Sounds of Children in Worship: Materiality and Liturgical-Ritual Spaces

Abstract

Bringing together concepts from the fields of material religion and liturgical studies, this article explores how adults and children manage sound-related affordances during worship. The concept of affordances—the possibilities an environment offers a person—is made sensitive to socialization and is related to the concept of liturgical-ritual space. Liturgical-ritual space comes into being through people’s participation in an environment and is therefore defined as a type of lived-in space. The analysis of children’s acoustic participation in two pre-Reformation church buildings shows how sounds made by children contribute to the creation of a liturgical-ritual space. It also brings to light tensions in how adults experience and interpret the sounds that children make. Attention to sound highlights the relationship between people and the material environment and shows that sound matters in Protestant worship with children, not only for the cognitive messages it may convey but for its affective qualities as well.