Janet Walton
Improvisation and Imagination: Holy Play, pp. 290 - 304.
Summary. Janet Walton answers the call of Joseph Gelineau, who urged churches to find more dynamic ways to engage their symbols, to play with them, so that each person could discover their meanings for themselves. Walton says that Gelineau invites us to let go of caution in our worshiping communities, not to be concerned with protecting our traditions as if they might break if we play with them. Our liturgical forms, she adds, have the capacity to help us "get wet" if we want to play. In her essay, Walton offers a strategy for holy play based on a study of improvisation among artists.
Improvisation, Walton explains, is a process that intends to make space for new layers of experience to be added to old ones, for boundaries to be stretched. Applied to worship, it means that leaders and members of worshiping congregations provide and take space and time to discover their own interpretations of symbols. For Walton, improvisation describes an attitude toward worship as well as the skills needed to embody it. She proposes that worshiping congregations develop an artistic mindset and a schema for improvising as a way to enjoy the freedom and the power worship can provide. Improvisation or holy play intends to use engaged bodily ways of knowing to transform ourselves and our world.
Walton provides a framework for developing worship congregations where improvisation and imagination are at the heart of their lives, and thus, their liturgies. The schema she suggests involves four steps: take every offer, presume discomfort, go beyond the predictable, try it. In conclusion, Walton writes that her proposed rationale for improvisation and imagination in worship, or "holy play," dares to suggest that we play with the story of God and our stories. When we gather to remind ourselves of our identity as people of God and to take our stand in relation to it, we throw the lights and the definitions to each other, so that they live among us.
Winfried Haunerland
The Heirs of the Clergy? The New Pastoral Ministries and
the Reform of the Minor Orders, pp. 305 - 320.
Summary. Winfried Haunerland asks, "Where in the theology of the church should we situate the new parish ministries?" In response to this question, he asserts that the church has a pastorally responsible ecclesiology that holds positions for ministries which are not those of the presbyters (and not those of the deacons). Haunerland further urges that this ministerial realm is from the pastoral point of view desirable and would exist even if there were sufficient presbyters (and deacons) available.
In addressing the question posed, Haunerland first identifies relevant aspects of the deliberations and texts of the Second Vatican Council. Next, he considers the ecclesiological area of ministries and offices in the church in light of the history of the church and the reforms after Vatican II. Here, Haunerland's analysis leads him ask whether the ministries of lectors, acolytes and other new pastoral ministries are not partly the heirs of the clergy of the minor orders according to the old arrangement of orders.
Haunerland continues his discussion with the suggestion that a Catholic Church which sees itself as not exclusively Eurocentric but consistently as more and more a world-church, will have to live out of a greater pluriformity of ecclesial structures. He remarks that the Roman leadership of the church in its reform of the minor orders was conscious of this horizon of the world-church. To be realistic, he says, is to look at public ministerial actions. He notes a number of different ministries in the Church today which are exercised by laity and entrusted to them permanently. Haunerland concludes his essay by discussing the desirability of developing a suitable liturgical and sacramental expression for the new lay ecclesial ministries. He urges that positive orientations could emerge from a clear description of each particular ministry and from a suitable celebration of commissioning.
Richard D. McCall
The Shape of the Eucharistic Prayer:
An Essay on the Unfolding of an Action, pp. 321 - 333.
Summary. Richard D. McCall proposes that the eucharistic prayers of the various traditions maintain a remarkable semblance both to each other and to the motives expressed in their earliest examples. In his essay, McCall examines these basic motives, suggesting that they are expressed primarily by the verbs of the eucharistic prayers. The question as to what the eucharistic prayer is, he writes, is best answered by discovering what the eucharistic prayer does.
McCall's analysis begins with an evaluation of the actions and intentions of the earliest Christian eucharistic prayers. He proceeds to trace the development of these prayers and the elaboration of the motives expressed therein. In his discussion, McCall attends to both the present and eschatological, or future, focus of the action of the eucharistic prayer.
In conclusion, McCall suggests that the recovery of the eschatological dimension of the eucharistic prayer in several of the revised liturgies of the late twentieth-century church is a response to the recovery of the open-endedness of history in the post-modern world. With the loss of faith in "substance" and the absolutes of the metaphysical and scientific world-views, we are perhaps finding ourselves in the midst of an enacted reality which cannot be grasped except as remembered promise and hoped-for fulfillment. In McCall's words, we are incomplete actions in an incomplete Act.
Lester Ruth
Reconsidering the Emergence of
the Second Great Awakening and
Camp Meetings Among Early Methodists, pp. 334 - 355.
Summary. Lester Ruth offers a reassessment of the emergence of the Second Great Awakening in the United States and the means by which Methodists, among others, participated in this new revival. He contends that given the phenomenal growth of Methodism in the first decade of this revival, the Methodist dimension must be taken seriously in the history of the Second Great Awakening. Ruth further notes that the nature of the early years of the awakening sheds light on the role of camp meetings within this revival. In particular, he argues that the awakening and camp meetings should not be associated too closely.
Ruth first details the geographic breadth of the Second Great Awakening among Methodists and then discusses the variety of venues in which the revival emerged. For Ruth, the historical evidence calls into question some older portrayals of the relationship between camp meetings and the revival. He proceeds to outline the new line of scholarship concerning the relationship that has developed.
In his concluding remarks, Ruth writes that a revised history of the Second Great Awakening and camp meetings from a Methodist rather than Reformed perspective should include the following points. First, Ruth says the revival was seen by Methodists as a truly national phenomenon. Second, he argues that both the practice of camping and the particular practices associated with camp meetings need not be attributed to some geographic frontier and the nature of life there. Finally, Ruth urges that the reassessment of the relationship between the Second Great Awakening, camp meetings, and a so-called frontier should affect how liturgical historians view the period of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in general.
Nathan D. Mitchell
The Amen Corner, pp. 356 - 365.
Summary. In his essay, the 'Poetics of Gesture,' Nathan Mitchell reflects on the beauty of our hands. In our hands, we hold knowledge, art, and soul. Referring to the writings of Romano Guardini, Mitchell writes that liturgy unfolds in the language of the hands. Here, Mitchell points to hands as an integral element in the institution of the Eucharist. What connects Eucharist and cross, he adds, are human hands - hands outstretched to take, break, and give; hands cupped to hold, receive, eat and drink; hands nailed east and west on a crossbeam.
Mitchell then notes the debate during the last several years about the gestural language of the liturgy. He suggests that we have perhaps exaggerated the importance of visual access to symbols and that it would be preferable to help people learn how to "see" with their ears rather than "hear" with their eyes. Such a question leads Mitchell to consider "the poetics of gesture," or, that which deals with the limitlessly imaginative ways our bodily movements, positions, and postures read reality, read the world. Although these readings may be personal, they are never entirely private; they arise from the world of public discourse and flow back into it.
Applying these insights to the church's public worship, Mitchell says that the public, visible, gestural language in which Christians enact the liturgy aims to keep its meanings from collapsing into private fantasy and daydream. He comments further that gestures have greater precision than words; they read reality with greater depth and accuracy. Perhaps that is why, in John's gospel, Jesus reads table-fellowship as footwashing, and so keeps eucharistic dining from falling into a world of private meanings. Jesus' subversive, hand-made gesture kept our eucharistic discourse public. Thus, concludes Mitchell, meals from now on do not define the meaning of Eucharist; Eucharist defines the meaning of meals.
Book Reviews
Serve the Community of the Church: Christians as Leaders and Ministers (First Century Christians in the Graeco-Roman World). By Andrew D. Clarke. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans 2000). Pages, ix + 305. Paper, $30.00. ISBN: 0-8028-4182-1. Review by Andrew McGowan, pp. 366 - 367.
Speaking Parables: A Homiletic Guide. By David Buttrick. Louisville: Westminster John Knox 2000. Pages, 195. Paper, $24.95. ISBN 0664221912. Review by Alvin Rueter, pp. 368 - 369.
Anamnesis as Dangerous Memory: Political and Liturgical Theology in Dialogue. By Bruce T. Morrill. Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press 2000. Pages, xvi + 224. Paper, $27.95. ISBN 0-8146-6183-1. Review by Kevin W. Irwin, pp. 369 - 370.
New Creation: A Liturgical Worldview. By Frank C. Senn. Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2000. Pages, xvii + 195. Paper, $16.00. ISBN 0-8006-3235-4. Review by Michael D. Whalen C.M., pp. 371 - 372.
God Speaks in the Night: The Life, Times and Teaching of St John of the Cross. By Federico Ruiz et al. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications 2000. Pages, xii-387. Paper, $39.95. ISBN 0-935216-74-X. Review by R. Kevin Seasoltz O.S.B., pp. 372 - 374.
At This Time in This Place: The Spirit Embodied in the Local Assembly. By Michael Warren. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International 1999. Pages, ix-181. Paper, $15.00. ISBN 1-56338-251-2. Review by Gerard S. Sloyan, pp. 374 - 376.
Holy Saturday: An Argument for the Restoration of the Female Diaconate in the Catholic Church. By Phyllis Zagano. New York: Crossroad (A Herder & Herder Book) 2000. Pages, 182. Paper, $16.95. ISBN: 0-8245-1832-2. Review by Edward P. Hahnenberg, pp. 376 - 377.
Ages of Initiation: The First Two Christian Millennia. By Paul Turner. Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press 2000. Pages, 64 with CD-Rom containing full text of study and source excerpts. Paperback and CD-Rom, $14.95. ISBN 0-8146-2711-0. Review by Anne Y. Koester, pp. 378 - 379.
Sacramental Orders. By Susan K. Wood S.C.L. (Lex Orandi Series) Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press 2000. Pages, xvii + 197. Paper, $19.95. ISBN: 0-8146-2522-3. Review by Edward P. Hahnenberg, pp. 380 - 381.
History of Vatican II. Volume III: The Mature Council, Second Period and Intercession, September 1963-September 1964. Edited by Giuseppe Alberigo; English version edited by Joseph A. Komonchak. Maryknoll: Orbis/Leuven: Peeters 2000. Pages, xx-532. Cloth, $80.00. ISBN 1-57075-153-6. Review by R. Kevin Seasoltz O.S.B., pp. 381 - 383.
Painting the Word: Christian Pictures and Their Meanings. By John Drury. New Haven: Yale University Press 1999. Pages, xv-201. Cloth, $25.00. ISBN 0-300-07777-7. Review by R. Kevin Seasoltz, O.S.B., pp. 383 - 384.
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