Worship

Kelly Donahue-Wallace surveys the art and architecture created in the Spanish Viceroyalties of New Spain, Peru, New Granada, and La Plata from the time of the conquest to the independence era. Emphasizing the viceregal capitals and their social, economic, religious, and political contexts, the author offers a chronological review of the major objects and monuments of the colonial era.

In order to present fundamental differences between the early and later colonial periods, works are offered chronologically and separated by medium--painting, urban planning, religious architecture, and secular art--so the aspects of production, purpose, and response associated with each work are given full attention. Primary documents, including wills, diaries, and guild records are placed throughout the text to provide a deeper appreciation of the contexts in which the objects were made.

Why do some music styles gain mass popularity while others thrive in small niches? Banding Together explores this question and reveals the attributes that together explain the growth of twentieth-century American popular music. Drawing on a vast array of examples from sixty musical styles--ranging from rap and bluegrass to death metal and South Texas polka, and including several created outside the United States--Jennifer Lena uncovers the shared grammar that allows us to understand the cultural language and evolution of popular music.

What are the common economic, organizational, ideological, and aesthetic traits among contemporary genres? Do genres follow patterns in their development? Lena discovers four dominant forms--Avant-garde, Scene-based, Industry-based, and Traditionalist--and two dominant trajectories that describe how American pop music genres develop. Outside the United States there exists a fifth form: the Government-purposed genre, which she examines in the music of China, Serbia, Nigeria, and Chile. Offering a rare analysis of how music communities operate, she looks at the shared obstacles and opportunities creative people face and reveals the ways in which people collaborate around ideas, artworks, individuals, and organizations that support their work.

Liturgy lures us through our senses, grounds us in a great tradition, and plants us in the midst of a diverse community, present and past.

Are you attracted to liturgy but don't know why? Are you considering changing to liturgical tradition? Are you already immersed in liturgical worship but want to grasp its deeper significance? Beyond Smells and Bells addresses the lure and relevance of liturgy for your life today.

Thousands of Christians become interest in liturgy each year for the first time, as they turn to orthodoxy, tradition, and the lasting rituals of the Christian faith. In a culture that values spontaneity, liturgy grounds us in something enduring. In a culture that assumes truth is a product of the mind, liturgy helps us experience truth in mind, body, and spirit. In Mark Galli's able telling, liturgy is an intruguing story, full of mystery, that transforms us.

"Mark Galli's book almost pursuides me to become high church! This warm and personal overview commits me to work for a renewal of historic liturgical practice in the so-called low churches."

-Scot McKnight Ph.D., author of The Jesus Creed

"In this warm and engaging book, Mark Galli makes a compelling case for the relevance of Christian liturgy in our postmodern, individualistic age. Through lucid examples and moving personal testimony, Gallie explains the countercultural appeal of liturgical worship that spans the denominational spectrum."

-Colleen Carroll Campbell, former White House speechwriter and author of The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy

Mark Galli is senior managing editor of Christianity Today. He is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary and the author of Francis of Assisi and His World, and Jesus Mean and Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untamable God. He is married and has been worshiping in the Anglican tradition for nearly 20 years, most recently as a member of Church of the Resurrection in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

One of the hallmarks of modern society has been a heightened awareness of human bodiliness in all aspects of life- sexual, economic, legal, religious, and so on. Academia has also experienced a heightened awareness of the body. Along with the academy and wider society, Christian theology and pastoral practice have sought to take human bodiliness more prominently into account. However, the ambiguous "career" the body has had in Christian history and tradition, as well as the serious criticisms leveled by secular society at the Church's teachings and practices concerning the body, has made this a challenging task.

Bodies of Worship takes on that challenge. First, it systematically explores the various bodies engaged in the Church's worship-ecclesial, ritual, personal, and cultural. It examines each in light of how such humanly sanctifying work continues Christ's mission in the power of the Holy Spirit. The five chapters of Part One are purposefully arranged so they unfold the multivalancy of bodies at worship, thus displaying a certain theological coherence. Then the four chapters in Part Two describe and analyze specific liturgical, physical, and spiritual practices. These chapters offer further insights into the irreducibly bodily nature of the celebration of the Christian life as worship of God.

The entire work is introduced by means of a narrative that describes an actual liturgy which took place just a few years ago. A brief conclusion reflects back across the landscape of the chapters to the narrative and symbolic basis for liturgical theology insofar as it is, at origin and end, practical and pastoral.

Chapters and authors in Part One are the introduction "Initial Considerations: Theory and Practice of the Body in Liturgy Today," by Bruce T. Morrill, SJ; "The Many Bodies of Worship: Locating the Spirit's Work," by Bruce T. Morrill, SJ; "Body and Mystical Body: The Church as Communion," by Bernard J. Cooke; "The Liturgical Body: Symbol and Ritual," by Margaret Mary Kelleher, OSU; "Spirituality and the Body," by Colleen M. Griffith; and "The Cultural Bodies of Worship," by James L. Empereur, SJ.

Chapters and authors in Part Two are "Christian Marriage: Sacramentality and Ritual Forms," by Paul Covino; "Walking the Labyrinth: Recovering a Sacred Tradition," by Bruce T. Morrill, SJ, with Leo Keegan; "The Physicality of Worship," by James L. Empereur, SJ; "Liturgical Music: Bodies Proclaiming and Responding to the Word of God," by Bruce T. Morrill, SJ, with Andrea Goodrich; and the onclusion "Nonsystematic Reflections on the Practical Character of Liturgy and Theology," by Bruce T. Morrill, SJ.

Bruce T. Morrill, SJ, holds the Edward A. Malloy Chair of Catholic Studies in the divinity school at Vanderbilt University where he is also Professor of Theological Studies. In addition to numerous journal articles, book chapters, and reviews, he has published several books, most recently Encountering Christ in the Eucharist: The Paschal Mystery in People, Word, and Sacrament (Paulist Press, 2012). His most recent book with liturgical Press is Divine Worship and Human Healing: Liturgical Theology at the Margins of Life and Death Pueblo/Liturgical Press, 2009).