Overview

In God and Mystery in Words David Brown uses the way in which poetry and drama have in the past opened people to the possibility of religious experience as a launch pad for advocating less wooden approaches to Christian worship today. So far from encouraging imagination and exploration, hymns and sermons now more commonly merely consolidate belief. Again, contemporary liturgy in both its music and its ceremonial fails to take seriously either current dramatic theory or the sociology of ritual. Yet this was not always so. Poetry and drama, Brown suggests, grew out of religion, and therefore that creative potential needs to be rediscovered by religion.

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9780199231836

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Reviews

Brown's observations are frequently striking and often sharp. We lurch from the first gay kiss in the television soap opera Eastenders to the symbolism of different cuts of jeans...this book is beautifully written, always thought-provoking, and displays vast, quirkiliy juxtapositioned erudition. Phillip McCosker, The Tablet A necessarily short review cannot do justice to the wide range of these two volumes, which witness to an impressive mastery of multi-faceted material, as well as Brown's ability to present it in a highly readable and engaging style...warmly commended, and it is to be hoped that others will follow where David Brown has led. Geoffrey Brown, International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church Brown has writtien a provocative work of sophisticated theology that, because it wears its learning so lightly, has much to offer the general reader. Johnathan Wright Catholic Herald It is not possible to read a book by David Brown without being challenged, informed, and provoked to think again about received assumptions and expectations...[it is a] privilege [to be] invited to revisit familiar liturgical experiences in the company of such an engaging companion and to know them as if for the first time. John Saxbee, Times Literary Supplement

Author Information

David Brown is Van Mildert Professor of Divinity at Durham University, and a Fellow of the British Academy.

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