Multicultural Worship: Theory and Practice

Dear Colleagues,

We live in an unprecedently globalized multicultural world in the 21st century. Christian churches and worship leaders are challenged to be conscious of the significant impact of multiculturalism within and beyond the church and provide worshipers with theologically faithful and culturally appropriate worship services. As a response to these challenges, this Special Issue deals with various multicultural issues emerging from contemporary liturgical contexts: What is multicultural worship? Why should Christian worship be multicultural? How can multicultural worship be designed to be relevant to a particular liturgical context? How can liturgical elements (e.g., worship space, symbols, language, sermons, prayers, music, and sacraments) be prepared from the multicultural perspective? This Special Issue aims to help worship leaders and scholars explore these questions and develop their theology and method of multicultural worship.

The scope of this Special Issue includes five areas: (1) worship in multiracial or multiethnic contexts; (2) worship in monoracial or monoethnic contexts; (3) worship in multigenerational contexts; (4) worship in ecumenical contexts; and (5) worship in multireligious contexts. You are invited to write an article focusing on one of these areas with a critical analysis of the current practice of worship in that area. For example, you may choose area (1) and investigate what is going on in worship among multicultural congregations and interpret why this is going on. You are also expected to articulate a theology of multicultural worship in terms of its nature, purpose, and character appropriate to multicultural congregations and propose creative liturgical ideas and strategies for the practice of multicultural worship in a particular liturgical context. In addition, a sample liturgy with annotations that call attention to distinctive liturgical characteristics and explanations about the specific liturgical context and theme should be attached to your article. Biblical, historical, socio-cultural, religious, aesthetic, or other scientific research may be necessary to developing your theory and practice of multicultural worship.

While there are some resources available to study multicultural worship, this Special Issue uniquely contributes to the study of multicultural worship with diverse approaches to various liturgical contexts. I invite you to contribute an article to this Special Issue to make it an invaluable resource for teaching and learning multicultural worship.

Prof. Dr. Eunjoo Mary Kim
Guest Editor

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