Abstract:
The publication of a new service book of the reformed and Lutheran churches in the Netherlands, and of a new liturgical handbook, have given the science of liturgy in that country a new impulse. The development of the discipline is focused on a cultural-anthropological perspective as well as on a reflection of the discipline in itself. In this article, two illustrating examples of four dimensions in this dynamism are given. The four dimensions are then discussed. These four dimensions are: 1. the popularity of rituals and symbols; 2. the interference of different systems of meaning; 3. the restoration of the two domains of art and
liturgy into the one domain of imagination; and 4. the (sometimes radical) recontextualisation of liturgy. These dimensions of liturgy are all
tendencies in the dynamism of cult and culture, and to understand them, it is necessary to use cultural-anthropological methods in the science of
liturgy.
