In the Current Issue: "We Talk But We Don’t Know What We’re Saying"
The issue of Liturgy entitled “How the Pandemic has Changed Worship” guest-edited by Taylor Burton-Edwards contains articles that look at survey data from pre- and post-pandemic worship both in-person and on-line. This excerpt, however, is from one of the members of The Liturgical Conference Board, Audrey Seah. Board members take turns writing about something that has been ruminating in their scholarly minds. Part of the reason for these columns is to give readers an opportunity to get to know the Board members. Writing before the November 2024 presidential election, Seah is interested here with how Christians in all our varied traditions have interpreted the faith, especially with regard to political views. The full essay is accessible through institutional and individual subscriptions. –– Melinda Quivik
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With the United States election season in full swing, I was reminded of research in the social sciences that has shown time and again that Americans Christians reconcile their personal political views and the teachings of their faith by projection—attributing their political views to Jesus as a means of reducing dissonance between who Jesus is according to Scripture. These authors also suggest that while most who participated in the studies are Christian, the behavioral tendency does not seem to vary according to denomination or religion.
As a liturgical theologian, this worries me. I believe that worship has the power to form us into the body of Christ so we may live as Christ did in our daily lives. However, I also recognize that the ritual systems of Christian worship are always necessarily embedded within or in competition with a larger system of capitalism, nationalism, racism, and other “isms” that also form us and may be shaped more by the projection of our desires than God’s revealed desires for us.
In the epilogue of Meeting Mystery, [Nathan] Mitchell writes, “We talk, but like Peter at the Transfiguration, we don’t know what we’re saying (Luke 9:33). In our ordinary human experience, to speak is to seize, to grasp (an idea, an object, a reality, a truth); to name is to claim. But in the metaphoric language of the liturgy, our words—like the words of lovers—lose themselves; they are “given to, given over.” Quoting Chrétien, he continues, “To be [always, already] heard by God is an ordeal, speech being put to a test like no other; for our speech is exposed in all that it seeks to hide, excuse, justify, obtain”; our voices are “truly naked.”
Perhaps what we need more of in the current political landscape is humility. This is the humility that we bring to worship when we recognize who God is, not because we have language that fully explains God’s reality, but because we give ourselves over through the liturgical act. Liturgical humility can remind us that even when we discuss policies and politics with the best of intentions, what we stand for may be a projection of our desire, rather than a full expression of Christ’s desire. We really don’t know what we are saying. Perhaps we need to bring the humility in our eucharistic liturgies into our liturgy of the neighbor, so we may all recognize our limits and live a little more into the commandment to love one another as Christ has loved us.
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Audrey Seah is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, where she teaches global Catholicism, worship, and Deaf and disability theology. Her research examines intersection of worship, culture, and politics from critical perspectives. Her publications in various pastoral and academic journals focus on Deaf Catholic worship, rituals in conflict transformation, indigenization, and popular religiosity.