The Future of Liturgy – An Evangelical Perspective

This lecture will investigate the future of liturgy in order to defend its value while exposing the dangers of cultural captivity, a danger to which both evangelicals and Anglo‐Catholics fall prey. Firstly, I will contend that our missiology in the post‐Christian West creates significant tensions with received liturgical models and yet those models are not thereby invalidated. Perhaps American revivalism’s assumption of a nominally Christian society is itself no longer tenable, providing a new social space in which to appreciate liturgical forms. Secondly, I will argue that our approach to anthropology will ultimately shape our assumptions and conclusions concerning the value of liturgy. How our worldviews are constructed and how our hearts and minds are to be redirected will have a bearing on how liturgy should operate. Thirdly, I will outline some concrete suggestions as to how all kinds of Anglicans might rethink their liturgical practice, and generate new liturgical materials for our post‐modern context. While I critique here one common set of reactions inAustralian liturgical culture, examples no doubt could be produced which are less easily categorised. In the end, we must find a model of liturgy which honours the formulations of a particular age, and encourages contemporary contributions, insights and experience, from a variety of local contexts. One size does not fit all.

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