Search Results (80)

This study investigates the theological function of the contemporary worship song “The Blessing” by addressing the following guiding research question: in what ways does “The Blessing” function as a form of prophetic declaration and communal prayer in contemporary congregational worship? Drawing on frameworks from Pentecostal theology, lyrical theology, and performative speech-act theory, this study analyzes how the song’s language, structure, and performance embody Spirit-enabled proclamation and intercession. Engaging Rice’s Evagrian–LAPT grammar, Glenn Packiam’s theology of worship as encounter, and Steven Félix-Jäger’s model of New Testament prophecy, the textual analysis focuses on the song’s present-tense verbs of divine action and its lyrical constructions. Scripturally grounded in Numbers 6:24–26, “The Blessing” operates as a sung benediction that invokes God’s blessing, sanctification, divine favor and protection, covenantal presence, and peace. The repetitive use of “Amen” functions as a communal seal of affirmation, turning passive reception into active, prophetic participation when sung. This study contends that the song exemplifies how contemporary congregational song serves as primary theology—Spirit-inspired, embodied, and sounded—where proclamation and prayer are nurtured in lived worship. Ultimately, “The Blessing” functions as a pneumatological and ecclesial act of sung prophecy and intercession—an instance of primary theologizing that nurtures the worshiping community and mediates a Spirit-empowered encounter with divine hope. Full article

The subject of this article is the centuries-old religious heritage of Vilnius. The aim of the article is to analyse this heritage and its reflection in the gaze of tourists. In particular, it focuses on selected Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Jewish, and Karaite sites. The methods used in the empirical study include the analysis of reviews posted on the Tripadvisor website by tourists from different countries who visited five selected sites: (1) St. Anne’s Church, (2) Holy Spirit Orthodox Church, (3) Evangelical Lutheran Church, (4) Vilnius Choral Synagogue, and (5) Kenesa. The authors employed the method of desk research, which involves the analysis of existing data. The selection of objects was made by indicating the most commented sites of a given religious tradition for which the most comments were received. In the light of the pervasive influence of social media, it is noteworthy to observe the contemporary representation of multi-religious Vilnius that is disseminated through this medium. Urban sacred spaces are not only places of worship of interest to religious people, including local and foreign pilgrims. Furthermore, they constitute an attractive urban heritage for a significant number of cultural tourists. Committed tourists, including cultural tourists, meticulously document their impressions in various forms of narrative, offering either endorsement or criticism of a particular object. In this manner, they also interpret elements of the heritage in the local urban space. Full article

Urban space is the social field in which religious diversity in contemporary Italy becomes most evident and where religious groups compete for visibility, recognition, and places of worship. The sites of so-called minorities can be observed as indicators of a plural religious geography. Peaceful and conflictual dynamics are both expressed precisely through external recognition, which may be horizontal—religious and social—when between peers or vertical therefore juridical. This study presents the findings of research conducted in the city of Turin, an emblematic case within the Italian religious landscape for the management of religious diversity and interreligious dialogue initiatives. The analysis focuses on the Romanian Orthodox Church located in the historic center, which we interpret as a shared religious place. This case shows how a spatial and material perspective can offer an innovative approach to the field of interreligious dialogue. Places of worship are crucial spaces for interreligious dialogue: they serve as laboratories of local peace-building and experiments in coexistence, mutual respect, encounter, and conflict mediation. However, in a frame of multiple secularities, the ambiguity of both the national and regional legal systems contribute to marginality of the religious dimension in the city’s urban planning policies, ignoring the important role these places play as spaces of cohesion, identity, inclusion. Full article

For generations, a silent symbol of politics in U.S. religious congregations has been the presence of the national flag in worship spaces. Despite debates over the flag, there is limited empirical research on its contemporary prevalence or influence in congregations. Building upon research on social sorting, we hypothesize that people with conservative religion and conservative politics sort into congregations displaying the flag. Additionally, we hypothesize a priming effect whereby worshipping with the U.S. flag elevates support for Christian nationalism. Findings from the 2021 Baylor Religion Survey reveal that nearly half of religiously affiliated U.S. adults worship with the flag, most notably members of white Protestant religious traditions (more so than Catholics) and older adults. Regardless of religious tradition or political ideology, worshipping with the flag is associated with support for Christian nationalist beliefs. These finding highlight a sorting process into American congregations and hint at political socialization occurring within them. Full article

The First Epistle of Peter is a writing that addresses a new way of understanding and practicing worship among the followers of Jesus. The Christians, recipients of the letter, due to the imminent identity distinction from the Jews and their distancing from the practices of imperial worship, live in a difficult social and religious situation. This situation demands the author to recall the theological foundations of Christian identity and redefine the meaning of traditional ritual concepts in new ethical and communal terms. This article, through a historical and theological analysis, examines the concepts of “sacrifice” and “submission” in their Christian reinterpretation and how they shape the worship practices of Jesus’ followers. To this end, the cultic elements present in the exhortative discourse are analyzed to explore the development of their theological significance at the dawn of the second century. Furthermore, considering the current appreciation of these attitudes as outdated values, this article evaluates whether the ethical discourse of the letter can have an impact on contemporary society. The study seeks to offer a renewed reading of 1 Peter that contributes to understanding the particularity of Christian worship in the Greco-Roman society of the first century and to ascertain whether its message is still relevant today. Full article

This article examines the correlation between “trendy” musical features and contemporary worship songs for kids. We engage in music video analysis, comparing three songs from a range of contemporary worship children’s ministries to critically examine the messages that their children’s covers convey. Further, we question how contemporary worship music videos form children’s preferences and musical tastes, drawing on Lucy Green’s writing on musical taste formation and intersonic properties (2008). We argue that when children’s religious and musical experiences are formed by adults’ assumptions of their preferences—including that they prefer fun, cool, and trendy music—their overall experience of Christian music may be limited. Full article

Contemporary Congregational Songs (CCS) are used for gathered musical worship in churches of diverse traditions and denominations all over the world. Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) has measured the use of CCS in licensed churches in various global regions for over 30 years. This article examines the trajectory of songs as they enter and exit the biannual CCLI top songs lists over a 10 year period from 2014–2023. Hillsong has been one of the most prominent producers of CCS, with dominant appearances in the CCLI top song lists for the last three decades. However, they have not released any new CCS since 2021. This article explores what has happened over the past few years to the void left by such a dominant producer of CCS, and what that might mean for the genre and its future. Full article

“If there is no space in our faith communities where children can participate in theological work, how can children create a theology that will liberate them?” R.L. Stollar asks in his book, The Kingdom of Children: A Liberation Theology (2023). Popular Christian parenting literature since the 1970s has encouraged adults to view children as undisciplined trainees with little of value to offer their families and churches other than their obedience. Exploration of the recent history of Christian parenting literature and its intersections with politics and other Christian media reveals that there is substantial overlap between the communities most impacted by these books and those that utilize contemporary praise and worship music (CPWM). Using a child liberation theology framework, I examine the ways that prevailing ideas in parenting books have enabled a “parent-centered” model of musical worship in many evangelical churches. By observing the ways children are invited into or implicitly discouraged from participation in corporate musical worship, we can better understand the ways that CPWM practice might be reshaped in a more liberatory direction—one that will benefit children and adults, and foster a more radically unified church. Full article

From young children to elders in the community, the Holy Spirit’s empowering presence is indiscriminate of age, ability, gender, culture, or status. Many communities continue to wrestle with the pastoral and practical implications of welcoming children into worship as full, distinct participants, yet within the biblical narrative, children are included as full participants in experiencing the Spirit’s gifts and empowerment and encountering God’s dynamic presence. Emerging from the discipline of practical theology and a review of New Testament pneumatology from Acts 2 and 1 Corinthians 12, this paper argues for the full inclusion of children within the church’s worship life as welcomed, distinct participants. Contributing to the emerging field of children’s spirituality, we offer faith-forming pedagogical practices to engage children in congregational songs as participants and as those filled with the Spirit as leaders. This article contributes to the fields of worship studies and children’s spirituality by exploring hospitable approaches in corporate worship and congregational songs that affirm children’s capacity to lead in distinct ways where their own spirituality is formed alongside that of the congregation. Full article

This article explores two cases of architectural conversion within the TESEO project: the transformation of a Catholic church into an Orthodox church in Trento and the adaptation of a farmstead into a Buddhist temple in the Molin Valley, Trentino. These cases show how conversion involves a negotiation of visual and spatial markers, redefining what is considered “heritage”. The article situates these experiences within broader global trends of growing religious diversity and migration, exploring how such transformations respond to the need for worship spaces for religious minorities. It also reflects on the temporariness of these solutions, often pending the creation of more permanent spaces. In conclusion, the article proposes an open, non-deterministic view of heritage, embracing the fluidity and transformability of contemporary religious spaces. Full article

This article draws upon doctoral case study data from two Protestant Christian churches to examine how contemporary worship music-making practices can reinforce and solidify the musical tastes, dispositions, and tendencies of particular demographics. Drawing upon sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus, this article examines the religious musical habitus of musicians in relation to contemporary music repertoire. For some churches, contemporary worship music-making practices may “disrupt” the habitus of a particular subset of a demographic due to their musical preferences and positioning, while contemporary repertoire may affirm the habitus of other, often “young” worshippers due to their musical preferences. Further, the research analyzes each church’s positioning within the overarching musical and theological fields in place. Case study data affirm the notion that Contemporary Worship Music is generationally based in the way it engages with the habitus, which provides implications for worship leaders and those making musical decisions within Christian church contexts. Full article

This study offers an in-depth exploration of the visual representation of Roman Rite liturgical altars in medieval images from the 13th to the 15th centuries, presenting a fresh perspective on the altar as a central and complex element of medieval liturgical furnishings. It examines key iconographic themes, such as the introit Ad te levavi animam meam and masses celebrated by saints, often depicting divine interventions during the Eucharist. Additionally, the research investigates the role of performative visual elements, such as curtains, which contributed to the depiction of sacred space within altar scenes. These visual devices help convey the altar as a space imbued with spiritual significance. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary visual and documentary sources, the study traces the continuity and variation in the altar’s iconography, offering a nuanced understanding of its role in medieval Christian worship. By examining how artists employed visual symbolism to emphasize the sanctity of the altar, this research sheds new light on the ways medieval altars were imagined and represented in the broader context of medieval art. Full article

Assumptions about the preferences of teenagers in corporate worship regarding format, style, musical selections, and other experiences abound. Recognizing that teenagers are far from homogenous, we sought to listen deeply to how they process and define their experiences of worship, particularly through the lens of encountering liturgical difference. Our research team spent one week with approximately 35 highly religious, majority-Evangelical teenagers at Animate 2023 in Birmingham, Alabama—a summer camp with an emphasis in worship and the arts. Based on data from individual interviews and focus groups, this paper articulates some of our findings—namely that these highly devoted teenage worshipers demonstrate liturgical curiosity, delight in their own agency, and often desire to adopt practices that are foreign to them, even when some of those elements are deemed “weird”. The lived experiences of young people are often missing from conversations about their liturgical practices in both the Church and academy. While this study is not generalizable, it offers a micro glimpse into one worship arts camp, aiming to provide tangible data points to address this lacuna. Full article

How do infants praise the Lord? While we cannot say definitively how this is so, exploring this idea—particularly in the context of intergenerational worship and formation—offers rich theological insights. Scripture declares, “Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants, you have perfected praise” (Matthew 21:16; Psalm 8:2, NKJV), suggesting that (1) infants indeed praise God, and (2) their praise is perfected by Him. Rather than dismissing this as purely metaphorical, this article draws on St. Augustine’s concept of the jubilus, a song with no intelligible words, to explore how infants’ babbling might be seen as a form of praise and worship, and what we might learn from it if it is thus seen. The article concludes by demonstrating how this reflection on infants’ praise might challenge us to reevaluate and enrich our approaches to Contemporary Praise & Worship and intergenerational formation. Full article

This paper analyzes the Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) within the Arctic Cultural Circle by comparing three influential texts: the Russian travelogue Dersu, the Trapper (1923); the Canadian memoir People of the Deer (1952); and the Chinese novel The Last Quarter of the Moon (2005). By examining these texts, which depict the Indigenous cultures of the Nanai, the Ihalmiut, and the Ewenki, the study identifies shared ecological perspectives. These include an emphasis on the sacredness of nature, as seen in their animistic worship and spiritual connection to the environment; a holistic relationship between humans and nature, characterized by a wise and sustainable use of resources and a minimal sense of ownership; and a sense of reciprocity among all living beings, fostering mutual care and respect within the natural world. The paper further contends that the TEK of the circle offers valuable reference for addressing contemporary environmental and social challenges posed by climate change and biodiversity loss, particularly in the context of modernization and globalization. Full article