Unsettling Worship: Reforming Liturgy for Right Relations with Indigenous Communities

Settler churches across North America have committed to the work of reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples. Worship is a space in which these commitments are expressed and nurtured. As we are embraced by God’s reconciling love in worship, we are equipped to carry that reconciling love into our relationships beyond the worship space. Worship equips us for the work of conciliation, but the liturgy itself needs to be decolonized if it is to truly honour Christian commitments to God and neighbour. This book explores the reformed liturgy in its pattern of Gathering, Word, Table, and Sending, searching it both for colonial vestiges, and spaces of new possibility.

Unsettling Worship invites the reader into a conversation about worship in a setting of ongoing colonization. Worship should both unsettle us, and equip us for the essential work of making things right with Indigenous neighbours.