Thesis (D.W.S.)--Institute for Worship Studies, 2007. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 268-274).

This thesis studied the experience of worship in Scotland in the first generations after the Scottish Protestant Reformation. It was inspired by the realisation that earlier historiography had been a denominational battle-ground whose dogmatism had obscured the view of worship in the parish. Aonghus MacKechnie’s phrase, ‘Dour-Mongers All?’ sums up the leading question; was Reformed worship as austere and colourless as its detractors and advocates suggested? Questions surrounding the key components of Reformed worship: architecture, liturgy, music and preaching have more recently been addressed with less sectarian interest, but these individual strands have tended to be studied in isolation. In terms of the experience of worship, they belong together. Traditionally, the period 1560-1638 has been used as the period defining the first phase of the Reformed Kirk, with the National Covenant of 1638 marking the end of what could be called the experimental phase of the new dispensation. However, 1559 was chosen as the starting point to recognise the significant changes to worship that began with the “cleansing” of the churches and friaries of Perth and St Andrews in that year. The terminal date of 1617 marked King James VI’s return to Scotland, during which worship at Holyrood Palace was conducted in the manner of the English court both in terms of liturgical materials, music, and the refurbishment of the Chapel Royal. This proved to be a portent of James’ vision for liturgical change by statute in the Five Articles of Perth that were a significant watershed for the Kirk. Whilst it took another 20 years for the full outworking of this policy under his son Charles I, after 1617 the vibrant and complex worship culture of the Scottish Kirk that had been developed since 1559 began to be squeezed. That culture became a victim of the polemicized battle between extreme Scottish and English Reformed models advocated in the growing controversy over the relationship between Church, Crown and State within the Three Kingdoms. By 1650, an austere new psalter and worship directory had been adopted by the victors and the diversity and richness of the earlier Scottish worship culture had been lost. The first part of the necessarily multi-disciplinary thesis explores the experience of worship by isolating its key components: church buildings and furnishings, liturgical material, and singing. It does this by analysing the surviving material culture and the written and visual documentary evidence of church buildings and interior furnishings used for worship after 1559; surveying the nature, extent and use of the liturgical material included within the Psalme Buiks, with particular focus on the Henrie Charteris edition of 1596; and exploring the development and impact of the new and popular phenomenon of metrical Psalm-singing. The second part assesses the contribution of four significant ministers: John Davidson, James Melville, William Cowper, and John Welch, examining their lives, writing and preaching and judging how their contribution enriched the experience of worship in their parishes. This evidence is used to reconstruct the experience of worship in this period and show that it was vibrant and compelling, influenced in its raw materials by much from outside Scotland but strongly developed in the diverse contexts of Scottish parishes.

A misunderstanding or ignorance of the concept of worship resulting in a misuse of the word worship has necessitated clarification within the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (PAOC), an evangelical church denomination. Leaders of PAOC churches, colleges and the denomination have for the most part, received their ministerial training at PAOC theological colleges. In order for PAOC people (i.e. congregants and leaders) to correctly understand and practice biblical worship, those leading the denomination, colleges and churches require accurate teaching on the concept. Curriculum development (revision) within PAOC theological colleges may be necessary for this to take place. This thesis, therefore, studies the worship curriculum and instruction within PAOC theological colleges and clarifies the concept of Christian worship. The PAOC denomination, colleges and churches base their doctrine and practice on the principles of the Holy Bible. Therefore, laying a biblical-theological foundation when defining and teaching Christian worship is essential. If instruction in biblical worship is inadequate and/or optional in PAOC theological colleges, the accurate understanding and practice of worship by PAOC leaders and, in turn, congregants, is diminished. The vast majority of a sampling of PAOC theological college graduates and PAOC leaders believe that all students at PAOC theological colleges should be required to receive instruction in biblical worship. Since the biblical definition of worship relates more to Christians living all of life for God (or spiritual formation) than just to corporate gatherings within the church, it is recommended that worship instruction with this emphasis be required for all students at PAOC theological colleges. This instruction should take place within the biblical, theological and practical theology departments rather than the church ministry or music departments. However, since the purpose for the corporate gathering is to teach and foster whole-life worship, teaching on corporate worship should not be ignored. In order to assist church leaders in offering biblical teaching on worship to their congregations, accurate and thorough instruction at PAOC theological colleges is necessary. Included in this thesis are lesson outlines for whole-life worship instruction within spiritual formation courses or groups, and worship theology instruction within systematic theology or doctrinal courses. / Educational Studies / D. Ed. (Didactics)

Work toward ecumenical liturgical convergence may be traced back to at least 1910; however, this project thesis expands upon the concept of full, active, and conscious participation in worship found in the 1963 Second Ecumenical Vatican Council’s Sacrosanctum Concilium to illumine how shaping the worship practices of the Church can make our communities of faith inclusive of all sexual orientations and gender expressions. This thesis presents the design of a curriculum for worship leaders to reflect upon the worship practices of these local context, and move from their current state to a place where all members of the beloved community are valued.

This dissertation explores the liturgical work and influences of Methodist theologian Georgia Harkness in the broader context of mainline American Christianity and theological liberalism of the twentieth century. Through an examination of Harkness’s writing about worship as well as the resources she produced for worship, the thesis argues that her often overlooked liturgical work was central to her self-understanding as an applied theologian and shaped her theological interests and evolution throughout her career. This study begins by showing the centrality of prayer and worship in the personal and professional biography of Harkness. Through analysis of her many articles and sections of books on prayer and public worship, it leads to an assessment of Harkness’s own growing commitment to the liturgical life of the church and demonstrates how a self-described “evangelical liberal” built on her personalist foundations to help modern Christians reclaim the church’s liturgical tradition within new theological constructs. Further, by examining the prayers, worship services, and hymns that Harkness planned and wrote, the dissertation helps to explain how her theological understanding of worship and prayer was made manifest in the liturgical resources she created. This study also argues that Harkness’s growing commitment to the liturgical life of the church played a key role in her own theological evolution. Through her own immersion in worship and prayer, Harkness’s work became more theological, her theology became more Christocentric, and her ecclesiology deepened and developed a global and ecumenical conscience. As she delved deeper into the liturgical life of the church, she began drawing connections between liturgy, theology, and ethics, which presaged a central topic of modern-day liturgical studies. Finally, the dissertation claims that her work as an applied theologian at the intersection of various disciplines and communities makes her an excellent model for modern-day practical theology. This research and assessment contributes to existing scholarship by reclaiming an often-overlooked part of Georgia Harkness’s legacy. More broadly, it helps dispel the myth that theological liberalism was not interested in worship or devotion and gives a more nuanced understanding of the theological and liturgical landscape of mid-twentieth-century mainline Protestantism. / 2020-06-21T00:00:00Z

The major focus of this dissertation is the ancestor worship that is inferred to have been practiced in the multiethnic Middle Sicán theocratic state (AD 950-1100) that prospered on the northern North Coast of Peru. The major objective is twofold: (1) demonstrating by archaeological means that ancestors were indeed worshipped in the Middle Sicán society and (2) elucidating the nature and role of the inferred ancestor cult and associated rituals and ceremonies. Ancestor (and the veneration of it) is one of the themes that have the deepest roots in the anthropological thoughts; nevertheless, many archaeologists have uncritically invoked ancestor veneration without sufficient theoretical underpinning and empirical support, to the point that James Whitley (2002) decried "too many ancestors." This dissertation thus begins with a review of the earlier anthropological discoveries and theoretical debates on what ancestor is and who becomes an ancestor, including the cases in the Andes. Based on this review of previous studies, it is hypothesized that the select members of deceased Middle Sicán elites were transformed into an ancestor through a series of prescribed processes. This hypothesis is examined in terms of the five possible material correlates of the inferred Sicán ancestors extracted from the regional archaeological database of the study area accumulated by the Sicán Archaeological Project (SAP) for the last three decades. The role of the inferred Middle Sicán ancestor cult is approached from the ideological perspective. It is inferred that the ancestor cult was employed by the ruling group as an ideological and political means to justify the existence and extension of social hierarchies and inequalities and thus targeted at wider populations different in genealogical origins as opposed to family or lineage members. This study focuses attention on the food preparations and consumptions documented by a test excavation at the principle plaza of the Sicán capital, "Great Plaza," adjacent to the inferred ancestral tombs and hypothesizes that the commensality among the living and the dead during feasts there served not only to commemorate the inferred ancestors, but also to bring together people in different social tiers and to consolidate the highly stratified, multiethnic Middle Sicán society. Two excavations at the ceremonial core of the Middle Sicán state capital, one at the Huaca Loro West Cemetery in 2006 and the other at the Great Plaza in 2008, provide varied lines of evidence that support the above two hypotheses. The results suggest that ancestor worship was indeed practiced during the Middle Sicán Period. By maintaining and monopolizing the ritual access to the Sicán Deity through their ancestors, the Sicán elites reproduced their religious and political power and retained the legitimacy of their social status. Concurrently, the Sicán elites consciously employed their ancestor cult for social integration. After the Middle Sicán Period, these ancestors seem to have retained their spiritual viability even after the later Chimú Empire took the control of this region. If not recognized as the Sicán anymore, they were remembered and honored by the living for over four centuries. On the basis of the merits of traditional approach (e.g., the study of architecture, iconography, bioarchaeology, and ethnohistory and ethnography in the Andes), this study gives primacy to the direct focus on the material residues and relational contexts and patterns of ritual activities and studies their change and stability through time in relation to other historical contingencies. The merit of focusing on the trajectories of ritual activities themselves in a long and wide perspective is that it sheds light on the regional peculiarities and contingent nature of the inferred ancestor veneration, which may be overlooked in cross-cultural, ethnological arguments about the nature, role, and capacity of ancestors. It also provides a wealth of information not only to determine what types of activities took place, but also to explore the intangible symbolic significance behind those activities. As a result, this approach provides a practical solution to the justified criticism by Whitley (2002) and demonstrates how we should approach ancestor veneration and what evidence we would need in order to appropriately define it in archaeological record.

Vad är en lovsång, hur låter det och vad kännetecknar soundet för en lovsång idag? Är det en egen genre som har egna kännetecken idag? Målet med detta projekt har varit att ta reda på och få en förståelse för hur en lovsång är skriven och producerad och utifrån de kunskaper och insikter jag fått under projektet skriva och producera en egen lovsång för att praktisera resultatet.

No description available.

The worship service of the Yoruba Baptist Churches of the Nigerian Baptist Convention reflects the Western ways of life. The Nigerian Baptist pastors are oriented from the seminary where suits and ties are the official dress for ministration, the teaching of theology is Western oriented, many of the worship services are conducted in English language, most brides and bridegrooms often put on Western clothes during their wedding ceremonies and Western music and musical instruments are used to the detriment of the indigenous ones. Most of the African ways of life are not encouraged. Consequently, the worshippers are alienated, confused, disoriented and dissatisfied. This alienation is the result of what I describe in this research as ‘psychological slavery’.In this research, I argue that the Yoruba Baptist Christian of Nigeria, like other tribes in the world, have their cultural heritage which ought to be used in the place of the foreign elements/materials of worshipping the Lord. Some of the elements/materials I emphasize in this research include akara (local cake) and sobo drink (juice extracted from Hibiscus sabdariffa) in the place of bread and wine for Eucharist, indigenous clothes for the pastors and couples in the place of Western clothes during ministration and the wedding service respectively, indigenous music and musical instruments, oriki Olodumare (God praise-name) and the use of the Yoruba command-language in prayer. The aim of this thesis is to propose a contextual form of worship whereby the Yoruba Baptist Christians have a holistic worship fulfilled within their socio-religio-cultural context.

Filiality (xiao) has been a significant concept in Chinese culture. Its significance is shown by the fact that its idea was elevated to a system of philosophy by Confucians in the Zhanguo period (475-221 B.C.E.). The purpose of this study is to clarify why filiality was important and what the philosophy of filiality essentially meant. Filiality was not merely a familial ethic. In the Western Zhou period (the 11th c. to 770 B.C.E.), it meant sacrifices to ancestors. Filiality toward fatherhood was essentially obedience to headship of lineage groups, and it was expressed in ancestor worship. When lineage gradually collapsed in the Chunqiu period (770-475 B.C.E.), its significance must have been restricted. In fact, however, filiality was given a new meaning by Zhanguo Confucians. First, Confucius emphasized the mental aspect of filiality, and then Mencius thought of filiality as the basis from which general ethics were generated. The various ideas of filiality were collected in a book: the Book of Filiality. This book, presenting the dichotomy between love and reverence, argued that a father-son relationship had an element shared by a monarch-retainer relationship and that filiality should be shifted into loyalty. The essential achievement of this philosophy was the recognition of the dualistic nature of human beings; any human relationship was a social relation between two social roles as well as an emotional connection between two characters. The former was the basis for culture and society. It was the aspect of culture inherent in human nature that should be developed to bring about social justice. This dualism was derived from the ambiguity of fatherhood in ancestor worship. As ancestor symbolized the social role of lineage headship, the philosophy of filiality symbolically connected fatherhood to the social role of authority in general. Filiality was identified with devotion to the absolute basis for humans and society that was symbolized by fatherhood. This thesis, analyzing ancient Chinese philosophy of filiality, presents a hypothesis concerning the essential structure of ancestor worship, which can be summarized as the symbolism representing higher levels of authority on the basis of parental authority. / Arts, Faculty of / Asian Studies, Department of / Graduate