Christian Ritual Research Articles

Still because of the weakness of some? A descriptive exploration of the Lord’s Supper in South Africa, 1948-2002

This article is a preliminary descriptive exploration of the celebration of the Lord’ s Supper in selected Reformed churches in South Africa over a period of 54 years. Methodologically, it employs a broad anthropological approach towards liturgy, thereby trying to reconstruct parts of the enacted ritual of the Lord’ s Supper from its historical debris. By making use of the comparative method, significant differences have been highlighted and interpreted. Throughout the article it becomes apparent how this Christian ritual was used to serve various political agendas, how cult and culture influence(d) one another . Finally, some tendencies have been extracted to be used in developing a criterion for the liturgical inculturation of the Lord’ s Supper as a ritual of reconciliation within the South African context.

Dangerous Eating?

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size This article emerged from a longer study, “The Meals of Jesus and the Meals of the Church: Eucharistic Origins and Admission to Communion,” in, Maxwell E. Johnson and Edward Phillips (eds.), Studia Liturgica Diversa: Essays in Honor of Paul F. Bradshaw (Portland, OR: Pastoral Press, 2004), 101–115. Notes R. J. Karris, Luke: Artist and Theologian (New York: Paulist, 1985), 70. From Richard Fabian and Scott King, “Richer, Not Dumber! The Key to Participation,” Colloquium: Music, Worship, Arts 1 (2004): 111; cf. Norman Perrin, Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 102–8. Although with greater emphasis on the canonical text and its theology; see Francis J. Moloney s.d.b., A Body Broken for a Broken People, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997), 7–13; quote from p. 190. Particularly given the difficulty of knowing the precise relation of New Testament texts to liturgical practice; see Paul F. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 47–72. The Anglican Church of Australia, A Prayer Book for Australia (Alexandria, NSW: Broughton Books, 1995), 126. Brendan Byrne makes an important link, for Luke's Gospel at least, between this motif and the wider sense of God as host: “The marginalized one [i.e., Zacchaeus] who has given hospitality to Jesus finds himself drawn into a much wider hospitality, the hospitality of God.” The Hospitality of God: A Reading of Luke's Gospel (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 4. See Jacob Neusner, “Two Pictures of the Pharisees: Philosophical Circle or Eating Club?” Anglican Theological Review 64 (1982): 525–38. Dennis Smith and Hal Taussig suggest that “as much as one can reasonably affirm about the historical Jesus on [the] question” of eating is that he “probably attended banquets”; see Smith and Taussig, Many Tables: The Eucharist in the New Testament and Liturgy Today (London: SCM, 1990), 45–8 (quote from p. 47); cf. E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 208–9. See Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (London: Dacre, 1945), 48–70; but cf. Paul Bradshaw, “Did the Early Eucharist Ever Have a Sevenfold Shape?” Heythrop Journal 43 (2002), 73–76. See John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), 293–98, 364–5; Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 119. For how one might consider the historical questions, see John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 2.950–967. Geoffrey Wainwright, Eucharist and Eschatology (London: Epworth, 1971), 130–31. See Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, 53–56. Additional informationNotes on contributorsAndrew McGowanAndrew McGowan is director of the theological school and Joan F. W. Munro Lecturer in Theology at Trinity College, University of Melbourne. A historian of the early church, he is the author of Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999).

DEATH BY LAUGHTER IN SADE AND MAUPASSANT

Sade's Dialogue entre un prêtre et un moribond (1782) and Maupassant's ‘Auprès d'un mort’ (1883) both deal with death in a humorous way. The solemn situations and philosophical tones of these two stories are ‘hijacked’, as it were, by comedy. Both deliver comic relief in a final punch line. The question as to how and why this surprising comic effect functions in both works will be dealt with here. One cannot claim that a link between Sade and Maupassant rests upon intertextuality as such a claim would be unsustainable.1 This comparative study aims to consider parallel themes in relation to the use of comic devices. To begin with, both texts refer to Christian rites concerning death. In Sade's dialogue, a priest comes to administer the last rites to a dying man who is a libertine. ‘Auprès d'un mort’, as the title suggests, presents a traditional funeral vigil. These familiar...

Ritual Appropriation and Appropriate Ritual: Christian Healing and Adaptations of Asian Religions

This article analyzes the uses of the past for liberal Christians who borrow from Asian healing‐related practices such as yoga, Buddhist meditation and Reiki. It focuses on questions of historicity, both in the ways liberal Christians validate their syncretism by drawing connections to the Christian past, and in the way that longer histories of orientalism and colonialism shape current Christian interactions with Asian religions. Centred on the narratives of three North American Anglicans, and informed by attendance at their various healing services, meditation groups, yoga classes and Reiki sessions, this article is evidence of a wider liberal Christian embrace of difference via ritual. The article argues that these liberal Christians use “ritual proximity” to bring together symbols, acts and memories from various times and cultures, thus constructing new lineages of religious inheritance within webs of Christian ritual.

BATHS OR BAPTISTERIES? HOLCOMBE, LUFTON AND THEIR ANALOGUES

Summary. Prominent octagonal buildings in the fourth‐century villas at Holcombe (Devon) and Lufton (Somerset) have usually been interpreted as bath‐suites. This paper questions this view and suggests that they were linked with early Christian ritual, probably baptism. The exceptional character of these structures in the context of bathing is underlined. Their analogues are most evident in early Christian baptisteries of fourth‐ and fifth‐century date in Gaul and Italy, offering support for linkage between Christian communities in late Roman Britain and those in the adjacent western provinces. Other possible sites of baptisteries in Britain are noted.

La civilization la plus antique : Voltaire's Images of India

This article examines the writings of the Enlightenment philosophe Voltaire on India as he situated that land within a global context of history and cultural exchange. It examines the creation of a recognizable entity, "India," in the Western imaginary by studying selected texts and focusing on a romanticized ideal of India as an Oriental paradise. It also examines the reasons behind such creation of India, primarily the Enlightenment attack on the Roman Catholic Church and more specifically Voltaire's claim that many of the most important Christian rituals had their origin in Hindu rituals.

Building Community through Ritual: An Exploration of the Work of Chaplaincy on the Chelmsford Campus of the Anglia Polytechnic University

This article examines some of the ‘rituals’ created by Chaplaincy at Anglia Polytechnic University (APU) and carried out on its Chelmsford campus. It suggests that Christian ritual both embraces and critiques the fragmentation wrought by postmodernity and inherent within a secular, new, Higher Education Institution.

Book Review: Worship: A Primer in Christian Ritual, Dynamic Equivalence: The Living Language of Christian Worship

Book Review: Worship: A Primer in Christian Ritual, Dynamic Equivalence: The Living Language of Christian Worship

Partial Discontinuity: The Mark of Ritual

Over time, anthropology has lost the notion of ritual within the framework of exchange and of the ‘total social fact.’ Sahlins as well as Mauss interpreted the Maoris’ hau as a paradigm of exchange in which any event comprising a circulation of objects is but an exchange. The notion of ritual thus vanished, leaving in its place a long chain of logically equivalent transitive exchanges. Drawing on Orokaiva (Papua New Guinea) material relative to the competitive attempt of several religious factions to establish a comparative view of customary and Christian ritual, the Maori hau is revisited. This reading shows a clear contrast between what we must call ritual, comprising a hierarchic and mediated form of exchange wherein gifts are equated by virtue of the ‘spirit of the gift,’ and exchange per se, constituted by a face-to-face transaction of goods wherein equivalence is posited between prestations.

« Apocalypse, éthique et liturgie (2 ApJn). Édification religieuse du lien social, construction didactique et théophanique du sujet »

In 1914, F. Nau edited and translated the « Second Greek Apocalypse of John ». Since then, some scholars have classified it among the pseudo-chrysostomica. This article leaves aside the philological debate and concentrates on the historical relevance of the text used here to understand the social and pragmatic function of religious discourse. It shows an essential link between apocalyptic and liturgy. Such a text helps to elaborate didactic coherence between moral teaching about everyday life and Christian ritual. The practical function of the liturgy is placed at the centre of social life where every Christian has to practise fraternal love. The Christian understanding of time depends on a construction which organizes life on earth as in heaven.

Changing Concepts of Embodiment and Illness among the Western Arrernte at Hermannsburg Mission

This paper argues that the interaction between Lutheran missionaries and Arrernte people at Hermannsburg mission was shaped by different body practices and discourses. Notions of sickness, causation and healing were central to the ideas of the body. Both missionaries and Arrernte paid attention to these somatic states in their social interactions. Lutherans attempted to reinforce an individualistic notion of the body, while Arrernte people continued to believe in the fundamental interconnectedness of the person with ancestors and kin. In the new social environment of the missions, the indigenous socio‐somatic view of a person remained flexible enough to accommodate aspects of Christian ontology and ritual.

Shi`i Narratives of Karbalâ and Christian Rites of Penance: Michel Foucault and the Culture of the Iranian Revolution, 1978–1979

Shi`i Narratives of Karbalâ and Christian Rites of Penance: Michel Foucault and the Culture of the Iranian Revolution, 1978–1979

Remembering Christ's death or the promise of salvation: Reinterpreting communion in Southern Tanzania

The present article explores the apparent universality of Christian symbols with reference to the ritual of communion in part of Catholic Southern Tanzania. Despite the significance of ideologies of salvation in both Christian doctrine and social theory, many popular interpretations of core Christian rituals in Africa and elsewhere emphasise the remembrance of Christ rather than his resurrection. Theories of Christianity as a universal religion may have overplayed the extent to which Christian symbols are universally interpreted.

Appropriation des pratiques religieuses: le cas des rituels catholiques dans une ville belge

The modern process of secularization is analysed in Charleroi, a medium-size city (200,000 inhabitants) in Belgium. Despite its modern character, a number of popular Christian rites are still practised there. They are performed by priests representing the institutional Church, but in response to those who do not habitually attend the city's churches. The ritual performed by the “professionals” continues even as the institution wanes. These practised rites of a contemporary urban religion bear witness to the appropriation of institutional symbols and rituals. Lack of cognitive understanding of Catholicism allows the reconstruction of Catholic components into a popular belief. The aim of this article is to analyse the process of appropriation. The observational research is based on anthropological fieldwork and in-depth interviews not only with church-goers but also with the priests of the city as a whole.

Ascetic eucharists. Food and drink in early Christian ritual meals. By Andrew McGowan. (Oxford Early Christian Studies.) Pp. xiii+312. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. £48. 0 19 826972 2

<i>Ascetic eucharists. Food and drink in early Christian ritual meals</i>. By Andrew McGowan. (Oxford Early Christian Studies.) Pp. xiii+312. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. £48. 0 19 826972 2

Un échec relatif : La mission des engagés indiens aux Antilles et à la Réunion (seconde moitié du XIXe siècle)

In the second half of the 19th century, the plantation-owners of the West Indies and the Reunion island called on Indian workers to replace black slaves. Large contigents of Hindus disembarked in theoretically christianized islands. The roman catholic clergy rapidly decided to organize a particular mission, in order to eliminate a so-called immoral religion. But the problems of communication were hard to solve. Moreover the plantation owners turned out to be reticent. At the end of the 19th century, most immigrants held on to Hinduism, although they adopted some Christian rites.

Ascetic Eucharists. Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals

The early Eucharist has usually been seen as sacramental eating of token bread and wine in careful or even slavish imitation of Jesus and his earliest disciples. In fact the evidence suggests great diversity in its conduct, including the use of foods, in the first few hundred years. Eucharistic meals involving cheese, milk, salt, oil, and vegetables are attested, and some have argued that even fish was used. The most significant exception to using bread and wine, however, was a `bread-and-water' Christian meal, an ancient ascetic form of the Eucharist. This tradition also involved rejection of meat from general diet, and reflected the concern of dissident communities to avoid the cuisine - meat and wine - characteristic of pagan sacrifice. This study describes and discusses these practices fully for the first time, and provides important new insights into the liturgical and social history of early Christianity.

Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (review)

In this revisionist study Andrew McGowan examines the varied and scattered body of evidence for the early use of foods other than bread and wine in Christian ritual meals. In doing so, he persuasively argues against previous scholarly approaches that identify a normative model of early eucharistic practice and are based in liturgical and theological concerns that exclude alternatives to bread and wine practices as heretical, late, and deviant. Instead, McGowan identifies an early and constant strain of "dissident" eating (78) not only among Christians but also Jews and pagans in the ancient and late ancient Mediterranean. This essentially ascetic inclination manifests itself among some Christians by their rejection of a bread and wine eucharist which represents pagan sacrificial foods and sacrificial culture, in favor of vegetables, cheese, milk and honey, and--most often--bread and water in the eucharistic meal. Thus McGowan argues that, for ascetic Christian eaters, "eucharist" is not simply a distinctive meal with a sacral character that separates it from everyday eating, but part of an entire way of life in which all eating expresses opposition to and separation from the world.

The 'Plain' and the 'Positive': Ritual, Experience and Aesthetics in Quakerism and Charismatic Christianity

This paper argues that sharp distinctions between formal ritual action and everyday practice cannot always be sustained. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among British Quakers and Swedish charismatic Protestants, we seek to show that both groups manifest an experiential aesthetic that constructs and is constructed by engagement in daily life. The Quaker aesthetic we call 'the plain', and the charismatic aesthetic we term 'the positive'. In presenting our argument, we adopt Bourdieu's concept of habitus and extend its meaning to take account of material culture in the establishment of religious commitment.

REVIEWS

Journal Article REVIEWS Get access Ascetic Eucharists. Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals. By ANDREW MCGOWAN. Pp. xiii+312. (Oxford Early Christian Studies.) Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. ISBN 0 19 826972 2. £48. STUART G. HALL STUART G. HALL Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume 51, Issue 2, October 2000, Pages 715–717, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/51.2.715 Published: 01 October 2000