Adam Capriola
Response to Question #1
10/28/08
In the book The Sacred Quest, the authors Lawrence Cunningham and John Kelsay
discuss the religious notion of ritual. They define ritual as being “a ceremonial act or a repeated
stylized gesture used for specific occasions” (76). In the context of religion, rituals are a
necessity in order to shape beliefs and values. Rituals can take hold in many different forms,
which are elaborated upon by the authors. One specific form of rituals includes “rites of
passage”. These are rituals that are intertwined with transitional moments in a person’s life (79).
Rites of passage are necessary for a follower of a religion to move from stage to stages of their
life. They are very important rituals because they mark milestone moments in a person’s life in
their church. Despite how secular a family may be, rites of passage are moment of life still
highly associated with religion.
Typically the first rite of passage in one’s life, birth rituals mark a person’s entry into
their faith. This ritual is performed at a young age and celebrates the new followers’ initiation.
In Judaism, the male child becomes a member of the Jewish people upon circumcision, as this is
seen through the bible to be a covenant between God and the Jews (80). Baptism is the birth
ritual associated to Christianity, through which a child officially becomes a member of the
church. Many people see this as the ceremony which differentiates Christians from nonChristians. Finally, Cunningham and Kelsay describe a Hindu ritual feeding, which initiates a
male into the religion.
The next type of rites of passage described is rituals of initiation. These rituals typically
signify the growth of a child to an adult. Often these rituals take place during the adolescence.
Adulthood in Judaism is signified through the celebration of bar or bat mitzvah. In Christianity,
the onset of adulthood is denoted with the sacrament of confirmation. One last example of
initiation is marriage. Even though the actual marriage ceremony is often modern and
contemporary, the rite of marriage is an old religious tradition (81). Marriage is a ritual
contained in nearly all religious.
The last type of rites of passage described is rituals of mourning and death. These rituals
mark the end of one’s life and are performed in the moments of death and after death. Rituals of
mourning and death are performed even in the most secularized cultures. The process of
mourning is ritualized in various ways in different religions. Taoists, for example, perform
elaborate ceremonies signifying the soul’s journey into the underworld and its rescue and
delivery into heaven (81). This ceremony can take months of planning and preparation. On the
contrary, Muslims and Orthodox Jews perform very simple and quiet ceremonies and typically
bury the deceased within a day of their death. Burial ceremonies often symbolize the connection
between humankind and the natural world. Hindus in India may cremate the deceased and
scatter their ashes in the Ganges river to symbolize the never-ending cycle of life and death.
Christians bury the dead in the ground, as the bible says humanity was created from the “dust of
the earth” (81). Other rituals of death are designed to aid the dead in their crossing to the
afterworld. This is shown by Egyptians and Native Americans who bury the dead with gifts, and
by Catholics who pray for those who have passed away.
In my opinion, Cunningham and Kelsay show more similarities than differences between
the different religions with respect to rites of passage. For example, they discuss how all birth
rituals serve the same basic purpose; to formally introduce a child into the religion. Though the
actual ceremonies are different for the varying religions, the purpose they serve is exactly the
same. Likewise, rituals of initiation also serve the same purpose throughout religions. They all
serve as ceremonies to celebrate the transition for a child into adulthood. Again, the ceremonies
are not the same for all religions, but Cunningham and Kelsay do not really go into detail about
the ceremonies and exploit the differences. They point similarities the religions share in the
rituals.
However, when discussing rituals of mourning and death, Cunningham and Kelsay make
more evident the differences in ritual between different religions. They describe how some
religions use burial rites to help the deceased in their journey through the afterworld, such as
Native Americans and the ancient Egyptians who bury the dead with trinkets. On the contrary,
Roman Catholics instead pray for the dead to achieve this same goal. The authors also describe
the actual ceremonies. Taoist culture, which includes an elaborate ceremony, is compared the
monotonous ceremonies of the Jewish and Muslims. The ceremonies serve the same purpose of
letting go of the dead, but they are gone about in completely different manners. The
comparisons in this section make the purpose of rituals of mourning and death seem much
different in the various religions. Birth rituals and rituals of initiation for the most part serve the
same purpose throughout all religions, while rituals of mourning and death seem to have more
differentiating purposes and ceremonies in religions.