Liturgy 40.2: Worship and Formation

Issue 40.2 of Liturgy is entitled “Worship and Formation” and is guest-edited by E. Byron Anderson What follows is an excerpt from Anderson’s introduction to the issue.

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This issue of Liturgy is designed to attend to these questions of liturgical and spiritual formation. Its primary focus is not on the malformations I have just described, but they are hard to avoid and need to be addressed even as we consider the life-giving formative possibilities of Christian liturgy. We come at these questions from several directions: Clare Schwantes and Gail Ramshaw help us consider the formation of a scriptural imagination through a common lectionary and the attention we give to the qualities of Christian liturgical language. David Bjorlin and Jonghyun Kim continue the conversation about liturgical language, with Bjorlin reflecting on his own work as a hymn writer and Kim on the development of a hymnic repertoire in Korean Protestant churches and its influence on the churches’ political imagination. Michelle Whitlock helps us think about how our liturgical communities are intergenerational “communities of practice.” She attends to a set of “neighborhood practices” she finds expressed in Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood and how these practices contribute to the liturgical formation of children. Bryan Cones moves directly to questions about liturgical “malformation,” particularly the malformation that occurs through the shaping of liturgical space and through forms of liturgical leadership that obscure or prevent the assembly’s work of worship. Because liturgy “shapes an assembly as concelebrants and protagonists,” he argues, it now requires “significant shifts in an assembly’s prayer and the way it is led.” The final essay, provided by Lizette Larson-Miller, provides a helpful conclusion to this issue, focusing our attention on sacramentality, sacramental participation, and, ultimately, our participation in the life of the Triune God.