Embodied Faith Practices During and Post Pandemic

Ritual is bad and faith is good, right?

I grew up in a very Calvinist Christian tradition in the Presbyterian Church, and we were always concerned about empty rituals. My earliest experiences with the word “ritual” were not positive. It was associated with empty actions and just going through the motions and was contrasted with a more vibrant and transformative faith.

I think that is part of the reason I am so fascinated with ritual from an intellectual perspective. It’s why I have published two books on ritual in the Bible. Because, while my faith tradition was very much opposed to empty ritual, other embodied actions we called sacraments or liturgy were viewed very positively. We just don't call them "rituals," even though that's what they are. Maybe your faith tradition also practices ritual or embodied action as part of spirituality.

My Christian tradition finds great depth of meaning in Christian liturgical traditions like the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper, or the eucharist. We also participated in all kinds of other embodied faith practices like saying the Lord’s prayer out loud, singing traditional songs of faith, and praying for members of our faith community out loud. These are Christian rituals, according to my definition, and are deeply meaningful to those who participate. Ritual actions are ways in which our faith involves our physical bodies and where we can get out of our heads.

It seems to me that faith should be more than just cognitive assent to theological principles or ideas. Faith is also something we do with our bodies in the real world. Faith doesn’t reside only our mind. Faith is something that involves all of us - our hearts and minds and bodies. All of us! And ritual is the word I use in my books to capture this idea.

Ritual tends to be characterized by formality, by a sense of dignity and specialness around a particular event or action or even an object or a set of objects like the elements of the Lord’s Supper or the eucharist, rosary beads, or mezuzot, for example. Rituals are typically repeated: sometimes less frequently, sometimes more. And they involve bodies and real objects or substances in the world. For example, baptism or other kinds of ritual washing in faith communities makes use of water, and possibly a special font or bath where it is kept. 

Rituals are events rather than things, in my view. They are usually performed by a special set of experts – persons who have a certain qualification in training and/or education so that they know how to do the ritual in the right way so that the practitioner protects the community’s sense of the sacred.

Rituals are essentially ordinary behaviors and involve ordinary objects and words, but when brought together and performed correctly, they can lead a faith community or an individual into a transformative experience. For example, baptism involves water and concepts of cleansing but used in a very unique and symbolic way. Also, many rituals, like baptism, typically involve a standard set of words and phrases, reading of sacred texts like the Bible in order for the faith community to have a sense of effectiveness, the presence of God in that moment. Many faith traditions also include acts of justice or service as part of spirituality, which could also, in my view, be viewed as a ritual act of embodied faith that serves others.

In my two books about ritual in the Hebrew Bible, I understand rituals practiced within the Bible as positive actions, transformative actions, which could also be characterized as expressions of the liturgical life of ancient Israel, or even as the sacramental life of ancient Israel.

I think during the pandemic and post-pandemic (?), we have grown in our awareness of how much ritual and sacred practices mean to us when many of us were unable to participate in services with our faith communities. Many of us were doing Zoom church or Temple, or watching livestreams. And, for many of us, this was not the same experience as participating in person. In my experience during the pandemic, faith started to feel like it was all just a cognitive experience happening in my mind, rather than a full body, multisensory, community experience or community service.

 So, is ritual good or bad? It seems to me that bodies are good, including women’s bodies, and that we are called to enact our faith within them. Are rituals empty or full? Are they meaningless or inspirational? It depends on the experience of those participating. What are your ritual practices or those of your faith community or personal practice? Have they changed or adapted since the pandemic? Grown more or less meaningful? Leave a comment on Facebook or Instagram about your story!