Liturgy in Migration: From the Upper Room to Cyberspace was born out of a conference hosted by the Yale Institute for Sacred Music in February 2011. This contextual detail shapes the flow of this book and how its various voices come together. Organized around the theme of liturgy in migration, each chapter in this work offers a unique take on the theme, inviting the reader into a multifaceted exploration overall.
Reading the book as a whole does give the impression of attending an academic conference, where each unique voice offers a simultaneously abbreviated and in-depth look at his or her expertise. As with a conference presentation, the results can be illuminating or over one's head, all depending on how the expert invites the audience into his or her presentation.
Liturgy in Migration is a great fit for a library and can best be approached as a gathering of chapters that offer interpretations on the theme. Thus both researchers and teachers will appreciate the freedom to browse the book's contents for relevant chapters and to seek these out directly. Of course, if one's area of teaching or research is liturgy in migration from a variety of ecumenical, historical, and contemporary perspectives, this is the perfect book. For others with a more specific research topic or a broader task for teaching liturgy, individual chapters will serve better.
Some chapters stand out as especially illuminating candidates for the reading list of any course in contemporary pastoral liturgy or faith and culture. Graham Ward's “Belonging to the Church” is a relevant and compelling conversation starter about cultural and ecclesial belonging and would enrich the discussion in any ecclesiology course. Jonathan Y. Tan's “Asian American Catholics and Contemporary Liturgical Migrations: From Tradition Maintenance to Traditioning” is a valuable invitation to understand tradition as a living and dynamic reality, as he situates it in the context of the Asian American immigrant experience. This chapter, along with Karen B. Westerfield Tucker's chapter on Methodism's origins and contemporary life in Singapore and Cambodia, Kostis Kourelis and Vasileios Marinis's chapter on Greek Orthodox immigration to America, Raul Gomez-Ruiz's chapter on Mozarabic and Hispanic devotion to the cross, Kay Kaufman Shelemay's chapter on the liturgical migrations of the Ethiopian Orthodox diaspora, and Charles E. Farhadian's examples of a globalized liturgy from Papua, Africa, Peru, Indonesia, India, and China are all fresh and invaluable glimpses of our multicultural world and insist on global considerations of liturgy.
In addition to these chapters, researchers will undoubtedly find other excellent chapters in this book that are relevant to their specific interests. Among these, Gisela Muschiol's chapter on the role of women religious in medieval liturgical reforms is fascinating. Stefan Böntert's exploration of liturgy and cyberspace is also interesting and timely and invites due conversation about the possibilities and limits of online Christian worship.
