CULTURAL CURRENTS AND THE EMERGENCE OF WORSHIP PATTERNS

Abstract

At the present time, particularly since 1960, we are witnessing a proliferation of what are called informal groups. These are of various kinds and of different religious and confessional affiliations. But they seem to possess a certain number of common morphological characteristics rooted in the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. We are particularly interested in such of these as are being polarized in terms of new patterns of worship. It is true that this is not the first time that such a thing has happened in the history of religion and culture. "Whenever the relationship between God and the world changes in the minds of men then there follows a shaking up, a crisis in man's understanding of worship; the Old Testament bears witness to such crises, as when Israel, for example, ceased to be nomadic tribal society and became an agricultural society, and the Church in the history of the last two thousand years has from time to time experienced disturbing chan�ges of this sort involving radical thinking and a new expression ot her relationship to God in worship and prayer."! At the same time it would not be correct to see only a simple repetition of the past in the present-day movement. It seems more reasonable to link the present-day tendency with the specific problems of this century's growing techniculture that rouses in people both a desire to control their own destiny and a feeling of reserve and even a sort of antipathy towards large-scale organisations.