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Handel's Messiah
Handel s oratorio Messiah is a phenomenon with no parallel in music history. No other work of music has been so popular for so long. Yet familiarity can sometimes breed contempt and also misunderstanding. This book by music expert Calvin Stapert will greatly increase understanding and appreciation of Handel s majestic Messiah, whether readers are old friends of this remarkable work or have only just discovered its magnificence. Stapert provides fascinating historical background, tracing not only Messiah s unlikely inception but also its amazing reception throughout history. The bulk of the book offers scene-by-scene musical and theological commentary on the whole work, focusing on the way Handel s music beautifully interprets and illuminates the biblical text. For anyone seeking to appreciate Handel s Messiah more, this informed yet accessible guide is the book to have and read. (Handel s Messiah: Comfort for God s People is the newest volume in the flourishing Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Liturgical Studies Series, edited by John D. Witvliet.)
An Architecture of Immanence
Torgerson begins by discussing God's transcendence and immanence and showing how church architecture has traditionally interpreted these key concepts. He then traces the theological roots of immanence's priority from liberal theology and liturgical innovation to modern architecture. Next, Torgerson illustrates this new architecture of immanence through particular practitioners, focusing especially on the work of theologically savvy architect Edward Anders Sövik. Finally, he addresses the future of church architecture as congregations are buffeted by the twin forces of liturgical change and postmodernism.
Singing God's Psalms
Drawing on his decades of experience as a pastor, hymn writer, and hymnal consultant, Fred Anderson here offers pastors and worship leaders a rich treasury of singable psalms — one for each psalm text or canticle appointed in the three-year Revised Common Lectionary. Anderson renders each psalm into metered text, using contemporary, biblical, inclusive language, and suggests appropriate pairings with familiar hymn tunes. Short pastoral reflections on each psalm text provide background on what is being sung — and are also useful for sermon preparation and personal meditation.
Christian Worship Worldwide
As Christianity has boomed in the non-Western world, several significant questions have emerged regarding how worship and culture relate. Charles Farhadian here presents a timely investigation of the interaction between culture and worship. Leading scholars -- experts in history, mission, culture, and liturgy -- offer diverse essays addressing worship in the context of worldwide Christianity. At the heart of Christian Worship Worldwide are several case studies from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific that explore the contours of particular nations, cultures, and liturgical actions. These essays show how Christian plurality is most vividly exemplified in the context of worship, where language, song, culture, and indigenous theology come together. Contributors: M. L. Daneel Samuel Escobar Charles E. Farhadian C. Michael Hawn Seung Joong Joo Ogbu U. Kalu Thomas A. Kane Miguel A. Palomino Robert J. Priest Dana L. Robert Lamin Sanneh Bryan D. Spinks Andrew F. Walls Philip L. Wickeri John D. Witvliet
Resonant Witness
Resonant Witness gathers together a wide, harmonious chorus of voices from across the musical and theological spectrum to show that music and theology can each learn much from the other and that the majesty and power of both are profoundly amplified when they do. With essays touching on J. S. Bach, Hildegard of Bingen, Martin Luther, Karl Barth, Olivier Messiaen, jazz improvisation, South African freedom songs, and more, this volume encourages musicians and theologians to pursue a more fruitful and sustained engagement with one another. What can theology do for music? Resonant Witness helps answer this question with an essential resource in the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of music and theology. Covering an impressively wide range of musical topics, from cosmos to culture and theology to worship, Jeremy Begbie and Steven Guthrie explore and map new territory with incisive contributions from the very best musicians, theologians, and philosophers. Bennett Zon Durham University This volume represents a burst of cross-disciplinary energy and insight that can be celebrated by musicians and theologians, music-lovers and God-lovers alike. John D. Witvliet (from afterword)
The Sacramentality of Music
Steeped in the Catholic spiritual tradition, The Sacramentality of Music argues that musical experience, in its appeal to the entirety of the human person, can serve as a locus of encounter with the divine and an occasion of God’s self-revelation in love, with spiritually nurturing, ultimately transformative, ends. Christina Labriolacontends that this dynamic might most aptly be understood as sacramental, an all-encompassing perspective of the cosmos permeated by the divine creative, salvific, sustaining presence. Through its participation in the mysteries of beauty and creativity, its bodily and affective engagement, and impact on the inner life, music operates sacramentally: manifesting ...
God Against Religion
This volume outlines a Christian theology that takes worship as its basic framework, as the occasion of not only an approach toward God in piety but also separation from God in sin. Drawing on Luther, Calvin, and especially Karl Barth, Matthew Myer Boulton builds a Reformed liturgical theology, maintaining that the God of Jesus Christ is a "God against religion," one who saves human beings from religion by entering it, transforming it, and ultimately ending it.
What Language Shall I Borrow?
What language is most appropriate for worship? Should it lean toward the colloquial, perhaps targeting those attending a worship service for the first time? Or should it be a language with deeper roots, the language of a community that, for the most part, already loves the God to whom worship is offered? Ronald Byars argues that the communal speech that truly honors God is, in fact, biblical language, which encompasses a vast range of forms -- poetry and prose, song and proverb, parable and narrative. Byars explains how biblical language becomes liturgical language that pushes us beyond what we already think we know, requiring us to think anew about death and resurrection, beginnings and endings, and the life of faith. What Language Shall I Borrow? is an instructive, eloquent reminder not to retreat from biblical language and images but to fully embrace them in our worship today.
Becoming What We Sing
Contemporary worship music is ubiquitous in many Protestant Christian communities today. Rather than debating or decrying this post–worship-wars reality, David Lemley accepts it as a premise and examines what it means for us to be singing along with songs that aren’t so different from the pop genre. How do we cope with the consumerism embedded in the mentality that catchy is good? How do we stay committed to subverting cultural norms, as Christians are called to do, when our music is modeled after those cultural norms? How do we ensure that the way we participate in the liturgy of contemporary worship music rehearses a cruciform identity? Becoming What We Sing draws on cultural criticism...
Touching the Altar
What does it mean to be in the presence of God's holiness? How can it affect us whether we seek it out or stumble upon it? Can it truly change our very reality to encounter it? The essayists in this volume explore these questions at the heart of Christian worship, considering the oft-neglected Old Testament as essential to understand our purpose in worship. Following the structure of the Hebrew canon -- beginning with the Pentateuch, moving through to the Psalms, then wisdom literature -- each chapter considers a separate aspect of worship, from theater to the Sabbath to sacred space, offering new inspiration. In the final essay Carol Bechtel "rereads the book of Job through the lens of our ...
