Lament in the Liturgy of the Rural Church: An Appeal for Recovery (Critical Essay‪)‬

The Cost of Neglected Lament Christians in North America gather regularly for worship in the name of the One who cried from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" evoking the question that heads the 22nd Psalm. Yet that question itself and the cry that evokes it are routinely censored in American churches, except as a detail of biblical recitation. Jesus' lament may be recalled, and the psalms of lament may be spoken or sung, but lament itself is largely precluded as the substance of worship, as liturgical act, in many North American churches. (1) Many North American Christians are so deeply habituated to the absence of lament in their worship that the absence arouses little attention, prompts few objections, and raises few questions. This inattention imposes a grievous, even if uncounted, cost: where lament is precluded or censored, so are lamenting people.