Rethinking ‘active participation’ after a pandemic

Matthew Salisbury

doi:10.1177/0040571x211056792

Abstract

This article argues that the reimagining of Christian worship during the coronavirus pandemic beginning in 2020 calls for a consequent repositioning of the term ‘active participation’ in worship. It argues that the various gifts and capacities of a dispersed worshipping community point to kinds of participation in typical ‘in-person’ worship that are often overlooked. Reference is made to Paul’s theology of the members of the body of Christ and to the practice of music.

Highlights

This article argues that the reimagining of Christian worship during the coronavirus pandemic beginning in 2020 calls for a consequent repositioning of the term ‘active participation’ in worship
The use of the term ‘active participation’ here echoes its use in Sacrosanctum Concilium,[2] the first document to be promulgated by the Second Vatican Council and arguably the most influential text on Christian worship of the last century
The Council argued that: all the faithful should be led to that fully conscious, and active participation . . . which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy . . . [Such participation] is the aim to be Corresponding author: Matthew Salisbury Email: matthew.cheung-salisbury@music.ox.ac.uk considered before all else; for it is the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit

Summary

The digital medium

Marshall McLuhan, pioneer of media studies, famously coined the aphorism ‘the medium is the message’: it is so, ‘because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action . . . it is only too typical that the “content” of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium’.11 The classic example he gives, electric light, has no apparent meaning until it is used for a purpose: illuminating the darkness of the night to make possible various human activities, for instance. Liturgical scholars are familiar with the principle of the ‘inculturation’ of worship – that is, the ‘creative and dynamic relationship between the Christian message and a culture or cultures’.13. For Teresa Berger, it seems a natural if perhaps misguided reaction to suppose that the active participation imagined in Sacrosanctum Concilium is not possible in an online context Such an assumption exposes an unsatisfactory understanding of active participation: Even in a technologically basic example such as online eucharistic adoration, the worshipper is not purely and passively receiving the image of a monstrance through a webcam on a screen . From what source come the differences between the ‘abstract self’ and real individuals?

The diverse properties of the body of Christ

Listening as participation

An appeal for renewed catechesis