Worship as Theology

In Worship As Theology, Don Saliers discusses how worship is both theological (God-centered) and anthropological (embodied and embedded in specific human and cultural contexts). He illuminates worship as a theology "prayed, sung, and enacted." At the same time--by focusing upon specific dimensions of liturgical action such as praising, thanking, invoking, confessing, proclaiming, interceding, and blessing--he addresses the differences between the liturgical/sacramental and the "free-church"/evangelical church traditions. Underlying Saliers' approach is his basic conviction that Christian liturgy is an eschatological art. Theological integrity in worship, he asserts, calls for a permanent tension in the forms and patterns which reflect the "already" and "not yet" of Christian life in the world for the sake of the world. Worship As Theology, therefore, begins and ends with the eschatology of the divine promise, that the church's cry is still "Come, Lord Jesus!" and that God's will be done on earth "as in heaven."