Worship in the Network Culture : Liturgical Ritual Studies. Fields and Methods, Concepts and Metaphors

Worship signifies a wide field of liturgical ritual practices that extend from the Sunday morning service in a mainline church through a worship service in an African Independent Church to Christian ritual on the internet and cultural ritual-symbolic practices. Solid and solidified concepts are no longer sufficient for the study of this liquid field. This book approaches liturgical ritual from a different perspective. The first part of this book maps and explores the field of liturgical ritual studies. The second part of the book takes a first step in the process of conceptualisation and elaborates on the sensitising concept of liminality. In part three various aspects of the field are elaborated on in six double perspectives: bricolage/particularity, language/silence, image/sound, embodiment/performance, play/function, time/space. Part four reviews the road that the book has covered to this point from the two theological perspectives that characterise Protestant worship: Sacrament/Word and Prayer/Worship.