Congregational Music-Making and Community in a Mediated Age edited by Anna E Nekola and Tom Wagner. Anna E Nekola is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Denison University, teaching in the departments of Music and Communication, as well as the Queer Studies Program.
Congregational music can be an act of praise, a vehicle for theology, an action of embodied community, as well as a means to a divine encounter. This multidisciplinary anthology approaches congregational music as media in the widest sense-as a multivalent communication action with technological, commercial, political, ideological, and theological implications, where processes of mediated communication produce shared worlds and beliefs. Bringing together a range of voices, promoting dialogue across a range of disciplines, each author approaches the topic of congregational music from his or her own perspective, facilitating cross-disciplinary connections while also showcasing a diversity of outlooks on the roles that music and media play in Christian experience. The authors break important new ground in understanding the ways that music, media, and religious belief and praxis become 'lived theology' in our media age, revealing the rich and diverse ways that people are living, experiencing, and negotiating faith and community through music.
