Joris GELDHOF. Liturgy and Secularism: Beyond the Divide. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2018. Pp. 158 + xviii. $29.95 pb. ISBN 978-0-8146-8461-0. Reviewed by Stephen S. WILBRICHT, Stonehill College, Easton, MA 02357.

            Liturgy and life.  This is a connection I try to make in all of my teaching on sacraments and worship.  Yet, no matter how hard I try, the majority of students inevitably persist in their perception that liturgy is designed to be an escape from the rigors and chaos of this world.  Perhaps one of the reasons for such a sharp decline in attendance at Sunday worship is that people view liturgy as a “time-out” or an interruption rather than a deeper immersion into a Christian way of life that poses a challenging remedy to secular culture.

            In his compact book, Liturgy and Secularism:  Beyond the Divide, Joris Geldhof, professor of liturgical studies and sacramental theology at Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, works to heal what most identify as a glaring chasm between liturgy and culture.  Bringing together more than a decade’s worth of research on the topic, Geldhof contends that the choice between participation in worship and participation in the ways of the world is really an artificial ideological construct that demands to be nuanced.

            Geldhof’s six chapters are evenly presented in two parts:  “Positioning the Liturgy in the World” and “Positioning the World in the Liturgy.”  The author’s primary contribution to the liturgy/world debate is to locate the discussion in the realm of soteriology.  Rather than asking what constitutes liturgy, Geldhof is interested in asking “where” and “when” does liturgy occur?  From this question, he concludes that liturgy offers “universal transformative dynamics.”  He writes:  “In other words, Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Savior of humankind, establishes a universal extension of God’s grace, which, as a gift to the church, his bride, can be distributed everywhere” (18).

            This soteriological understanding of the liturgy allows Geldhof to attempt to heal four primary “antagonisms”:  (1) church and world, (2) heaven and earth, (3) cult and culture, and (4) religion and politics.  Secularist ideologies attempt to drive a wedge between these dichotomies, whereas Geldhof works for resolution between them.  For instance, in closing the gap between cult and culture, he states:  “The Christian liturgy may again assist in developing a better balance between faith and culture.  Through the grand vision it maintains, it may help undermine secular ideologies—from nationalism, ethnocentrism, populism, racism, libertarianism, anti-Semitism, ageism, sexism, communism, homophobia, and xenophobia to the many illusions that we can create and manage absolute security with military means and an increase in police powers” (22).

            One of the particular ways in which Geldhof attempts to move beyond the divide between liturgy and secularism is his grounding of worship in eschatology.  Liturgy is not only the praise of God by humans on earth but also the endless chorus of doxology sung around the heavenly throne.  This mystery demands that we always contemplate the dimension of liturgy that is beyond human comprehension; no ideology or secular construct is capable of limiting it. In the author’s words:  “It is precisely this transcendence which makes liturgy and mystery ultimately, but fundamentally, ungraspable and uncontrollable for any social, intellectual, or cultural construction” (112).

            Liturgical Press has published this book under its “Academic” label, for indeed, it is a work of intellectual rigor.  There is tremendous depth of scholarly inquiry and interpretation within each of Geldhof’s six chapters.  In his final conclusions, the author states succinctly:   “Secularism is incapable of diminishing or destroying liturgy” (147).  While he provides ample reasoning for this thesis, the pastoral question looms large:  How do we truly connect people with the liturgy so that it may transform individual hearts and human communities alike?  With more and more people distancing themselves from committed corporate worship, the task of transcending the divide between the “sacred” and the “secular” is greater than ever.