God by any other name

This original piece of music seeks to extend theological aesthetics’ focus on literature and representational arts to the artform of “musicking”. The underlying research position is that music-making is an essential form of human meaning-making beyond or even underlying the duality of verbal communication. The specific research question underlying God by Any Other Name is about the issue of God’s gender in the Scriptures, Tradition and Liturgy of the Church, and how we name God daily as a continuation of that. Guided by the ground-breaking work of Elizabeth Johnson, the song performs a breaking open of who God is in inclusive ways.

While there is a growing volume of works about music in theology, there is very little research attempting to theologise through music. Through its specific symbolic processes and semiotic patterning of experience and understanding, music can exteriorise aspects of conversion and Christian doctrine in ways that cannot be accessed solely through theoretical reasoning. God by Any Other Name combines and intertwines past and present names for God to open new spaces of experiencing and understanding who God might be.

This song was produced by Multi-Platinum Award Winning Producer Adrian Hannan at The Song Store, VIC; launched at The Cave Inn, Brisbane, while livestreamed to an international audience from across Australia, Asia, Europe, the USA, and Latin America; and released by Willow Publishing Party Ltd. In June 2022, it was published by Bloomsbury as an intrinsic part of chapter fourteen on "Is how we name God Important?” in Suspended God: Music and a Theology of Doubt.