Pentecostal Liturgical Theology: On the Altar, Willed to Pentecost

This book explores how Pentecostal meaning-full worship frees people into a cosmic liturgy that wills humanity to Pentecost. A liturgical turn has marked recent Pentecostal studies, producing a growing body of liturgical theologies. This cutting edge work analyses four theologians at its forefront: Tanya Riches, Daniela Augustine, Chris E.W. Green, and Wolfgang Vondey. It does so through a ＂liturgy as primary theology＂ approach, which defines liturgy as ＂the church at prayer＂. Here, Rice shows how Pentecostal experience clarifies liturgy as the church at prayer on the altar.

Drawing from critical discourse analysis, continental philosophy, and Aristotelian wisdom, this incisive book proceeds by narrating a healing soteriology that makes humanity willed to the common good signified by Pentecost. Working from Walter Hollenweger’s insights on the ecumenical promise of Pentecostal liturgy, Rice identifies inclusivity, liberative spirituality, Majority World epistemology, gift-sharing community, and scholarly re-oralization as apt benchmarks for Pentecostal liturgical theology. This inclusive multi-faceted form reveals how Occidental voices dominate the Pentecostal discourse, yet conversely offers augmenting pathways toward a more globally representative theology, summoning the Pentecostal academy to the altar.

The foremost pathway this book presents is its theology of Pentecostal meaning-full worship. Through the lens of liturgy as a cosmic gift economy, Rice shows how Pentecostal meaning-full worship frees people into a cosmic liturgy that wills humanity to Pentecost. Through engaging Ricoeurean/Aristotelian narrative theory, this eye-opening work thus climaxes with a briefly constructed Pentecostal theology of the altar. It shows how Pentecostal meaning-full worship fosters moral formation as worshippers place themselves on the altar of sacrifice, becoming priestly partners with God; fuelling the gift economy that flourishes his household, till all creation be willed to Pentecost.

Monte Lee Rice is an independent scholar and a Pastor in Pentecostal Christian Community, Assemblies of God, Singapore