The Universe and the Human Brain

The July 2013 issue of Liturgy, guest edited by Taylor W. Burton-Edwards, offers four essays on recent research in neuroscience and how the findings might inform liturgists, worshippers, and scholars about what is happening in worship. Here is a peek at the contents through Burton-Edwards’ introduction.

Neuroscience and cosmology may seem an odd pairing for a journal on liturgy. . . Neuroscience tends to focus on how brains, bodies, and environments interact to generate consciousness, memory, learning, and, in some species, the sense of self. Cosmology addresses the origins and destiny of the universe as a whole, from “big bang” to “big stretch.” The vast differences in the scope of the two may seem to lead them to talk more past each other than to be in meaningful dialogue with each other, even if . . . neural networks and the structures of the universe may actually look remarkably similar.  . . . 

 Christian worshipers need neuroscience. We need it to help us sharpen our understanding of how worship forms worshiping communities and individual worshipers, as centuries of experience show it does. We also need it to help us refine some of our doctrinal or practical approaches to worship that may not have had or may no longer have the formative effects we had believed or assumed they would or should have. 

 Baptism for us is nothing less than an initiation into resurrection and new creation. The Eucharist is our proleptic participation by our gathered communities here and now in the life and feasting of the age to come. Even the act of prayer, personal or corporate, embodies an implicit cosmology. We need the scope of scientific cosmology both to remind us of the boldness of our own claims, confessed or enacted, and to keep us epistemically humble about our capacity to make claims about the cosmos, given what appears to be our supremely limited time and place within it. 

 The four essays in this volume remind us of our time and place, as well as of the ways we inhabit or may better inhabit them through our worship. Brad D. Strawn and Warren S. Brown invoke James K. A. Smith's definition of human beings as “liturgical animals” to explore how neuroscience reveals the ways the liturgies of culture, including Christian ritual, may form or malform us in the image of the Triune God. 

 Christopher Demuth Rodkey takes their work several steps further to explore both the neuroscience behind what he describes as “The Synaptic Gospel” and how these insights have led in practice and may lead in principle to a dramatic increase in empathy across the generations of a typical congregation, starting with children. 

 Allan R. Bevere invites us into physicist John Polkinghorne's theological dialogue with scientific cosmology to consider how our own celebrations of Advent and Eastertide and our theology and embodiment of the sacraments . . . may provide credible witness to our cosmological hope. 

 Finally . . . my essay . . . calls us to reconsider what the ideals of “full, conscious and [actual] participation” in the liturgy may look like and how they may be better achieved in local practice . . .  

– Taylor W. Burton-Edwards is the Director of Worship Resources for the General Board of Discipleship of the United Methodist Church, Indiana.

Read further to find out what these ardent researchers have to teach us. This issue offers an excellent avenue for keeping up with some of what scientists are discovering that impinges on even our lives of faith.

Taylor W. Burton-Edwards, “Neuroscience, Cosmology and Liturgy: Introduction,” Liturgy 28, no. 4 (22 July 2014): 1-2.

Embodying interreligious prayer

In the current issue of Liturgy, a great deal of our discussion of Interfaith Worship has focused upon the texts to be used. The selection of texts, the selection of persons to read those texts, and the difficulty attendant upon inviting interfaith congregations to proclaim certain texts in unison have occupied much of our attention. However, the non-verbal aspects of interfaith worship have also received some consideration.

In "A Roman Catholic Perspective on Interreligious Worship," J. Frank Henderson includes the non-verbal elements of worship such as space, posture, gensture, movement, signs, symbols and clothing" in his checklist of things which must be considered in the planning of occasions of interreligious prayer, and Susan Henry-Crowe's fine article "Emory University's Cannon Chapel as Multireligious Space," gives us a very deep look into the issue of worship space in a religiously pluralistic community.

In 2006, Dr. David A. Hogue invited readers of Liturgy to consider some exciting recent discoveries in the field of neuroscience and their applicability to our efforts to understand the effect that worship experiences have upon participants. In his article "Sensing the Other in Worship: Mirror Neurons and the Empathizing Brain." Among the new discoveries in brain science that Hogue discusses are these:

• that the human brain is designed not only to monitor the body of which it is a part, but also to attempt to empathize with other human beings and to communicate that empathy to them in non-verbal ways
• that the neurological ability to engage in this exchange of empathy continues to grow throughout the human lifespan, as we encounter more and more human beings each with their own thoughts, feelings and perspectives
• that specialized neurons in the motor cortex of the brain called "mirror neurons" participate in this exchange of empathy by causing us to imitate the movements, actions, postures and gestures of others on a muscular level below the threshold of conscious perception

These scientific discoveries have applicability to all aspects of human behavior, and in his concluding paragraphs, Hogue applies them to the human behavior called "Christian worship."

First, if there was ever any doubt, the brain sciences constantly remind us that we are profoundly embodied creatures, moving about in an often-confusing world, avoiding threats to our very survival and seeking meaning and fulfillment in both likely and unlikely places. Carefully reading recent studies of the brain, it becomes increasingly difficult for us to consider ourselves as spiritual souls that temporarily inhabit material bodies, as some religious traditions believe. Even if we believe that this world is not our ultimate home, our present physical and social world shape our souls (who we most profoundly are) from the very beginnings of life. Soul and body require each other and shape each other in unavoidable ways. Hebraic understandings of the inviolable unity of mind/soul and body therefore reemerge with an unmistakable clarity in our scientific age.

Building on this conviction, we cannot help but question many of our liturgical practices, particularly those that rely almost exclusively on abstract doctrinal concepts or on spoken and written language. Worship is a physical event, welcoming our entire selves into the incarnate word of the gospel. Liturgical leadership requires pastoral sensitivity to the profound ways in which culture, class, and gender both enrich and constrain possibilities for vital worship. We do not all worship in the same way. But in Christian worship, emotional engagement in worship reflects God's incarnation, at once blessing and transforming our created brains and bodies.

"Sensing the Other in Worship: Mirror Neurons and the Empathizing Brain," Liturgy,21:3, (2006) pp. 31-39.

The implications of this research for the practice of interreligious prayer are equally profound. We may take as much care as we like to help members of religiously diverse congregations understand that they are not expected to participate in prayers from others' traditions either verbally or mentally. However, neuroscience assures us that all present will participate physically whether they want to or not. When a Christian assumes the orans posture before leading an interreligious congregation in prayer, everyone present will imperceptibly assume that posture as well. If the person sitting next to you is shuckling, you will be shuckling as well. In the presence of Muslims praying salat non-Muslims will, all unawares, be performing the physical rhythms of standing right, takbeeratul-ihram (raising the hands to the sides of the head), ruku (bowing and placing the hands on ones knees), l’tidal (standing), sajdah (prostration), sitting, sadjah, and sitting.

When we pray together, we move together, and our brains do this in order that we might empathize with our fellows and come to understand just a little better how it is that they think and feel. Though our conscious minds might wish to perform some complex calculous to determine which parts of our neighbors' prayers we can, with integrity, participate in, on a much deeper level our brains and bodies simply pitch right in and pray.

Dr. David A. Hogue is Professor of Pastoral Theology and Counseling at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. He is the author of Remembering the Future, Imagining the Past: Story, Ritual and the Human Brain.