Finding Their Place: Women and the Environment for Worship

Abstract

The history of the intersection between women and their worship-spaces is both simple and complex. This article begins to identify ways in which women have responded to restrictions on them in liturgical space and how they have interpreted that space. This task poses serious methodological challenges, identified here, and raises questions about ways in which women have found a place in and around church buildings during a history characterized by their restriction and exclusion. Using a variety of primary and secondary sources, women's action through patronage, fundraising and benefaction, in disobedience and disorder, is explored, together with ways in which women have exercised the natural authority of their religious gifts and experience, when their temporal authority wis limited and indeed have reinterpreted the meaning of the term ‘liturgical space’.     

Orthodox Worship

Abstract

This article attempts to convey both the riches of the experience of Orthodox Christian worship and the wealth of materials used in the liturgical celebration. There will be a discussion of the setting, the temple, and the modes of participation in the worship experience. The place of the senses in the experience will be noted, along with a sampling of the texts used. The article also contains a full discussion of the many liturgical texts required. An annotated bibliography of books and list of websites, together with a select glossary, are included.     

The Missional Shape of Worship in Evangelical Lutheran Worship

Abstract : Mission stands out as an orienting concept in ELW unlike its predecessors. ELW has a missional theological framework as well as a practical missional orientation, a situation in which worship and mission are understood and practiced in relation to one another. It is possible that ELW will help congregations claim the missional character of worship.     

Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens

Book reviewed:
Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens by Bernd Wannenwetsch, translated by Margaret Kohl (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) xiv + 402 pp. Reviewed by M. Therese Lysaught Department of Religious Studies 300 College Park University of Dayton Dayton, OH 45469-1530 USA