Worship Frames

Worship Frames
Author: Deborah J. Kapp
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2008-09-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1566997062

Worship is a congregation's most important practice. In worship we encounter God's gracious presence and come face to face with the frailty, goodness, and potential of our humanity. We are comforted, corrected, forgiven, healed, challenged, and sometimes even disturbed by the divine and one another. We are morally formed and sent by God into the world. The mysterious and uncontrollable work of the Spirit is at the heart of all genuine worship. Yet worshipers and leaders work hard to worship. In Worship Frames, Deborah Kapp explores how the sociological concept of frames can help us better understand the social and human dynamics of worship. Frames are interpretive schemes or ideas that help people locate, understand, and identify their experiences. For example, opening a service with a period of silent reflection followed by a sober hymn is a different frame for worship than opening with congregational announcements and a loud call-and-response session. She has found that this theory has opened her eyes to dynamics in worship she had not noticed before and best helped her understand differences in worship styles. By understanding our frames, we can learn how to reframe worship to give fuller and richer expression to our faith. Kapp shares her insights with congregations and worship leaders so they will gain new perspectives from which to analyze and design worship, and deepen their perceptions about the role worship plays in faith communities.

Politics as Worship

Politics as Worship
Author: Sumita Pahwa
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2023-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0815656998

Why do leading Islamist movements like the Egyptian Muslim Brothers embrace electoral politics while insisting that their main goal is "working for God," and how do they reconcile political with spiritual goals? Expectations that tension between political and religious organizing would pull the movement apart were not realized when the Brothers achieved electoral success following Egypt’s 2011 uprising. Instead, movement "conservatives" rather than "moderates" came to dominate political work; and political activists framed the movement’s electoral mandate as both popular and divine—arguing that campaigning, policy, and legislation could all be forms of worship. To understand how the movement threaded these disparate missions, Sumita Pahwa examines the movement’s internal debates on preaching, activism, and social reform from the 1980s through the 2000s. She explains how framing political work as ethical conduct, essential for building pious Muslim individuals as well as an Islamic political order, became central to the organization’s functioning. Through a comprehensive analysis of texts, speeches, public communications, interviews, and internal training documents, Pahwa offers a constructivist argument for how the movement has folded religious ideals into political discourse, enabling the leadership to shift the boundaries of justifiable and righteous action. Melding these aims, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood built an influential Islamic political project and a unified identity around "working for God."

The Gospel in a Handshake

The Gospel in a Handshake
Author: Kevin J. Adams
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2019-12-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1725245205

This book enables worship leaders to skillfully guide spiritual novices, skeptics, and Christian veterans to the grace embedded in the timeless liturgy. Offering winsome worship hospitality, these pages provide seasoned wisdom, often in the form of pithy introductions (Adams calls these "frames") that alert worshipers to the character and purpose of various service elements. Readers get the tools to create their own frames, informed by the church of all ages, and customized to their congregation and neighborhood. This book will serve well anyone who wants to increase their missional worship IQ.

Religion in Environmental and Climate Change

Religion in Environmental and Climate Change
Author: Dieter Gerten
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2011-11-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1441166289

Climate change and other global environmental changes deserve attention by the the humanities - they are caused mainly by human attitudes and activities and feed back to human societies. Focussing on religion allows for analysis of various human modes of perception, action and thought in relation to global environmental change. On the one hand, religious organizations are aiming to become "greener"; on the other hand, some religious ideas and practices display fatalism towards impacts of climate change. What might be the fate of different religions in an ever-warming world? This book gathers recent research on functions of religion in climate change from theological, ethical, philosophical, anthropological, historical and earth system analytical perspectives. Charting the spread from regional case studies to global-scale syntheses, the authors demonstrate that world religions and indigenous belief systems are already responding in highly dynamic ways to ongoing and projected climate changes - in theory and practice, for better or for worse. The book establishes the research field "religion in climate change" and identifies avenues for future research across disciplines.

Religion and Commodification

Religion and Commodification
Author: Vineeta Sinha
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2011-04-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1136908250

Using the lens of ‘visuality’ and ‘materiality,’ this book offers insights into the everyday religious lives of Hindus as they strive to sustain theistic, devotional Hinduism in diasporic locations. Relying on primary ethnographic data, the book engages key thematics in the fields of material religion, religion and consumption and visual Hindu culture.

Worship that Makes Sense to Paul

Worship that Makes Sense to Paul
Author: Nijay K. Gupta
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2010-07-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110228904

This book examines Paul’s use of temple, priesthood, and sacrificial metaphors from a cognitive and socio-literary perspective. The final conclusion of a number of scholars in this area of research is that Paul’s cultic metaphors have the theological and rhetorical purpose of encouraging community formation and moral living. Such evaluations, however, often take place without paying sufficient attention to the complexity of Paul’s cultic imagery as well as, from a methodological standpoint, what metaphors are and how they are used in thinking and communicating. Utilizing the tools and insights of conceptual metaphor theory, this study seeks to approach this topic afresh by attending to how metaphors constitute a necessary platform of cognition. Thus, they have world-constructing and perception-transforming utility. In this study, we conclude that, far from being merely about ethics or ecclesiology, Paul’s cultic metaphors act as vehicles for communicating his ineffable theology and ethical perspective. By anchoring his converts’ new experiences in Christ to the world of ancient cult, and its familiar set of terms and concepts, he was attempting to re-describe reality and develop a like-minded community of faith by articulating logikē latreia – 'worship that makes sense'.

The Gospel in a Handshake

The Gospel in a Handshake
Author: Kevin J. Adams
Publisher:
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2019
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532699999

This book enables worship leaders to skillfully guide spiritual novices, skeptics, and Christian veterans to the grace embedded in the timeless liturgy. Offering winsome worship hospitality, these pages provide seasoned wisdom, often in the form of pithy introductions (Adams calls these ""frames"") that alert worshipers to the character and purpose of various service elements. Readers get the tools to create their own frames, informed by the church of all ages, and customized to their congregation and neighborhood. This book will serve well anyone who wants to increase their missional worship IQ.