Liturgy and Secularism

Joris Geldhof is Catherine F. Huisking Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He previously served as professor of liturgical studies and sacramental theology at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. He is co-editor of The Worshiping Body: Chenu, Liturgy and Sacraments (Liturgical Press, 2025), and author of Liturgy and Secularism: Beyond the Divide (Liturgical Press, 2018), Liturgical Theology as a Research Program (Brill, 2020), and Monotheism in Christian Liturgy (Cambridge University Press, 2023). Joris is also a past president of the international ecumenical Societas Liturgica and a member of the Malines Conversations Group.

"How does one release a logjam? We ask because there does seem to be a deadlock in certain conversations over liturgy these days. Geldhof proposes that we must look for that bottom log that is jamming things up, and for him that is not the impasse between left and right, it is rather a more radical issue: the relationship of sacred liturgy to the secular world. Utilizing an array of philosophers and interpreters of culture, he challenges the definition of secularism with which we work; utilizing an array of historians and liturgists, he challenges our epistemological approach to liturgy in favor of a soteriological one. The result is not a modernized liturgy, but a liturgy that functions in our modern lives."David W. Fagerberg, University of Notre Dame

• Contents  AcknowledgmentsProvenance of the ChaptersIntroduction xPART IPOSITIONING THE LITURGY IN THE WORLDChapter 1: Liturgy, Modernity and Secularization Chapter 2: Liturgy, Ideology and Politics Chapter 3: Liturgy Beyond Sacred and Profane PART IIPOSITIONING THE WORLD IN THE LITURGYChapter 4: Liturgy, Desacralization and Sanctification Chapter 5: Retrieving the Liturgical Movement Chapter 6: The Liturgy’s Critical Potential Concluding ObservationsIndex