From the Archives: "Sensing the Other in Worship: Mirror Neurons and the Empathizing Brain"

Each month, our blog features articles from the archives of Liturgy. Our goal is to share the wisdom from decades past so that we might celebrate the work and insights of these excellent ministers and scholars.

This article explores how worship engages worshippers in body and mind. Recent neuroscience research has unveiled the deep relationships between the physical body and what the mind is exploring. David Hogue traces the brain’s development from birth, through infancy with its discovery and expression of emotion, and the second major growth in brain cells that occurs in adolescence. Some of the research indicates that what we see others do stimulates our brains in the very regions that would be stimulated if that action was one we were doing ourselves. Imagining ourselves performing an action activates the same brain systems. Using all of the senses, our brains bring us into the characters in a story, enhancing our abilities for empathy. Turning to liturgical practice, the author considers the implications of brain research on how we go about worshipping.

Selected Quotes from

“Sensing the Other in Worship: Mirror Neurons and the Empathizing Brain”

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Liturgy claims our bodies as well as our souls. Recent neuroscientific discoveries are shedding new light on the very real conviction that in worship we present our bodies “as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is our spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1; NRSV). We know, particularly from the Hebrew Scriptures, that being created in the image of God, we are whole beings, not easily divisible into arbitrary categories of mind, body, and soul or spirit.

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The brain has evolved to relate to other human beings (and as a result, to relate to the Other).

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Regardless of the extent to which physical movement characterizes the liturgical practices of a particular religious tradition, all participants worship with their bodies. For in gathering together, in reading and hearing stories, as well as in the rhythms of worship, we employ not only our physical bodies but also our embodied brains in perceiving, interpreting, and responding to the drama of liturgy.

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Our brains are us, and we do not often consider the ways in which our brains require other brains to survive and develop, nor the ways brains shape each other. Yet intriguing recent research in the neurosciences is painting a picture of the brain as an organ of connection with others, of relationship. Our brains are particularly designed to make sense of other human beings, their thoughts and feelings, and to respond in ways that communicate understanding and compassion

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Empathy is not a single human capacity but a constellation of discrete abilities. Selecting cues, focusing attention, perspective-taking, introspection, a sense of self as separate from others, and a repertoire of helping skills are some of the elements that contribute to the mature healthy adult’s ability to enter into the experience of others.

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If worship acknowledges and amplifies our innermost thoughts and feelings (like a good parent in the first year of a child’s life), worship also contains those feelings.

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We understand and we learn by unconsciously practicing what we are seeing before us.

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David A. Hogue is the now retired associate professor of pastoral theology and counseling
at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, and the author of Remembering the Future, Imagining the Past: Story, Ritual, and the Human Brain (Pilgrim Press, 2003).

Hogue, D. A. Sensing the Other in Worship: Mirror Neurons and the Empathizing Brain. Liturgy 21, no. 3 (2006): 31–39.

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