Upcoming: Volume 33 Liturgia Condenda
In the course of the new year, a new volume of our book series Liturgia Condenda will appear, authored by dr. Johan Bastubacka (University of Helsinki) and entitled: The Embodied Space of Worship. Liturgical Signs and Liturgical Bodies in Contemporary Finnish Orthodox Lay Worship. This book focusses on the active, bodily and nonverbal participation of lay people as a defining yet unexplored aspect of the Orthodox Divine Liturgy.
The Orthodox Divine Liturgy has been the focus of research from several angles over the past few decades. This research has predominantly concentrated on the verbal and priestly dimensions of these services. Consequently, the nonverbal lay performances and their semiotic, canonical, and theological dimensions have remained largely unexplored. Yet, through their bodily signs, laypeople have actively participated in liturgical signs and their combinations, thereby shaping the celebration of the Mystery. Lay liturgical signs and figures appear structurally and functionally vital in worship, making semiotic categories manifest. In the observed Finnish Orthodox Divine Liturgies (2014–2016), lay liturgical activities led the church to emerge as a body-space composed of people, spaces, liturgical signs, and signification, thereby creating an embodied space of worship.
