Publishing Opportunity

Dearest Colleagues,

I wanted to invite you to consider collaborating with us for a new volume on multilingualism in religious musical practice and worship. It is a follow-up issue to “Language Translation in Localizing Religious Musical Practice.”

Please consider submitting your research on this important topic. Additionally, please forward to scholars or research students that you think might be interested in working with us.

Specifically, this Special Issue focuses on multilingualism in religious musical practice. Drawing from Nathan Myrick’s concept of “musical caring” (Music for Others: Care, Justice, and Relational Ethics in Christian Music, Oxford, 2021), in which congregational music demonstrates care ethics “when it enables human flourishing”, “provides space for people to voice their needs…honestly”, and “preserves people in and restores people to just relationships with each other”, this issue seeks to explore the motivations for and approaches to multilingualism in sung congregational worship. Additionally, this Special Issue will build upon works such as Gerardo Marti’s Worship Across the Racial Divide: Religious Music and the Multiracial Church (Oxford, 2012) and Kathleen Garces-Foley’s Crossing the Ethnic Divide: The Multiethnic Church on a Mission (Oxford, 2007). We welcome the submission of original research from diverse disciplinary approaches, i.e., from historical musicology, religious and theological studies, applied linguistics, ethnomusicology, sociology of religion, anthropology, communication and media studies, etc. For example:

• Historical analyses of multilingualism in view of the Protestant Reformation or Vatican II;
• Ethnographies exploring multilingual congregational singing in a single local community;
• Sociological studies on the impact of urbanization, migration, or cosmopolitanization on language in ecclesial musical contexts;
• Case studies on specific religious communities;
• Theologies of multilingualism and multiculturalism in religious musical practice;
• Relational ethics through multilingual congregational song.

See https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/42Y2C5NY5G for more info.

The deadline is December 31, 2023.

Also, we will be waiving the APC (article processing charge). If the deadline is problematic, just let us know. If you have any questions or suggestions, don’t hesitate to reach out!

Dr. Jeremy Perigo
Dr. John MacInnis
Guest Editors