Academic literature on the topic 'Nazarene worship'

Loreto (Italy) is one of the most famous Marian sanctuaries in the world. It is a place of worship devoted to the Holy Family of Nazareth. It was in the eighteenth century that, according to tradition, the "Holy House" was transported from the Holy Land to the Hill of Laurels by the "ministry of Angels".

Did Jesus of Nazareth, born of a woman and born under the law, confess the Shema like all other Israelites? Was he a monotheist? Although scholarship argues that there were many types of monotheism, we focus here on strict Israelite monotheism (Deut 6:4). What does Jesus have to say for himself? This article does not go over plowed ground, but seeks to add to the conversation the use of two social science models: understanding “role” and “status,” and interpreting data in terms of the relationships of Patron-broker-client. These models necessarily serve to clarify much scholarship on monotheism, as well as clarify for us whether people worshiped Christ or prayed to him. In short, Jesus always functioned in two roles, either as God's client or as broker between God-Patron and Israel-client. Paul and other NT authors always put him in this place, namely, in a client or broker role, who never encroached on God's uniqueness or sovereignty.

The vast majority of sacred shrines and holy sites host pilgrims united by strong degrees of cultural homogeneity. But Jerusalem differs on this point- it draws pilgrims from a vast multitude of nations and cultural traditions since the city is considered holy by three major religious traditions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The representatives of these traditions go partly to different places at different times where they are engaged in different forms of worship. Often these visits are marked by clashes at the holy places. The notion of Jerusalem in religious belief is constructed by the transmission of various representations concerned with the image of the city. For Western Christianity today, Jerusalem is not only important because of the things which Jesus of Nazareth, according to the tradition, did there. For many Christians Jerusalem is vitally important because of the apocalyptic promise Jesus left his followers with: I'll be back! Therefore, the position of Jerusalem in the religious end-time play is crucial, since apocalyptic representations of the New Jerusalem motivate contemporary believers to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and to partake actively in political disputes about the Israeli—Palestinian conflict.

On 19 August 1897, a newly carved image of Our Lady of Walsingham, sent from Rome by Pope Leo XIII, was solemnly installed in the Roman Catholic Church in Kings Lynn. Since no plan of the original medieval shrine survived, the chapel that contained the image was modelled upon the Holy House of Loreto. The following day a pilgrimage led by the parish priest and by Fr Philip Fletcher, one of the prime movers behind the Marian revival, went from Lynn to the Slipper Chapel at Walsingham. This was an important focus of worship since it was the only building to have survived substantially intact near the great pilgrimage site destroyed at the Reformation. In 1934 the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Bourne, led the first annual Roman Catholic pilgrimage to the Slipper Chapel, in which a new image of Our Lady of Walsingham based upon that of the seal of the medieval Priory had been placed. In the intervening years, the Anglo-Catholic vicar of Little Walsingham, the Revd Arthur Hope Patten, had created a similar shrine in the Anglican parish church in 1922, and had gone on in 1931 to build a separate chapel with its own sanctuary of the Holy House of Nazareth.

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me: because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek.’ When Jesus stood up to read these verses from Isaiah at the start of his public ministry, as he began to reveal himself as the Word in the synagogue of Nazareth, the book ‘he had opened’ at the reading desk was one of the Torah scrolls, brought out for him from the Ark of the Law, the imposing reserve which is, from age to age, the most sacred part of any synagogue. Holy Scripture has always been a public book, a treasure for each synagogue, and for the commonwealth of the Christian community sacred as text and object. But the mystical sanctity of the Bible, and holy books in general, has raised a perennial problem. Precious books have usually been hedged round by restrictions to protect them from the profane, even at the cost of obscuring the public approach which is a necessary part of assembled worship. In this episode in the life of Christ, when the listeners grew too ‘filled with wrath’ for him to continue, we meet the deep and recurrent tension between the community’s need to hear the Word, and the conflicting desire to shield its essential sanctity, which accompanied the book from Judaism in transition to the Christian Church.

The task undertaken in this essay is to consider the significance for Christology of a relatively orthodox incarnational kind, of the fact that Jesus of Nazareth was a first century Jew. In other words the frame of reference taken here is the Christianity of the Christian creeds. The question asked is what the Jewishness of Jesus means for that. The task, no doubt, would have been much easier, though less interesting, had we followed the example of those who seek to demythologise the doctrine of the Incarnation, either in the interests of an eirenic global, pluralist, theology of religions, or in the interests of a purely expressivist, anti-realist, analysis of Christian faith. Even on such views as these, as represented by John Hick and Don Cupitt for example, there would be some interesting questions remaining: what still differentiates Christianity from Judaism? Why follow the Jewish prophet, Jesus, rather than some other? Does the Christian ideal necessarily retain its historical links with the Jewish ideal? But these are not the questions pursued here. It is not necessary to abandon the characteristic tenets of one's faith in order to make progress in inter-faith dialogue. Rather, what we bring to the dialogue and submit to mutual questioning are the distinctive and representative faith-stances, true to the patterns of belief and worship of the majority of our coreligionists.

The Church worships Mary of Nazareth as the Lord’s Mother (Luc 1, 43) and the Mother of God. In the Fourth Gospel the Mother of Jesus appears only at the beginning and at the end of the book and in both cases in the context of the „hour” of Jesus (John 2, 1–12; 19, 25–27). In the Evangelist’s comments she is referred to as the „Mother of Jesus” and her Son calls her a „Woman”.In the debate about the omission of the name of the God’s Mother in the Gospel of John most exegetes emphasize the symbolic meaning of the book and probably in connection with it the author’s intention to depict some persons as types in the narration. Besides Jesus’ Mother the names are not given to the woman of Samaria (4, 7), the royal official of Capernaum (4, 46), the man blind from birth (9, 1), and finally the disciple whom Jesus loved. Therefore the role of these people seems to be special.According to tradition John’s Gospel, being the product of well-developed Christology, was created in its final shape in Ephesus at the end of the 1st century. It was the time of various religious and philosophical trend clashes and the beginning of Christological errors. In these circumstances, Christian orthodoxy crystallized. The Fourth Gospel can be characterized as decidedly Christocentric. It seems that the author of the book was particularly careful not to overemphasize the importance of the Mother of Jesus, but to present her true role in the historical-salvific work of her Son by means of the indicated titles. Mary is Mother of Jesus, but she isn’t situated on the same level with his heavenly Father, therefore she is also defined as a “Woman”. For the disciples of Jesus she is Mother and new Eve. Both titles: „Mother of Jesus” and „Woman” express her specific position before Jesus and his disciples.

The article is a poststructuralist reading of the discourses on popular religiosity exemplified in the devotion to the Black Nazarene in Quiapo. Popular religiosity is considered the religious expression of the ‘ordinary’ believers in the margins relation to the official hierarchical Church. Poststructuralist interpretation shows how power operates like a thread network where those in the periphery can own their faith: this is described as discourse, an expression of the devotees’ faith and practices. Discourse can be either discursive or non-discursive. When it is discursive, it shows the structures, the faith expressions, organizations and observable elements. When it is nondiscursive, it reveals the resistance, the underlying structures, undercurrent faith beliefs and practices, worldviews and hidden interactions. An examination of the models leads to uncover how the movements of popular religiosity from below find its way towards faith empowerment, life’s meaning and even survival. References BooksCandelaria, Michael R. Popular Religion and Liberation: The Dilemma of Liberation Theology. New York: University of New York Press, 1990. Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the discourse on Language. Translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972. _________________. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, translated by Alan Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon, 1973. _________________. The Order of Things: An Archeology of Human Sciences, unidentified collective translation New York: Pantheon, 1971. _________________. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the discourse on Language. Translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972. _____________. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Random House Inc., 1977. _____________. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. London:Random House Inc., 1965. _____________. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume 1. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990 _____________. “Two Lectures.” Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas Debate. Translated by Michael Kelly. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1998. Galilea, Segundo. The Challenge of Popular Religiosity. Quezon City: Claretian Publications, 1988. Raas, Bernard. Popular Devotions. Manila: Divine Word Publications, 1992. Articles Bouritius, G.J.F. “Popular and Official Religion in Christianity: Three Cases in the 19th Century Europe”, Official and Popular Religion: Analysis of a Theme for Religious Studies. Edited by Pieter Hendrik Vrijhof and Jacques Waardenburg.New York: Mouton Publishers, 1979 Frijhoff, M. “Official and Popular Religion in Christianity: The Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Times (13th-18th Centuries)”, Official and Popular Religion: Analysis of a Theme for Religious Studies, edited by Pieter HendrikVrijhof and Jacques Waarddenburg. New York: Mouton Publishers, 1979. Internet Sources Catechism of the Catholic Church On-line Version: http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines. Catechism for Filipino Catholics.1997. Manila: ECCCE Word and Life Publications. On Line Version: https://chermercado.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/cfc-cbcp.pdf Defending the Bride. Proof that Catholics clearly teach to worship only God and not to worship Mary in http://www.defendingthebride.com/ma3/only18.html. Inquierer.net. Traslacion 2018 attracts 4million Black Nazarene Devotees in http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/958747/traslacion-2018-attracts-4-million-black-nazarene-devotees-black-nazarene-pnp-quiapo-metro-feast-traslacion-devotees. Manila Reviews, Devotion to the Black Nazarene, A Pastoral Understanding. MinorBasilica of the Black Nazarene Website, 2018 in http://www.quiapochurch.com/devotion-to-the-black-nazarene-a-pastoral-understanding/.

Christmas gives us that ’sweet little Jesus Boy’ and Lent follows that with the ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild.’ He was neither of those. In point of fact, he was the ‘tough guy from Nazareth.’ He was consistently abrasive, if not abusive, to his mother (Lk 2:49; Jn 2:4; Mt 12:48) and aggressively hard on males, particularly those in authority. In Mark 8 he cursed and damned Peter for failing to get Jesus’ esoteric definition of Messiah correct. Nobody else understood it either. Jesus had made it up himself and not adequately explained it to anybody until then. He called the religious authorities snakes, corrupt tombs, filthy chinaware, fakes, and Mosaic legalists who had forgotten God’s real revelation of universal grace and salvation in the Abraham Covenant. He tore up the temple in the middle of a worship service and cursed those present for turning God’s house of prayer into a den of thieves, when actually they were kind, helping out-of-town tourists obtain the proper sacrifices for the liturgical rituals. Jesus was persistently aggressive, often angry and not infrequently irrational, killing an innocent fig tree with his curse, for example. He constantly attacked the Pharisees and their proposals for renewing the spiritual vitality of the Jewish Community. He abused numerous people by healing them on the Sabbath just to make his political point against the religious leaders. He could just as well have healed them on Tuesday, if he really wanted to heal them. By healing the blind man in John 9 on the Sabbath, for example, he caused the man to be driven out of his synagogue, his family, and his community of faith; isolated and abandoned as if he were a leper. Even when he said surprising things about children, his focus was not on the children but on his disciples, using the children as tools for making an assertive teaching point. Jesus’ life was one of perpetually aggressive claims for his vision of God’s reign. He constantly and intentionally provoked conflict and disruption of the status quo, spiritually and politically. He refused to negotiate, compromise, palliate, or mollify his insistence upon keeping his elbow perpetually in the eye of the people in power. In all this he would not back down. The principle by which Jesus operated was absolute and that is why he did not back down, even though they killed him for this very reason. His principle was simply that the renewal of Jewish spirituality could only come from a return to the Abrahamic Covenant, which declared (Gn 12; Rm 8) that God is gracious and universally forgiving towards all humankind, unconditional to our conduct and behaviour, and radically in that it removes all fear, guilt, and shame from the equation of our relationship with God (Mi 7:18–20). He saw that the Pharisees and Scribes were absolutely wrong in assuming that the Mosaic legal system would renew the Jewish relationship with God. He was not the gentle Jesus, meek and mild. He was that tough guy from Nazareth! He had good reason and he was willing to go the distance for what he stood for, even to death on the cross.

<p><em>This time, in the modern era, human lifestyle are increasingly changing the human habit who makes them more concern with a worldly life and tarnished their needs of God, thus starving of their spirit has been ignored. For some people to go to church only be regarded as a formality or just things that do not even need to do. This makes human have lack understanding about the human essence which are part of God creation. Now, the church only seen as a building which is place to worship, the true meaning from the church is the human itself. This deconstruction of meaning are writer try to reverse back as a basis of Church planning and design. The problem in this design process is how to design church which can make physical and psychological impact to the user. The Universal Church of Metaphysics approach is most suitable appointed because the elements of Metaphysics Architecture can give impact to user psychical and physical. The Universal means intended to accommodate all of the Nazarenes, not only for Christian or Catholic believes, as well as to facilitate all people physical condition, normal people or disabilities people. Metaphysics Architecture can be achieved from some aspects consist of archetype, nature, light, materials, human, and memories which will be creating particular feel and atmosphere in the design. The main target of this architecture form is the user that is human. All of senses and sensors on the human body become essence in this work. Through planning location, nature, and all of architectural details which writer implemented to Universal Church and Retreat Facilities design, which have an aim to restore the human essence and can ‘presenting’ the God inside of the design.<strong></strong></em></p><p><em> </em></p><p><strong><em>Keywords</em></strong><em>: </em><em>Human and God, Metaphysics Phenomenon, Universal Church</em><em></em></p>

This qualitative research study explores the role of the sermon in corporate Nazarene worship. The context of this study is located with the Christian, Protestant, evangelical, Wesleyan theological tradition as expressed through the Church of the Nazarene in Australia. The church is briefly described from a Wesleyan perspective. Seven features are identified as historically important within the worship experience of Nazarenes; Biblically centred, centrality of the sermon, connection with Christian tradition, the preacher's life, encounter with self and the divine, community, and practical and relevant to present life. The conceptual lens through which the worship experiences are described is Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), as primarily articulated by Yrjö Engeström (1999). The philosophical roots of CHAT and the concept of activity are described along with the structure of activity. Additionally, the compatibility of Wesleyan theology with the conceptual understanding of CHAT is presented. The interactive context of Nazarene worship is one of the compelling reasons given for using CHAT as the conceptual base for this study. Three corporate Nazarene worship experiences in three different Nazarene congregations are examined in detail using four research methodologies; namely, video taping, video stimulated recall interviews, focus groups, and observation reports. The data gathered is by way of transcriptions based on the video taping of the sermons, stimulated recall interviews and focus groups and is managed by use of the NUD*IST (5) computer program. The observation reports are used to gain insight into specific context issues. Nazarene worship is then mapped by relating the features found to be historically important in Nazarene worship to elements of the activity system. The role of the Bible, the sermon, Christian tradition, the preacher's life, the church community, personal encounter, divine encounter, and the application and the call to decision are identified in CHAT terms. The focus of this study is within Steps 1 and 2 of Engeström's (2000) expansive development cycle. Through the mapping of Nazarene worship, tensions are identified and their possible sources explored. The tensions of confrontation versus care, creation of a quiet, meditative environment versus noisy, dynamic environment, planning versus spontaneity, and individual versus community orientation are all explored in turn. Possibilities for resolution of these tensions are suggested as a means of guiding the continued development of the activity of Nazarene worship. Possible resolution of these tensions includes the change of the focus of sermons from confrontation to empowerment, the change of the structure of sermons to encompass the visualisation of the change sought, the change of the perceptions of the preacher to one of a sojourner, and the cultivation of spontaneity within sermon delivery. The static nature of the sermon as an instrument in both the sermon's historical development and the development of the corporate worship experience points to the need for the development of the sermon as a more flexible instrument. These conclusions have implications for the teaching of preaching in schools preparing Nazarene preachers. This study contributes to the conceptual basis for the ongoing development of clergy in their preaching ministry. This study has also made visible the difficulty of applying the conceptual framework of CHAT to the complex situation of corporate Nazarene worship experience. While conceptually it may be possible to differentiate between elements within an activity system, their practical distinction is less precise. This imprecision can create confusion especially at the tertiary and quaternary levels of contradictions and may need more precise articulation of the interactions within the activity system as well as between activity systems.

This qualitative research study explores the role of the sermon in corporate Nazarene worship. The context of this study is located with the Christian, Protestant, evangelical, Wesleyan theological tradition as expressed through the Church of the Nazarene in Australia. The church is briefly described from a Wesleyan perspective. Seven features are identified as historically important within the worship experience of Nazarenes; Biblically centred, centrality of the sermon, connection with Christian tradition, the preacher's life, encounter with self and the divine, community, and practical and relevant to present life. The conceptual lens through which the worship experiences are described is Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), as primarily articulated by Yrjö Engeström (1999). The philosophical roots of CHAT and the concept of activity are described along with the structure of activity. Additionally, the compatibility of Wesleyan theology with the conceptual understanding of CHAT is presented. The interactive context of Nazarene worship is one of the compelling reasons given for using CHAT as the conceptual base for this study. Three corporate Nazarene worship experiences in three different Nazarene congregations are examined in detail using four research methodologies; namely, video taping, video stimulated recall interviews, focus groups, and observation reports. The data gathered is by way of transcriptions based on the video taping of the sermons, stimulated recall interviews and focus groups and is managed by use of the NUD*IST (5) computer program. The observation reports are used to gain insight into specific context issues. Nazarene worship is then mapped by relating the features found to be historically important in Nazarene worship to elements of the activity system. The role of the Bible, the sermon, Christian tradition, the preacher's life, the church community, personal encounter, divine encounter, and the application and the call to decision are identified in CHAT terms. The focus of this study is within Steps 1 and 2 of Engeström's (2000) expansive development cycle. Through the mapping of Nazarene worship, tensions are identified and their possible sources explored. The tensions of confrontation versus care, creation of a quiet, meditative environment versus noisy, dynamic environment, planning versus spontaneity, and individual versus community orientation are all explored in turn. Possibilities for resolution of these tensions are suggested as a means of guiding the continued development of the activity of Nazarene worship. Possible resolution of these tensions includes the change of the focus of sermons from confrontation to empowerment, the change of the structure of sermons to encompass the visualisation of the change sought, the change of the perceptions of the preacher to one of a sojourner, and the cultivation of spontaneity within sermon delivery. The static nature of the sermon as an instrument in both the sermon's historical development and the development of the corporate worship experience points to the need for the development of the sermon as a more flexible instrument. These conclusions have implications for the teaching of preaching in schools preparing Nazarene preachers. This study contributes to the conceptual basis for the ongoing development of clergy in their preaching ministry. This study has also made visible the difficulty of applying the conceptual framework of CHAT to the complex situation of corporate Nazarene worship experience. While conceptually it may be possible to differentiate between elements within an activity system, their practical distinction is less precise. This imprecision can create confusion especially at the tertiary and quaternary levels of contradictions and may need more precise articulation of the interactions within the activity system as well as between activity systems.
Thesis (Professional Doctorate)
Doctor of Education (EdD)
School of Vocational, Technology and Arts Education
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Abstract When and where does the worship of Jesus as Son of God begin? Early Aramaic speaking followers of the Way were already calling him “Lord.” The maranatha prayer indicates a freedom from earliest time to address Jesus directly. Ultimately, this and the understanding of Jesus as Lord and Son of God must be traced to the impact Jesus himself had on his followers. This impact led to an apparent paradox: Christians remained committed to belief in One God, but they also were clear that they experienced God in and through Jesus of Nazareth. This led directly to the centuries of theological debate, and eventually to the homoousion.