Marva Dawn
Marva J. Dawn (August 20, 1948April 18, 2021) was an American Christian theologian, author, musician and educator, associated with the parachurch organization Christians Equipped for Ministry in Vancouver, Washington. She also served as Teaching Fellow in Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. Dawn was generally perceived as a Lutheran evangelical. She often wrote in a paleo-orthodox style, stressing the importance of Christian tradition and the wisdom of the Church through the centuries. Biography. Born in Napoleon, Ohio as Marva Gersmehl, she later took the surname Dawn as a pseudonym. After completing a B.A. (1970 ) from Concordia Teachers College, she completed a M.A. (1972) in English from the University of Idaho, an M.Div. (1978) in New Testament from Western Evangelical Seminary, and a Th.M. (1983) in Old Testament from Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary. She then completed an M.A. (1986) and Ph.D. (1992) in Christian Ethics and the Scriptures from the University of Notre Dame. She has taught for clergy and worship conferences and at seminaries in North America and internationally. She was married to Myron Sandberg, an elementary school teacher, in 1989. She died in Vancouver, Washington on April 18, 2021. Works. Her 1995  book, "Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down: A Theology of Worship for the Turn-of-the-Century Culture", which urged a second look at so-called "contemporary Christian worship", caused a stir in evangelical circles, being the first scholarly work from within the evangelical community to seriously question "seeker sensitive" style worship. Dawn claimed that much contemporary worship, which seeks primarily to evangelize through entertainment, is not really Christian worship at all. Rather than focus on bringing people into the church through worship, Dawn argued that worship should instead focus upon the glory and grace of the triune God, not ignoring  the artistic treasures and traditions of the Church through the ages. The book remains her most widely read and most talked about work. Dawn continued this exploration in her 1999 book, "A Royal "Waste" of Time: The Splendor of Worshiping God and Being Church for the World". In her more recent work, Dawn has drawn on Albert Borgmann's notion of the device paradigm to develop a critique of the church in its capitulation to commodification where worship, for example, becomes a device to attract and please.