Interviews with church visitors on their responses on Christmas Eve service reveal that their expectations are based on two perceptional perspectives: On the one hand, a basic tension between the general, culturally informed notion of "religious service" and the personal experience of its individual liturgical practice defines the worshipper's notion of a service. This tension leads to extremely conservative expectations regarding Christmas Eve services and considers any deviation from conventional preaching as a disruption of the "right" order. On the other hand the sermon on 12/24 serves as an occasion for a retrospective on the whole year in the sense of an individual autobiographic accounting. Like Christmas as a whole, the attendance of Christmas Eve worship structures the liturgical year and functions as a biographical marker. A certain 'turn of the year atmosphere' shapes the experience of the service. Worshippers expect the sermon to make this ambience of autobiographic accounting explicit and offer Christian interpretations pertaining to it.

Enthalten in:
Evangelische Theologie; 2013/1 Zweimonatsschrift (2013)

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Serie / Reihe: Evangelische Theologie

Personen: Merzyn, Konrad

Schlagwörter: Predigt Empirische Untersuchung Gottesdienst Weihnachten