor-in-Chief of Liturgy, a writer, and a preaching mentor with Backstory Preaching at backstory-preaching.mn.co.
Andrew Wymer
Andrew Wymer is an assistant professor of liturgical studies at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois, is ordained in the American Baptist Church (USA). His research engages liturgical and homiletical theory and practice with attention to race and power. Wymer serves as the vice president of The Liturgical Conference.
Notes
1 A group of liturgical scholars who would later form the NAAL first met in 1973 in Scottsdale, Arizona (with sponsorship from the Casa Foundation of the Franciscan Renewal Center), ten years after the Second Vatican Council concluded its work. The first gathering was in response to the Second Vatican Council’s liturgical changes, leaving Roman Catholic and Protestant worship leaders and scholars and congregations wanting more help in figuring out how to respond. Those who had come together in 1973 gathered again in 1975 and officially formed NAAL with the seminar structure as the basis for the work that would be undertaken at the meetings. Members settled themselves into seminars devoted to certain questions to delve deeper and deeper into those questions and offer for each other their research and writing. From the nearly eighty persons who first gathered in Scottsdale, our Academy has grown to a membership numbering over 400 today.
2 The Styberg Preaching Institute is a center of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, under the directorship of Gennifer Brooks. Focus group participants were: Nicholas Denysenko, Lawrence Hoffman, HyeRan Kim-Cragg, Melinda Quivik (facilitator), David Turnbloom, Khalia Williams, and Andrew Wymer (facilitator).
3 This is not intended to indicate that the pandemic is over; rather, we are now and for the foreseeable future in the aftermath of pandemic.