Healing liturgy: The role of music and singing

Coenie J Calitz

doi:10.4102/ve.v38i1.1628

Abstract

Apart from all the other functions of liturgical singing and music, it also has a pastoral function or aim. Within the normal Sunday-to-Sunday liturgy, singing and music aims at promoting and restoring spiritual well-being. Within communities struck by disaster or grief, liturgical singing aims at healing people and processing their loss and ultimately promoting spiritual wellness by restoring or reshaping their picture of God. A brief look at liturgies in a lamenting congregation by means of an autoethnography illustrates the functional use of music and singing in the process of spiritual or emotional healing, thus illustrating the role of music in worship as an in-between experience: between laughter and lament.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The article explores the role of music and singing in healing liturgy in a descriptive way, using ethnography and autoethnography to describe the process. Although the article refers to insights from pastoral therapy, it only makes suggestions for liturgy and in a lesser sense, hymnology.

Highlights

In a culture dominated by the visual and the verbal, the significance of music is perplexing, and is underestimated. (Storr 1992:xii)A few years ago a short video with the title ‘The best coin ever spent’ was released on the Internet (Wimp n.d.)
This article aims at understanding the healing function of music and singing within the liturgy of the worship service
Liturgy in broader context refers to the liturgy of life, while in narrower context it refers to the liturgy of the worship service (Louw & Nida 1989:9)

Summary

Introduction

In a culture dominated by the visual and the verbal, the significance of music is perplexing, and is underestimated. (Storr 1992:xii). Hymnological studies, on the other hand, identify many more functions for liturgical singing – these include a pastoral function, which among other aims at healing individuals as well as a congregation. This article aims at understanding the healing function of music and singing within the liturgy of the worship service. The literature study is followed by an autoethnographic description of a congregation in the process of loss and grief, with the aim of describing the role singing and music played in the healing process. The author of this article (Pastor B) was part of the grieving congregation, and the emotions, processes and liturgies are described from the viewpoint of the author by means of an autoethnographic study. The autoethnographic study (and methodology) will be described in the second part of the article

Literature study

Conclusion