Liturgy and Public Theology

Abstract

Liturgy is an act of public theology, when considered from the point of view that Christian ritual performance is publicly enacted for the sake of a wider public, and joins the assembly to Jesus Christ, who is himself God's logos tou theou and God's liturgy. Liturgy does this work through its scripted repetition, formality, spatial and temporal patterning, focus on the body, and deployment of the familiar and unfamiliar. Through these modes, a worldview is enacted and valorizes a certain set of virtues and an orientation to living that correspond to that worldview. Among those virtues are gratitude, a desire for reconciliation, the recognition of our dependency of God and responsibility toward others, and a compassionate commitment to the dignity of humanity and the created order. These ritually enacted virtues, practiced in the hope for the full and coming reign of God, will orient the liturgical assembly to particular social, moral, political concerns as worthy of Christian engagement; but liturgical formation will not, in most cases, prescribe detailed courses of action to take when facing specific instances of those concerns.