Liturgy 37.4: Renewals in Retrospect

Issue 37.4 of Liturgy is entitled “Renewals in Retrospect: Fifty Years of Worship Scholarship amidst the Changing Worlds of Worship” and is guest-edited by Andrew Wymer and Melinda Quivik. What follows is an excerpt from Wymer and Quivik’s introduction to the issue.

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In short, this issue of Liturgy asks: What difference has this work made in the liturgical practice of our various traditions? These essays neither pretend to exhaust what might be said of liturgical change in recent decades nor represent all possible faith traditions. Our hope is that this issue of Liturgy appropriately commemorates the work of hundreds of liturgical scholars who have contributed to a movement fomented by changes in biblical scholarship, interpretive methods, cultural shifts, and unresolved conflicts that congealed in the Second Vatican Council. This issue also hopes to commemorate not only the liturgical scholars but the countless practitioners who have put into practice liturgical changes touching the Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Orthodox faithful. We hope that what is surveyed here will give readers an impression of how deeply the questions of liturgical scholarship have found fertile and creative home among scholars and practitioners.

Ron Anderson’s charge was to offer a perspective on the liturgical renewal of Mainline Protestants from 1966 to 2020. He identifies “ecumenical roots, tensions in and challenges to those ecumenical roots, and emerging methodologies” as some of the threads shaping liturgical reform and the work of liturgical theologians.

John Baldovin surveys the contributions from Roman Catholics working in liturgical theology and liturgical history that laid the groundwork for the Second Vatican Council. The impact of NAAL has been, he reminds us, not only ecumenical but inter-faith—an exchange of ideas in six areas of research: the “Schmemann School,” culture, eucharistic praying, postmodern approaches, liturgical language, and major surveys.

A scholar in the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church and cantor in Byzantine and Latin rites, Brian Butcher, surveys communions in the Orthodox world, showing the tensions that prevail between preservation of liturgical practice and change. He explores the influence of trends borne from the Second Vatican Council as influencing Orthodox practice obliquely, contiguously, and directly.

Joseph Donnella II reminds us of the long history of Christian “wrestling with questions and matters of culture”: the ancient church’s use in varied places of a multitude of languages, the effects of the idea that racial differences are a meaningful divide between people, the need for scholars both to acknowledge the pain of those who have struggled with the effects of slavery and to recognize the contributions made by African Americans.

Exploring “Decolonial Challenges and Opportunities,” Michael Jagessar asks whether academic liturgical scholarship and practice have reflected post- and de-colonial concerns, whether renewal has occurred, and what he sees as critical for future work. He surveys the research that has been done.

A Womanist liturgical theologian, Chelsea Yarborough describes the importance of a methodological course of inquiry that privileges the experiences of Black women toward an appreciation of what can be accomplished through resistance, embodiment as protest, and esthetic disruption. With these parameters, her aim is to open a conversation about the central importance of approaching liturgical scholarship by starting with Black women’s voices.

Sarah Kathleen Johnson reports on the changes and status in Free Church worship noting the ways in which both the Liturgical Movement (ecumenical) and Contemporary Praise & Worship (Pentecostal and evangelical) have influenced the Free Church. She emphasizes the complexity of ways that renewal has been achieved.

Looking at the “Past Half-Century of Jewish Liturgical Life,” Ruth Langer characterizes it as a complex of “continuity and change.” With an increase in observation of bar and bat mitzvah, more Hebrew teaching, more informality, women in the pulpit, revised prayer books, gender-neutral language, and guitars as well as pianos, the ancestors, she tells us, would be surprised. And yet, long-held tradition stands behind the evolution of liturgical practice.

Janet Walton was a member of the Feminist Studies Seminar of NAAL when it arose from a burgeoning conversation among feminists liturgical scholars regarding the role of women in public worship, how liturgical teaching approached those roles, what resources were available, what feminists were publishing, and much more. She tells the story of that seminar’s evolution and how it was received by NAAL, given its focus on “claiming what is true for us.”

We are also grateful to include a brief essay from Gordon Lathrop who responded to our direct solicitation of artifacts and reflections from NAAL members. Celebrating NAAL’s fifty years, he points to two significant books of essays. One on the creation of eucharistic prayers, edited by Frank Senn, grew out of the NAAL Eucharistic Prayer Seminar. The other, edited by Dwight Vogel and spurred by work in the Liturgical Theology Seminar, offered a “reader” of primary sources for liturgical theology with introductions to each author represented.

In curating the accomplishments of the last five decades of liturgical scholarship amidst the changing worlds of liturgical practice, we have sought to commemorate the faithful work of liturgical scholars and practitioners who have sought to renew “the work of the people.” For those whose names are present in this issue, we give thanks. For those unnamed faithful whose names are not here, we also give thanks. May this issue expand our awareness and appreciation of the dynamic, changing worlds of liturgical scholarship and practice as it continues to nourish us.