Ritual is inevitable

Dear Tom,

With -5 degrees outside as I write to you, I’m wondering if I could ever be grateful enough for the miracle that is internal heating! With that said, this year seems warmer than last year (although I don’t want to speak too soon!). I remember days that dipped below -7 and never quite made it back to 0. Now we have strings of days that don’t even drop below 0, although we have had more snow this year for what it’s worth. Perhaps the last winter’s coldest moments were in February, and this year’s worst is still waiting in the wings. We shall see.

Many people with a secular upbringing find religious ceremonies strange, and I’m admittedly quick to agree as soon as I attend an unfamiliar one (though attending an orthodox school gave me a high bar for what counts as strange). Jonathon Pageau offers a compelling perspective on these services which can make them seem a little less strange. He discusses this view in two videos on YouTube—“The Inevitability of Ritual” and “Ritualised Behaviour From Animals to Church”— and he makes the case that religious services are only strange if you divorce them from every day life. The mistake people make is to label activities as either “religious” or “non-religious”. Having made this distinction, they will inevitably be struck by the foreignness of candles, chanting and funny outfits. But this is a false distinction according to Pageau: there are no religious and non-religious categories; all activities we participate in emerge from the same human tendency to ritualise.

Pageau argues that it’s often the ritualistic aspects of religious ceremonies that bother people: such rigorous repetition seems cult-like and mindless and doesn’t jive with the value we now place on spontaneity and authenticity. But ritual isn’t unique to religious activities. Indeed, everything we do is ritualised. What’s more, ritual—or ordered behaviour—is inevitable: any repeated activity with a consistent objective will necessarily develop into a ritual. Shaking hands, waving, facing each other while we speak, and sitting around a table to eat are all rituals. A myriad of rhythms and rules govern these interactions; we know this because we struggle to break those rules and are very uncomfortable around people who do. We don’t stare at the floor while we speak, or make eerie, unbroken eye contact, or keep our hands behind our backs when someone waves or extends their own hand in greeting; nor do we stand on the table during dinner or arrive drunk at work. When someone strays from the rituals of daily life, we’re instantly aware that something is off.

The rituals of daily life might be arbitrary in their specifics, but they are not meaningless: they emerge to achieve specific and non-arbitrary purposes. We probably began to wave or shake hands to show that we aren’t carrying weapons, and continue to do this today to signal that we come in peace. The ritual of greeting one another and shaking hands quickly establishes common understanding: we both know how to follow the rules and we can act together peacefully, at least until proven otherwise. You can imagine a much longer ritual to ascertain the intentions of a stranger. Shaking hands only takes a second and lets you get down to business.

Pageau claims that religious rituals are the result of the same process; the result of our proclivity to lay down rules which govern our behaviour so that we might effectively achieve a meaningful goal. The goal of the mass is the collective worship of God, and non-arbitrary rituals naturally emerged as people repeatedly gathered to worship. Bowing is not arbitrary: it’s the act of putting yourself in subordinate relationship with something higher than yourself. Facing in the same direction demonstrates the group’s collective attention toward a shared target. Singing in unison represents unity, lighting candles represents a battle against the darkness.

The christian mass in particular celebrates the memory of a meal. The result of hundreds of years of iteration is that the mass now symbolises the perfect meal: a demonstration of the unity and commitment of a potentially boundless community united under that which is most high. The mass lies at the end of a spectrum which ranges from eating alone, eating together with your family, eating together with your neighbourhood, eating together as a town or city in something like a banquet, to finally eating together at the mass. Each level creates unity between more and more people, and points everyone’s attention toward higher and more abstract unifying ideas. This is why religious services can’t be separated from non-religious activities: the mass is no different from all the other meals on the spectrum. You cannot draw a line that divides them into religious and non-religious meals—it’s just that the meaning and significance of a meal reach their peak during the mass.

Religious outfits, which seem so ridiculous from the outside, are also a continuation of our daily rituals. We’re no strangers to wearing particular outfits for particular occasions. People dress up to go to a formal dinner, and suits are almost as arbitrary as robes and capes (I mean, what’s with the tie?). The bishop’s hat might bother us, but it finds its parallel in the hat of a policeman or the uniform of any government official: they all use their dress to distinguish themselves in the roles they’re playing in the current ritual. We should be able to identify a policeman just as we should be able to identify our shepherd. Their outfits represent something meaningful, and something is lost when “priests” decide to rock up in a t-shirt and ripped jeans.

I think that was a bit of a jumbled letter, but I hope you got the sense of what I was trying to say. Even more, I hope that you’re doing well, Tom, and Eliane too. Have a great day, and stay warm.

James