November 19, 2014

Prayer, Praise and Postcoloniality: Rethinking Liturgy in Canada

by Dr Sarah Travis (Knox College)


Postcolonial theories have been brought into dialogue with many fields in recent decades, including biblical and theological studies.  Even more recently, liturgical scholars have begun to wonder about the relationship among postcolonial theories and worship practice.  This seminar will ponder this relationship with specific reference to the contemporary Canadian context.  What critiques and cautions are brought into the space of worship from a postcolonial perspective?  In what sense does liturgy interact with key postcolonial themes such as identity and hybridity?                                    
 

Rev. Dr. Sarah Travis is Minister-in-Residence at Knox College, where she also teaches courses in the areas of preaching and worship.  Her forthcoming book will be published by Wipf and Stock and is entitled Decolonizing Preaching: The Pulpit as Postcolonial Space.

October 29, 2014

Singing, Prayer, and Sacrifice
The Neo-Platonic Revival of Musica Humana
in the Swiss Reformation

by Dr Hyun-Ah Kim (Trinity College)



Dr Hyun-Ah Kim is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies in the University of Toronto and teaches at Trinity College in U. of T. and the Toronto School of Theology.

September 17, 2014

From Vancouver to Busan: Promises and Challenges in Ecumenical Worship since 1983

by Dr. Andrew Donaldson (Consultant in Worship and Spirituality, WCC, Geneva)



The worship that took place in the tent at the 6th Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Vancouver in 1983 opened up fresh possibilities in ecumenical liturgy and global song. This presentation will sketch some key turning points in the use of global song in North America since 1983. We will also consider some of the changes – the new possibilities and the fresh challenges –  that global song has brought to ecumenical liturgies.

Dr. Andrew Donaldson, Worship Consultant to the World Council of Churches
Co-editor of The Book of Praise for the Presbyterian
 Church in Canada and a past-president of the Hymn Society in the U.S. and Canada, Andrew received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree
 from Knox College in 2007 for his work in congregational song.

 Andrew works with the World Council of Churches in the area of worship and spirituality. Last year, along with Dr. Lim Swee Hong, he helped create and facilitate daily worship at the world-wide gathering of the WCC in Busan, Republic of Korea.

February 28, 2014

Let us sit and tell sad stories of the deaths of Kings: How to Bury a Medieval King in 2014

by Douglas Cowling MA - Musical Dramaturge for the Tallis Choir

*Special TST Liturgy Seminar and Concert  in collaboration with the Tallis Choir of Toronto


The discovery of the bones of Richard III in 2012 unleashed a flood of interest in medieval funerary customs and a spirited public debate about where and how the much-maligned king should be reinterred. As part of the historical commemoration of the event, the Tallis Choir is recreating a requiem mass as it may have been celebrated by Richard III's sister, Margaret of Burgundy. He may have been buried secretly in England, but he had a royal funeral in Burgundy. The polyphonic requiem was invented by the Franco-Flemish school of Ockhegem and Brumel and gives students of the liturgy an opportunity to hear the lavish obsession with death that seems to overwhelm the late 15th century.  

Douglas Cowling is a writer, musician and educator in Toronto who has written on the relationship between medieval liturgy and English religious drama. He is the co-author of Sharing the Banquet: Liturgical Renewal in Your Parish and a contributor to Let Us Keep the Feast. He edited two collections of global music for liturgical use in Let Us Make Music Together, and his own music has been published by CHC in the USA. His children’s symphony show, Tchaikovsky Discovers America was recently performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra. He is Director of Music at St. Philip’s Church, Etobicoke, and musical dramaturge for the Tallis Choir of Toronto.


Concert: “Requiem for Richard III” with the Tallis Choir of Toronto, Saturday, March 1, 2014 7:30pm, St. Patrick’s Church, 141 McCaul St (north of Dundas). For more information see:

February 19, 2014

May The Angels Lead You Into Paradise: Medieval Liturgical Expressions of Eschatology

by Rebecca Spellacy (Trinity College)

*A joint session with the TST Patristics Seminar. 


“Who I was, you are. Who I am, you will be. Pray for me”. This Medieval admonishment from the dead to the living reminds all who would read it of two very important things, the inevitability of death, and the necessity of prayer for the departed.  This presentation will concern itself with the liturgical prayers around the death of a Christian in the Middle Ages and how the prayers for the dead reflected the theology, both popular and established, of the day. It will demonstrate a development and continuity of the related liturgies in relationship to the eschatology of the time that still allowed for local adaption. Ultimately, it will attempt to show that the prayers for the dead exhibit a deep ecclesial and personal response to an eschatology that could at times prove both hopeful and hopeless.

January 29, 2014

The Eucharistic Celebration of the Didache: A Jewish Apocalyptic Messianic Banquet

by Rev. Dr. Harold E. Shepherd (Anglican Archdioceses of Toronto)


A joint session with the TST Patristics Seminar.