1.1 The entire Christian life as worship of God

While the word ‘worship’ conventionally connotes religious ritual activity expressly devoted to praising, thanking, blessing, and beseeching the divine, the fundamental meaning and scope of the term in Christianity is far more encompassing. Worship entails the entire practical life of the church in its members. The key biblical text is found in the letter of Paul to the Romans:

I appeal to you therefore, brother and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Rom 12:1)

With this exhortation to spiritual worship, logikós latreía, the apostle is opening a discussion not of sacred ritual or prayer (modern connotations of spirituality), but rather of how believers are to conduct their daily lives among each other and in wider society. The Greek (Stoic) word logikós translated here as ‘spiritual’ may also be translated as ‘reasonable’ or ‘rational’, taking into account the way in which a person’s thought and actions can align with the logos (the Word, or creating principles of God). For Paul, this reordering of human reason and behaviour to align with divine reason and behaviour is intrinsic to the very personhood of Christians due to ‘the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead [that] dwells’ now in them (Rom 8:11). This holistic concept of the person is what Paul means by ‘your bodies’ – that is, the entire person, both acting and acted upon (Fitzmeyer 1990: 1382–1416).

The basic purpose of ritual sacrifice in the antique Mediterranean world was to present an offering to strengthen bonds with or seek the favour of a god or goddess (in the case of Judaism, of the one true God). Paul transposes this conventional notion of temple sacrifice into a metaphorical symbol for the revolutionary change in one’s life enacted by baptism (Rom 6:1–23). New life in the Spirit of Christ is a matter of offering to the Holy One not a ritually slain animal, but rather one’s own ‘living’ self. The opening verse of Romans 12 is therefore a fitting introduction for the two chapters of instruction in Christian living that follow: many parts, one body; mutual affection and honour; love of neighbour as fulfillment of the law, etc. Another New Testament exhortation similarly instructs:

Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander. […] Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Pet 2:1, 4–5)

For those baptized, holiness is not narrowly identified with the separate – that is, sacred – precincts of temple and altar. Rather, all such ritual images and terminology function metaphorically to locate worship in the entire lives of Christians.

1.2 The human and theological necessity of ritual worship

The comprehensive sense of worship as Christian life does not preclude the types of symbolic and ritual activities conventionally associated with the term. Far from it. Indeed, symbol and ritual are an utter necessity in the life of the church and its members. This is due to the fundamental way in which humans go about making meaning or constructing their experience of life. Experience is always interpreted experience (Cooke and Macy 2005: 3–18). We participate in symbolic systems (the most obvious being language) so as to understand, to communicate, and to pursue purpose in our personal, interpersonal, and social lives. The content and convictions of one’s beliefs – and especially their coherence in a comprehensive worldview such as Christianity – are only possible through habitual practices, shared communication, communal participation, and individual self-reflection. All such interpretive work is done through symbols and rituals, and through their mediation of the narratives and myths that shape our lives in the complex physical, social, historical world in which we live.

One of the ways that the irreducible importance of ritual worship in the life of the church has been captured in modern theological discourse is found in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (1963) of the Second Vatican Council (also known as Vatican II). This Roman Catholic text was readily adopted by multiple Christian denominations – Anglican, Methodist, and Lutheran, among others – as the charter document for reform and renewal of worship in their own churches (Wainwright 2006: 721–754). Fundamental to the Constitution is its assertion that ‘the liturgy is the summit towards which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows’ (Sacrosanctum Concilium, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy 1963). This principle is grounded in early Christian patristic teaching: The church assembles in worship for the glorification of God and the sanctification of people. The transformation of the faithful in every aspect of their lives is complementary to the prayerfully gathered church’s fundamental purpose of offering praise, thanks, adoration, and intercession to God. The bond between divine glory and human holiness is the redeeming person of Christ Jesus. Through the Holy Spirit, he is present among the members in their prayer and song, in the community’s leadership, in the proclaimed biblical word, and in the sacraments, especially the Eucharist.

The assembled church prays both through and with Christ Jesus, who now sits at the heavenly right hand of God, actively joining his divine humanity with the people of God at worship. Christ’s transcendence and immanence, his presence in absence, is portrayed in the closing scene of the Gospel of Matthew:

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age’. (Matt 28:16–20)

Notable is the disciples’ worship of the risen Christ – an unprecedented symbolic act at the story’s end – acknowledging his divine stature. It is the final moment of bodily encounter before they undertake the mission to which he charges them. Yet, that mission comprises an ongoing experience of his accompanying presence in their life’s work of evangelizing, baptizing, and fashioning lives of prayer, community, and ethics in accordance with his teachings – all of which glorify the triune God revealed in and through him. Numerous other New Testament passages pertinent to the relationship between the glorified Christ and the worshipping body of the church contribute to traditional and contemporary theological interpretations of worship. Before discussing them, a brief review of Christian ritual terminology will be useful.

1.3 Christian ritual terminology

Through the discussion so far, it has become evident that ‘worship’ serves as the most general and comprehensive term for corporate Christian prayer. This is not least because it denotes generic activities that take place across many religious traditions, including praise, adoration, and supplication to the divinity or divinities – most often in some combination of demarcated (sacred) times and spaces. Reformed philosophical theologian Nicholas Wolterstorff has succinctly defined Christian worship as ‘acts of learning and acknowledging the excellence of who God is and what God has done’ (2018: 29–30). Worship therefore includes revelation of precisely this God who can only be known in the present through the believing community’s recounting of what he has done in the past and has promised for the future. This makes essential the proclamation of the Word; preaching and the reading of scripture constitute a moment of revelation. Nonetheless, the revelatory event is only realized in the people’s reception of this ‘living and active’ word of God (Heb 4:12). Their full-bodied response through symbols, gestures, song, and words, explains Methodist liturgical theologian Don Saliers, encompasses praise, adoration, confession, intercession, and communion (Saliers 1994: 85–138).

The church at worship renews and strengthens the divine-human covenantal bond as it tangibly expresses God’s faithfulness to his people and their loving trust in him. This faith is practised through obedient, well ordered service (obsequium servitus), a dimension of ritual worship that lends itself to being called a ‘service’. Drawing attention to the sense in which the church at worship is doing God’s work, English-speaking Christians widely refer to the ‘Sunday service’ or to ‘attending services’, just as for Protestant and Catholic Germans alike worship is referred to as Gottesdienst (divine service, the church service).

While the English term ‘church service’ has its roots in Latin and Old French, its connotation of ordered, public work for God aligns with another word now widely used as synonymous with worship: liturgy. This term derives from the Greek word leitourgia, meaning a work (érgon) done on behalf and for the benefit of the people (laós). In late Greco-Roman society the term referred to such activities as serving in the senate or paying one’s taxes or serving in the military. Early Christians applied the term to their acts of divine worship, as well as to those ministering to the faith community. Eventually the Eastern churches limited the word to the celebration of the Eucharist. In the Latin West, official worship services were called divine offices or sacred rites so that the Greek-based word disappeared for more than a millennium. Only in the eighteenth century did it begin to reemerge in reference to the entire ritual worship of the church. Such is its general use now among Catholic, Anglican, and some Protestant denominations, while the Orthodox churches continue to identify the term strictly with the Divine Liturgy celebrated on Sunday.

The most prominent worship-related term to emerge from the early Latin church, persisting across Christian churches to this day, is ‘sacrament’. In the emerging church’s late Roman imperial context a sacramentum was a promise, a solemn oath pledged in undertaking some form of service. Entrance into such an order of service would be expressed by a symbol involving the body, such as the purple-striped tunics worn by Roman senators, the tunics and other insignias of rank worn in the military, or the practice of soldiers touching their banner when vowing allegiance. Latin Christians found the word sacramentum suited to what their participation in baptism and the Eucharist entailed: namely, their reception of the gospel message proclaimed in the worshipping assembly and their pledge to carry out in their lives the divine favour (grace) that they experienced bodily together in the symbols and rituals of the church. Gradually, sacramentum came to apply to several rituals, including those of penitential reconciliation and ministerial ordination, until in the thirteenth century the Latin church determined the number of official (priestly mediated) sacraments to be seven. A few centuries later, the Protestant Reformers would restrict the term to baptism and the Lord’s Supper, while in Roman Catholicism the complex of seven sacraments, and especially the Mass, became the predominant symbol of ecclesial worship.

2.1 The incarnational approach

Some of the most prominent and enduring theological approaches for understanding the church’s worship through word and sacrament draw upon the doctrine of the incarnation – the teaching from John 1:14 that Jesus Christ is the eternal Word (Greek: logos) of God in the flesh (Latin: in carné): ‘And the Word became flesh and lived among us’. This doctrine proved instrumental in the early church fathers’ arguments against various Gnostic forms of Christianity that denied the goodness of the material world and claimed that the God and Father of Christ Jesus did not create this world, nor is Christ’s saving mission inclusive of our bodily existence. In his extensive arguments against those holding such beliefs, Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon (d. 180), enlisted the eucharistic practice held in common by both sides to point out his opponents’ inconsistency. Insofar as the heretics offer to God ‘from His own creation’ bread and wine ‘over which thanks has been given [as] the body of their Lord, and the cup His blood’, they are either acknowledging that the Father of the Son is the Creator of the world and all within it, or else are making God ‘covetous of another’s property, and desirous of what is not His own’ (Against Heresies IV.18.5). This bears positive, practical, and fateful implications:

For we offer to Him His own, announcing consistently the fellowship and union of the flesh and Spirit. For as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly; so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity. (Against Heresies IV.18.5)

Salvation, far from being an exclusive affair of the soul or spirit, is a full-bodied concern. Across the homilies of such fourth-century bishops as Ambrose of Milan, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, and Theodore of Mopsuestia, deliverance from corruption involves both living a good and virtuous life that is pleasing before God, and knowing that the body will ultimately be transformed into fullness of life in God despite mortal death. The immortality of a person – of their body, mind, and spirit – begins with baptism when the Holy Spirit invoked upon the water washes away the corruption of sin and death, and the oil of chrism anoints them as a member of Christ’s body. Weekly sharing in the eucharistic body and blood of Christ heals the effects of sinful failings and empowers a continued life of faith, hope, and charity (practical love) amidst the ecclesial body of Christ and in the wider world.

The centuries-long Middle Ages may be fairly characterized as a period of increasing concern over the power exercised in the church’s public worship. The authority for not only leading but also performing the church’s common prayer (offices, services) and sacramental rites became the exclusive domain of the ordained clergy. In Western Europe, the laypeople’s posture became passive, watching the performance of symbolic actions accompanied by obscure and largely inaudible Latin while the figure of the priest and the eucharistic host he consecrated served as the central symbols of the body of Christ. Among the theological schools, Christology developed as philosophical theory about the incarnation – that is, about how Christ’s fully divine nature joined with his fully human nature. Such theologizing dovetailed with explanations for how, in the sacraments, divine power operates instrumentally in and through human symbols (persons, actions, and objects). Eucharistic practice came to focus singularly on ‘confecting’ the Blessed Sacrament – the transformation of the wheaten wafer (‘the host’) and chalice of wine into Christ’s body and blood – which was signaled by bells and, in more solemn celebrations, venerated with incense. Beginning in the thirteenth century, the widespread feast of Corpus Christi (the Body of Christ) entailed a street procession of ordered ranks of the citizenry followed by a cleric carrying the Blessed Sacrament under a canopy with candles. These rituals catalyzed a shift in ecclesial worship towards prayers of supplication and a bodily posture of adoration before the miraculous divine presence in the sacramental wafer. At the same time, a generally transactional notion of sacramental grace lent itself to hierarchies of power (ecclesial and governmental offices) and finance (guilds, noble ranks, and indulgences).

The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation rejected the ecclesial focus on material symbols and hierarchical mediators, asserting instead the divine power in the proclaimed biblical word as received by the intellectual assent of faith. Reacting to the Protestant emphasis on ‘scripture alone’ (sola scriptura), the Roman Catholic bishops at the Council of Trent (1545-1563) reinforced the sacred power of both the sacramental symbols and the priestly hierarchy enacting them. Although the theology of the incarnation affirms the goodness of the body and informs eucharistic practice as a joining of divinity with humanity, power hierarchies prevented this from tickling down to the laypeople’s experience in worship. Protestant worship – by focusing so singularly on the verbal content of scripture – failed to correct this distancing of God from bodily human experience. The practical result for both branches of Western Christianity was a widespread loss of the early Christian integration of worship with daily ethical life as the worship of God.

2.2 The paschal mystery approach

By the late nineteenth century, the consequences of European political revolutions and wars led certain northwest-continental Benedictine monasteries to assess the need for renewal of their foundations and ritual practices with a view towards those of the wider church. A central objective was to restore an integral relationship between sacramental worship (liturgy) and Christian life in both its communal and individual facets. What gradually became known as the Liturgical Movement was an assiduous study of early Christian theological and liturgical sources combined with experimentations in ritual reform. Symbolic of the change was the vital recovery of the term ‘liturgy’ itself (see section 1.3), connoting a dynamic engagement of the assembled faithful and their leadership in the work of divine service done on behalf of and for the benefit of both the church and the wider world. The process would continue into the twentieth century and gain measures of papal endorsement, Roman ritual changes, and ecumenical engagement as in the notable work of the Anglican Benedictine monk Gregory Dix (2005, first published 1945). The movement culminated in Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, which became the charter document for full-scale liturgical revisions for both Roman Catholicism and an ecumenical range of other church bodies (see section 1.2).

The theological principle guiding this contemporary restoration and renewal of liturgy is the paschal mystery. The term has profound roots in scripture and the origins of the church. The earliest Christians employed the word ‘mystery’ in reference not only to the Eucharist and baptism but to all the embodied (personal and communal) ways they experienced God entering into and shaping their lives in Christ. The Greek word mysterion (mystery) occurs repeatedly in the New Testament, drawing upon the Jewish biblical tradition wherein God’s knowledge is hidden, secret, and beyond comprehension, yet is revealed to the people through the law, the prophets, and – in the late apocalyptic literature such as the books of Daniel and Enoch – as the promise that evil and suffering will be eradicated through the establishment of new heavens and a new earth (Isa 65:17). The first believers in Jesus as the Christ and Son of God shared the revelatory experience that in him the ‘mystery of the kingdom’ (Mark 4:11) – the dawn of the final age – had come. The letters of Saint Paul expound on the crucified and risen Christ as the definitive revelation of God’s power and wisdom in antithesis to the supposed wisdom of the world (1 Cor 1:23–24; 2:6–8). Christ himself is the fullness of the mystery – is the very mystery of God come to full-bodied revelation – into which the baptized are incorporated (Col 1:17; 2:2; Eph 3:4–5; 5:32; see Gerhards and Kranemann 2017: 194–200). Membership in the church (the body of Christ) bears practical consequences for the baptized. It requires that all recognize one another as parts of Christ’s body and together build ethical lives in anticipation of a shared bodily resurrection (1 Cor 15).

Baptism is a share in Christ’s death in that the baptized no longer lives under the power of sin but in the hope of the resurrection (Rom 6:1–14). The Eucharist is proclamation of the Lord’s death until he comes (1 Cor 11:26), but its truth is only verified though the celebrating community’s charity (love) towards one another and their witness in the world (John 13:34–35). It is this sharing – the participation in the very life of Christ through the proclamation of the Word of God and enactment of bodily symbols – that the homilies of ancient bishops as early as Melito of Sardis (d. 180) articulated in terms of paschal mystery (2001). Christ’s death and resurrection occurred precisely in the Jewish season of Passover (Hebrew: pesach, Greek: pascha), hence the paschal character of the mystery of redemption that God has accomplished for humanity in Christ. The early church tradition of perceiving the sacraments as celebrations of the paschal mystery came through two lines of development. The first emphasized participation in the sacraments as participation in Jesus’ death and resurrection as the definitive event of salvation. The other emphasized how the sacraments join believers to the work of salvation that Christ’s death and resurrection continues to realize both in their individual lives and, through the mission of the church, for the life of the whole world. It is this latter understanding of the paschal mystery that contemporary liturgical theologians continue to advance, as promoted by the influential Orthodox author Alexander Schmemann (d. 1983):

But I know that in Christ this great Passage, the Pascha of the world has begun, that the light of the ‘world to come’ comes to us in the joy and peace of the Holy Spirit […] And this joy transforms all [Christians’] plans and programs, decisions and actions, making all [their] mission the sacrament of the world’s return to Him who is the life of the world. (Schmemann 1973: 106, 113)

2.3 Sacraments and sacramentality

The twentieth-century renewal of paschal mystery theology has proven highly consequential for understanding the church’s sacramental worship. This focus speaks to the belief that salvation in Christ is not a distant story of the past for human recall and instruction, nor is it narrowly contained in the material objects of priestly consecration, but it is a present experience of the Christ-event playing out in the lives of believers. As full revelation of divine mystery, Christ is the primordial sacrament of God. Ascended bodily to the right hand of God, he is nonetheless present and active through the power of the Holy Spirit in the corporate body of the church and in each of its members. Sacraments, along with all worship acts of the church, are therefore events of full-bodied engagement in the very life of God. As such, they are revelatory of God’s active presence in not only the specific life events of believers, but potentially all dimensions of life. Ongoing participation in the sacramental symbolism of the liturgy likewise reveals the awesome otherness of the God of biblical faith, thereby empowering believers to discern the presence or absence of the divine in concrete human affairs.

In the early twenty-first century, Australian theologian Graham Hughes argued rigorously for a renewed articulation of this sacramentality in contemporary Reformed liturgical tradition (Hughes 2017). Similarly, an earlier French Catholic theologian explained:

Once we give ‘sacrament’ its older and broader meaning, we realize that in the Church, the ‘universal sacrament of salvation,’ everything is somehow sacramental, that is, everything is the vehicle of a meaning and an efficacy belonging to a different order from the realities of direct experience […] (Dalmais 1987: 257)

Christ is the source of life’s sacramentality, being both the ‘firstborn over all creation’ (Col 1:15) and, by his resurrection, the ‘firstfruits’ of the new creation (1 Cor 15:23). The eschatological nature of paschal faith, of life as a new creation underway yet not yet fully realized, opens participants’ awareness to all aspects of the world – natural creation, personal experience, human relations, and history – as bearing potential revelation of God. That is what is meant by sacramentality. Theological understanding of and support for such symbolic interpretation of and engagement with the world requires an adequate comprehension of the multidimensional reality of human embodiment.

4.1 Sunday: basic unit of time

From early Christian origins, Sunday is the orienting symbol for the church’s liturgical worship. This tradition coincides with the theology of the paschal mystery. The new, unprecedented belief that God had raised the crucified Jesus from the dead emboldened the early believers to take up the prophetic biblical symbol of the Day of the Lord (Joel 2:1) as well as the Jewish apocalyptic notion of the Eighth Day as the first day of the New Creation (2 Enoch) and to transpose and apply them to what God had done in Christ (Lathrop 1993: 36–43). The mid-second-century Roman martyr Justin testifies:

Sunday, indeed, is the day on which we all hold our common assembly because it is the first day on which God, transforming the darkness and [prime] matter, created the world; and our Savior Jesus Christ arose from the dead on the same day. (First Apology 67; Justin Martyr 1975: 107)

Herein lies the heart of Christian eschatology, namely that the biblical expectation of God’s establishing a new era (the time of God’s reign) has indeed definitively happened, but in a manner humans could not have expected. The risen Christ is the ‘firstborn from the dead’ (Col 1:18), the first and the last (ho protos kai ho eschatos, Rev 1:17), the Lord of creation and history. The baptized, sealed with his Spirit (see 2 Cor 1:22), carry on in their bodies his salvific mission. They participate in the mercy and forgiveness, the justice and peace of God’s reign on earth and bear witness to God’s favour (grace) for all in Christ until he comes again in glory. Sunday is the original, primary feast day – the day that the diffuse members of Christ’s body gather up the work and witness of their lives in a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving while receiving at the table of God’s word and sacrament the divine nourishment that sustains them on the journey towards the kingdom’s final coming.

4.2 Calendrical time: fasting and feasting, drama and devotion

4.3 Times in the life-cycle: person-bodies, ecclesial bodies

The regular cycles of day, week, and year shape the life of the church in the world, its ongoing history towards the eschatological coming of Christ, and its final transformation into ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ (Rev 21:1; see also 2 Pet 3:13). Still, the church is comprised of individual person-bodies, each with their own life-cycle and variable abilities. This necessitates the use of Christian symbols and rituals for marking transitions related to maturation, to status within the church and society, and to the health of body and soul. These occasional rites benefit both the individual and the social-traditional body of the ecclesial community. Just as the symbolism in the rituals of the church calendar engages the full range of physical senses to enable individual participation and communal cohesion, life-cycle rites feature symbolic materials and gestures that are traditional yet conditioned by sociocultural contexts. The purpose of these rites is to allow individuals to participate more deeply in the paschal mystery – to interpret their lives as companionship with Christ Jesus (with his life and his death) through the life-creating and restoring power of his Spirit.

The New Testament portrays baptism by water and the Holy Spirit as initiating the believer’s new life, and the Eucharist as offering the ongoing sustenance of that life (Acts 8:36–39; 10:44–48; 1 Cor 11:23–26). These the church identified early on as mysteries and eventually (in the Latin-speaking lands of North Africa and Europe) as sacraments. Rituals for the healing of mind, body, and soul developed quickly, while healing rites of penance and reconciliation for those whose sin had wounded communion with God and the ecclesial body came about more gradually. Rites for ordination to permanent offices of leadership in the church – beginning with bishops (episkopoi) and deacons (diaconoi) – evolved relatively early as well, whereas only much more gradually did the vocation of married life realize a degree of sacramental stature and evolution in ritual (Reynolds 2016). The medieval Latin church (with parallels in the Eastern Orthodox church) settled on identifying a total of seven formal sacraments: (1) baptism, (2) confirmation/chrismation, (3) Eucharist, (4) penance, (5) anointing of the sick, (6) holy orders, and (7) marriage. The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformers, however, restricted the category of sacrament to those rituals Christ explicitly commanded in scripture: baptism and the Lord’s supper. Here follows a brief treatment of just a few of the most notable types of symbolism engaging the bodily senses that are operative among the seven liturgical sacraments.

Anointing with oil is a gesture of smooth liquid permeating the surface of the body, making it an appropriate marker of the transformation of a person’s life condition or even permanent life status. New Testament texts describe both Jesus and believers as being anointed with the Spirit and/or power (Acts 10:38; 2 Cor 1:21; Heb 1:9; 1 John 2:20). These accounts influenced the development of traditional rites of Christian initiation, including the anointing of catechumens in preparation for water baptism and a post-baptismal anointing with chrism. The anointing with chrism constituted the infusion of the Spirit of Christ upon the neophyte, now a full member of the body of Christ. Using olive oil infused with aromatic spices proper to each stage of initiation, these anointings engaged not only the sense of touch but also of smell. In churches that teach ordination to the priesthood as affecting an ontological change in the person, the ritual includes anointing of the hands, consecrating them to the ministry of the sacraments. In certain churches, such as the Roman Catholic, the ordination of a bishop includes an anointing of the head (Wood 2000: 30, 52, 89, 106). Such an anointing is but one among several symbolic gestures engaged during the ordination rites.

From the start of Christianity, the medicinal function of olive oil made its prayerful application a symbol of healing for the sick. As churches grew in size, bishops regularly consecrated oil for the sick during the Sunday eucharistic liturgy for people to take home and self-apply or even drink. However, by the medieval period the ritual of applying oil to a sick or dying person-body became the exclusive function of the ordained (a priest or bishop). Today, across a broad ecumenical spectrum, a biblically and anthropologically renewed theology and pastoral ministry of anointing the sick offers holistic strengthening for the seriously ill person (Boulton 2007; Morrill 2007a; Schattauer 2007; Smith 2007). Readings and prayers used during these anointings draw heavily from gospel narratives of Jesus’ healing encounters with the sick and outcast. The presence of the church represented by the minister as well as by loved ones and caregivers fosters assurance of Christ’s loving accompaniment of the anointed person in their health crisis or advancing decline due to old age.

The sense of touch functions in various other symbolic gestures among the formal sacraments. As noted earlier, the eucharistic rite’s kiss of peace expresses mutual affection through embrace or handshake. The current liturgy for Maundy Thursday in Catholic and many Protestant churches includes a ceremonial washing of members’ feet done in obedient imitation of Jesus at the Last Supper (John 13:1–17). Mennonite traditions (on principle of strict biblical adherence) perform foot washing during each of the few occasions per year that they celebrate Holy Communion. In addition to the multivalent sensation of water and drying by towel, the ritual entails the washer’s bending and kneeling – a visual symbol of humble, caring service. Another common gesture of touch is the laying on of hands. For rites of penance and the anointing of the sick this serves as a healing gesture, whereas in rites of confirmation and ordination it symbolizes status conferral and empowerment for mission.

5.1 Form serving function, art serving theology

Just as people often associate the word ‘church’ with the Christian Sunday service, so also the word can readily bring to mind the building where the assembly worships. As noted above, the typical place for gathering during the first three centuries was the house. The earliest house church that archeologists have discovered dates to the mid-third century in Dura-Europos, Syria. It features a large space for worship plus a small room containing a bath or font for baptismal immersion with walls covered in painted scenes from the gospels and a depiction of Christ as the Good Shepherd. With the fourth-century imperial sanctioning of Christianity, the basilica became the edifice capable of holding the swelling numbers of worshippers along with the equipment and vesture of imperial court ritual. These included thuribles, chalices, fans, and candle sticks used in the apse, which also contained the bema, the altar table, and the chair for the presiding minister (bishop). The cultural body found further expression in floors, walls, and ceilings covered in mosaics depicting male and female worshippers dressed in period finery as well as any number of allegorical symbols and biblical figures and scenes. Baptistries, likewise decorated, were separate chambers or free-standing structures containing pools for full-body immersion. These were designed and artistically decorated to embody the theological themes of the sacramental mystery: rebirth by water and the Spirit, dying and rising in Christ, and new creation (John 3:3–6; Rom 6:4–11; 2 Cor 5:17).

The structures and art of Christian worship spaces have developed in continuous relationship with the historical evolution of ritual forms. These forms are shaped by the interaction of theological beliefs and customs, geographic conditions, and the aesthetic and power dynamics of a social context (Ramshaw 2009). While two millennia of ecclesial art and architecture exceed the scope of this article, a short description of the key characteristics of Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant spaces can sketch how the physical, sociocultural, and traditional dimensions of human embodiment are constantly at play in Christian worship settings.

5.2 Orthodox churches

The Orthodox worship space – whether on a metropolitan or a village scale – has a basic horizontal floorplan and vertical design features that create an interior symbolic of the joining of earth and heaven. This form accords with the eucharistic theology of the Divine Liturgy that envisions an ascent into the mystery of the heavenly marriage banquet of the Lamb in the great company of saints (Rev 19:1–9). The assembly space allows for free movement while a wall of icons (the iconostasis) separates it from the apse-like inner sanctuary with its altar and curved (often domed) ceiling. The predominant artform is the icons covering the walls, the iconostasis, and the ceiling. The figure of Christ as Lord of all creation dominates the ceiling (making the interior symbolic of the cosmos) while figures of saints and angels spread out and around. An ordered series of key saintly figures on the iconostasis stand between the assembled people and the altar, symbolizing the communion of the visible and invisible members of the entire people of God. The people light and place candles in stands in front of the iconostasis and prominent icons in the wider assembly space. Individuals have the freedom to choose at what point during the stages of the lengthy liturgy they will physically perform their spiritual devotions and prayerful intentions. Standing is the posture of all who are physically able throughout the liturgy. Similarly, each person-body making the sign of the cross from forehead to breast to shoulders at each blessing of the Divine Trinity is a constant throughout the service. Although regional and cultural variations exist, the clerical vesture, musical chanting, profuse use of incense, and array of ceremonial equipment all have Byzantine roots. The differentiated activities of the various Orthodox liturgical roles (the ordained, the cantor, the choir, and the assembly) embody a present atmosphere of divine-human communion.

5.3 Roman Catholic churches

Much greater cultural variations in art and architecture characterize Catholic worship spaces around the globe even as certain features and fixtures – such as the sanctuary’s fixed altar table, pulpit, and chair for the presiding celebrant – are mandatory. The legacy of the medieval Western European eucharistic theology (which centres on the real presence of Christ in the sacramental eucharistic host) has governed historical and regional variations in Catholic interior design for nearly a millennium. While churches and cathedrals coming into the Middle Ages had long fixed their altars against the eastern wall of the building (the eschatological horizon of Christ’s return), the narrowed identification of the body of Christ with the consecrated host led to the addition of a tabernacle reserving some of the sacramental bread being centred prominently atop the altar. Over the tabernacle, a freestanding or wall-mounted crucifix (a cross with a figure of the dying Jesus) identified the Blessed Sacrament with Christ’s sacrificial death. As for the overall architectural design, the cruciform Gothic floorplan widely gave way from the late sixteenth century to a more linear baroque design focused on the altar’s tabernacle and crucifix. This shift was in part a reaction to Protestant rejections of the Medieval Mass and the reserved Blessed Sacrament. Within this setting, the priest and attending clergy and acolytes offered the sacrifice of the Mass with their backs to the people. Meanwhile, the congregation prayed devotionally and listened for bells to signal the moment when the priest elevated overhead the consecrated host and chalice before bowing in adoration on their knees. Church interiors could have any number of statues of saints to inspire individuals’ silent devotions, while stained glass windows presented narratives of biblical events and the lives of the saints.

Vatican II (1962–1965) set in motion a radical restoration and renewal of the Mass and all other sacramental rites. The aim was to recover (1) the liturgical identity and role of the assembled laity, (2) a robust service of the proclaimed word of God, and (3) a service of the Eucharist as an all-involving sacrifice of praise, thanksgiving, and communion. Adaptations to existing church interiors and even original designs for new buildings have necessarily followed from the theological reform. The most symbolically impactful feature of these adaptations is the free-standing altar table that faces the assembly. In the early period of this liturgical renewal, church designs situated the tabernacle in a side chapel or niche so as not to detract from the distinct sacramental event of each liturgical celebration – the people gathered before or around the altar and the priest in prayerful communion. In the past two decades, however, hierarchical leadership has returned to a nearly exclusive emphasis on the sacred object of the Blessed Sacrament – and with it, the exclusive sacral identity of the priest. Therefore, the tabernacle in most churches once again figures prominently at the centre of the altar space. The post-Vatican II simplification of the overall interior space (aiming to focus attention on the assembled body, on the proclaimed Word, and on the altar table) entailed limiting the amount of statuary and other symbols. However, in certain regions and amongst certain ethnic groups statuary and other visual art forms remain extensive.

5.4 Protestant churches

Fundamental to the full range of Protestant reform movements across Europe was a rejection of the medieval theology of the Roman Mass (Eucharist) and the related ideologies of the priesthood and the sacraments that they performed. The prioritization of the biblical word of God as read, preached, and responded to in congregational prayer could not but have a profound effect on the design and decoration (or lack thereof) of the worship space. Emphasis on the priesthood of all the assembled baptized correlated with removal of most artistic objects of individual devotion. Instead, congregational song and choral performance came to the fore, constituting the people’s corporate devotion in worship. Generally, the dominant feature of the Protestant sanctuary is the pulpit along with the pipe organ and choir configuration. The modest wooden altar table may stand either below the pulpit or to one side, with the biblical warrant for the sacrament, ‘Do this in remembrance of me’, often carved across the front. White walls, clear glass windows, and pews with racks for holding hymnals, Bibles, and communion glasses serve to support worship as an activity of a united people.

Conditions in the wider social body that have enabled Protestant traditions include affordable print media as well as literacy and music education. Modern technology’s innovations in structural design as well as sound and video equipment (along with varying cultural styles of music and oration) are among the other societal influences that have more recently contributed to the reconfiguration of embodiment in Protestant worship (see Theology and Technology). Rapidly emerging is the blending of cyber and physical space, enabling not only remote viewing but also remote interaction with a live service (Han 2017). Evangelical churches have long exploited audio and visual technology to free up bodies for hand clapping, arm raising, and (depending on ethnocultural embodiment) dancing. At the other end of the ritual spectrum are ‘high church’ Anglican and Lutheran spaces whose interiors, depending on their geographic and cultural locations, may resemble late medieval or post-Vatican II design and decoration.