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Gramby-Sobukwe, Book Review                                       18 

 

Book Review 

 

Liturgies from Below:  

Praying with People at the End of the World 

By Claudio Carvalhaes  

 
Reviewed by Sharon Gramby-Sobukwe 

 
 

 
 

Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2020. $29.99 

 

This collection of “462 acts of worship” seems an 

active response to Howard Thurman’s call for a 

ministry for people with their backs against the wall 

(Thurman, 1996). It steps decidedly into the center of 

demands for decolonizing everything, especially 

worship, focusing on prayers, and liturgical practices of 

people from outside the metropoles of this global 

order. Carvalhaes presents redefined and empowered 

prayers against bastions of power and domination, but 

for the destitute and oppressed. In doing so, this book 

redefines prayer and its purpose in the interests of the 

majority of peoples in the world. In partnership with 

Christian World Mission, Carvalhaes presents a 

collection of prayers, songs, rituals, art, and poetry 

curated collaboratively, by globally diverse contributors 

who lived and worshipped incarnationally on four 

continents, Asia-Pacific Islands, Africa, Americas, and 

Europe. This collection emerges from the Council for 

World Mission’s project, Re-Imagining Worship as 

Acts of Defiance and Alternatives in the Context of 
Empire, from 2018-2019.  

From the Council for World Mission’s 

perspective, empire is characterized as the ever-present 

context of God’s mission. From Jesus’ incarnation “in 

an imperial world,” until today, empire kills the whole 

of creation, “demands to be worshipped alone,” 

manufactures a kaleidoscope of spiritualities in support 

of “the hegemonic paradigm of neoliberal politics and 

economics” (xi), “commodifies God’s people,” and 

thus, “rejects God and God’s plan for the world” (xii). 

Prayer, therefore, needs to be renewed radically, to “be 

anathema to any form of government that sustains war, 

that oppresses people, animals, mountains, oceans, and 

the whole earth” (3), if we are to change the conditions 

of empire. This kind of prayer brings attention to and 

empowers the oppressed, enlightens and enacts the 

privileged to solidarity, and reconciles deep community 

globally. Carvalhaes offers this collection as an 

invitation to those in the metropoles to transform their 

traditional prayers to connect with those at the margins 

(hooks, 1989), and in the process to be transformed to 

listen, serve, imagine, and fight, in the name of God for 

new worlds (6). 

A collection of various types of prayers, from calls 

to worship and benedictions, prayers of thanksgiving, 

confession and intercession, topical prayers addressing 

the lived experiences of the destitute, to complete 

liturgical sequences, Liturgies reconsiders the meaning 

and purpose of prayer. Here, prayer is individual and 

collective; it offers social, political, and economic 

critique, but is also mournful, confessional, and 

liturgical. Steeped in the cultural traditions and 

expressions of Christians from various parts of the 

world whose lives are typically made invisible, 

expendable, and oppressed by racial capitalism, 

imperialism, hetero-patriarchy, and climate crisis, 

prayer is an empowering starting point for change (5). 

Prayer in these experiences continuously voices and 

validates the experiences of the poor and oppressed, 

everything from small joys and big hopes, loss and 

mourning, to anger and critique. This kind of prayer 

provides confirmation, healing and empowerment, 

leading to transformation, as a matter of responsibility 

to one another and worship of God. 

This approach is an intersectional foray into 

Christian literature and analyses that gives voice to a 

Christian radicalism focused “glocally,” both locally and 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 2(2),  Winter 2021 

                   
Gramby-Sobukwe, Book Review                                       19 

 

globally. It foregrounds race, class, ability, and gender 

as parts of an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist analysis. In 

its unflinching resistance to dominant global systems of 

politics, economics, and even Christiandom, Liturgies 

reflects criticisms emanating from climate crisis, 

#Metoo, and #BlackLivesMatter movements, to 

reconsider structures and systems holistically, and from 

the perspectives of those suffering beyond the 

attentions of capitalist metropoles. The Liturgies’ 
conception of prayer builds upon Latin American 

liberation pedagogy, or, as Paulo Freire styles it, 

Liberation Theology engaging the oppressed in a 

process of self-awareness and empowerment (Freire, 

1996). This reconnection to Christian faith as 

movement, like Jesus’ The Way, is an attempt to center 

the marginalized, amplifying their voice and following 

their lead.  

Such a task, noble and principled as it is, is 

vulnerable to typical critiques of decolonization, of 

going too far by conservatives and not far enough for 

radicals. Some will argue that these prayers, often rife 

with pain, suffering, mourning, and anger (as well as 

faith, hope, and imagination), cannot replace the 

holiness of established prayers. Further, efforts to 

replace established prayers become so persistently 

relativistic that they ultimately eliminate all that is 

sacred. Some of us, who identify more with those “in 

the margins” than the metropoles, cannot help but to 

be discomfited by language targeting the “we” and “us” 

of the metropole. Is this yet another empire-centric 

exercise? From one perspective, Carvalhaes’ book is 

published and marketed amidst the centers of empire 

and these prayers challenge those of us here to learn, 

confess, and follow with action. Yet, would this project 

prove even more powerful and reflexively authentic if it 

instead targeted peoples of the margins, prioritizing 

them, and then, secondarily, bringing along those of us 

in the metropoles?  

Written for “pastors and other leaders to use in 

worship services or other gatherings,” the strength of 

this collection is not only its intersectionality, but also its 

practical contributions to works focused on both 

decolonizing religion, and its provision of pedagogies 

for transformation and healing as holy acts in the midst 

of suffering. Liturgies’ global perspective harmonizes 

with contemporary, U.S. focused works, such as Obery 

J. Hendricks’ Christians Against Christianity: How 
Right-Wing Evangelicals are Destroying our Nation and 

our Faith (2021); Randall Balmer’s, Bad Faith: Race 
and the Rise of the Religious Right (2021); and, Du 

Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals 
Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (2020). Each 

of these assesses the role and impact of colonialisms in 

mal-shaping historic and contemporary Christian 

theology and ideology. While these books call for 

decolonization at institutional levels, Carvalhaes’ 

contribution seems intentional in refocusing church to 

local and congregational level practices. These practices 

echo cutting edge emphases, not only in decolonization 

but also in pandemic response work, on healing trauma 

and suffering through daily practices, made holy ritual. 

For instance, The Grace of Playing: Pedagogies for 

Learning into God’s New Creation (Goto, 2016) and 

Playing in the Face of Death: Pedagogical Play as Love 

and Lament in a Time of COVID (Green, 2020) 

document the pedagogical processes of using play for 

healing and lament. Likewise, in “Schoolin’ Black Girls: 

Politicized Caring and Healing as Pedagogical Love” 

(McArthur and Lane, 2019) and “From Lament to 

Advocacy: Black Religious Education and Public 

Ministry” (Lamont, 2021), these and other similar 

works focus on empowering the oppressed through 

intentional holy practices such as focusing on love to 

produce healing pedagogies, and practicing lament as a 

necessary first step in public theological reflection and 

action. Thus, for church ministry and relief work, this 

book is a powerfully inspiring and enlightening resource 

for engaged praxis. 

 

References 

Balmer, Randall. 2021. Bad Faith: Race and the Rise 

of the Religious Right. Grand Rapids, MI: 

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 

Du Mez, Kristin Kobes. 2020. Jesus and John Wayne: 
How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and 

Fractured a Nation. New York: Liveright 

Publishing. 

Freire, Paolo. 1996 Pedagogy of the Oppressed 
(revised). New York: Continuum. 

Goto, Courtney T. 2016The Grace of Playing: 
Pedagogies for Leaning into God's New Creation. 

Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers. 

Green, Rachelle R. 2020. "Playing in the Face of 

Death: Pedagogical Play as Love and Lament in a 

Time of COVID." Religious Education 116 (1): 

16-25. 

Hendricks Jr, Obery M. 2021. Christians Against 
Christianity: How Right-wing Evangelicals are 

Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith. Boston: 

Beacon Press. 

hooks, bell. 1989. "Choosing the margin as a space of 

radical openness." Framework: The Journal of 

Cinema and Media 36: 15-23. 

Lamont, Tracey. 2021. "From Lament to Advocacy: 

Black Religious Education and Public Ministry." 

The Wabash Center Journal on Teaching 2 (2). 

McArthur, Sherell A., and Monique Lane. 2019. 

"Schoolin’ Black girls: Politicized caring and 

healing as pedagogical love." The Urban Review 

51 (1: 65-80. 

Thurman, Howard. 1996. Jesus and the Disinherited. 

Boston: Beacon Press. 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 2(2),  Winter 2021 

                   
Gramby-Sobukwe, Book Review                                       20 

 

 

 

Sharon Gramby-Sobukwe is Associate Professor of 

Political Science at Eastern University where she 

also serves as Director of the Campolo Institute for 

Applied Research in Social Justice and Chair of 

the Department of Social Transformation. 

 

Author email:  sgrambys@eastern.edu  
 

 


