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Not the Words: Hymnody, Enacted Theology, and the Lutheran Inupiat
Author(s) -
Hanson Kristin Helweg
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
dialog
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.114
H-Index - 5
eISSN - 1540-6385
pISSN - 0012-2033
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-6385.2009.00483.x
Subject(s) - singing , spiritual practice , religious studies , sociology , history , theology , anthropology , art , philosophy , spirituality , medicine , alternative medicine , management , pathology , economics
: The theology of hymnody is not text‐bound. This article asserts that for the Lutheran Inupiat of Anchorage (Alaska), the practice of singing enacts the important theology. The Lutheran Inupiat still use the missionary hymns of the 1880s—early 1900s. This article explores how singing hymns simultaneously perpetuates Inupiaq spiritual culture and participates in the adopted Lutheran heritage. Inupiaq naming‐practices and song‐genealogies enrich Christian understandings of the ‘communion of saints’, which is enacted through singing.