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4 - The liturgical sign (i)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2010

Graham Hughes
Affiliation:
Moore Theological College, Sydney
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Summary

Worship, signification and meaning

In my notebook for a certain Sunday I made the following observations:

The minister leading worship today – an elderly man, retired I would say – sought to communicate a light-hearted, welcoming, personable style. But he managed it in such a way that it seemed (to this worshipper, at least) that this was an effect he desired rather than a fact he could assume. The actual communication seemed (to me), conversely, to be avuncular, saccharine, condescending; forms which attempted informality but which rather betrayed professional ineptitude, a style which attempted to make us present but which itself lacked ‘presence’.

This [second] ‘moment’ happened in a Sunday-morning eucharistic service in King's College chapel, Cambridge, England:

I had lined up with all the other visitors who had come to bathe themselves in the spectacularly fulsome aesthetic experience of vaulted stone and ethereal voices which is a chapel service at King's. That was my hope too, and I would have left, well-satisfied, had that been the sum of my experience. But there was more. One presumes, given the illustrious reputation of the place, that every aspect of the liturgy will have been meticulously rehearsed. I was therefore struck during the prayers of intercession, by the noticeably ‘prayerful’ quality of the prayers, and, on glancing up, realized that the chaplain, though he had manifestly prepared the topics of prayer, was in fact praying ‘extempore’. The aesthetic experience moved through to a more exactly worshipful experience.

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Chapter
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Worship as Meaning
A Liturgical Theology for Late Modernity
, pp. 115 - 147
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

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  • The liturgical sign (i)
  • Graham Hughes, Moore Theological College, Sydney
  • Book: Worship as Meaning
  • Online publication: 03 March 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511615481.005
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  • The liturgical sign (i)
  • Graham Hughes, Moore Theological College, Sydney
  • Book: Worship as Meaning
  • Online publication: 03 March 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511615481.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The liturgical sign (i)
  • Graham Hughes, Moore Theological College, Sydney
  • Book: Worship as Meaning
  • Online publication: 03 March 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511615481.005
Available formats
×