Worship as Meaning
A Liturgical Theology for Late Modernity

An examination of Christian worship within the context of modern theories of meaning.

Graham Hughes (Author)

9780521828512, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 September 2003

340 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.58 kg

'Graham Hughes offers a comprehensive summary of recent semiotic theory and recent liturgical studies in this wide-ranging, mature epic. … Hughes has put his finger on a host of questions, hunches and disaffections that have been worrying liturgical studies for some time. … this is an inspirational book, the sort that makes you see what you do a little differently and hope for more, and as such the concretization of its work will be done one worshipper at a time, if she is allowed to construct the realities of her world within the symbolic openness that God, in this view of worship, creates.' Scottish Journal of Theology

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.

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.

Subject Areas: Christian theology [HRCM], Philosophy [HP]