# Black Liturgies (Cole Arthur Riley) **Summary.** Cole Arthur Riley's *Black Liturgies* is a collection of liturgical prayers and meditations rooted in Black experience and centering dignity, lament, rest, and the sacred. Riley — creator of "Black Liturgies" on social media — writes liturgy as a practice that holds one when personal prayer has no words left. The book is a direct DEIB intervention in worship: it insists that Black spiritual experience is not marginal to Christian liturgy but constitutive of it. Only four highlights currently in Readwise (last highlighted September 2024); this page records the substantive content present. **Tradition:** Progressive / Black liberation theology / liturgical **Author:** Cole Arthur Riley — writer, creator of @blackliturgies **Last highlighted in Readwise:** 2024-09-06 **Readwise source:** `3. Resources/Readwise/Books/Black Liturgies.md` --- ## Key Claims and Quotes ### 1. Liturgy as rest and surrogate imagination > "The independence of personal prayer required more imagination than I could access at the time. It is exhausting enough trying to keep oneself alive; to be expected to articulate love and hope and beauty — and more dangerously, lament — was like trying to float with weights hanging from my neck." (Location 129) Riley describes liturgy as a relief from the impossible demand to produce spiritual articulation while exhausted. This has direct implications for worship theology: written liturgy is not merely tradition-following but pastoral care for those who cannot currently "perform" their own prayer. > "Liturgy, I found, was a kind of rest. For the first time, my presence in a spiritual space didn't depend on my own articulation or imagination. I could rise and sit and kneel and speak or not speak in this sacred theater that others had written the script for. I could let others hold a sacred imagination for me." (Location 131) > [!note] Connection to St. John's UCC practice > St. John's maintains a Word-and-Table liturgical structure with a Call to Worship, Confession, Assurance, and responsive litanies. Riley's framing of liturgy as "letting others hold a sacred imagination" is a theological argument for exactly this practice — and a DEIB argument that liturgical forms can carry worshippers who are too worn to carry themselves. ### 2. Ritual and mooring > "Ritual, when coupled with beauty, makes for a very adequate mooring. It won't carry you to shore, but it will keep you close enough that hope can swim out to visit you regularly." (Location 135) A striking metaphor for liturgical theology: ritual does not solve the problem of suffering or doubt, but it creates proximity to hope. Connects to [[Musical Sacramentality]] — the claim that embodied ritual acts mediate divine presence without being magic. ### 3. Dignity as non-contingent > "Remind us that our dignity does not wane or bud in relation to anyone's belief in it, including our own. Let us rest with the knowledge that we have nothing to prove; our dignity, perpetual as it is divine. We will not shrink. We expand. Remind us of our making. For we too contain the divine. Amen." (Location 339) This is a liturgical prayer — not a theological argument but a performed theological claim. It asserts imago Dei as non-contingent: not dependent on external validation, not even on self-belief. "We will not shrink. We expand." — a pastoral counter to white supremacist and complementarian theologies that assign diminished dignity to Black people, women, and the marginalized. > [!note] DEIB observation > Riley writes primarily from and for Black Christian experience. The liturgy at Location 339 is a direct response to anti-Black racism as a spiritual wound — the internalized diminishment of one's dignity. Applying Riley's framework to St. John's UCC context: how does St. John's liturgy account for worshippers for whom dignity is contested by the broader culture? --- ## Connections to Wiki | Thread | Connection | |--------|------------| | [[Praise and Worship Theology]] | Riley's liturgy-as-rest is a critique of charismatic worship cultures that demand emotional performance | | [[Musical Sacramentality]] | Ritual as mooring; embodied practices mediating hope | | [[Inclusive Language Hymnody]] | Riley's liturgical prayers model expansive, non-exclusionary language | | [[Worship Music Vetting Projects]] | Riley's dignity-theology provides criteria for evaluating worship music's treatment of marginalized communities | | [[DARVO]] | Riley's "dignity does not wane in relation to anyone's belief in it" is a pastoral response to manipulation | --- > [!question] > Riley's liturgies were created for social media (Instagram) before being collected in book form. Does the migration from digital/fragmentary to bound liturgy change how they function theologically? How does the brevity of the form shape what kind of theology is possible? --- ## Ingest Notes - **Highlights volume:** Sparse — only 4 highlights captured; all from early chapters. Book likely has more relevant content not yet highlighted. - **Priority:** Medium — the four highlights are high-quality; fuller engagement needs a directed read - **Gaps:** Limited highlights means this page captures the book's entry points, not its full argument - **Author entity:** Cole Arthur Riley — no entity page exists yet. Minor figure in this wiki's scope but relevant to DEIB and liturgy threads.