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Let All The People Worship: Applying Inculturation In A Multicultural Community, Darrell St. Romain

Doctor of Pastoral Music Projects and Theses

The United States of America is growing more diverse, and its houses of worship are embracing this diversity to engage congregants and build membership. There is a tool to help worshiping communities to espouse diversity of cultures, namely Liturgical Inculturation. Liturgical inculturation, as defined by Anscar Chupungco, is the process whereby the texts and rites used in worship by the local church are so inserted in the framework of culture, that they absorb its thought, language, and ritual patterns. Incorporating the goals and functions of liturgical inculturation, worshiping communities can begin to re-evangelize themselves and celebrate unity through diversity.

This …

Frozen Ii And Girls’ Spiritual Formation: How The Music Of An Animated Musical Resonates With Girls And Women, Cristen Mitchell

Doctor of Pastoral Music Projects and Theses

Frozen II (2019) is a popular Disney animated movie for children and depicts striking spiritual elements while weaving in feminist practices such as justice and equity, and feminist theology through representations of female spirits and connection to the earth. Through this movie, its themes, and the historical exclusion of women in the church, this thesis seeks to show that representation of women in the divine is an important, and necessary part of the spiritual and psychological development of girls and women. The methods of this thesis include exploring the following synchronicities:

1. Parallels between feminist issues in the church and Walt …

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Making Old Things New Again: The Northridge Psalter, With Antiphons Based On Lessons From The Revised Common Lectionary, Bryan Scott Page

Doctor of Pastoral Music Projects and Theses

Responsive psalmody is one of the primary musical vehicles for presenting the Psalms in worship by choir and congregation. Existing responsive psalmody features congregational antiphons with texts derived directly from the psalms. Working with the Revised Common Lectionary, this thesis presents fifty newly written and composed antiphons with texts derived from the accompanying RCL lessons. The goal of this method is to emphasize prophetic connections between the Old Testament lesson and Gospel lesson via the antiphons. This thesis also features a history of lectionary development, a detailed account of the creative process, rubrics for presenting the responsive psalmody in worship, …

Plenty Good Room: Using Negro Spirituals To Bridge The Racial Divide, Darnell Allen St. Romain

Doctor of Pastoral Music Projects and Theses

In 2020, the United States experienced a global pandemic and the murder of Mr. George Floyd. With the murder of Floyd, many churches were confronted with the racial divide in the United States. This thesis is a response of one community, the Prince of Peace Catholic Church in Plano, Texas. Using the folk song of Black Americans, namely the Negro Spirituals, as the foundation of an ethical-theological framework, this thesis poses one way for addressing the anti-Black structure prevalent in the Catholic Church in the United States of America. This work progresses from despair to hope, addressing the link between …

What Is This Place: Encountering The Body Of Christ In Prison And Church Through Sacrament And Ritual Musicking, Bryan Black

Doctor of Pastoral Music Projects and Theses

Churches in the United States have faced institutional decline due in part to an unprecedented half-century of intense cultural shift and digital acceleration. Many leaders responded to this disorientation with technical fixes that have exacerbated divisiveness rather than addressing the underlying crisis of alienation and loneliness. Driven by fear of decline, communities of faith have forsaken their alterity of purpose and become lost in the marketplace as a “purveyor of religious goods and services” (George Hunsberger). This thesis considers the imagery of Huub Oosterhuis’s hymn “What Is This Place?” in theological dialogue with the Voices of Hope—a choir of female …

Singing Unity—Performing Ecumenism: Musicking And Ecumenical Prayer Through The Lens Of Performance Studies, David James Anderson

Doctor of Pastoral Music Projects and Theses

This thesis examines the foundational call to Christian unity, communal prayer for unity, and the practice of ecumenism through pastoral musicking and performing unity through the lens of performance studies. It asks the question: Can we sing and perform Christian unity? The ecumenical call is considered from ecumenical documents of both the Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions since the Second Vatican Council. Ecumenical worship is considered a performance of unity viewed through the lens of performance studies with scholarship from ritual, liturgical, and church music studies. Two distinct services of ecumenical prayer are considered as “performances of unity.” One service …

Enlivened Worship With The Divine: Evaluation And Innovative Application Of The Liturgical Arts For Worship Renewal, Nicole Sikora Gray

Doctor of Pastoral Music Projects and Theses

Liturgical arts are meaningful resources and vessels for reclaiming and renewing the storytelling abilities of dynamic worship. This thesis explores a strategic evaluation of liturgical arts through the foundational and relational subjects of theology, ritual studies, and liturgical theology. Through the Holy Spirit, liturgical arts have formative powers that lead congregations into a deeper meeting with God—sending them forth as renewed signposts of Christ’s transcendence. They provide the space where pain and brokenness meet hope and grace for the renewal of the world.

This thesis examines those powers in combination with a foundational and contextual evaluation to restore and apply …