예배와 촛불집회의 의례·퍼포먼스적 성격에 관한 고찰

Abstract

Liturgical study in broader sense covers all the ritualistic activities performed by human beings. For this reason, secular rites should be interpreted with christian point of view. Christian liturgists should not exclude secular rites to get insights for their search for liturgy proper to contemporaries. The Candlelight Virgil from 2016 to 2017 can be the object of christian liturgical studies in that sense. The Candlelight Virgil were more of a ritualistic act of gathering than anything else. They could be successful because they created a sense of community, called “social presence,” and expressed it dramatically by building up “co-presence,” and sharing “co-location.” The experience of exaltation of ordinary individuals to become transcendental social existence by uniting with higher values, which are more transcendental ones like equality, and justice. Those values could not be sought by individuals in their daily lives. Christian worship service, a communal ritual based on the gathering in the name of Jesus, is an act of gathering for the union with transcendental values, which are preoccupation of God’s Kingdom and commemoration of salvation through Jesus. It is in that sense that we can find ritual similarity between christian worship service and the Candlelight Virgil. The Candlelight Virgil were well organized performances as a whole. It was a mega performance consisted of various performances like songs, gestures, and dramas. A performance is not a recorded text. It is a practice, event, and action, whose process is most important. Christian worship service is also a performance in that it is rather an on-going practice than a product of the past. What christian worship service lacks is, however, a desperate need to deal with common problem. It doesn’t have any anti-structure that rites and performances must have. Its structure is for maintenance of the existing order. As a result, christian worship service has lost its dynamics, and cannot enjoy the thrills and delights of the Candlelight Virgil. Christian worship service as the rehearsal of God’s Kingdom must be practised as a performance to overcome the rigidity and fixedness of ideas and perspectives with the dynamism of anti-structure and diversity of age, gender, and class.