Defining Religious Rituals: Prayers, Passages and People's Faith

There are many different kinds of ritual, practiced in various religions and traditions. A ritual can be defined as any repetitive sequence of acts. Psychologists often will refer to a ritual as any repetitive compulsive activity. A religious ritual is however a ritual involving the manipulation of religious symbols. The first thing that comes to mind when one imagines a religious symbol is often that of the cross, or the star of david or some similar symbolic representation of a religion. Religiously, and indeed within ritual, these are not the only forms of symbols that are manipulated. any prayer, offering or section of sacred literature is considered as a manipulation of religious symbols in a ritual.

One problem in defining a ritual, is that there are so many different types. Because of that anthropologists have created multiple tears of organization that describe rituals, their uses and the times in which they are performed. These categories allow anthropologists to define and describe a ritual to others shorthand. This provides more time to define and detail the specifics of a ritual instead of it's broader and more general aspects. The first category in which religious rituals can be defined is determining whether it is a prescriptive or a situational ritual.

Prescriptive rituals are rituals that are required to be performed by some form of religious authority. This authority may be a text, a deity or a tradition. Situational rituals on the other hand are also known as crisis rituals. Crisis rituals arise spontaneously and quite often during times of distress and well...crisis. Usually in times of war, disaster or other dangerous activities.

The next categories in which a religious ritual can be defined are the timely basis on which they are performed. This mainly determines whether the ritual is periodic/calendrical or occasional in nature. A periodic or calendrical ritual occurs on a regular basis according to a religious calender.

Occasional rituals are those performed for a specific purpose when a given situation arises. Occasional rituals are often associated with nature, healing and affecting the agricultural cycle. The final group of categorizations of a ritual determine and describe the ritual's basic purpose. This category is distinctly larger than the others containing Technological Rituals, Therapy Rituals, Ideological Rituals, Rites of Passage, Salvation Rituals and Revitalization Rituals.

A technological ritual is one that attempts to control nature, or influence the world to affect human activities and bring about well being. Therapy rituals are those techniques and practices dealing with illness, injury and accident. Ideological Rituals maintains the normal activities in a community by defining issues of evil, good, moral, immoral and articulating the world view of the community.

Rites of passage are a form of specialized Ideological ritual. Thinking of society as a series of positions defined in terms of rights, obligations, ranks, statuses, and behavior a rite of passage governs a person's transition from one position to the next . Salvation rituals focus on the religious experience of an individual. Revitalization Rituals involve those associated with nativistic movements. These focus oon returning to the basic society's way of life and purging outside influence. Using these three basic groups of categories it is possible to outline the basic situation a ritual is to be performed in, the time which it should be performed, and the outline of the ritual's purpose.

Works Cited

The Anthropology of Religion, Magic and Witchcraft 2nd Edition by Rebecca L. Stein and Philip L. Stein

Professor Pamela Lindell | Anthropology 330