God and Mystery in Words
Experience through Metaphor and Drama
Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, British, Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Religion & Spirituality
| Author: | David Brown | ISBN: | 9780191607899 |
| Publisher: | OUP Oxford | Publication: | March 20, 2008 |
| Imprint: | OUP Oxford | Language: | English |
| Author: | David Brown |
| ISBN: | 9780191607899 |
| Publisher: | OUP Oxford |
| Publication: | March 20, 2008 |
| Imprint: | OUP Oxford |
| Language: | English |
In God and Mystery in Words David Brown uses the way in which poetry and drama have in the past opened people to the possibility of religious experience as a launch pad for advocating less wooden approaches to Christian worship today. So far from encouraging imagination and exploration, hymns and sermons now more commonly merely consolidate belief. Again, contemporary liturgy in both its music and its ceremonial fails to take seriously either current dramatic theory or the sociology of ritual. Yet this was not always so. Imagery and hymns mattered, liturgial msic encouraged a sense of drama, sermons required rhetoric. In a characteristically stimulatling and inspiringly expansive study, that ranges from ancient Greek drama to modern poetry, from the meaning of the Logos to the history of vestments, David Brown pleads for a much wider focus on the kind of factors that aid experience of God.
In God and Mystery in Words David Brown uses the way in which poetry and drama have in the past opened people to the possibility of religious experience as a launch pad for advocating less wooden approaches to Christian worship today. So far from encouraging imagination and exploration, hymns and sermons now more commonly merely consolidate belief. Again, contemporary liturgy in both its music and its ceremonial fails to take seriously either current dramatic theory or the sociology of ritual. Yet this was not always so. Imagery and hymns mattered, liturgial msic encouraged a sense of drama, sermons required rhetoric. In a characteristically stimulatling and inspiringly expansive study, that ranges from ancient Greek drama to modern poetry, from the meaning of the Logos to the history of vestments, David Brown pleads for a much wider focus on the kind of factors that aid experience of God.
