Worship- homage or reverence paid to a deity. The word
is derived from the Anglo-Saxon weorthscipe, meaning
“honour”, and was originally used to address people of high
rank. Today, it is used almost exclusively in a religious
context. It is significant that some form of worship, whether
of ancestors or of forces of nature, seems to have existed in
all civilizations.
Central to worship is its priority over the formulations of
creeds and theologies. Although the latter provide form and
meaning, it is worship that is their source and basis.
Christians worshipped Christ long before they began to
define His nature and person. This priority of worship over
creed is encapsulated in the time-honoured Latin phrase
“Lex orandi est lex credendi” (“The law that is worshipped is
the law that is believed”).
Worship may be spontaneous and expressed in informal
language by an individual believer either in private or in
public. It may also be expressed in set formulas, rites, and
rituals prescribed by different religious traditions and
conducted by one or more celebrants. Collective worship,
when the congregation prays together, is common in many
religions. Often a sacred place is reserved exclusively for
worship, such as a church, a gurudwara, (Sikh place of
worship), or even a sacred grove (jaher), outside a village,
as among the Santals, an indigenous people in West
Bengal. A worshipper combines his inner disposition with
his outward bodily expressions. Thus, standing is
sometimes meant to indicate respect and alertness;
kneeling, one's submission; and prostration, one's selfabandonment in abasement.
The performance of rites with the attention to minute details
(rubrics) has been variously stressed by different religions.
They vary from attributing inner efficacy to the rite itself, if
strictly adhered to, to allowing considerable freedom as to
the form and content of worship. Some religions require a
qualified or ordained minister, a priest, or a pujari, while
others, like Islam, do not.
Judaism
Jewish worship encompasses the whole of a believer's life.
The wish of every devout Jew is to live always in the
presence of Jahweh (Psalm 16:8). Jewish worship takes
various forms: prayer, the study of the Torah, and the
celebration of festivals and other special occasions. Jewish
prayer is both public (or institutional) and private (or
personal). The basic structure of public (or liturgical)
worship, held in a synagogue, is the recitation of
benedictions (Tefillah, “prayers”) on weekdays, replaced by
prayers for specific occasions on sabbaths and festivals. In
the liturgy too, the Shema, a confession of faith composed
of passages from the Torah, is recited twice daily. All
liturgies end with two messianic prayers, the Alenu and the
Kaddish, an Aramaic prayer of praise to God.
A devout Jew prays to God privately three times a day—in
the morning, afternoon, and evening—and a man will cover
his head with a hat or skullcap (in Hebrew kippah, or, in
Yiddish, yarmulke). These three times are deemed to
perpetuate metaphorically the three times each day when,
in the pre-Christian era, before the destruction of the
Temple of Jerusalem in 70 CE, priests offered sacrifices
there. Jews often recite benedictions in their daily activities
to acknowledge that God is the Lord of everything and that
they are merely His stewards.
In rabbinical Judaism, the study of the Torah is considered
an act of worship. Passages from the Torah and Talmud
are recited during the daily morning services. The reading
of the whole of the Torah is spread over the sabbaths of the
liturgical year (a cycle which begins in the autumn with a
celebration called Simhath Torah, (“rejoicing in the Torah”).
At festivals, readings from the Torah are chosen for the
occasion. Thematically suitable readings from the prophets
are also read on sabbaths and festivals.
Jewish festivals celebrate historic events that have given
the Jewish people their identity. Three major feasts,
originally
agricultural,
are
Pesach
(Passover),
commemorating the exodus from Egypt, Shabuoth, to mark
the time of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai (the Ten
Commandments, in the Bible), and Sukkoth (the feast of
Tabernacles), to remind the Jews that their forebears dwelt
in tents on their journey to the Promised Land. A ten-day
period of self-examination and repentance precedes
Sukkoth. It starts with Rosh Hashanah (New Year's Day, in
September-October) and ends with Yom Kippur, the Day of
Atonement. This is the holiest day of the year, during which
Jews fast, pray, and confess their sins, asking God for
forgiveness.
Birth, marriage, and death are also celebrated by acts of
worship. Eight days after birth, all male children are
circumcized, symbolizing their initiation into the covenant of
Abraham. At marriage, the seven wedding benedictions are
recited. The Shema is recited as a person is dying. Unlike
in Christianity, no prayers for the dead are said, but the
Kaddish is recited by a son in honour of his deceased
parent.
Christianity
At the heart of Christian worship is the adoration of, praise
of, and thanksgiving to the Triune God: Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. Most liturgical formulae are addressed to the
Father, through the Son, in the Spirit. God is worshipped as
the creator of all things, and thanked for all His gifts,
especially for having saved all men and women in (or
through) Jesus Christ. Though Christians are also expected
to worship God by the way they act in the world, the more
specific act of worship is expressed in the liturgy, with
Church-established and supervised services suited to
different occasions.
Eucharist
Central to all Christian worship is the Eucharist, a prayer of
thanksgiving and praise. Although the details of this act of
worship vary between different Christian traditions, the
essential pattern remains the same: a preparation
consisting of a confession of one's sins, usually followed by
an absolution by an ordained minister; the liturgy of the
Word (readings from the Bible); and a homily (or sermon),
an explanation of the reading with an exhortation to put its
religious message into practice in one's daily life. In many
Christian confessions, the liturgy follows, called by different
names (for example, The Lord's Supper, Holy Communion,
or Mass). The main purpose of celebrating the Eucharist is
to declare the saving power of God and to participate in this
saving power in daily life.
One of the causes of division between the Roman Catholic
Church and other Christian Churches in the 16th century
was the way the Mass was perceived, the Roman Catholic
Church insisting that it was a re-enactment of the sacrifice
on Calvary while the Reformation Churches stressed the
memorial aspect of the Last Supper. Today, sacrifice and
memorial are seen by both sides as two aspects of one
reality, the mass being a “sacrificial meal”.
Other Rites
Other forms of worship, besides the Eucharist, are found in
most Christian denominations, the most common being
rites of initiation (baptism and confirmation), marriage,
ordination, penance, or confession of one's sins, and the
anointing of the sick. All of these are referred to as
sacraments in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox
Churches. The basic structure of each sacrament is an
outward sign (for instance, the pouring of water in baptism)
accompanied by a prayer invoking God's blessing on the
person receiving the sacrament.
The Christian Year
Christian worship has a yearly cycle, starting with Advent, a
period of preparation leading up to Christmas. Then follows
Lent, a time of penance culminating in the Holy Week,
when the Passion, death, and Resurrection of Jesus,
known as the Paschal Mystery, is re-enacted. Easter is the
most solemn feast for Christians. Fifty days after Easter,
Christians celebrate Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy
Spirit, giving birth to the Church.
Conducting Worship
Official worship is conducted by ordained ministers in most
Christian Churches whether by an all-male clergy, as in the
Roman Catholic Church, or by an ordained minister of
either sex, as in the Anglican Church. In the Free Churches
(for instance, the Baptists), Church leaders conduct
services and prayer meetings. Although worship is
generally understood to be collective and public, an equally
widespread form of worship is private prayer and
meditation. Indeed, silent prayer in a group, after the
manner of the Quakers, can be a powerful form of Christian
worship.
Among the new forms of worship in recent years is that of
the Charismatic Movement, wherein the primacy of the
Spirit over the institutional aspect of the Church is
highlighted. Based in the mainline Protestant Churches but
now popular also in Roman Catholicism, Charismatic
Christians sing and praise God, giving free reign to bodily
movements and often showing signs of the presence of the
Spirit, for example speaking in tongues (see Glossolalia) or
prophesying. The ministry of healing, both spiritual and
bodily, is also linked to this movement.
Islam
According to the Koran, a human being is, by definition, an
abd (a worshipper and servant of Allah). The whole of a
Muslim's life is meant for the praise and worship of and
submission to Allah. There is, therefore, no distinction
between the religious and the secular, the mosque and the
market-place, religion and politics. The framework of
Muslim life and worship, ibada, is what is known as The
Five Pillars: shahada, or profession of faith; salat, or daily
prayers; zakat, or prescribed almsgiving; saum, or
purificatory fast; and, for those who can, hajj, a pilgrimage
to Mecca, to be performed at least once in a lifetime.
Shadada is the phrase “la ilah illa Allah wa Muhammad
rasul Allah” (“There is no god except Allah, and Muhammad
is the prophet of Allah”); spoken sincerely in Arabic, this is
the expression of the Muslim faith, the sacred words
breathed in a Muslim's ear at birth and ideally the last words
to be uttered before dying. It is also spoken on the occasion
of conversion to Islam, and as part of the adhan, or call to
prayer.
The salat is a daily prayer. Five times a day, at dawn, noon,
mid-afternoon, sunset, and before midnight, the muezzin
climbs up to the minaret and calls Muslims to prayer. When
Muslims go to the mosque, they take off their shoes and
make ablutions at the entrance (washing their hands, faces,
and feet). They then stand, kneel, and touch the ground
with their foreheads on a carpeted floor, as they pray and
recite verses from the Koran in Arabic. They generally
supplement these recitations with prayers in their own
languages. The prayers are led by an imam, a person
chosen by the congregation, who knows the whole of the
Koran by heart. For fear of idolatry, no statues or paintings
of images are found in a mosque. A mihrab (decorated
place) indicates the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca,
towards which worshippers have to kneel so that all
Muslims around the world are united in the praise of Allah.
At the end of prayer, worshippers exchange with those
praying on either side of them words of peace: “assalamu
alaikum” (“peace be with you”).
The Muslim is seen in the context of a worshipping
community and formally attends collective prayer in a
mosque. Devoted Muslims also pray individually every day
at prayer time, whether they happen to be in offices, fields,
or even, for example, on a train.
Zakat, or almsgiving, gives credibility to one's faith and
worship. It also shows concern for the poor and needy.
Today zakat, a compulsory taxation to be used for the
benefit of the poor, is computed at 2 per cent of one's cash
balance per annum. Pious Muslims are encouraged to go
beyond this, giving sadqa in secret.
Saum, a dawn-to-dusk fast from all food, drink, and sexual
relations, during the month of Ramadan, is the fourth pillar
of Islam, compulsory for all, from the age of puberty. The
sick, travellers, pregnant women, and all other people who
have some good reason not to fast during Ramadan, move
their fast to a time when they are able to abstain. Those
who cannot are obliged to compensate by performing good
works, for instance, the feeding of the poor. Fasting is seen
as a discipline of the soul.
Hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca, to be performed at least
once in a lifetime by those who can afford it. Mecca is the
holiest place for Muslims, hallowed by the memory of
Muhammad who began his life and ministry there. It is also
traditionally the place where Abraham, with his second son
Ishmael, built the Kaaba, in obeisance to God, who showed
them where to worship. Pilgrims go all dressed in simple
white clothes to signify that all are equal before God. The
rites of the hajj include going round the Kaaba seven times,
and going seven times between the mountains of Safa and
Marwa (in memory of Hagar in search of water, as found in
the christian Bible, Genesis 21:19). Pilgrims then stand and
pray on the plain of Arafa for Allah's forgiveness, a
prefiguring of the Last Judgement. Eid-ul-Fitr, marking the
end of Ramadan, and Eid-ul-Adha, the end of the hajj, are
the main festivals of the Muslim calendar.
Hinduism
The word that comes closest in meaning to worship in
Hinduism is the Sanskrit word puja, also used in most
Indian languages. Puja is offered to a god or goddess who
may dwell in a statue or image. However, puja, meaning
profound reverence, is also offered to a guru, to departed
ancestors, or even to a husband by his wife.
In the Hindu view of life, the ultimate aim of men and
women is liberation (moshka) from all that blocks the
awareness of their true self. Three ways of reaching such a
stage are described: the way of works, or karma (doing
one's duty, sacrificial and ritual acts); the way of knowledge,
or jnana (meditation); and the way of devotion to God or
bhakti (see Hinduism). The first and third of these ways
would more appropriately fall within the scope of worship.
Public Worship
Hindu worship takes place mainly in a temple or in the
home. The temple is the sanctuary of the main god or
goddess while other shrines may be built around it for other
deities. The priest alone performs the daily ritual, often
treating the deity in much the same way as he would a
revered person. The god is awakened, dressed, fed, and
prepared for the darshan (auspicious seeing) by his
devotees. There is no congregational worship as there is in
Christianity or Islam. Samskaras (purificatory rites) are not
performed in the temple. At private worship in the temple
the devotee offers prayers, gives an offering to the priest,
bows before the image, goes round the temple, right side
turned towards the deity, and at the end receives a prasad,
a part of the offering made to the deity. Pilgrimages (yatra)
to holy places and vows (vrata) are also popular forms of
Hindu worship.
Private Worship
Daily worship in the home by Hindus varies in complexity,
ranging from the simple humming of a devotional song or
an offering of flowers or water to the elaborate ritual typical
of an orthodox Brahmin, a member of the priestly caste.
Getting up very early in the morning, the Brahmin recites
the mantra (A-U-M), bathes, sits facing east, sips water,
and says the gayatri mantra, completing all these devotions
before sunrise. Before his first meal, a Brahmin offers ghee,
curds, and rice to the fire (homa). Then follows the reading
from the sacred books (svadhyaya) after which the deity is
worshipped in a special room or in a reserved corner of the
house, where incense, sandalwood, paste, a bell, and a
copper vessel are used. Noon and evening devotions are
similar but shorter.
Festivals
In Hinduism, no fixed day of the week is set apart for rest or
worship. However, the whole year consists of a sequence
of fasts, vigils, sacred days, and festivals. The main
festivals, all determined by lunar reckoning, are Holi (a
spring festival celebrating the god Krishna); Navaratri
(“festival of nine nights”) in September or October (broadly
speaking dedicated to Saraswati in the south and west of
India and to Durga in the rest of the country); and the the
tenth day, (Dasara) commemorating the triumph of the god
Rama over the monster Ravana, which symbolizes the
victory of Good over Evil. Diwali (“feast of lights”) follows, a
five-day feast when people light lamps to welcome
Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity.
Other Religions
Buddhism and Jainism are both offshoots of Hinduism.
While the latter has few followers outside India today,
Buddhism has flourished, especially in all the Asian
countries east of India, from Sri Lanka to Japan. Both
religions emphasize personal-effort rather than dependence
on divine grace. Worship is not central to these religions.
Buddhists of different traditions, however (Theravada, in
South East Asia, East Asia, and Tibet), do have certain
rituals. In the Theravada tradition, monks officiate at
funerals, commemorate the Enlightenment of the Buddha,
and, at the end of the rainy season, confess their sins to
one another. In East Asia, monks have ordinations, worship
services, and funeral and memorial rites. Other practices,
such as New Year service, Midsummer festival, and
celebrations relating to the way of life of the Buddha,
involve mass lay participation. Dance, theatre, and the tea
ceremony were originally religious services that have now
become secularized. In Tibet, Buddhists revere the
“precious incarnate lamas”, incarnations of the buddhas
and bodhisattvas. Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva of
compassion who is said to protect the Tibetan nation, has
an immanent presence in history, today in the Dalai Lama.
Tibetan religious services include prostrations, sacrifice,
confession, congratulation on others' merits, and prayers for
the continuing presence of enlightened beings.
Primal religions, as well as other significant religions like
Zoroastrianism and Sikhism, have their characteristic forms
of worship. Chinese religions, especially Confucianism and
Daoism developed without any known contact with the rest
of the world. Ancestor worship is distinctive of Chinese
religions, notably Confucianism. The Japanese religions,
too, mainly Shinto, have their traditional forms of worship,
shrines, and festivals.
Multifaith Worship
This is the coming together of people from different
religious traditions for prayer, silence, or devotion. People
of goodwill are diversely motivated to pray together, some
simply as an extension of their friendship, others out of a
desire to engage in inter-religious dialogue, to appreciate
the faith of other traditions, or simply to express the
fundamental unity of people even in their diversity. There is
no set formula for multifaith worship. Celebrations vary in
form and content, and some religious leaders have
expressed concern over the indiscriminate organization of
interfaith services where no heed is taken of individual
religious identity and symbolism.
Two types of multifaith worship seem to have special depth
and to enjoy a fairly wide acceptance across religions. The
first is when people of different faiths meet together and
pray in silence. William Johnston, a Jesuit scholar, speaks
of religion as having identifiable structures: a
superstructure, composed of the outer aspects of religion,
and an infrastructure, containing the core, beyond words
and concepts, typical of mysticism. It is at this level that
people of different faiths praying together experience their
unity in communion with a transcendent being.
The second type of multifaith worship is what has been
called a “serial multifaith service”, wherein prayers from
different faiths and scriptures are placed side by side and
participants join in as their conscience allows. This has the
effect of believers attending one another's worship: they
may not be praying together but they are praying in each
other's presence, providing an opportunity of celebrating
togetherness.
Opponents of interfaith worship consider it as a surrender to
syncretism, a half-hearted humanism, a sort of mishmash
meant to offer a compromise to please everybody but
which, in the end, pleases nobody. Traditionalists, with few
exceptions, favour such a view. Supporters of interfaith
worship insist that the coming together of people of faith to
support each other by listening to scriptures, hearing each
other pray, and sharing in each other's silence, do so not to
bury their differences but to learn from them and to build
bridges between communities. The result of such an
experience is to discover what underlies the various names
and forms of religion. As a Zen Buddhist simile has it,
doctrines are fingers pointing to the Moon, and not the
Moon itself.