Poetry and singing provide a powerful tool for contextualizing theology by facilitating the incarnation of Christian meaning into contemporary Christian experience. Clifford Geertz's understanding of religious symbol systems as models of and for reality, and the functional relation of poetry and singing to the experience Victor Turner calls communitas, provide a means for interpreting how poetry and singing can bring the meaning of the gospel into inter-penetration with the cultural world of Christian believers. Historical examples during times of Christian expansion and renewal give evidence of the power of poetry and singing to function in this way.
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