Summary of the Ordinary Time 2021 issue of Doxology.
Founded in 1984, Doxology: a journal of worship and the sacramental life is a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal of liturgical scholarship bridging academic and church communities. It is published by the Order of Saint Luke, a dispersed ecumenical religious order founded by Methodists. The Order currently includes United Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Baptists, members of Holiness movement churches, and many others. Doxology publishes work by established and emerging liturgical scholars to address historical, theological, and cultural questions about Christian worship and the sacramental life.
ARTICLES
A Crossroads of Theology and Performance: J. S. Bach’s Passions in Twenty-First-Century American Festivals
Alanah Rebekah Franklin
This article explores twenty-first-century presentations of J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew and St. John Passions in the United States, and how modern Bach festival participants experience and interact with the Lutheran theology of the works from a variety of ideological and theological perspectives. Though originally liturgical, Bach’s Passions quickly entered the concert repertoire after Mendelssohn’s 1829 Berlin performance. Similarly, the Passions have a rich performance history in American secular concert environments. Bach festivals, including concert series and choral society performances, are currently the primary venue for regular presentations of Bach’s larger choral-orchestral works such as the Passions—venues which change the context and experience of the works, but not their narrative. I argue that American Bach festival environments crucially generate opportunities for diversely-minded performers, audience members, and administrators to seriously grapple with the religious content inherent in the Passions. My interviews with over sixty participants at Passion performances given by Bach festivals across the United States explore the diversity of approaches to Bach’s retelling of the crucifixion story. Singing and playing these works forms a communal space that moves beyond the works’ liturgical origins, creating a modern American community in which individuals approach the crucifixion of Christ through the lens of Bach’s music.
Tradition and the Roman Rite: The ongoing struggle
Bruce T. Morrill, S.J.
Summer 2021 witnessed an unusual papal action concerning the liturgy that nonetheless is only the latest installment in a dramatic saga reaching back now a half-century. The years-long Roman Catholic scenario has had variable impact on other Christian communions insofar as the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 1963), the subsequent Lectionary for Mass and Roman Missal of Pope Paul VI (1970), and other reformed rites have served as models for their own liturgical renewals. This fact has carried significant ecumenical implications along these several decades, initially in positive directions but then, negatively since the turn of the new millennium. 1 Here, I shall explain the basic content of Pope Francis’s July apostolic letter in relation to pertinent ones by his two predecessors, providing history and commentary on both those papal documents and their counter-forces in contemporary Roman Catholicism.
Open Table: Should the Unbaptized Share in Communion?
Michael H. Marchal
In the last decades what began as a movement among the Protestant churches in North America to allow all baptized Christians to share in communion has also become a movement to allow the unbaptized to share as well. The practice has been referred to as the Open Table. This article examines and questions that practice with reference to current denominational teaching, historical tradition, and scriptural exegesis related to the Eucharist.
Twelve Theses on Eucharistic Hospitality: A Lutheran Response
Gordon Lathrop
Presented in the form of thesis statements with brief commentary, this piece presents another perspective on what is variously called the practice of the “open table” or “eucharistic hospitality.” It does so from a Lutheran perspective; these theses were initially crafted for an annual meeting of the North American Academy of Liturgy in Albuquerque in 2013, when this discussion was a burning one among Lutherans. A revised version was later part of an “in-house” discussion within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
POEM
“Listening the Monks’ Evensong”
Cara Ellen Modisett
BOOK REVIEWS
Liturgy and Secularism: Beyond the Divide by Joris Geldorf
Performing the Gospel: Exploring the Borderland of Worship, Entertainment, and the Arts by Deborah Sokolove
SCREEN REVIEW
Film: Corpus Christi
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