LAUSR

Worship is the church’s primary act of faith. It is through worship that Christians acknowledge not only their belief about God, but also their theological understanding of their existential presence. Any liturgical form of worship is an explicit way of expressing the people’s encounter with God in time and space, which is contextually bound. Robert Brooks and Michael Vasey write, “The worship of the church, like language itself, is a complex creation by a living community. It is formed in life and then, in turn, exercises its own formative influence.” Inculturation is the way to make sense of the Gospel revealed in the life setting of the people concerned. Liturgical inculturation is to care for liturgical forms by which the faithful will be able to acknowledge God and God’s presence through their participation in the liturgy here and now. But what might an inculturated liturgy look like? How likely is it that such a liturgy would truly serve the purpose of worship as the church’s primary act of faith in and of a living community? An inculturated Marriage Service Rite (IMS) produced in 2013 by the Standing Commission on Liturgical Matters of Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui (HKSKH, the Anglican/Episcopal Church of Hong Kong) was trying to answer these questions. IMS is a project intended by the commission to search for a way of making a new Chinese Book of Common Prayer to replace the book that has been used in Hong Kong since 1957. It was hoped that by doing so HKSKH would be able to invigorate the liturgical life of the church and to address the pastoral needs of the faithful. This study is to evaluate how the IMS has served these purposes and to collect new findings about its liturgical performance in a context both Christian and Chinese.