Book Review: Call and Response: Litanies for Congregational Prayer, by Fran Pratt

Call and Response: Litanies for Congregational Prayer, by Fran Pratt (Outpost Press © 2018)

Reviewed by Kerry Greenhill

Fran Pratt’s Call and Response: Litanies for Congregational Prayer is a meaningful addition to any pastor or worship leader’s bookshelf of resources. She brings the passion of a convert to liturgical worship, with energy and fresh, contemporary language to lead a congregation in coming into God’s presence with new awareness.

The introduction (“Or, How Liturgy Saved My Life”) beautifully summarizes the power of written corporate liturgy for spiritual formation and stimulating the prayer lives of individuals and the church as a whole. Pratt’s litanies cover a range of spiritual needs, social issues, and liturgical seasons, from Litanies for Looking Inward, Looking Outward, and Coping, to Church Rituals, Communal Worship, Advent, and Lent.

 Theologically, the liturgies will speak to a wide range of Christian traditions, as many include scripture woven into the prayers. The author offers a mix of God’s transcendence and immanence, and social issues include attention to racism (in the US context), and victims of sexual violence, where Jesus accepting “all genders” is as close as the author comes to affirming LGBTQ+ people.

A minor distraction for me was seeing the vocative “O” (as in, “we pray to you, O God”) rendered as the interjection “Oh.” I can’t tell whether this was an intentional attempt to update seemingly archaic language, or an editorial oversight.

Over all, the content is powerful, authentic, poetic prayer that works for both individual and communal use, and I highly recommend it to anyone planning worship.

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Disclaimer: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255.

Link Love:

Call and Response on Amazon
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