A book review is presented for Cool Christianity: Hillsong and the Fashioning of Cosmopolitan Identities, authored by Cristina Rocha, by Fernando Berwig.
Author Biography
Fernando Berwig is a PhD Candidate in Religion and Culture at Southern Methodist University and a Brazilian composer. A drummer since his teenage years, he earned a Master of Sacred Music degree from the Perkins School of Theology and a bachelor’s degree in composition and conducting from Paraná State University (Brazil). He has led music in churches across diverse cultural contexts and served for three years as the Coordinator of Arts Ministries at a Lutheran church in Brazil. His compositions, which often explore the intersections of church and concert music, have been premiered in Europe, the United States, and Brazil.
Currently, Berwig teaches as adjunct faculty in the Musicology department at the Meadows School of the Arts and serves on the committee for the Christian Congregational Music Conference, held biennially in Oxford, UK. His research brings church music into dialogue with decolonial and Latin American scholarship. His dissertation examines how the contemporary praise and worship industry shapes Latin American worship, using liberation theology to explore the ways its practices both reinforce and disrupt liturgical coloniality.
Berwig, Fernando
(2026)
"Cool Christianity: Hillsong and the Fashioning of Cosmopolitan Identities,"
Yale Journal of Music & Religion:
Vol. 12:
No.
1, Article 4.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17132/2377-231X.1366
