Bryan Cones

University of Divinity, Pilgrim Theological College, Post-Doc

Followers

Following

Public Views

I am a presbyter in the Episcopal Church, based in Chicago, and pursue research in practical and liturgical theology. I focus on the appearance of difference in Christian worship, including gender, sexuality, age and ability, for what they contribute to a community's understanding of God and itself.

less

Andrej Dujella

University of Zagreb

Hemin Koyi

Uppsala University

Jana Javornik

University of East London

Graham Martin

University of Leicester

Gwen Robbins Schug

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Gabriel Gutierrez-Alonso

University of Salamanca

John Sutton

Macquarie University

Eros Carvalho

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

Kevin Arbuckle

Swansea University

Jesper Hoffmeyer

University of Copenhagen

Uploads

Papers by Bryan Cones

“How Beautiful the Feet”: Discerning the Assembly’s Path on Holy Thursday

SCM Press, 2019

Carter Heyward (1945

Wiley-Blackwell, 2020

God’s Farm and Field: An Ecology of the Liturgical Assembly

Liturgy Training Publications, 2020

Looking for the Body’s Language: Tracking the Roles of ‘Ministers’ in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer

Coventry Press, 2020

Mixed Media: The Assembly's Theologia Prima of Resistance to Its Place of Prayer

Studia Liturgica

Many liturgical assemblies celebrate in spaces purpose-built for the worship of a different age. ... more Many liturgical assemblies celebrate in spaces purpose-built for the worship of a different age. While financial and other constraints limit the possibility of complete reordering and renovation of these buildings, assemblies can nevertheless creatively engage their inherited architecture and discover new encounters with the living God. This paper explores how active resistance to the built environment can be a juxtaposing act of primary liturgical theology that interacts with the received liturgies of past assemblies and proposes new patterns for prayer even in inhospitable spaces.

Word and Worship

New Theology Review, Sep 24, 2018

The Assembly Beyond “the Brink of Chaos”: Signs of Hope among those Re-gathered in Christ’s Name

Liturgy

Essential Workers, Essential Services? Leitourgia in Light of Lockdown

Religions, 2021

Within days of the outbreak of COVID-19, the language of “essential work” and “essential workers”... more Within days of the outbreak of COVID-19, the language of “essential work” and “essential workers” became commonplace in public discourse. “Church workers” and their in-person liturgical services were largely deemed “non-essential”, and most assemblies shifted worship to online platforms. While some reflection on this virtual “church work” has appeared in the intervening months, there has been less evaluation of the gathered assembly’s absence from the public square, along with the contribution its liturgical work might offer in interpreting the pandemic and its effects. This essay imagines a post-COVID-19 agenda for liturgical studies that focuses on a recovery of Christian liturgy as public, in-person, and “essential” service done for the sake of the polis—a public example of “church doing world”—that proposes a countersign to the inequalities of contemporary consumer culture laid bare in these last months. It begins by engaging in dialogue with the leitourgia of groups who insiste...

Download

“This Assembly of Believers”: The Boundless Riches of Christ in the Church at Prayer

Fully Conscious, Fully Active: Essays in Honor of Gabe Huck

Liturgical Training Press, 2020

Field Notes from a Pilgrimage: Lessons from Beneath the Southern Cross for a Pilgrim from the Lands of the North Star

After rehearsing his experiences as a participant-observer in a number of Melbourne Anglican cong... more After rehearsing his experiences as a participant-observer in a number of Melbourne Anglican congregations, the author notes particular tensions that to him appear as &#39;sticking points&#39; impeding ongoing liturgical renewal, particularly regarding differences of gender and cultural heritage in an assembly&#39;s liturgical ministers. Placing liturgies experienced in Melbourne in conversation with his home U.S. Episcopal Church context, the author goes on to explore pathways toward renewed liturgical practice that might help assemblies get &#39;unstuck&#39; in relation to these differences, with reference not only to Anglican assemblies but to assemblies of other churches what have sought to engage the twentieth-century liturgical renewal.

Introduction: The Vivid Richness of God’s Image

Essential Workers, Essential Services? Leitourgia in Light of Lockdown

Religions, 2021

Download

Liturgy with a Difference: beyond inclusion in the christian assembly [Edited Book]

Christian churches in recent decades have taken some steps in their practices of liturgy and wors... more Christian churches in recent decades have taken some steps in their practices of liturgy and worship toward acknowledging the graced dignity of human variety. But who is still excluded? What pernicious norms still govern below the surface, and how might they be revealed? How do texts, gestures, and space abet and enforce such norms? How might Christian assemblies gather multiple expressions of human difference to propose through Christian liturgy patterns of graced interaction in the world around them? Liturgy with a Difference gathers a broad range of international theologians and scholars to interrogate current practices of liturgy and worship in order to unmask ways in which dehumanizing majoritarianisms and presumed norms of gender, culture, ethnicity, and body, among others, remain at work in congregations. Together, the chapters in this collection call for a liturgical practice that recognizes and rehearses the vivid richness of God's image found in the human community and...

The 78th General Convention of the Episcopal Church and the Liturgy: New Wine in Old Wineskins?

The 78th General Convention of the Episcopal Church generated a significant number of resolutions... more The 78th General Convention of the Episcopal Church generated a significant number of resolutions related to the church's liturgy, most of which passed both Houses, including resolutions authorizing preparation of the revision of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and The Hymnal 1982. A review of the resolutions related to liturgy and music, however, raises fundamental questions about the kind of liturgical reform the church may undertake and how it may integrate growing appreciation for linguistic and cultural diversity in the church, including the insights of feminist, postcolonial, and LGBTQ theological reflection and those produced by theologians of color. This essay argues that serious engagement with these questions suggests a completely reimagined liturgical “center of gravity” that integrates the insights of liturgical scholarship and practice since the authorization of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and The Hymnal 1982, while providing the flexibility to respond to the chur...

A Prayer Book for the Twenty-first Century?

In the more than thirty years that have passed since the authorization of the 1979 Book of Common... more In the more than thirty years that have passed since the authorization of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, scholars and practitioners of its liturgical vision have mined the riches of its “baptismal ecclesiology,” its variety of texts, and its permissive rubrics; they have also raised new questions about its inconsistencies and shortcomings. Anglican and ecumenical partner churches have adapted and improved upon material found in the BCP in their own new liturgical resources, suggesting directions for further liturgical renewal, and the Episcopal Church itself has authorized supplemental texts in its Enriching Our Worship series, which began publication in 1998. Questions concerning expansive language, the relationship between baptismal ministry and its expression in holy orders, and the contextualization of liturgy in a multicultural church have come to the fore as primary concerns of the church in the twenty-first century, with important implications for the celebration of liturgy....

‘Evoking the Other’: Towards Feminist Gesture for Any Assembly

Feminist Theology, 2020

While some church bodies and denominations have taken steps towards language for the divine and h... more While some church bodies and denominations have taken steps towards language for the divine and human informed by feminist theological reflection and practice, the embodiment of common prayer across traditions is little changed. Feminist liturgical reflection and practice, however, offer patterns of movement and gesture, voice, and leadership that are no less critical to renewed and liberating liturgical practice in assemblies not consciously identified as ‘feminist’. The following suggests strategies for embodying in liturgical assemblies ritual patterns that would extend and develop the insights of liturgical feminism beyond liturgical texts.

Download

Word and Worship

Theology Today, 1959

‘Christ, Hear Us’: The Assembly’s Prayer for the World

On not playing Jesus: The gendered liturgical theology of presiding

Pacifica: Australasian Theological Studies

“How Beautiful the Feet”: Discerning the Assembly’s Path on Holy Thursday

SCM Press, 2019

Carter Heyward (1945

Wiley-Blackwell, 2020

God’s Farm and Field: An Ecology of the Liturgical Assembly

Liturgy Training Publications, 2020