Hearing our Prayers: An Examination of Liturgical Listening

'... there could be no saying without hearing, no speaking which is not an integral part of listening, no speech which is not somehow received'. With these words philosopher Gemma Corradi Fuimara challenges us to acknowledge that speech is completed by hearing, but although almost all studies of Christian worship attend to the words spoken and sung, almost none consider how worshippers hear in the liturgical event. Drawing upon insights from philosophy, anthropology, musicology, as well as theology and liturgical studies, this book offers researchers of historical and contemporary liturgy, ministers and the informed layperson new tools to investigate the experience of worship.
Each ecclesial community creates a distinctive soundscape which entails distinctive listening practices. The concept of the 'soundscape' facilitates a more focussed investigation of the intentional and unintentional sounds of worship, and how these convey relational, situational and dogmatic content. Further chapters explore models of liturgical listening and approaches to the reception of particular sounds: silence and noise, speech and music. Church design, from the basilica and dome, to the auditorium and the sound system, reflect the use of technologies in support of cultural
practices of listening; and preachers and polemicists have not been slow to emphasise the ethical and spiritual imperative to attentive listening in church! The book will suggest that the actual worship sounds, the values applied to them, and the implied and actual modes of listening reflect the identity and community memory (traditions) of the local, inculturated worshipping community, just as much as they do the denominational institutions they represent.