The Embodied Space of Worship: Liturgical Signs and Liturgical Bodies in Contemporary Finnish Orthodox Lay Worship

This book focuses on the significant roles and functions of laypeople in performing the signs of the Orthodox Divine Liturgy in one local, Finnish, context, observed in 2014–2016. By their bodily signs, laypeople took part in performing liturgical figures that shaped the celebration of the Mystery and characterized the different parts of the ordo. Lay liturgical figures and signs are structurally and functionally significant in worship, and enabled semiotic categories to emerge. The performance of liturgical signs and figures had its historical roots in and concurrent strong relationships with the regulation of the canons and the theological insights of the mystagogues. The church emerged in the observed liturgies as a body-space of people, spaces, liturgical signs, and signification: an embodied space of worship.