Is it a Tenebrae Moment Again?: On Crisis in Liturgical Theology as an Opportunity for Renewal

The language of crisis in liturgical theology and practice in the Western context is not a mere figure of speech. In the second decade of the twenty-first century enormous contradictions and fissures permeate all terrains of life. The late postmodern fragmentation of reality, veracity, and common experience is reaching hyperbolized dimensions—a hypermodernity of fragmentation and inequality. At the same time, a broad range of postcolonial and decolonial currents insistently unveil the metastasizing persistence of the coloniality of being, power, knowledge, and feeling. For liturgical theology and practices of worship in the West, this global entanglement of crosscurrents plays out not only during the present-day geriatric phase of Christendom (as a distinct religio-political regime) but also during a gradually solidifying moment of “after” Christianity (as a self-evident religio-cultural regime). In this context, we can ask whether liturgical theology is experiencing (yet another) Tenebrae moment, another moment of anxious twilight–a crisis? If so, as Nicholas Denysenko has recently argued, then we still need to ask: Whose crisis it is really? In the North American—and more broadly, Western—context, what currents are churning up trouble in the pews and for the practice of liturgical theology? Most importantly, what avenues might liturgical theologians discern as vital for thinking through this crisis? I believe that every crisis can be an apocalyptic, revelatory, and potentially transformative gateway toward more vibrant worship and more life-giving theological endeavors.