Ritual Studies - Kevin Gontkovic

For this post, I’d like to talk about Paul Bradshaw and John Melloh’s book, Foundations in Ritual Studies. Many art forms come about as a result of rituals so looking further into ritual studies could help us to understand how rituals relate to the different art forms that we have learned about. This book is based in Christianity, but it gets at the heart of what ritual actually is and presents some of the views of other scholars in the field. The book begins by trying to define ritual, which the authors even admit is a very difficult thing to do. The authors take formal definitions of the word ritual and criticize them because of their inability to fully grasp what is going on in a ritual. For example, one definition says that ritual is “the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not encoded by the performers” (11). The authors point out that this definition is really broad and encompasses just about everything. There is an argument as to whether people should us the term “ritual” generically or more specifically, as in when associating with a ceremony.
Mary Douglas is a very important scholar in the study of ritual and she is discussed greatly in his book. She has discussed the relationship and conflict between pollution and purity. This relationship is very important in most religions, including Christianity which this book is based in. When dealing with anything sacred, one must maintain purity at all times. If one faces the sacred while polluted, then one will be injured by the sacred because it must maintain purity and anything that is not purified will probably be destroyed. There are many rituals that are necessary to maintain purity and avoid pollution, such as baptism in Christianity. Baptism is a ritual that is performed to remove all the original sin from a person usually soon after someone is born. It can also be performed for anyone who is being initiated into a Christianity church or community. That person must first cleanse himself or herself of all sin before entering the purity that was established by the community.
The relationship between pollution and purity shows up in many artifacts as well. Many artifacts are very sacred to the people so it is very important that they maintain purity and avoid pollution. The shrines that house kami in Japan are a very good example. One must purify oneself before entering the shrine and praying to the kami. One must be pure in order to be in the presence of the sacred. To be polluted is considered profane. This relationship between pollution and purity is very similar to the relationship between sacred and profane that Van der Leeuw discusses frequently in his book.


Reference: Bradshaw, Paul and Melloh, John. Foundations in Ritual Studies. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic. 2007. 228 pages.