(11.) "Liturgiology, like linguistics, is a comparative discipline: one can no more be a
liturgiologist by studying one tradition than one can develop a theory of linguistics knowing only one language" (Robert Taft, Beyond East and West: Problems in Liturgical Understanding [Washington: Pastoral, 1984] ix).
An increasingly popular answer to these questions is that provided by Lutheran
liturgiologist Gordon Lathrop in his compelling studies, Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology (6) and What Are the Essentials of Christian Worship?
Hovda, editor of Living Worship, wrote the foreword to Church Architecture and Liturgical Reform by Theodor Filthaut, in which he described himself as "neither a
liturgiologist nor an expert in sacred art" but an ardent supporter of Filthaut's theories, especially "on the absolute primacy of the living assembly." (Published in 1968, the book is a grim foretaste of EACW, its illustrations even more repugnant.) Hovda's only criticism is that Filthaut's book is too timid in expressing the mandate for change.
Feminist
liturgiologist Mary Collins also notes the importance of narrative to women's ritualizing: "The third moment [in the process of feminist interpretation] is affirmation of what has been retrieved, both women's achievements and stories of women's suffering exacted as the price of maintaining patriarchal relationships" (11).
While master's students might read the book as part of some project, the professional
liturgiologist would find the book too much of a survey to be helpful.
This significant book brings together two groups of scholars who rarely talk to each other: missiologists and
liturgiologists. Two scholars of large vision--missiologist Charles Farhadian, who has lived in Papua and now teaches in California, and liturgical theologian John Witvliet, who directs the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship in Grand Rapids--convened seminars in 2002 and 2003 in which there was sympathetic observation of the worship practices in non-Western churches, as well as penetrating cultural and theological reflection.