community

An Artist’s Perspective on Creating Visual Art for Worship

by

The following article examines the process of commissioning and creating visual art for worship from the point of view of an artist, exploring, in particular, the unique concerns of the liturgical artist.

After fourteen years as a professional craftsperson, working in pottery and fiber, I have become increasingly interested in making things for use in worship. The occupation of “dressing the church” uses many of my past experiences and skills, but it brings with it a new set of problems—personal and professional. The following reflections developed as I wove vestments, hangings, and altar cloths. I hope they will strike a chord with others who can develop them more fully and more deeply.

A Question of Design

As I do liturgical design work, one question repeatedly comes to mind: What is the difference between designs for the liturgy and other designs? I don’t feel any different doing liturgical work, and there is no apparent difference in the design processes. I gather information from a client and find out as much as possible about the space in which the object will be used. I show samples, swatches, and sketches to elicit responses; then within the limits of available materials and technical skills, I produce the best design possible. That’s pretty straightforward, though not easy. Any artisan who does commission work or custom orders has a healthy respect for the difficulties involved in communicating with clients and in satisfying them with the resulting product.

Many conflicts and tensions are built into the design process, and picking one’s way through them is a balancing act. The artisan has to balance conflicting responsibilities. Details of planning or producing, for instance, require constant attention, while one’s vision or image of a beautiful creation shimmers in the future. Such a “stereoscopic vision” must be held in focus for the goal to be attained with any success, or the result will lack clarity.

Another conflict or tension exists between the desire to spare no expense to produce the most beautiful object possible and the real limitations placed on the artisan’s time and the client’s pocketbook. Sometimes the design process is unexpectedly prolonged by something as simple as the unavailability of required material. But such stumbling blocks, conflicts, and tensions can become the steppingstones to where one wants to go. This is a matter of making good use of the time at hand to think about and experiment with design possibilities.

The process is almost the same whether the commission is for an altar cloth or a bed quilt, but the completed works will be used in distinctly different ways. Liturgical design work is done for a community rather than an individual, and that community uses the work for a sacred purpose: to enhance worship.

Designing for a Community

Even though the artisan may deal with one individual who represents the worshiping community, that person must convey the needs and desires of the whole group. The artisan needs to ask the right questions and gather as much information as possible before proceeding, but the design is not produced by committee; it is the responsibility of the artisan alone. If the proposed design is not acceptable, it may be modified; another design can be worked out or another artisan hired.

The resulting design should express or reflect the nature of the particular community, but it should also point that community to what it might become. This prophetic quality, or prescience, is an elusive but important element of art that challenges the body of worshipers, encouraging response and growth. If “we become what we behold,” as Psalm 34 suggests, then all the visual elements in a church are vitally important. The community’s response to the completed work can be a powerful dynamic when it gathers to worship and when it goes forth into the larger community.

In addition to considering the community for which work is executed, one must also carefully consider the sacred purpose of the completed work. This purpose is realized when the object is taken out of the artisan’s control and put to use. At that moment this “work of human hands” is made holy. If the artisan is in the congregation, it is a humbling and poignant experience to see the vestment of chalice or altar cloth used in the context of worship.

A designer must understand that the object is made holy, not by human efforts alone, but by being offered and used for a sacred purpose. This fact frees the designer from the worrisome feeling that only saintly or religious people can make sacred objects. No human being is adequate to this task, and if this fact is not fully accepted, some problems are bound to arise. For one thing, if the artisan feels “unworthy,” there will be an almost compulsive temptation to multiply the use of sacred symbols on the work. This multiplication has a “desanctifying” effect, for the harder we try to “make” something holy, the more we are assured of failure. The multiplication of symbols weakens the power of the object. By accepting the fact that the object will be transformed more by use than by symbols, the artisan is free to do what he or she does best. Creative energies can then be focused on making a beautiful form through which the liturgy can come alive and flower in the community.

This topic of the object’s holiness has personal parallels for the artisan. On our own, we might achieve virtuous lives with great effort. But we cannot make ourselves holy; God alone does this. We can offer ourselves to God and cooperate with God’s actions in our lives, or we can choose not to. We can receive the Lord’s blessings joyfully and gratefully, or we can take them for granted. We can share God’s gifts with others or keep them to ourselves. But if we offer ourselves to God, as the work of the artisan is offered, then God can use us for God’s own purposes.

Respecting One’s Craft

God’s work in completing the process of liturgical design does not diminish the importance of the artisan’s effort. We must bring to any work we do for churches a sense of reverence and respect, but not to the point of timidity or immobility. Being self-conscious is as much difficulty as being insensitive to the work’s importance and potential. Fear of doing something that is unintentionally funny, absurd, or even scandalous—something that will be shown as a “bad example” in someone’s slide show at next year’s liturgy conference—must be overcome again and again. Otherwise one will do only what is “safe,” repeating something that succeeded in the past. That course of action results in work that has a deadly, sanitized look. Removing the risk means removing all the things that invigorate a work; it is the death of creativity. “Playing it safe” won’t displease or offend anyone, but neither will it move people to smile with joy, shed a tear, or pray spontaneously.

I have resolved this tension between safety and risk by making the best work I can. Then I show it to someone whose judgment and taste I respect, for comments and criticism. This dialogue helps me to grow and try out new ideas. Looking at other works, traditional and contemporary, also helps.

People who are interested and knowledgeable in liturgical design are difficult to find. When I do find them, I consider them gifts. Various people appear in my path when I need them, and for that I am grateful. Both their encouragement and their critical comments have helped me to continue working in the liturgical field when confidence wavered or when logic could provide no answers. One such resource person I met through a magazine article, and we developed a correspondence. I met another when friends brought someone into our shop. Others came from a design workshop and a visit to a seminary to look at a vestment collection.

I value my dialogue with these people who are vitally interested in a rather specialized field of design work for which good books and periodicals are hard to come by. These people are clergy and lay, women and men, of various ages and backgrounds. What is important is that we share a common vision: we want to create beautiful things to be used for a sacred purpose by the worshiping community, and we each have different abilities to contribute to that end.

Catalog versus Craft

Why order custom-made work when articles can simply be ordered from a catalog? While there is nothing inherently wrong with ready-made vestments or altar cloths, they can never replace objects crafted with the personal skill, inspiration, and creativity of an artisan. Never having the chance to commission original art would be a great loss to the community as well as to local artists and artisans. The presence of something unique and beautiful is a great gift; it calls forth peace and healing—even conversion—at deep, unspoken levels in both the artist and the viewer. Thomas Merton said, “Sacred art is theology in line and color, and it speaks to the whole man.… The material elements of the image become as it were the vehicle of the Holy Spirit, and furnish Him with an occasion to reach souls with His hidden, spiritual power” (Thomas Merton, Disputed Questions [New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1976], 156).

When parishioners make a vestment or an altar cloth, they often think that materials must be ordered from a church goods catalog; yet actually, they could purchase the same fabric locally. In a local store, they can examine the material, or ask for a courtesy discount, or have the owner order just what they need. But some church goods catalogs suggest that their fabric is special, beyond the ordinary; the fact that it costs more than local goods only seems to enhance its desirability. Catalog prices for mass-produced items are often so high that an experienced artisan can produce work at competitive prices. Catalog prices, after all, reflect the cost of employees, accountants, equipment, and 200-page annual color catalogs. Responding to the desire for crafts, some suppliers list handmade or handcrafted items, like carved crosses from Italy, that cost thousands of dollars. Imported crafts are not necessarily better than domestic crafts; artisans working in this country can produce equally authentic and beautiful objects, and at less cost.

Adapting the Ordinary

Why can’t an artisan’s ordinary production items be purchased for use in church? If you buy a handmade iced tea pitcher and goblets to hold and serve the consecrated wine, you are not making use of the artisan’s ability to design something special for liturgical use. The maker of a custom Communion set considers such important aspects of the design as the capacity of the vessels, their size in scale to the altar, the extra stability required, and ease in passing them from hand to hand. Such a design takes time and should be done sensitively. Artisans should pray for the grace to do simple and subtle liturgical design work. Obvious solutions, such as putting a cross on an existing iced tea pitcher or sewing the word Alleluia on a spring hanging to make an Easter banner, do not make good liturgical design.

The obvious does not invite us to go deeper, to reflect, to look, to wonder. Sensitive use of color and symbol in church design work is a natural means to lead us into supernatural realities with all their mystery. The obvious solution (“Alleluia!”) has a bullying quality that brings out our defenses or numbs us; subtle solutions lead us gently, gracefully, into worship. “Where there is revelation, explanation becomes superfluous” (Frederick Frank, The Zen of Seeing [New York: Random House, 1973], 28).

For an artisan, the completed work becomes a prayer to which the community can say “Amen.” Freedom, however brief or fleeting, can be found by losing oneself in such a work. Though questions linger, their importance fades. What matters to me at the creative moment is that both the artisan and work serve a sacred purpose and become incarnations in which God’s spirit can live.

The Church Building as a Home for the Church

by

The church building is the home for God’s people, providing identity and a place in the world. The article illustrates how the change in liturgical understanding since Vatican II has changed the understanding of what a church building wants and needs to be for God’s people.

What does the building want to be? Architect Louis Kahn, whose work ranges from the Sears Tower in Chicago to the Unitarian Church in Rochester, New York, introduced this question into the discussion about architecture. Although the question has been posed in a variety of disguises throughout the history of architecture, Kahn’s phrasing stands in stark contrast to the modernist preoccupation with function: What should a building do? In light of Vatican II, its reformed liturgy, ecclesiology, and view of the world, Kahn’s question may be asked more specifically: What does the church building want to be?

We may answer the question by showing how the church building has undergone a change in identity from the house of God to the home of the church. An appreciation of this change is now fundamental for designing church buildings and worship spaces. The new paradigm for the church building is, in light of the reforms, the home.

House of God—Home of the Church

Adapting an older church building to the liturgical reforms is often difficult and frequently unsuccessful. This indicates the radical shift in the identity of the parish building. The older buildings were not meant to house worshipers. They were meant to house God, and this was consistent with the theology inherent in the liturgy and popular piety of the times.

With the Counter-Reformation of the sixteenth century, the Roman church aggressively attempted to defend against the confusion introduced by the Reformation, especially regarding the Eucharist. For example, the Council of Trent reaffirmed the doctrine of transubstantiation, which holds that the substance of the bread and wine undergoes a radical transformation at the moment of the consecration and becomes the body and blood of Christ, even though appearances remain the same. Reaffirmation of this doctrine renewed devotion to the consecrated host, a devotion that had its genesis in medieval church history and nourished later as the reception of Communion waned. What people felt no longer worthy to receive, they could worship and adore from a distance. Thus, the consecration at the Mass became the raison d’etre of the Mass.

Parallel with this devotion, preaching took on a life of its own outside the Mass. Architects then designed churches to feature the sermon and the consecration. The pulpit became prominent; acoustical projection became essential. However, except when the pulpit was in use, the focus was the high altar where the consecration could be seen. With the increasing focus on the consecrated host, the tabernacle found its place on the high altar. Thus, even after Mass, one could prolong that moment of consecration by gazing at the tabernacle, which typically was placed where the priest would have elevated the host. The tabernacle often included its own balcacchino where a monstrance, which also served to keep the faithful focused on the consecrated host, could be enshrined.

The architecture of the church—from the reredos that embellished and augmented the tabernacle to the plan of the building—reinforced the importance of the tabernacle and the theology it symbolized. The lines of the church from the main entrance led the eye to the sanctuary, up a flight of stairs, to the high altar upon which the tabernacle rested, augmented by an elaborate backdrop. Here was the locus of God’s presence, where one could witness the sacred moment and sustain it in worship and prayer.

In effect, the Tridentine church became a tabernacle to house the tabernacle that housed God. One came to church to pray to God who resided there. God’s court could be found there, too, hence the various side altars and shrines for the Virgin and various saints. The church was a place to make a sacred social call in God’s earthly dwelling.

We should not be too quick to denigrate such piety. It was practiced for centuries and was supported by a formidable theology. The greatest and most sophisticated architecture gave expression to it. Such architecture served the spiritual needs that today we run the risk of ignoring, forgetting, or denying.

The Essential Recovery

That piety, however, neglects the essential character of the eucharistic liturgy that the church needed to recover. To Christians, the divine presence is not manifested primarily in objects and images, but in the community of believers, especially when they gather for the eucharistic liturgy.

Despite the long tradition of seeing the consecrated host as the primary manifestation of God’s presence, the documents of Vatican II, along with subsequent documents, emphasized the primary importance of the assembly. The assembly not only has the right and duty to be present at the liturgy, but it also has the right and duty to take an active role in it. The liturgy, which formerly was a rite performed by one man for a passive congregation, became a ritual celebration demanding the activity of all present—from actively listening to the Word of God to moving around an altar in song and prayer. Sacred objects, instead of helping to focus attention on a consecrated host, now facilitate the liturgical action. In short, what was formerly the house of God has become the house of an active congregation.

The difference between the house of God and the house of the church reflects the difference between two significantly different kinds of prayer. Since Vatican II, both private passive prayer and active public prayer have been encouraged. However, they require different times and, perhaps, even different spaces. The house of God is suitable for private prayer, which calls for quiet and solitude. Even when devotions are done in common, they are essentially passive. Gestures, movement, and active responses are typically detrimental. Such prayers engage the imagination, experience, and emotions and may be deliberately inspired by sacred images and objects.

True community prayer is exactly the opposite. Because it requires the faithful to gather together as a community, it is predisposed to socializing. Entering the church quietly, saying a prayer, and waiting for Mass to begin is no longer appropriate. Community worship requires the active participation of people: to greet each other; to sing and pray with one voice; to wish each other peace; to break bread and share it; to drink from the same cup. The eucharistic liturgy still engages the feelings and imaginations of the congregation, but this occurs less through extraneous visual images beheld by the individual and more through the word, action, and symbols of the liturgy made available to the entire assembly.

Where Is the Sacred?

This shift in the nature of the church building also reflects a shift in the way the church perceives herself—from militant and triumphant to personal and serving. With Gaudium et Spes the person received renewed recognition and importance. With Lumen Gentium the people of God recovered their identity as a church of disciples and servants. With Sacrosanctum Concilium the Sunday assembly assumed a vital significance as the visible manifestation of the body of Christ gathered again to remember and reenact the saving work of the Lord.

The church needs a new architecture to house its people, its liturgy, and its other activities. This new architecture must have a “good feeling in terms of human scale, hospitality and graciousness. It does not seek to impress or even less to dominate.” A monument or temple of exaggerated proportions is no longer deemed appropriate.

The document Environment and Art in Catholic Worship suggests another possibility. “The congregation, its liturgical action, the furniture and other objects it needs for its liturgical action—these indicate the necessity of a space, a place or hall, or a building for the liturgy.”

Since the council, architects like E. A. Sovik and Frederic Debuyst have designed such halls and parish buildings fully equipped with portable altar, movable platforms, stackable chairs, office rooms, classrooms, and what Sovik calls the centrum, a space large enough for a congregation to meet for any number of reasons, only one of which is the eucharistic celebration. The new space is meant to facilitate and house the activities of a parish or faith community. The main centrum becomes a space that can be adapted to the needs of a large group, but primarily it provides space for the celebration of the Eucharist.

One might question the appropriateness of this multipurpose hall for the liturgy. As Environment and Art in Catholic Worship indicates, “such a space acquires a sacredness from the sacred action of the faith community which uses it.” At the same time, the community of the church and her liturgy find their home in the space because the space is sacred. This is not a simple matter of cause and effect, but a matter of the mutual relationship between the space the community. What is sacred about the space must be sustained by its design and “feel.” To use the metaphor from modern architecture, the model of the multipurpose hall is in danger of becoming nothing more than a machine for worship. To paraphrase Frank Lloyd Wright, the church building is a machine for worship, but architecture begins where the machine ends.

Look Homeward

Environment and Art in Catholic Worship, with its emphasis on hospitality, graciousness, and human proportion, suggests that the church building should be a home, a dwelling. A home is more than shelter, more than skin to house the inner activity. Like Heidegger’s understanding of “thing,” a dwelling gathers “world.” It is the space where life occurs. It serves as a reference and orientation point. The home, the dwelling, becomes for the household part of the fabric of its life together. Home is the place where the person creates his or her world. It is the place where the person is at home in the world. This is not a matter of convenience, appliances, or decoration, but a matter of meaning, harmony, and integrity.

What are the characteristics of the home that might be pertinent to the church building?

First, the home is both public, or at least a semi-public, and a private place. It shelters, facilitates, and becomes integral to the ritual activities of the household. At the same time, it allows and fosters spontaneity, individuality, and solitude. As the place that gathers the world, establishes and maintains meaning, it must be instrumental in gathering family and friends and in gathering the self. It must help designate the subsets of the world that stand for the world and that are progressively more intimate: friends, family, lover, self. It thus articulates one’s relationship with the world.

Second, the building becomes home when the household takes possession of it. This is not accomplished by the exchange of title deeds. The classical Romans had the custom of carrying and moving their household gods with them. The household “moved in” when the gods were established in the house. The household moves in when the spirit of the family meets the genius loci, the spirit of the place, and the two are wedded, shaping each other and accommodating each other. The family takes possession when those tokens, those things which stand for the family, are established and when the new place embraces the rituals and the uniqueness of the individuals who contribute to the household’s spirit. This is not an immediate occurrence, but one that takes time and that resists manipulation.

Third, the home must stand over and against its surroundings as well as respond to them. As the subset of the world, it is of the world and opposite to the world. To maintain a sense of the mutual relationship between the home and the world, the home includes something of its surroundings: plants and animals, for example. The house, built of materials like stone and wood, assumes characteristics of its environs, while open windows for view and air allow for interpenetration of the world within and the world without.

The fourth follows from the third. Even as the home articulates the distinction between outside and inside, it must also celebrate the transition from one to the other. Entry into the home is carefully arranged so that it becomes something of an event. One removes outer garments, proceeds through a vestibule, and so on. The home is supported architecturally by a porch and a door that is an integral part of the structure, but more than a machine for gaining entry. All this conspires to promote a feeling of hospitality and welcome. The dwelling opens its arms and enfolds the one who enters and then sends them on their way.

Fifth, the house needs a center around which the household gathers. In some cultures and at certain times, this was the hearth or the fountain in the middle of the courtyard. Perhaps now it is the kitchen. But it must become the center for the group’s most intimate and significant experiences. It must provide a means for preserving former experiences and for documenting the history of the household. The hearth is perhaps the best example of this. Favorite chairs were placed around the hearth. Pictures and family relics were displayed on the mantelpiece. The center is the place within the space that gathers the household, gathers meaning. It is the center of the world; the place where the family is most at home; the place where the family leads its guests to be at home with them.

Thus, the house as home facilitates relationship and communication as well as the withdrawal from them. It is a place replete with meaning and memory, a place that encourages and ritualizes the activities which are sacred to family.

Moving In

The church building is a public facility, but people who use the church building are bound together by a faith which makes them more a family than a random collection of people on independent paths.

Although there is a communal aspect to the church building, the design of the building must allow for the need to withdraw, to be alone, to pray. The building which houses the people of God and becomes the facility for their prayer and worship must accommodate both public and private prayer.

To be at home in the church building, the community must take possession somehow and move in. The household gods must be established, so to speak. The spirit of the community and the genius loci must embrace. This is achieved in a number of ways and on a number of levels. First, the design of the church must communicate the presence of God, whether the community is assembled or not. Through its eloquent beauty, it must bespeak the presence of the holy. For Catholics, the “household God” moves in when the blessed sacrament is reserved and the red lamp burns. The blessed sacrament testifies to the lasting presence of God. The “household gods” move in when the patron is adopted and the beloved Virgin finds a home.

In terms of its surroundings, the church building, like the home, must stand over and against its environs and, yet, relate to them. By separating the space for the people of God, the building thus groups the people and gives basic architectural expression to the unity of those who assemble there, but which does not extend beyond the walls to those who do not believe. Yet the church serves as a witness to the world. To be entirely self-enclosed, with no relation to the world, would frustrate the community’s essential duty to the world.

A sense of welcome and hospitality must be woven entirely into the fabric of the building. This does not take the place of a welcoming community, but architecture has the capacity to help make hospitality possible and more likely. Moreover, even when the community is not assembled, the solitary visitor ought to feel welcome to enter and pray. A church, especially in a busy urban area, has the responsibility to be a place where one can withdraw momentarily in order to recollect oneself. Such a welcome can be achieved through the combination of several elements: a vestibule; light; warmth; color; familiarity; and a place for coats, hats, bags, and so on.

Hospitality is not merely a matter of functionality. The design of the church must embrace the community and the individual. It must reveal the God who summons a people to gather. The break in the boundary, the entrance, must serve as the invitation and the point where the building begins to reveal itself.

Finally, the church building needs a center where the most significant actions of the community can be experienced. This center is where the Eucharist becomes “the summit toward which the activity of the church is directed” and “the fount from which all the church’s power flows.” Although this place is conducive to and may be used for other events such as concerts, other artistic performances, meetings, and prayer groups, its vital importance as the space for the Eucharist must not be compromised or violated. Any activity that divorces the sacred experience of the liturgy entirely from the space is a questionable practice. Space acquires its sacred nature from the activity of the community, but the sacred is not so transient a characteristic that it can be disregarded immediately after the sacred activity is completed. Like the house, the church building becomes part and parcel of the sacred activities of the community and cannot be violated without violating the sensitivities and the dynamic of the community.

The Second Vatican Council reestablished the church as a people called to holiness and to be witnesses of the good news to the world. It also reestablished the Eucharist as the activity of that people, a ritual that asserts their identity in relation to God. In light of this, what the church building wants to be is a dwelling for this people, the place that allows them to be, the center of their lives, which holds and communicates the meaning of their lives. Nothing is so expressive of this meaning as the eucharistic liturgy, and the church building that houses this sacred activity becomes an integral component of it. More than a platform or a facility for their activity, the church building becomes the place where this people gathers its world and its greater meaning, which is not finally thought, but felt. It is where religion is articulated and restored through the community’s experience of God. The church building is that existential foothold where the community is at home.

Community Through Small Groups

by

The pervasive individualism of Western culture has broken down the sense of identity experienced through community. Nevertheless, the church in the post-World War II era has seen a resurgent interest in and recovery of community. Two promising models of community from which a strong worship is arising are the “basic communities” of South America and the small group movement.

Basic Communities of South America

One of the characteristics of non-modern society, whether it was of the simpler, tribal sort or of a more complex, civilized sort, was that the individual saw himself or herself in terms of the group. The group naturally tightened the bonds between individuals, creating close interdependence among them and regulating the nature of their social relationships from within. Whether the society was more simple and egalitarian or more hierarchical and stratified, the individual in non-modern society had an assigned place from birth. He or she was conditioned and limited somehow by the group, but also supported and sustained by the group. It cannot be said that this group (extended family, tribe, nation) was always a community in the sense of the word we use today, but there is no doubt that it did offer some of the features essential to any community: it personalized within the context of well-defined social relationships. Thus the individual was provided with identity and intelligibility.

The remote origins and roots of modernity were marked precisely by the breakdown of that paradigm, which took place relatively early in the Christian West. At the end of the twelfth century and throughout the thirteenth century, the individual was moving toward a position of autonomy in regard to the group. An important contributory factor was the changed relationship vis-à-vis the economic dimension at every level and the beginnings of the modern market. The ties between individual and group were breaking down, opening up room for competition among individuals as isolated units. This lies at the root of modern society and finds concrete expression at every level: in the ideology of individualism, the economics of capitalism, and the politics of liberalism.

The full unleashing of this dynamic, which matured in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has left us in the twentieth century with a society characterized by such traits as anonymity, extreme competition among individuals, and, most of all, a deterioration of social relationships, if not an outright perversion of them. All this has provided the basis and roots for new forms of domination and oppression. Converted into systems and invested with economic and political power, they crush the individual by various means and in various ways: e.g., by implementing impersonal bureaucratic rationalization; by atomizing the labor market; by dissociating work from family and group life; and by increasing migration, which accelerates the uprooting of individuals and cultural groups. In this general context we have seen a growing and widespread yearning for community from the middle of the nineteenth century on, but particularly since World War II.

The early church certainly viewed itself as a community, its point of departure being the first community composed of Jesus and the apostles he had gathered around him. The theme of the church as a community was clearly explicated from Pentecost on: in the Acts of the Apostles; the writings of Paul, John, and James; and other works. Theology and exegesis would proceed to analyze and explore that thematic treatment from various angles. The church’s early awareness of being a community began to fade markedly as time went on.

In South America, the Roman Catholic counterpoint to this loss of community was precisely the creation of “basic ecclesial communities.” This new way embraces more fully the whole of life, and thus facilitates the creation of a community in a stricter sense. As one of their pastors has written:

In the present-day circumstances, basic communities frequently manage to express various fundamental elements of Christian experience much better than parishes do. Basic ecclesial communities manage to facilitate a maximum of the Christian life with a minimum of institutional structures. The missionary element of welcoming the divine word and bearing witness to the faith is sharply accentuated. There is the practical possibility of a pluralism suited to the desires and needs of the community, which thus can experience the feeling of brotherhood and sisterhood in a more living way. In these basic communities people can fight peacefully for justice, better exercise Christian freedom in the free expression of the word, and live together in a less anonymous, hence more personal, way. In these base-level groups, it is not rare to see the rise of new charisms and ministries dedicated to the build-up of community and service to the gospel message. New pastoral options also arise. The exclusivism bound up with territorial limits is overcome. By the same token, the evangelical Christ centrism characteristic of basic communities tends to purify popular religiosity, offering adults a practical form of catechumenate in the midst of real life. The very praxis of the sacraments takes on greater ecclesial relevance within these small communities. In and through basic communities, the work of priests is made enormously easier, lay participation in the apostolate finds new space in reality, and the ecclesial community can more easily be the leaven of human reality.

Home Cell Groups

The largest church in Christendom draws from an active adherent group of 625,000 for its various weekend worship services. But to the typical parishioner, the church is only about ten persons large.

Dr. Paul Yonggi Cho, the founding pastor of Yoido Full Gospel Central Church in Seoul, Korea, has taught his people that the heartbeat of the church occurs through the “one another” ministry of small, home-based cells. These affinity-based, lay-pastored nurture groups are the center of the church’s evangelism, discipleship, worship, prayer, and fellowship.

Corporate worship celebrations are still eminently important at the Yoido church. But they function more as conventions of cell groups than as large gatherings of individuals.

These large services radiate excitement. They are characterized by the festive qualities of a political rally or a recording-artist concert. What the feasts in Jerusalem were to the clans of Israel, the corporate worship of the Yoido church is to its home cell groups.

Yet, the congregation’s sense of momentum, which regularly fills auditoriums and overflow rooms, cannot be traced solely to a charismatic speaker or talented music group. Rather, corporate worship exudes vitality because it brings together portions of more than 50,000 small, spiritual kinship groups that have each experienced the working of God during the week. The cell-driven church is at once small enough for intimacy and large enough for celebration.

The model of Yoido Full Gospel Central Church helps illustrate the burgeoning popularity of home-based small groups on all seven continents. In North America, for example, practically every church has, during the last two decades, elevated the priority of cell groups. Virtually all religious publishing houses now offer books and curriculums suitable for off-premises, lay-led small group gatherings.

Many factors contribute to this rising popularity of cell groups. With the widespread fragmentation of the nuclear family, many people are looking for a surrogate family. Others crave a personal touch in an ever-increasingly high-tech society. Still, others realize the need to establish reasonable spans of care in order to prevent leadership burnout—both of the laity and of the clergy.

For these and other reasons, many churches now consider themselves to be a fellowship “with” cell groups. For them, whatever they consider being the mission of the church—worship, evangelism, discipleship, prayer, fellowship, and the like—can occur both in the large meeting and in the small, with one reinforcing the other.

The leading-edge trend, however, goes further. It acknowledges that various-sized groups, such as cells, classes, congregations, and celebrations, are present in most churches, even if not officially recognized. As such, a social network of “cells” exists, though it may not be properly identified, resourced, encouraged, or supervised.

The trend of the future builds on that perception. It says that the effective church will see itself not as a fellowship “with” cells, but as a matrix “of” cells. The vibrancy and spiritual health of these cell-sized groupings is the engine used by the Holy Spirit to drive the church forward.

The church-“of”-groups concept is neither Korean nor limited to one particular style of worship. Its vital components—though not necessarily its identical outward forms—have been implemented in thousands of churches worldwide, spanning the spectrum of worship styles and traditions.

The cell-celebration concept is being implemented equally well in historically recent innovations (such as the seeker-sensitive church of the 1990s) as it was in the Wesleyan class meetings of the 1800s, or as it still is in the incense-burning high liturgy of a centuries-old Lutheran or Greek Orthodox setting.

Of North America’s largest and most unchurched-sensitive churches, a significant number trace their growth to a new set of priorities: clergy focusing their energy on the development and empowerment of lay leadership for cell groups. A typical infrastructure involves each church staff member working with a small number of lay coaches. Each of them, in turn, supervises a few cell group leaders. And each of them, likewise, sees to it that approximately ten people receive spiritual nurture.

These levels are sometimes connected according to life-state affinities (“youth,” “young married,” “single adults”) and, in larger metropolises, by geographic zones. At each of the levels, the men and women involved are simultaneously training apprentices. That way, when growth opportunity calls for additional leadership, the necessary personnel are already prepared to be released.

This cell-drivenness factor has become so widespread that students of the church growth movement are now seeking categories for explaining and interpreting it. On the popular level the social theory is being called the “Cho model,” “cell group church,” “cell church movement” and the “cell-celebration” paradigm.

The theological jargon gaining the greatest popularity is the term metachurch. While large churches keep burgeoning until they become mega churches, the concept meta, meaning “change,” communicates a radical paradigm shift. When examined structurally and philosophically, a metachurch, with its lay-tended cells, is as different from a traditional church of clergy-tended subcongregations as a butterfly after undergoing metamorphosis is different from a caterpillar.

Whatever the name, the phenomenon, which we believe traces its origins to the book of Acts, is undeniably linked to worship renewal and spiritual vitality. As goes the cell, so goes the church.

The Church as Community

by

In the exodus event, God created a people and brought them into a covenant relationship. The covenant specified that Israelite worshipers display loyalty and faithfulness both to Yahweh, the King of the covenant and to their fellow Israelites covenanted to that same King. In a corresponding way, God has created a people through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; these people are bound together with him and with one another in a new covenant community. Jesus’ commandment for this community, or church, is that they love him with their entire being, and their covenant brothers as themselves. It is out of this relationship with God and one’s fellow believers that worship arises. Biblical worship is intended as a corporate expression of the covenant relationship.

The Church as a Body

In the liturgy there is a vertical movement, the out-going of the person to God; but there is also a horizontal movement. Liturgy is celebrated with others and the relationships between the members of the worshiping community are of the highest importance. Private acts of public worship are a contradiction in terms, as a statement in the Roman Catholic Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy suggests: “Liturgical services are not private functions, but are celebrations of the Church, which is the sacrament of unity” (section 26). At the practical level, all liturgical rites are arranged for the participation of the community. Rites enable people to relate to each other (the kiss, the handshake—both symbolic gestures) and also to the community. One can become part of the congregation and enter more deeply into its life. The sociologists tell us that for true community to exist there must be a face-to-face relationship. For the Christian, this means that the members of the community are persons bound together by faith and love. In principle, they are already related to one another. In the worshiping community, this relationship is deepened and enhanced—or will be, if the members try to act as a community.

The Pauline teaching on the church as “body” emphasizes at once the closeness of the relationship between Christ and the people—they are members, limbs, of the body—and of the horizontal relationships between the members of the body (1 Cor. 12:12–31). In other words, perhaps more strongly than before, it is indicated that the priestly people is also a community, the community of Christ with which he has a vital relationship. He is the source of all its life; it is totally dependent on him as the branches of a tree are on its trunk (John 15:1–5). And the relationships of faith and love between its members are in the first instance created by Christ, though they are to be realized and strengthened by Eucharist, which is the sacramental sign of koinonia of communion, the union of minds and hearts in faith and love. If the church can be said to “make” the Eucharist, in a much deeper sense the Eucharist makes the church. But the depth and richness of the relationship is best seen in Ephesians 5, where Christ is said to be the head of the church of which he is also Savior; and this church is his bride (vv. 25–26), which he brought into existence by the “fragrant offering and sacrifice” that he offered to his Father (v. 2).

It is this people, then, the priestly people, the body of Christ, and the community of Christ, who are the “subject” of liturgical celebrations. In other words, it is they who celebrate the liturgy, and the form of the liturgy must be of such sort as to make this possible. The Christian liturgy by its nature cannot be the monologue of a single participant. It is the action of a whole community.

African-American Worship in the Post-Reformation Period

by

Churches in the African-American community share a distinct worship culture that is the result of the integration of Christian worship forms with a worldview shaped by a traditional African ontology (understanding of being). In addition to the African heritage and religious perspective, the experience of blacks in American slavery has also helped to shape African-American worship patterns.

Introduction

Any discussion of Christian liturgy, regardless of particularities, begins from one basic premise: God, in the beginning of time, initiated and set the momentum for worship. God’s initiative is a priori to the individual or corporate response of a people. In Jesus the Christ, God entered fully into the conditions of humanity and the world. In Jesus Christ God’s initiative shaped ritual action, setting the direction for praise, adoration, thanksgiving, confession, acts of prayer, proclamation, remembrance, and offering. In the Holy Spirit, God takes the initiative and remains actively present, transforming, empowering, and sustaining human lives.

It is in response to God’s divine initiative that the people of God, enabled by the power of the Holy Spirit, acknowledge and respond to the mysterious presence of the divine in the world and in their lives.

The priority of God’s initiative is the theological foundation for our discussion. Upon this foundation, we will explore ways that a particular people have heard and responded to God’s call to worship. The people around whom this discussion will focus have taken upon themselves the designation “African-American,” affirming a uniqueness that incorporates a plethora of converging roots and traditions. (1) One root is deeply embedded in rich African soil, with all that this implies. (2) Another root is American, a heritage which we vociferously claim. (3) Christian African-Americans also acknowledge a faith root in the Judeo-Christian religious tradition which binds the body of Christ. (4) The fourth root is a common liturgical history that has been shaped by the Graeco-Roman cultures of the West.

Out of these four major converging roots, African-Americans have been able to transform existential experiences in America into particularities: ways of praying, liturgical patterns, and ways of theologizing. Ritual action that may indeed appear to be the same as Euro-American liturgical action may be informed by a totally different worldview or theological base. On the other hand, certain liturgical assumptions common to both Euro-Americans and African-Americans will evoke totally different worship responses and patterns. Herein is one of the innumerable examples of the mysterious power of God to communicate with people and to allow them to respond out of their particular cultural context. It also speaks to the helpful scholarship of cultural anthropologists, who remind us of the numerous similarities in the way that myths and rituals are shaped by humans to reflect responses to life situations.

As we provide some clarity about African-American liturgy in context, let us bear in mind that there are indeed differences in worship practices among African-American worshipers, both within and across denominational lines. Nevertheless, in spite of our differences, there is much that we share.

Traditionally, active participation in worship, rather than active discussion, has been foremost for African-Americans. Recently, however, we are attempting to hear God clearly in this age as we “discover” and “recover” liturgical options available to us from our African and slave heritages. We do not seek merely to “hear” exactly as our forebears did, for we are not at the same place and time. We can observe how they heard with such intensity that they were able to make sense out of the realities of their circumstances in worship and life. We are also able to determine what remained essentially the same in the transition from African traditional religions to African-American Christianity. In this data, we are discovering avenues for liturgical and spiritual renewal not only for ourselves but for Christian liturgy in general. We begin first with a discovery of African worship practices.

African Liturgical Practices and World View

Over the four centuries of the Atlantic slave trade, Africans were taken from many parts of the continent. Therefore, those who would ultimately shape African-American liturgical traditions came from a variety of diverse cultures. From the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries a majority of Africans brought to the Americas were taken from a 3,000 mile stretch along the west coast of Africa, from Senegal south to the southern part of Angola. They did not bring with them beliefs and practices which would accurately be called a unified or monolithic “African culture.” Peoples of Africa south of the Sahara, like those of North Africa, created a myriad of languages, religions, customs, political systems, and institutions, all of which differentiated their societies. It is more appropriate, then, to refer to traditional African religions rather than to a universal African religion.

Societal religions did not include carefully honed creeds and theological formulas which were to be recited. Nor were beliefs spread by missionary or evangelistic efforts. No doubt, some of the religious ideas may have been disseminated through migrations and inter-familial linkages. Large portions of societies or tribal groups are known to have migrated basically intact to different locations, taking their beliefs and practices with them. The new environment would create a need for alterations in ritual and possible adjustments in belief.

African peoples did share a fundamental primal worldview, a basic system for perceiving realities and making sense out of existential situations in order to survive. This fundamental view helped to provide a common means for cultural expression and a basic sense of common identity. In order to understand religious rituals and ceremonies of Africans in diaspora, one must understand the context in which worldviews were shaped and disseminated. A search for elements of continuity through an investigation of primal worldviews will not limit us to what some researchers would refer to as “survivals” from African cultures. To do so would misinterpret the nature of culture as a fixed condition, rather than as a process. The strength and resiliency of culture is determined by its ability to react creatively and responsibly to the realities of a new situation. The evidence of the African continuum in Christian worship among the rapidly growing churches in Africa and in the diaspora attests to the resiliency and adaptability of African cultural roots.

We begin then, with common African primal worldviews as the basic context of continuity which helped Africans to adapt to new environments, and to shape unique liturgical practices.

Interaction with the Spirit Realm

First and foremost, for Africans, the whole of existence is a religious phenomenon. The African scholar John S. Mbiti states quite succinctly, “Africans are notoriously religious.… Religion permeates all departments of life so fully that it is not easy or possible to isolate it”(African Religions and Philosophy [Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor/Doubleday, 1970], xvii). The prevailing African ontology, or understanding of being, essentially views spiritual realities as bound up with the lives of people. This anthropocentric ontology is centered in an awareness of a sovereign God who is the originator and sustainer of all there is. God the Creator is all-wise, ubiquitous, all-powerful, beyond our grasp, as well as the present. To use the classical metaphysical terms, which are meaningless in African thinking, one could say that God is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, transcendent and yet immanent. God is also Spirit, and yet spirits (with a small “s”) permeate the cosmos. Some spirits begotten of God serve as intermediaries or divine emissaries for God.

Included in the spirit world are spirits of humans who have died and are categorized as “living dead.” For Africans, the concept of the “living dead” (according to Mbiti) means the deceased are still living within the active memory of the community and interact with it. Those who have lived a full and fruitful life become ancestral spirits, and libations are poured on the ground as a sign of this interaction. Contrary to the opinion of many Euro-Americans, who say that this is merely evidence of ancestral worship or a form of spiritual necromancy, the function of the “living dead” is in some ways similar to that of saints in Christian traditions. Some scholars have proposed that the importance of the spirit of the ancestors in African traditional religions could provide a link to the Christian concept of the “communion of saints” (communio sanctorum). Rather than assuming that the ancestral saints are objects of worship, one must understand the interplay between the “living dead” and the temporal community.

Since all parents are respected, especially the elders of the community, the spirit of the deceased ancestral parent continually helps maintain coherence in family life for the living. Age is a symbol of impending transition into the divine state of ancestral spirit. The spirit of the deceased, who now lives closer to God, serves as a guardian of ethics, family traditions, and community custom. Ancestors are remembered and celebrated in a form of representing or reliving the life of a person who served the community well while alive. This is also a reminder that neither life nor community ends with the physical death of persons.

Wholeness of Life

The second concept in an African ontology is the perception of the wholeness of life, where there is no separation into sacred and secular realms. To be fully human is to “belong,” to belong to God. Thus, to be in solidarity with the whole community is to be bound up with all that comprises the cosmos: humanity and the natural environment, past, present, and future. Ritual action allows the community to reconnect with, and maintain, the reality of the “rhythm of life.” Wholeness of life, epitomized in ritual action, necessarily involves the whole person, body, and soul. While some verbal communication takes place, a larger proportion of communication takes place in bodily movement and in song. Dance evolves from full corporate participation in worship and is considered communal. Even when there are special performers, the community participates in some manner. Word, song, and action are often simultaneous, and the community understands what is being communicated. Just as life is viewed from a holistic perspective requiring the participation of the entire person, so involvement in life requires that the whole person participates in the process.

A consistent understanding of rites of passage in African traditional religions recognizes that in the “rhythm of life” one is born, then dies, and is reborn continually from one state of existence to another. The rhythm of life begins long before a child is born since the perpetuation of life calls for the anticipation of a continual process of birth. John S. Mbiti eloquently explains this process: “Children are the ‘buds’ of society, and every birth is the arrival of spring” (Mbiti, 143).

The first rite of passage for individuals and societies is the moment of one’s physical birth. At this time the community claims the child as its own. It is the task of the entire community to nurture and help prepare the child to become a corporate person, one who belongs to the whole. Through appropriate rituals, the community helps to mark each stage of a person’s life as an experience memorable for all. Rites of adolescence or puberty, marriage, parenthood, and death abound with ample amounts of music, dancing, pouring of libations, and the reciting of appropriate words.

Since all of life is regarded as sacred, elements of nature can be used symbolically in ritual action. Water, so basic in the creation process, was and remains an important symbol in rituals. Prior to an understanding of water baptism in the Christian tradition, Africans understood water as a gift from God and used it in most rites of passage. The word for water or rain in some African societies is the same as, or synonymous with, the name and attributes of God or “divine outpouring.” For without water—without God—there is no life. For example, the name given to me in a Kikuyu naming ceremony is nyambura, which combines two terms, nya, meaning a female person, and mbura, meaning the pouring out of rain. nyambura is a female who pours out special blessings from God. Mbura is also the name of a clan of rainmakers in the traditional Kikuyu society who pray for rain around the sacrificial tree called mugumo. Following their special prayers, rain would invariably fall in a matter of a few hours or minutes. Rain, therefore, is a gift of life and a blessing from God, who often comes with the drops of rain. For this reason, water, palm wine, beer, or some other liquid is used for the pouring of libations to symbolize the continuing existence of life and the presence of God. Water is also used for rites of purification and regeneration, symbolizing cleansing and re-creation.

Sounds of nature are incorporated into the performance of ritual. The percussive rhythms of drums, rattles, bells or any improvisatory device which makes a sound of its own, as well as sounds produced by any other instrument, are for the most part imitations of the sounds of nature. In addition to melodic and percussive singing, a number of strident vocal sounds, such as squalling, twirping, and ululation (loud wailing) are imitative of sounds that are heard in the environment. All such sounds are likely to be included in traditional African as well as Christian worship. Thus the wholeness of life is incorporated in the worship of God.

Kinship and Community

The concept of wholeness of life leads naturally to the third aspect of African ontology, which has to do with kinship, family, and extended family relationships. In African thought, each person is an individual with unique qualities and personality, but his or her existence is intricately interrelated with others and with the natural environment. In a variety of ways, most societies would affirm the African adage: “I am because you are; and since we are, therefore, I am.” One comes to traditional worship aware that he or she is part of the whole. Communication takes place not because a person has something to say or do, but because the familial community exists. A “call and response” form of communication is evident in singing, as well as in verbal communication. One does not merely deliver information nor tell a story to the community. The listeners participate with the informant, the griot, or storyteller, interacting with interest in what is being said as though they were part of the story. Verbal dialogue also provides a means of evoking the best efforts of the presenter. Call and response dialogue is also reflected in music and dance as the community responds and participates spontaneously and informally. One cannot help but feel and be drawn into the communal kinship which prevails in these moments.

The African concept of family—and extended family—includes those living, those yet to be born who are still in the loins of the living, and the “living dead,” those up to five generations past who have died. The sense of kinship binds together the entire life of the society and is extended to cover animals, plants, and nonliving objects. I am told that the use of musical instruments made from animal skins and from resources in the natural environment is one way of incorporating the cosmos into the human community. The improvisatory gifts of the community reflect the whole of creation working together with human beings. Kinship largely governs the behavior, patterns of thinking, myths, and rituals of each society.

Relativity of Time

The fourth concept of African ontology involves the relativity of time. In traditional African societies, time is not calculated linearly but is conceptualized in the light of natural phenomena: the passing of day and night, lunar cycles, and the regular cycles of seasons. Time is viewed as meaningful in virtue of the content of the event, not because something will happen at a mathematically preconceived moment. Where rites and rituals are regularized, the community is notified to gather by a variety of means, particularly the talking drums. The time to start an activity arrives whenever enough people are gathered. The length of the activity, including worship, depends upon the involvement of the community. In worship one is likely to hear that “God is not to be hurried, and this is God’s time!”

Sacred Space

The fifth and final concept has to do with sacred space. In traditional religions, space and time are closely linked; the same word is often used for both. Just as with time, space is defined by the content or intent of action. What matters most to the people is what is geographically near. For that reason, Africans are particularly tied to the land; it is a concrete expression of both the past and the present (zamani and sasa). The land, like all of creation, is sacred because it provides Africans with the roots of existence, and binds them mystically to the departed who lived there before them. Certain space within the designated worship area is often set apart as special and considered “off-limits” for certain people. Rites performed to sacralize space are incorporated in Christian worship ceremonies. While attending the dedication of a church building in Kenya recently, I observed that the sacralizing ritual combined traditional Kikuyu and Christian practices. The church had been carefully locked after the builders, both members and non-members of the church, had completed their task. A very lengthy worship service, which included the ordination of the pastor who had been called to the church, took place under a tent on the church lawn. Officials of the denomination then led the procession to the church door, which was blessed by the presiding minister. Only church officials were allowed in the church, and the door was securely locked behind them. A ritual of blessing required that the officiant touch every space that the congregation would use, including the center aisle, the pews and floor space between them, the chancel area, pulpit, lectern, and the area for the choir. The initial words in Kikuyu were repeated in Swahili, loud enough for the waiting congregation to hear. While I did not understand any of the words, it was exciting to read the expressions of approval on the faces of the people and to note how eagerly they listened. The time seemed endless, but thirty minutes later the pastor (who was not allowed to enter before the blessing ceremony was over) responded to a knock on the door from the inside and announced in the languages of the people that the church had been blessed! As the community burst into song, a translation was provided in English, indicating that the ritual was a combination of African traditions and Christianity. Worshipers were rejoicing that the spirits of those who slept in the land had freed the church to worship in that space. I was also reminded that there was no electricity and that if it were ever added, another ceremony would be required.

Once inside the building, the entire congregation took part in additional ceremonies blessing every piece of furniture that had not been blessed before. This included kneeling pads for baptism and marriage, the communion table and baptismal font, and the battery-operated clock on the wall in the room. The strangers from America were also cleansed, blessed, and welcomed to walk on the soil of the spirits of their—and perhaps our—ancestors. Needless to say, the five-hour celebration, which included a meal of barbecued goat, was emotional and heart-warming.

The African Heritage in Christian Worship

In summary, Africans did not arrive in America with a tabula rasa, but with a network of understandings, potentials, and liturgical practices based on African primal worldviews. These are the foundation for liturgical elements which we have discovered, recovered, and in which we freely engage as a form of renewal. All three aspects of this network converge as we equip ourselves for and open ourselves to God’s enabling empowerment. Ours is a deeply religious heritage built upon a cluster of understandings and potentials which our forebears understood:

Awareness of God. As they were already aware of one sovereign God, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, transcendent, and immanent, they were able to relate this awareness to the God of Jesus Christ. Some of the slaves had been introduced to Christianity in Africa. Thus, as they were evangelized in America, they were able to deepen their faith in a God who is “always on time.” Their African memory of God as Spirit helped them to understand the enabling power of God in Jesus Christ.

Wholeness of Life. The concept of the wholeness of life which is not compartmentalized into “sacred” and “secular” results in a perspective which does not confine spiritual concerns to a once-a-week event (on Sunday). “Notoriously religious” Africans continued to build upon their traditions, and in some instances substituted African concepts and terms for those of the Christian faith. For Africans who became Catholics, especially during the slave trade via the Middle Passage to the West Indies, Louisiana, and other southern states, the concept of the saints could serve as a reminder of highly respected ancestors. Wholeness of life undergirds worship, a time when the individual personhood of all gathered is affirmed and celebrated. Empowerment to participate fully in the liturgy is more accurately described as “having church.” Amidst what some have described as liturgical confusion in African-American worship is the African continuum of seeking and finding God at the deepest spiritual level available to an uninhibited, whole people!

Needless to say, the various styles of preaching and praying as well as the forms and style of music and singing in the liturgy reflect this concept of wholeness. Herein is the foundation for improvisation and the use of the whole body in response to the Word of God. It is not difficult to fathom the similarities between forms and styles of music in everyday life and music “in church.” The beat and improvisatory techniques of blues, ragtime, and jazz are employed in some black gospel music, and there is a “rightness” about it.

Family Ties. The importance of family, extended family, and familial relationships in African ontology reinforce the awareness of the beloved community, the body of Christ at worship. Worship provides an opportunity for the community to interact at a level at which knowing and praising God in Jesus Christ and believing that God cares binds individuals to one another. The family and extended family at worship may place limits on or determine parameters for what things are done and how, because people care about each other. This is one reason that early African-Americans sought private spaces for worship: common needs and bondings are necessary for viable worship, hence the emergence of separate congregations and denominations among African-American Christians.

Rites of Passage. The importance attached to rites of passage, rituals, and ceremonies has persisted among Africans in diaspora. Under the slave system, many rites of passage, which helped maintain the wholeness of the community, were restricted. However, remnants of African funeral and burial rites persisted. Later, Christian baptism was filled with reminders of African initiation rites which used water in the symbolism of new life and re-creation, dying of the old, purification, regeneration, and cleansing. The symbolic act of going to or being carried to the water continues to be meaningful. It is not unusual in Africa for baptisms to occur where there is running water, a reminder of the living waters related to renewal and regeneration.

The Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper in African-American churches is related to eating traditions among African peoples. In Christian understanding, the gods and spirits are not to be fed, but humans are fed by the Son of God. The action at the Lord’s table carries with it an African understanding of the significance of the offering of food. The concept of anamnēsis—remembering as if the community actually transcends time and space—partially coincides with the tradition of the African griot, storyteller or oral historian, and thus relates the Lord’s Supper to the function of the preaching of the Word.

Worship Time. The broad parameters governing time in African culture continue in the diaspora and are especially prominent in worship practices. African-Americans have accepted the linear notion of time and have established beginning times for worship. Often operating underneath “established” time, however, is the worldview that regards time as strictly relative. Where this worldview is most evident, worship services may start close to the established hour, but will end when the Holy Spirit determines that worship is over; then and only then is the benediction pronounced.

Sacred Areas. The sacredness of space in God’s creation is observed especially in the way African-Americans view the space for worship. While the nave or sanctuary is sacred, it is available to all worshipers; the area around the pulpit, the communion table, and the baptistry, however, are special, sacred spaces. This sacredness is extended to include those divinely “called” such as the preacher or deliverer of the Word and those appointed to preside at sacred rituals.

Leadership. African community leaders whose roles continue in some form in African-American worship include both males and females. Those in leadership functions are usually viewed with awe and surrounded with mystique, as a result of a perceived divine call to serve in such a capacity. Leadership roles in worship are the mysterious incarnations of the ancient African custodians of worship. The aura of African diviners, priests, prophets, and medicine men and women is absorbed into the roles of preachers, celebrants, and charismatic leaders. The category of mediums, those gifted with insight to discern the degree or quality of spirituality in the ritual and who serve as conduits through which the spiritual is manifested, is absorbed in the matriarchal “Aunt Jane” types and often in the preacher. The African griot is the community historian and storyteller who often “sings” the story; this role is now absorbed in that of the preacher and song leader.