Abstract
Liturgy as art is one of the various particular relationships between liturgy and the arts. This article engages with “liturgy as public art” and addresses the question “how can urban liturgies be understood as public art in secularizing societies?” It presents three examples of contemporary “urban liturgies,” against the backdrop of the transfer and transformation of Christian liturgical forms and repertories from the church to the wider culture in post-Christian, post-secular Western societies. It then offers an anthropological interpretation of such liturgies, using the notion of play, but highlighting an aspect of play that has, so far, remained underexposed in liturgical studies. Afterwards, it unpacks how this anthropological interpretation is anchored in a Lutheran theological view of God as a playful God (deus ludens), which also gives theology a critical position vis-à-vis liturgical practices. The last section answers the central question by concluding that urban liturgies are alternative occasions that offer a playfield emphatically addressing and challenging people’s hermeneutic capacity to meaningfully deal with the sacred, thus inviting them into God's play. Offering playfields is how these urban liturgies serve the common good: they open up the possibility for people to be drawn into God's play. These liturgies are not just rituals—they are a public art: the art of playing.
Keywords
Introduction
Liturgy as art is one of the various relationships between liturgy and the arts. 1 I have been kindly invited to engage, here, with “liturgy as public art.” The rationale underlying this article is that liturgy is a public service of God to the whole world, and includes our service on behalf of the world. I shall explain this below and reveal the question that concerns me at the present time. But, since liturgy cannot be studied apart from its context, let me first give the context from which I speak. 2
As scholars have observed, ecclesial forms of liturgy and liturgical repertories are being transferred from the church to the wider culture in contemporary Western societies: from church assemblies, they fan out into gatherings in public squares and concert halls. 3 Such a transfer of liturgical forms is not new: liturgical history contains several examples from ages past. In 1829, for example, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy directed Bach's Matthäuspassion, which was composed for the liturgy, in a shorter version as part of a charity concert in the concert hall of the Berlin Sing-Akademie. 4 Further back in time, in the Middle Ages, vernacular liturgical dramas developed from short playlets staged in churches into longer plays including music, dance, and processions, performed in the squares or courts outside of churches and throughout the streets. 5 Although not new, the current transfer of liturgical forms in Western societies is unique in the sense that it is taking place in “post-Christian contexts,” or in what we have come to term “a secular world.” I am referring, here, to societal contexts in which processes of secularization have taken place. Institutionalized Christianity has been receding for decades and processes of “de-churching,” that is, decreasing church membership and church attendance, have progressed, as shown by research on Christianity in, for example, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, and the USA. Church buildings are being closed, sold, or demolished. 6 Over past decades, numerous scholars have characterized the role and place of Christian liturgy, of the church, and even of Christianity as a whole, as becoming increasingly marginal in large parts of Western societies. 7 Yet, interestingly, it appears that Christian liturgical forms and repertories do not vanish: as stated, they have been moved from the church to the wider culture. 8 This transfer often goes hand in hand with the transformations of these forms and repertories: people appropriate them in various ways, leave out certain things, add new elements, and ascribe their own meanings to them.
Liturgical forms and repertory on the move give us the opportunity to discover new things, and discover other things anew. In this article on liturgy as public art, I shall focus on urban liturgies: an open concept referring to liturgical rituals that have moved to and are performed in urban settings (e.g., in cities, towns, or suburbs). These rituals are performed outdoors—in the streets or in large central squares—but also inside buildings; for example, in large and famous concert halls, or in (often age-old) church buildings with cathedral allure; and they are also often broadcast on TV or live-streamed on the internet. This focus on urban liturgies intends to make the topic manageable in the framework of this article—and, hopefully, enjoyable, since this is also supposed to stir the reader's imagination. The central question I engage with today asks: how can urban liturgies be understood as public art in secularizing societies? It must be noted, here, that I use “urban liturgy” as a heuristic lens: I am not interested in setting strict boundaries that serve to distinguish between, for example, official liturgies and unofficial liturgies. Rather, I use the concept to discover the way in which liturgy can be understood as public art.
To manage the expectations of those who compose the international and ecumenical body of Societas Liturgica, I shall clarify my own background and theological commitments: I am a Dutch scholar in theology who, over the past decade, has studied liturgical and ritual practices on the interface between the sacred and the secular, and whose theology—also her liturgical theology—is informed by her Lutheran upbringing and education. Thus, in the background of this article, I am also exploring what a Lutheran theology of worship brings to the ecumenical conversation.
This article is organized as follows: I shall first briefly unpack the rationale that undergirds my view of liturgy as public art (2). Then, I shall present some examples of urban liturgies (3) and offer an anthropological interpretation using the notion of play, but highlighting an aspect of play that has, so far, remained underexposed in liturgical studies (4). This anthropological interpretation is anchored in a theological view of God as a playful God, upon which I shall subsequently elaborate (5). The concluding section shall offer a summary and answer the central question I have posed (6).
Theological Rationale
The best introduction to the rationale that underpins this article is to share an experience I had on the evening of Maundy Thursday in 2011. I was standing in the market in the city center of Gouda, in the Netherlands. I had my back turned to the historic and monumental church Sint Janskerk, and was facing the main stage for the musical performance of the passion of Jesus Christ. On the stage, the narrator gave the following urban ritual introduction: It is 8:30 p.m. on Maundy Thursday, three days before Easter. Welcome to Gouda! […] Tonight, Gouda forms the stage for The Passion: the story of Jesus Christ's last hours, communicated through images, words, and well-known Dutch pop songs […] The sacred united with worldly music in a way the Netherlands has never seen or heard before. It is a story of sacrifice, forgiveness, of hope. But also a story of love so powerful that throughout the world, millions of people have talked about it across the ages. And, as the most widely-read book in the world states: God did not send his son Jesus to judge people, but to save them. So: let us go with him. – Narrator Jakhals Erik, April 21, 2011, The Passion, Market Square, Gouda
What struck me that night in the square is what still strikes me as very powerful: that in Christian liturgy, we express our creative skill by imagining that God's reality and our reality are connected. Our stories, our lives are included in God's story with us. In the world that is, we celebrate, for a moment, the world that ought to be, that was promised to us and that we hope for: on earth as it is in heaven.
Christian liturgy, in my view, is a ritual with a symbolic dimension that expresses and shapes, here and now, our imagination of ideas, ideals, and our identity in Christ. 9 Such expression of creativity and imagination is what constitutes various definitions of the arts as well; hence I define liturgy as an art, namely as ritual art. 10 Aidan Kavanagh gives a much more eloquent and comprehensive description of liturgy when he writes that it is “the ritual of a Word made flesh for the life of the world, as a ministry of reconciliation between God and all persons and things in Christ.” 11 Kavanagh's description acknowledges the ritual aspect that allows for an understanding of liturgy as art, but he adds two other aspects that are crucial when engaging with the topic of liturgy as public art. First, the scope of liturgy is the whole world: never is the liturgy meant only for those who are present, nor, insofar as it is a work of humans, is it performed only on behalf of those who are present. Secondly, liturgy is God's ministry aimed at the whole world. The latter becomes even clearer in another definition of liturgy, by my colleague Marcel Barnard, who describes it as “a service of God to humans that evokes, carries, and comprises the service of humans to God.” 12 Thus, all liturgy is God's, all liturgy is God's service to all, and the whole world is included in the service of humans to God.
Three Examples
To give you an idea of what such urban liturgies look like in secularizing contexts, I shall give three examples. These are all taken from the Netherlands. 13
National Blessing of the New Year 2021 in the Kloosterkerk by the 2020 Theologian Laureate—broadcast on national TV
On the first Sunday of 2021 (January 3), shortly before noon, the Evangelical Broadcasting Company broadcast the National Blessing of the New Year 2021 on Dutch television, a new tradition in which the Theologian Laureate speaks “a blessing over all the Dutch people.” 14 The Reverend Almatine Leene—who, in November 2020, was the first female minister to be ordained in The Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (Liberated) 15 and was elected the Dutch Theologian Laureate about the same time 16 —presented a program consisting of artworks, solo dance, and music in this 25-minute broadcast. While walking through the fourteenth-century church building, the Kloosterkerk in The Hague, she narrated the biblical story wherein Jacob crosses the Jabbok River and wrestles with the angel (Gen 32). She presented this program dressed not in liturgical vestments, but, rather, a pink lace dress.
At the end of the program, Leene linked Jacob's blessing and his re-naming to the promise of a new beginning, and concluded the program with a Dutch blessing, saying: I really hope that in this new year, we can hug each other again, or shake hands. But it may well take some time. And precisely for that reason, I want to say the blessing. Because basically, we cannot control life. The blessing encourages us […] (raises hands to perform the blessing). I hope that you can experience that God is there, on all your paths, whatever river you may need to cross, in all you do and all wrestling with life. Know that the Eternal God is there for you, wants to give you strength for the new year, to surround us with love and to take us by the hand. The Lord bless us in this New Year, 2021. God bless the Netherlands. Amen.
Choral Evensongs Concerts
A second example is the choral Evensongs, an Anglican liturgical form that has become highly popular in the Netherlands in recent decades. This popularity led Liturgical Studies scholar Hanna Rijken to investigate Dutch practices of Evensongs, which have been appropriated and are celebrated outside the context of the Anglican Church, yet often in the English language. Rijken discovered that “Evensongs are held in monumental churches; [that] boys’ choirs and mixed choirs dress up in cathedral vestments and perform a complete liturgy with English preces and responses, psalms, lessons, canticles, an anthem, and hymns; [that] the churches are full of people, [and that] sometimes participants have to pay money for an entrance ticket.” 18 These Evensongs take the shape of a concert, or (semi-)ecclesial performance. 19 The monumental church buildings with their acoustics, and especially the aesthetic quality of the singing and the rite (e.g., the procession of the choirs), are the dominant qualities of these urban liturgies, in such a way that (most) Dutch choral Evensongs can be described as having turned into musical rituals with, in most cases, the choir as their focal point. In addition to the sacred spaces of monumental medieval or neo-Gothic churches chosen for the celebration of Evensongs, it is the use of the non-vernacular and archaic liturgical language that contributes to the experiences of sacrality, mystery, and beauty for which people appear to yearn. 20
The 150 Psalms Festival
A third and final example of an urban liturgy is a large cultural event staged in 2017, at the two-day festival, 150 Psalms. The festival is initiated by Tido Visser, artistic and managing director of the Nederlands Kamerkoor (Netherlands Chamber Choir), and organized and performed by this choir together with three internationally famous choirs: The Tallis Scholars, Det Norske Solistkor, and The Choir of Trinity Wall Street. 21 The festival features choral performances of all the 150 biblical psalms (each set to music by a different composer) across twelve concerts, pairing these with speeches by well-known literary authors, with art installations and lectures by international intellectuals. The festival was first performed in one of the largest Dutch concert halls, Tivoli Vredenburg in Utrecht, 22 but has been reprised in other cities: New York, 23 Brussels, 24 and, in part, in Amsterdam. 25 In 2020, the festival toured Adelaide and Hong Kong. The festival's temporal structure was inspired by the Christian Divine Office. Vogel et al. write: “The issue of what the (supposed) religiosity or sacredness of the psalms means within the context of a cultural festival is a recurring, sometimes latent, question in the presentation of the festival … However, in all of these texts, the psalms are nevertheless considered a heritage worthy of conservation for the future.” 26
These urban liturgies fly under different banners: a blessing, a concert, a festival. They almost always include music and biblical verses or narratives. They are not initiated by institutionalized churches, but are, rather, primarily organized and performed by others, such as a broadcasting company, a Theologian Laureate, a dance company, professional and amateur choirs, artistic directors of world-class choirs, festival organizations and conductors, all of whom relate to the church in different ways. The transfer of these liturgical forms and repertory from the domain of the church to the wider cultural domain means that these practices are no longer confined to the worship of the institutionalized church, but occur in the context of concerts and cultural projects. 27 At the same time, these practices in the cultural domain would be inconceivable without institutionalized churches. The Theologian Laureate Almatine Leene, for example, is a minister of a Reformed Church; the Passion was initiated by a Christian TV producer and an evangelical broadcasting company, and supported by the Dutch Protestant Church. Without the existence of institutionalized churches, the 150 Psalms festival would not have drawn as much attention.
Urban liturgies like these are, in other words, embedded in the dynamics of cult and culture in the context of secularization processes. They generally do not lead to increasing numbers of churchgoers, let alone conversions to Christianity. Yet they engage many people: Christians as well as Muslims, and atheists or agnostics, among others. Several empirical research studies in ritual and liturgical studies have shown that transferred and transformed liturgical forms and repertory offer, among other things, comfort, solace, pleasure, a feeling of being lifted, togetherness, solidarity, beauty; experiences that relate to the sacred. 28 One could rightly pose the question whether these urban liturgies are actually liturgies, but I think it is more helpful to view institutional liturgy and urban liturgies in secularizing contexts as two ends of a continuum: a continuum of play. I shall elaborate this in the next section.
Urban Liturgies: Offering the Art of Play
In my view, urban liturgies invite participants to engage in the ars ludendi (“the art of playing”) that the church has practiced from its inception. Describing these urban liturgies in terms of ritual art is a way of appreciating liturgical rituals in secular settings; urban liturgies should not be seen as “derivatives” of “the real thing” (e.g., “ecclesial liturgy”), but, rather, as forms of play—just like the liturgy of the church. All spring from the same root, namely, the human capacity for play. Christian ritual repertory and liturgical forms offer people the opportunity to engage with the sacred. The notion of play has been employed to characterize the liturgy and has been discussed at length by various scholars in and outside the field of liturgical and ritual studies. 29 Most famous is Romano Guardini's dictum that liturgy is play: “To be at play, or to fashion a work of art in God's sight—such is the essence of liturgy.” 30 Similarly: “It [the soul, MK] must learn not to be continually yearning to do something, to attack something, to accomplish something useful, but to play the divinely ordained game of the liturgy in liberty and beauty and holy joy before God.” 31 For Guardini, the liturgy has no purpose; it has meaning (that is, significance). 32 By defining liturgy in terms of play, Guardini and many others have strongly emphasized this purposelessness. 33 However, I want to emphasize a different aspect of play, namely, its hermeneutical character. The reason for this is that in the context of ongoing secularization processes, this hermeneutical aspect of play becomes more, perhaps even most important. In this section I turn to the disciplines of anthropology and sociology, which can help us to further explore this hermeneutical character.
Anthropologist of religion André Droogers has elaborated the hermeneutical character of play. Droogers defines play as a practice of connecting realities. Droogers considers play a human capacity: it is “the capacity to deal simultaneously and subjunctively with two or more ways of classifying reality.” 34 The term subjunctively is taken from Victor Turner's work, and refers to the fact that people can imagine other worlds and other realities “as if” they are real. 35 This resonates with what I described above as part of the theological rationale: that in liturgical ritual we practice the art of connecting God's reality and our reality—an art that employs our faculty of imagination. Droogers pitches the practice of play as a hermeneutical practice: putting two realities together simultaneously helps people to explore new ways of seeing things. This hermeneutic pitch connects with what sociologist of religion Nancy Ammerman has termed “sacred consciousness,” thus pointing to a characteristic that many individuals possess, whether or not they are affiliated with religion; that is, a hermeneutical faculty for dealing with the sacred in their lives. 36 Ammerman places the ability to mark something as sacred within the individual. “Sacred meaning” is thus constructed by humans: the meaning that people hold as ultimately valuable, or non-negotiable. 37 Here, Ammerman diverges from Guardini, who locates the meaning (i.e., significance) of the liturgy in the liturgy itself. 38 In such meaning-making practices, the boundaries between the religious and the secular are blurred, and “the sacred” is negotiated, recognized, found, discovered, and encountered. The sacred is constructed dynamically, as a result of ritual appropriation and processes in which meanings are ascribed to (experiences of) practices. These processes have been theorized as the rise of, among other things, “the spirituality of seeking” and of a “quest culture.” 39
In secularizing contexts—notwithstanding the fact that the increasing marginality of Christianity in parts of the Western world may be considered as a loss 40 —the human ability to construct sacred meaning offers opportunities for people to find the sacred in liturgical forms and repertory that have been transferred and transformed. The urban liturgies we are examining in this article offer to non-believers, ex-believers, church people, atheists, Christians, agnostics, and so forth a playground, or an interface, that may trigger or even induce their hermeneutical faculties for dealing with the sacred. As any liturgy, these urban liturgies invite people here and now to engage with the other reality that liturgical forms and repertory playfully present; to see things differently or in a new light, by combining reality as is with a reality presented, performed, longed for, and promised. The National Blessing by the Theologian Laureate on TV combines the reality of the start of a new year in the midst of a pandemic with the reality of God, who has promised to be there also in times of crisis; and the reality of God who has called pastors to the ministry, proclaiming the Word in the public arena for the common good. The choral Evensongs and their liturgical order in concentrated moments juxtapose the reality of daily life and the noise of the city with the aesthetic and purifying quality of the performed rite and the beautifully performed choral music, which open the door to experiences of the sacred. They combine the reality of what participants have described as “the smallness of reformed church life in the Netherlands” with the reality of worldwide Christianity as presented by the larger Anglican tradition. 41 The 150 Psalms festival combines the reality of a two-day music festival event with the reality of human beings who, in the psalms, express coram Deo their thankfulness, despair, hope, comfort, and so forth; and combines both realities with the reality of monastic practices that have structured time and life before God for ages. 42
In summary, we can say that an anthropological view of liturgy as public art yields the insight that Christian ritual offers the ars ludendi—to congregations in church buildings and to participants in urban liturgies alike—by invoking the human capacity for play. This capacity is rooted in nothing less than God's own being, which is a theological claim that I shall unpack in the next section.
Deus ludens: A Lutheran Theological Perspective
Having explored the hermeneutical character of play with the help of anthropology and sociology of religion, I return to the discipline of theology. My theological claim is that God can be seen as the Lord of the play: homo ludens is a creation of deus ludens. First, this theological perspective deepens the liturgical reflection by driving the human capacity for play into God's own being. Secondly, and, more importantly, it gives theology a critical position vis-à-vis any liturgical ritual practice.
The Lord of the play is the One who created humankind by teasingly blowing into Adam's nostrils; who created humankind as a species that playfully makes sense of the world. Deus ludens is the one in whose image and likeness we are made—the homo ludens, to use the words of Johan Huizinga 43 —the one who has playfully interacted with us ever since creation, “genesizing” together, enjoying the becoming of things, forms, and the world; exploring ways of seeing things differently, imagining new views and frames, combining them with the world as it is. In short, play is the mode of living that God envisioned for us; play is God's service to human beings that takes, among other things, the shape of liturgy—which evokes, carries, and comprises our play, in other words, our service to God and the world. I find support for this theological view in the work of Martin Luther. 44 According to Luther, God's playfulness pervades the relationship between God and human creatures; this relationship is typified by play. 45 In Luther's view, God plays games to draw the players closer together. As a consequence, a Christian “never outgrows God's play”: it is a fundamental element of the relationship. God's play is not aimed at independence, but at shaping people in “spiritual growth,” “an ever-deepening faith and reliance upon God.” 46 This is why the liturgy never ceases: it is the ongoing play of humans and God.
Similar to the play in which the faithful engage in congregations and parishes, with or without clergy, urban liturgies are playfields on which God interacts with human beings in order to draw them closer. In the broadcast of the National Blessing of the New Year, the Theologian Laureate offers a glimpse of the reality that the pandemic will be over, emphasizes the fact that human beings cannot control life—indeed, God is the play-master—and tries to assure the nation of the reality that God is present throughout the struggles of life and will provide strength in the new year. 47 In the choral Evensongs, the reality of the here and now is amplified with the reality of God's self-revelation in, with, and through the beauty of sound and the liturgical ordo, the Scriptures, and the typical use of archaic English language. The festival staging 150 Psalms offers the opportunity to enter and be immersed in the reality of the Psalter—God's work given to the world—set to music through the ages and sung by choirs offering a public service on behalf of all listeners by performing expressions of despair, gratitude, laud, and praise, even beyond what some people, nowadays, say they are able to believe.
Humans, however, do not always abide by God's rules in play, and this gives theology a critical position vis-à-vis any liturgical ritual practice. Already, in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve broke the rules of fair play; and ever since, people have tried to take over the role of game leader, to decide (in God's name) who is included and who has lost the right to play along. For the liturgy, this critical role of theology works in two directions. On one hand, it criticizes harmful play: unless it is corrupt play, humans can never use Christian worship to cast others out or to be self-congratulatory. In this sense, the National Blessing, which includes a hymn melody evoking strong identification with the Dutch soccer team and Dutch victory could acquire unhealthy traits. On the other hand, a theology of play prevents the liturgy from becoming a feel-good ritual celebrated for its own sake: liturgy closed in on itself, losing its outlook on God and the world and, thus, ruling out the Lord of the play. 48 Theologically speaking, urban liturgy can never be the kind of public service that sends evaluation forms to consumers afterwards to gauge whether the play has met their expectations: whether it feels good, or whether we like it, is not the most important thing. God's play always has this little sharp edge through it: liturgy is exciting and beautiful, but also disruptive or disturbing. 49 So, if the play does not feel entirely familiar, or if we are not completely comfortable, if we are not sure in which direction the play leads us, it is probably God blowing into our nostrils.
Conclusion: Ars Ludendi as Public Service
It is time to wrap up and answer this article's central question: how can urban liturgies be understood as public art in secularizing societies?
For people in secularizing societies who do not, or no longer (wish to) participate in ecclesial liturgy, urban liturgies are alternative occasions that offer a playfield to emphatically address and challenge their hermeneutic capacity to meaningfully deal with the sacred; inviting them into God's play. This means that these occasions become increasingly important as processes of secularization proceed. Offering playfields is how these urban liturgies serve the common good: they open up the possibility for people to be drawn into God's play. These liturgies are not just rituals—they are a public art: the art of playing. The church has patronized this art for centuries by celebrating the liturgy within and outside the walls of church buildings, recognizing and supporting play as a way in which the Lord of the play draws human beings closer, inviting them to the game of creative hermeneutics, and to combine reality as it occurs to them with one or more realities that offer new insights, perspectives, and revelations. The church is called to engage in God's invitation to be liberated from one's own game, from being locked in a single and/or fixed reality.
The image of deus ludens, who invites the whole world to play, reaffirms that urban liturgies in secularizing contexts and institutional liturgy are to be viewed on a continuum of play in which ritual practices are connected because they are rooted in God's relationship with humans, and as such are God's service to the world. In relating this to the rationale that liturgy is a public service of God to the whole world, which includes our service on behalf of the world, we must acknowledge that urban liturgies in secularizing contexts differ from ecclesial liturgy in the extent to which they evoke, carry, and comprise humans’ service to God. In short, urban liturgies, whether or not humans serve God, are more diffuse: not all will recognize or celebrate these rituals as a service to God.
In secularizing societies, Christians (or, the baptized) appear to have an important role in the art of play. Whether they are the Theologian Laureate of a particular year, the artistic director of a TV production company, or an independent choir director working in the cultural sector, the baptized, recognizing that God's play is a public service, are called to join the performance of liturgical play organized by others, for example in urban liturgies. The church's patronage of the ars ludendi may thus be seen as a kind of leitourgia that helps activate humanity's hermeneutical capacity, which is God's service of human liberation; indeed, a “means of grace” that “re-members the world” in all its needs before God, as the Congress statement puts it. 50 Ideally, this leitourgia includes critical reflection (or at least conversation) with other Christians, aimed at preventing liturgical play from doing harm or losing its external outlook; in short, to prevent urban liturgies from going theologically awry.
Framing the public service of urban liturgies as ars ludendi is an act of anthropological and theological interpretation. Regarding the latter, I have offered a Lutheran view on this topic, which is one possible perspective. Our reflections on the topic would greatly benefit from the input of other theological voices and from the ecumenical conversation in order to reflect on the topic from different theological viewpoints. This ecumenical enterprise, itself, is otherwise a form of play: in search of perspectives, we combine the reality of urban liturgies in secularizing societies as it presents itself to us with the realities offered by various possible theological interpretations, thus exploring new ways of seeing things and drawing us closer to the Lord of the play. Thank God for that service.
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