Rhizomatic Social Change & Worship
The issue of Liturgy dealing with “Pandemics, Protests, and Performances: Embodying our Faith in an Unexpected Season,” guest-edited by Todd E. Johnson and Shannon Craigo-Snell, looks at many aspects of how ritual is done and in what context. What follows is an excerpt from the Introduction by the guest editors which explains something about the big shift that occurred for worship following the Covid-19 shutdown. –– Melinda Quivik
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Covid-19 was not the only reality that shifted as this issue was coming together. Ahmaud Arbery was jogging when white men followed him in a pickup truck and killed him. Breonna Taylor was asleep in her bed when police officers burst through her door and shot her eight times. And George Floyd called out for his mama as a police officer knelt on his neck for seven minutes and forty-six seconds, others watching as his breath and life were taken from him. Because George Floyd’s killing was recorded, that technology allowed many of us to witness fatal injustice virtually. Protests against police brutality and structural racism arose in over 1,700 cities across the country, in all fifty states. . . [and] spread from the U.S. to the world. . .
This movement is rhizomatic, like wild strawberries. Strawberry plants root down in one location, then send out a long tendril elsewhere, touch down and root again. They exist by creating a non-linear interconnected web which cannot be seen on the surface in their seemingly independent existence.
The protests—ongoing as we write—have been powerful precisely because they are embodied performances amplified by the technological dissemination of pictures, videos, and live feeds. We see the sheer number of people willing to go out in a pandemic after they have been quarantined for weeks. We see the violent police response—tear gas, sound cannons, pepper balls, and rubber bullets. . . .
Perhaps the rhizomatic uprising of these protests can be a model for formation in these strange days. An inspiration for how we can embrace the blessing of technology that allows us to connect, without dismembering the human person into bits and pieces.
So welcome to our issue on performance. We begin with Todd’s exploration of how every person’s participation in worship has the potential to form other people’s worship practices and faith. We next invite you to consider the life-giving qualities of technology and how this can translate to on-line worship, even the Lord’s Table, according to Deanna Thompson. Then consider how people, no matter how wired they may be, are still intrinsically connected to our planet’s ecology by their body, as Cláudio Carvalhaes observes, and how this might even be enhanced by technology. Maria Fee will then introduce us to the Black church inspired performance art of Theaster Gates and what it might teach us about performances of Christian worship. Brandon McCormack will examine practices of Maafa rituals as performances of healing that can aid and sustain the healing of Black communities. This will lead into the contemporary performances of worship in Black churches and the integration of hip hop with gospel music as mutually enriching resources drawing on the riches of the Black community both present and past overcoming a fragmented faith, an analysis brought to us by Charrise Barron. Shannon’s essay finally suggests that rituals and performances of joy could have positive effects in healing trauma and even protecting future generations. In much the same way the fully embodied rites of Black churches invite us to restore our humanity in worship, they also invite us to celebrate the joy of God’s love in all circumstances.
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The full article and the entire issue of Liturgy 36, no. 1 is available by personal subscription and through many libraries.
Shannon Craigo-Snell is professor of theology at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
Todd E. Johnson, the current vice-president of The Liturgical Conference which publishes Liturgy, holds the Brehm Chair in Worship, Theology, and the Arts at Fuller Theological Seminary in California.
Shannon Craigo-Snell and Todd E. Johnson, “Pandemics, Protests, and Performances: Embodying Our Faith in an Unexpected Season––Introduction,” Liturgy 65, no.1 (2020): 1-7.