Hearing Our Prayers

"""Contra Macbeth’s view that life is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, in worship sound—spoken, chanted, individual or communal, as well as ritual gestures and silence—signify everything. In this widely researched book, Juliette Day discusses contemporary understandings of sound and aurality, illustrated from different Christian traditions, and from her wide knowledge of the history of liturgy. This study fills a glaring academic void, and it should be read and heeded by all those who study liturgy, and those who both plan and lead worship."" Bryan D. Spinks, Bishop F. Percy Goddard Professor Emeritus of Liturgical Studies and Pastoral Theology, Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School ""This original and compelling study of the phenomenon of sound in Christian worship invites its readers into a world much more complex than song, sermon and vocalized prayer. Juliette Day's multi-disciplinary approach to the way worshippers hear and are themselves heard draws on the physics of sound as well as physiological, ritual and architectural accounts of the way sound is created and received, as well as (most importantly) attending to the marking of sound, by silence. Participating in the liturgy will not be the same again for those who let this book guide future listening and hearing."" Bridget Nichols, author of Lively Oracles of God"