Worship as Meaning
Worship as Meaning
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How, in this Christian age of belief, can we draw sense from the ritual acts of Christians assembled in worship? Convinced that people shape their meanings from the meanings available to them, Graham Hughes inquires into liturgical constructions of meaning within the larger cultural context of late twentieth-century meaning theory. Major theories of meaning are examined in terms of their contribution or hindrance to this meaning making: analytic philosophy, phenomenology, structuralism and deconstruction. Drawing particularly upon the work of Charles Peirce, Hughes turns to semiotic theory to analyse the construction, transmission and apprehension of meaning within an actual worship service. Finally the book analyses the ways in which various worshipping styles of western Christianity undertake this meaning making. Taking account of late modern values and precepts, this ground-breaking book will appeal to teachers and students of theology, to clergy, and to thoughtful lay Christians.
- Ground-breaking attempt to address the question of liturgical meaning from the points of view of the major twentieth-century theories of meaning
- Offers a unique semiotic analysis of worship
- Surveys the current styles of liturgical theology and offers a new approach, taking into account late modern values and precepts
Reviews & endorsements
"Hughes's book is a welcome call to disciplined reflection about the ways in which we worship and a challenge to the accepted pieties of most church traditions." Tim Gorringe, University of Exeter, Theology Today
"Worship As Meaning remains an important book that belongs on the essential reading list and will surely further the conversation in liturgical theology and liturgical hermeneutics." Anglican Theological Review, James Farwell, The General Theological seminary, New York City
"Hughes' work provides a movement toward an enhanced relationship between liturgy and semiotics." - Theological Studies, Thomas J. Scirghi, S.J., Jesuit School of Theology and Berkeley
"Hughes has ably introduced a theological readership to the difficult world of Peircean semiotics and given it a strong glimpse of its extremely fruitful potential for liturgical theology. Moreover, he has in an exemplary fashion pressed his readers to identify, diagnose and find solutions to their distinctive challenges presently facing Christian worshipping communities in theri meaning-making strategies. Finally, we are in Hughes' debt for showing us, albeit in a fragmentary and partial fashion, how the practical bearings of a number of 'semiotic habits' of Christian life might re-orient and re-shape the Christian body twoard God, the world and one another in ways that prove faithful to its best own most possibilities." - Jim Fodor, Department of Theology
Product details
September 2003Paperback
9780521535571
340 pages
227 × 155 × 18 mm
0.47kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Part I. The Making of Meaning:
- 1. Meaning in worship
- 2. 'Theory of Meaning' at the end of the twentieth century
- 3. Dimensions of a theory of meaning for worship
- Part II. Signs of Wonder:
- 4. The liturgical sign (i)
- 5. The liturgical sign (ii)
- 6. Sign production, sign reception
- 7. Liturgical theology
- 8. At the edge of the known
- Epilogue
- Bibliography.
