Mirella Klomp

The human-induced climate crisis calls for a transformation in how human beings dwell on earth, including spiritually. This article starts from the premise that the liturgy is an important locus for forming and practicing a new, ecumenical spirituality. In order to develop fully ecumenical liturgical language (i.e., language that includes all of creation), liturgists need ecotheopoetical language — language in which poets lead the way toward theological meaning-making that combines an ecumenical outlook with a poetic form of theology. Ecotheopoetics welcomes creativity as an important transformative force alongside cognitive reflection on the relationship between God and creation. We read the work O fragile earth. A mass for the new covenant (2020) by South African writer and poet Antjie Krog through an ecotheopoetical lens to answer the following research question: How might an ecotheopoetical perspective help liturgists develop transformative liturgical language that is committed to a sustainable future for the entire planet?

Yearbook for Ritual and Liturgical Studies – Open access journal published by University of Groningen Press.

This article explores local church congregants’ lived understandings of racism and reflects on what these yield for Christian practical theology aimed at disrupting racism in the Netherlands. We build on case study research on four partnerships between Global Majority Heritage congregations and Global Minority Heritage congregations. It appears that although congregants recognise racism in Dutch society to some extent, this does not translate into awareness of manifestations of racism within churches. We also demonstrate how particularly Global Minority Heritage congregants experience discomfort with their power position in racism.

This article aims to explore how the entanglement of Protestant Christianity and race and racism is manifested in contemporary Dutch society, and to identify which themes for introspection this yields for majority white Dutch Protestant churches. We argue that introspection on perceived superiority of white Dutch Protestantism is crucial to uncover subtle, unconscious mechanisms and ideas that are present in majority white Dutch Protestant churches and that contribute to maintaining racism. Furthermore, we argue that contemporary topical issues such as racism and colonial history run the risk of being pushed to the margins again as long as there is no systematic review of power and privilege of white Dutch Protestantism.

This article discusses how, in contemporary Dutch and Flemish culture, the ritual-musical appropriations of Psalms in extra-ecclesial settings are challenged by the longer history of appropriating Psalms. Analyses of qualitative empirical research show that this history appears to challenge contemporary Psalm performances to address God, to perform Psalms collectively, and to contemplate life through these Psalms. Contemporary Psalm performances, thus, both continue the history of appropriating Psalms and are critiqued by this history. Evaluating the research results, we conclude that current appropriations tend to wipe away the Psalms’ ambiguity concerning images of God, the relationship between individual and community, and between hope and despair.

In this article, the authors explore the yield of a sacramental lens on extra-ecclesial ritualizations around food in contemporary Dutch ‘secularized’ culture. In an effort to explore the scope of sacramental theology beyond the liturgical ritual of the Eucharist/Holy Communion, they conclude that sacramental theology as a heuristic lens has a promising potential to reveal what is at stake when it comes to ordinary practices of food. Taking Louis-Marie Chauvet’s ground-breaking study Symbol and Sacrament as a point of departure for a sacramental frame, and using three examples from a recent Dutch TV series on counting blessings at dinner time, they seek to answer the question “What is the heuristic potential of a sacramental perspective on food-related ritualizations in everyday life?” The authors conclude that everyday ritualizations, in turn, constructively challenge ‘classic’ sacramental and liturgical theology. Thus, a sacramental lens on extra-ecclesial food-related ritualizations can enhance the understanding of the Eucharist/Holy Communion, as well as reveal what is at stake when it comes to ordinary (ritualized) practices of food.

Genemuider bovenstem is a particular style of psalm singing, originating from the town of Genemuiden in the Netherlands, in which a higher voice is added to the Genevan melody of the psalms. It has roots in liturgical contexts, and has been designated as Intangible Cultural Heritage. This article discusses the construction of singing communities in Genemuider bovenstem psalm singing as performed both in the Sunday worship practices of strictly Reformed church communities, and in collective regional singing events on weekdays that receive financial and practical support from the Dutch government. We present the results of empirical research in Genemuiden, demonstrating the existence of a mutually reinforcing overlap between church communities and the publics who attend psalm-singing events. Our work serves to further nuance extant theories that suggest that the eventization and heritagization of religious practices lead to a diminution in the status of church communities and of their control and ownership over their practices.

This article discusses the role of biographical memory in three contemporary ritual-musical appropriations of the psalms in Dutch and Flemish contexts. We observe that, in performances of psalms, participants (intend to) either forget or recall different biographical memories. Nostalgic narratives of religious, cultural and individual change and continuity inform both the way that they interpret their experiences of these psalm performances, and their motivations for attempting to forget or recall particular memories related to the psalms. By using the notion of sacrality — that which is set apart, non-ordinary — we show that particular non-negotiable desires and non-ordinary experiences recur multiple times in these nostalgic narratives. Analysis of these desires and experiences leads us to conclude that contemplative experiences are desired by many, but experienced by only a few. We suggest the combination of Aleida Assmann’s theory of forgetting and remembering with the notions of nostalgia and sacrality as a way to successfully overcome the unproductive dichotomy between religious and cultural heritage.

‘De aarde is van de Heer, en alles wat zij bevat.’ Dit is niet het begin van een eigendomsakte, maar de jubelende aanhef van Psalm 24. In deze psalm verwoordt de psalmist hoe de grootheid en heiligheid van de Schepper voelbaar zijn in de aarde, de vaste grond onder de voeten van wie haar bewonen, te midden van een dreigende zee en woeste rivieren. Dieren, planten en de aarde heeft de Schepper aan mensen toevertrouwd om samen voor te zorgen, de aarde om te beheren zodat die leefbaar blijft voor alle schepselen. Het bewerken van de grond om voedsel te verbouwen maakt daar deel van uit. Het goede leven is leven in een land dat overvloeit van melk en honing, waar de vruchten van de aarde eerlijk worden verdeeld, waar mensen na gedane arbeid kunnen rusten onder de vijgenboom, genietend van de vrucht van de wijnstok.

This article discusses a case study focusing on the appropriation of psalms in the choral festival “150 Psalms”. The authors observe a complex relationship between the festival, in which the psalms are appropriated as heritage, and attitudes regarding the religious traditions in which the psalms are rooted. Authenticity, a key concept in the field of heritage and cultural memory studies, is an important quality of the appropriation; however, this authenticity appeared to be constructed in a wide range of ways. Participants of the festival made different, competing claims regarding (in)authenticity, relating to ‘beauty’, ‘humanness’, ‘religiousness’, ‘relationship with God(s)’, political relevance’, and ‘ambiguity’. Discussing how these authenticities work in different individuals’ appropriation, the authors show that an authenticity built upon values of ‘human universality’, promoted by the festival organization, seems to have replaced an authenticity built upon ‘religiousness’, which the organizers assign to the realm of non-universal, individual experience. By signaling this tension, the authors conclude that ‘authenticity’ is a notion which is far more complex than extant theories on processes of collective ‘canonization’ suggest.