ABSTRACT
The history of Christianity, in general, and Western Christianity, in particular, is burdened with tensions surrounding the body in religious musicking. From the Patristic period through the Enlightenment and into its modern iterations, Christian traditions have grappled with the body in worship by regulating its expression or attempting to erase it from the liturgy. While certain aspects of this issue have been addressed by scholars, such examinations have not traced these questions past the “dividing lines” of Vatican II and the rise of contemporary worship phenomena which, in today's interconnected world, have broken down or resisted pre-established modes of negotiation, negation, and contestation of the body in Christian worship. An investigation of the body ethics of worshiping congregations must account for the ongoing convolutions and developments in the study of church music that acknowledge interdisciplinary perspectives. Located at the intersection of performances of music, ethics, and religion, this chapter will trace the mind/body gap in Christian thought and liturgical practices of religious musicking in order to examine how these “body ethics” surround and bind the worshiping body.
