Religion manifests itself in many ways: belief, story-telling (mythology), mystical experiences, and ceremonies. In many religious traditions, the emphasis is not on belief, but rather it is on participation in ceremonies.
Ian Barbour, in his book Religion in an Age of Science, writes:
“Traditions are transmitted primarily through stories and their reenactments in rituals, rather than through abstract concepts and doctrinal beliefs.”
Rituals are simply stylized, repetitive acts that take place at a set time and location. They almost always involve the use of symbolic objects, words, and actions.
With regard to the integration of myth and ritual, Sam Gill and Irene Sullivan, in their Dictionary of Native American Mythology, write:
“Ritual is not easily separated from mythology, though it has been common to consider it a set of actions, usually nonverbal. Many stories describe the origin or establishment of rituals. Many rituals are performed according to models and patterns described in stories.”
It should be pointed out that many rituals are not religious. Pledging allegiance to the flag and singing the national anthem at sporting events are secular rituals although some religious fundamentalists feel that they should be religious rituals and must involve an invocation to a deity.
There are many academic definitions of religious ritual. Barbara Miller, in her textbook Cultural Anthropology:
“Ritual refers to patterned forms of behavior that have to do with the supernatural realm.”
Paul Bohannin, in his textbook Social Anthropology:
“A ritual is a repeated act or set of acts—usually but not always ceremonial in nature—by means of which a community (of whatever composition) or, more rarely, an individual, makes manifest its celebration and repetition of the myths explaining the nature of the interrelationship among the cosmological, divine, and social worlds.”
H.H. Turney-High, in his book Man and System: Foundations for the Study of Human Relation says:
“A rite is any standardized procedure used by groups to enunciate or to strengthen a belief and thereby to produce some desired end, or to forestall an undesirable one, or to restore the homeostasis of personalities or group of personalities which has been broken or disturbed by crisis. It is basically a technique for expressing and satisfying the collective wish.” (italics are in original)
One example of a religion which emphasizes ritual rather than belief is Confucianism. In his book Structure and Function in Primitive Society, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown writes:
“You know that one of the major points of the teaching of Confucius was the importance of the proper performance of rites. But it is said of Confucius that he would not discuss the supernatural. In the Confucian philosophy, music and ritual are considered as means for the establishment and preservation of social order, and regarded as superior to laws and punishments as means to this end.”
In the The Handy Religion Answer Book, John Renard writes:
“Confucianism is surely among the most ritual-conscious traditions in history. Each day in the life of a Confucian is full of an awareness of the importance of ritualized actions and ways of thinking.”
With regard to Kong Qiu (551-479 BCE) also known as Confucius, Karen Armstrong, in her book The Great Transformation: The Beginnings of Our Religious Traditions, writes:
“He was convinced that the root cause of the current disorder in China was neglect of the traditional rites that had governed the conduct of the principalities for so long.”
In the performance of rituals, Confucius wanted participants to be fully aware of what they were doing and to lose their selfishness. Karen Armstrong also writes:
“The spirit in which you performed a rite would show in every single one of your gestures and facial expressions.”
In his book God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World—And Why Their Differences Matter, Donald Prothero reports:
“The purpose of rites is not to make it rain or save us from our sins but to knit us—dead and alive—into a beloved community.”
Because of the emphasis on ritual rather than belief, people who define religion on the basis on of belief, particularly belief in gods, refuse to consider Confucianism as a religion.
Ceremonies often include some kind of offering or sacrifice. These offerings can range from the flesh offerings in the Native American sun dance, to blood offerings among the Maya and Aztec, to offerings of food and material culture, to human sacrifice.
The most common ceremony is the rite of passage which marks an individual’s change in social status, such as adulthood, marriage, and death. Rites of passage, while nearly universal in all cultures, are not necessarily religious and many are purely secular. According to H. H. Turney-High, in his book Man and System: Foundations for the Study of Human Relations:
“These rites symbolize and emblemize the passage of a person from one status to another, from one transactional pattern to another. They objectify the already established fact that the person will never be the same again.”
Among the rites of passage, the most common and perhaps the most ancient is the funeral which marks the passage from the world of the living to some other realm. With regard to funerals, Richard Warms, James Garber, and Jon McGee, in their book Sacred Realms: Essays in Religion, Belief, and Society, write:
“Death is a cultural event that is acted out in mortuary rituals. Many such rituals help usher the deceased into a new status and location. They also typically reflect the values and beliefs of the society.”
While in modern American society the concept of marriage usually conjures up images of some type of ceremony—usually religious—in many of the world’s cultures, there was/is no marriage ceremony. While some religious traditions are concerned about marriage, there are other traditions in which marriage is not viewed as a religious matter.
Divination rituals are used in many religious traditions to determine the cause of disease, the location of game, the outcome of current events, and knowledge about the future. In many religious traditions, rituals of divination, prophecy, and “fortune telling” have been central to the religion.
One of the features in many religious traditions is the healing ceremony. In many cultures disease is seen as having a supernatural cause rather than a biological cause. Throughout most of human history, disease was understood and treated by religious means. Treatment, of course, meant religious rituals. In many cases, there would be two rituals: (1) a divination ritual to determine the supernatural cause of the disease, and (2) a ritual to deal with the cause.
In many religious traditions, mythology describes journeys to spiritual places as a part of the quest for truth and personal insights. With regard to the mythology of American Indian hunters and gatherers, David Jones and Brian Molyneaux, in their book Mythology of the American Nations, write:
“Their search for spiritual knowledge and understanding was seen in terms of a journey, a quest for vision, that took them away from the protection of their familiar surroundings into a natural world containing the mysterious forces that brought life and death, famine and plenty.”
It is not surprising then to find that religious pilgrimages are an important part of many traditions. The pilgrimage can be a life-changing experience as well as a mystical experience. Philip Wilkinson, in his book Religions, writes:
“Making the pilgrimage in the right way stresses the holiness of the enterprise and makes clear how much the pilgrim has in common with the countless others who have gone before.”
Among many American Indian nations on the Northern Plains, places such as Bear Butte, Devil’s Tower, and the Sweetgrass Hills were the destinations where people sought mystical experiences.
In Islam, the Fifth Pillar is the hadj or pilgrimage to Mecca. Every Muslim who is physically able and who can afford to make the journey is required to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca once in their life. The hadj is a ritual which brings together millions of Muslims from around the world. The pilgrimage fosters a sense of community, unity, and equality among Muslims.
In Christianity, one of the early examples of a pilgrimage occurred in 325 CE, when Helena, the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine, made a journey to Palestine to visit the places venerated by Christians. With regard to Christian pilgrimages during the Middle Ages, Richard Winston, in his book Life in the Middle Ages, writes:
“The need to do penance, the veneration of the relics of saints, and the natural desire to see something of the world prompted men to go on pilgrimages.”
Revitalization rituals are intended to “save” the society. They are deliberate, conscious, organized efforts by members of a society to create a new and more satisfying culture. In his essay on revitalization movements in Sacred Realms: Essays in Religion, Belief, and Society, Anthony F. C. Wallace sums up revitalization visions:
“A supernatural being appears to the prophet-to-be, explains his own and his society’s troubles as being entirely or partly a result of the violation of certain rules, and promises individual and social revitalization if the injunctions are followed and the rituals practiced, but personal and social catastrophe if they are not.”
For some people, a religious ceremony can be a mystical experience. To enhance this experience, many ceremonies incorporate music, dance, darkness, and special substances to help induce the trance state which may accompany the mystical experience. The special substances may include peyote, LSD, marijuana, alcohol, mushrooms, and other psychotropic substances.