The Priesthood of the Pew: Call and Response as the Fulfillment of the Reformation’s Liturgical Ideal

The Protestant Reformation championed the priesthood of all believers, an ideal envisioning a participatory and intelligible liturgy unmediated by a specialized clerical class. However, in an increasingly consumeristic and hyper-individualistic Western culture, contemporary Protestant worship often devolves into a spectator event that silences the laity. Employing a Black practical theological method, this paper decenters European historical lenses, positioning the lived praxis of the African American sanctuary as the primary theological text. By examining the roots of hush harbor meetings, the broader liturgical practices of song and prayer, and the homiletical techniques of figures like A.M.E. Zion Bishop James Walker Hood, this study argues that the Black Church tradition of call-and-response serves as the organic and prophetic fulfillment of the sixteenth-century liturgical ideal. The dialogical nature of Black worship dismantles professionalized passive liturgy, grants marginalized worshippers divine somebodiness, and actively actualizes the priesthood of all believers by transforming the congregation into a liberated, vocal collective.