Dr. Cláudio Carvalhaes is an artist, theologian, liturgist, activist, and pastor of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). He is currently the Associate Professor of Worship at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He is the author of Praying with Every Heart: Orienting Our Lives to the Wholeness of the World (Cascade, 2021); Liturgies from Below: Prayers from People at the Ends of the World (Abingdon Press, 2020); What’s Worship Got To Do With It? Interpreting Life Liturgically (Cascade, 2018); Eucharist and Globalization: Redrawing the Borders of Eucharistic Hospitality (Wipf and Stock, 2013) and the editore of Liturgy in Postcolonial Perspectives—Only One Is Holy. Ed. Cláudio Carvalhaes (Palgrave, 2015).
Posts By This Author
We Have Arrived
“Nonetheless, here we are! Thank God here we are! By the mercy of God here we are! Next to a tragic event that killed a precious family in cruel ways. Next to a wall that is searing with fears and constant threats. A wall of fear that begets anger, that begets destruction, that begets violence, that begets fear. Nonetheless, we came. Thank God we came! By the mercy of God, we came! We came to offer our presence. We came to show our love and support. We came to learn. We came to listen about love. We came to learn to speak about love.”
Worship Service in Solidarity with Unaccompanied Minors Crossing the Borders
"Brothers and Sisters, today we are called to respond to God’s love by responding to the hurts and pains of ninos/children of all ages who are crossing the borders between Mexico and the Unites States by the hands of coyotes or even alone... From October through July, the authorities detained 21,842 unaccompanied minors, most at the Southwest border, a 48 percent increase over a year earlier... Today, we are called to worship God by pointing our hearts to God’s children crossing the borders and going through an uttered difficult time."
Why I Created a Chapel Service Where People Confess to Plants
Photo by Jaromír Kavan on Unsplash
Saint Francis praying to sister moon and brother sun has changed me. I must confess I am going through a conversion, yet another one. But this time much bigger than I could imagine. I have begun listening to the birds. I have started paying attention to the rivers. I have stopped to talk to trees. As a city boy who grew up in the dirty streets of Sao Paulo, I am becoming closer to the pulsing heart of forests, animals, rocks and skies, and it has expanded my allegiance to God.
American Christians, How Can We Celebrate Easter?
In the midst of so much death, how can we Christians celebrate Easter?
These questions can be paired with questions regarding our own sense of worship on that day. How much have we Christians replaced justice with worship, not taking one into serious relation with the other? Are we accustomed to worship in the total absence of justice?