Sacred Stagings

By: Timm Siering

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Synopsis: Liturgical acts can be understood as performances. In this context, the focus is on the specific stagings within the diverse landscape of worship services, prompting an analysis that primarily explores the hermeneutics of individual liturgical practices and artifacts. The understanding of worship in this work is not primarily derived from a semiotic interpretation of worship based on theater theories. Rather, it becomes evident that worship services unfold their character as a cultural practice sui generis especially where they fundamentally differ from theater by presenting themselves as something other than everyday life. Guided by a concept of performativity developed primarily in religious education, a distinction is made between the factual and tactical design of liturgical processes. Following some terminological considerations, this is first illustrated using the example of the entrance rite. Here, the intentions and effects of individual traditional formulations and their situational adaptations are compared. Finally, three case studies focus on musical and pop-cultural approaches to an understanding of worship that, when thought of from the perspective of music, can be described as &“liturgicking.&”