• Why have religion scholars tended to focus on belief? Why is this a problem?

• How does Nye define “ritual”? How can the same action be a ritual sometimes but not others?

• What shift took place in ritual studies during the 1990s? How is this relevant to your film essay?

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4. Ritual

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Thanks for being a great class!

Have a wonderful Reading Week!

Snider Lecture

• Oct. 2 @ 7pm in IB120

• Ali Rizvi

• “The Muslim Enlightenment: The rise of secular thought among young Muslims”

• Visit religious site with one or two other students from your tutorial

➡ Must be site no one is familiar with

➡ No one in group can belong to that religion

➡ Contract on Quercus (“Assignments”)

➡ Info and advice on Q for finding a site

➡ You can change contract afterwards!

➡ Due October 8 (worth 2%)6

Field Research Contract

• Buddhism

• Christianity

• Hinduism

• Indigenous traditions

• Jainism

• Judaism

• Islam

• Paganism

• Scientology

• Sikhism

• Taoism

• Unitarianism

• Wicca

• Zoroastrianism

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Field Research Contract Christians• Anglican

• Baptist

• Catholic

• Coptic

• Global Revival (“Catch the Fire”)

• Jehovah’s Witness

• Lutheran

• Mennonite

• Mormon (LDS)

• Orthodox

• Pentecostal

• Presbyterian

• Seventh-Day Adventist

• United Church

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Anonymous Feedback

• Can we choose Catholicism?

➡ Yes – if you’re not Christian(or know much about otherforms of Christianity)

• Break / room too cold

• Nice note

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Film Paragraph

• Congratulations on completing this!

• If you did not complete it:

➡ Please do it soon!

➡ Ask for help if you need it

• Film Analysis (due Oct. 20):

➡ Instructions + theories on Quercus

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Today

• Belief

1. Remaining theories

2. Belief + the study of religion

• Ritual

1. What is ritual?

2. Ritual studies

3. Ritual theories

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Belief 1: Theories of Belief

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Theories of Belief

• Cognitive vs. affective beliefs (p. 117)

• Habitus (p. 125-6)

• Reductionist theories (p. 108-9)

• Non-reductionist theories (p. 111-5)

• Belief and common sense (p. 119-123)

• Cognitive approaches (p. 109-11)

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“Common Sense”

• Leach, Malinowski, Geertz, Evans-Pritchard, Tonkinson (p. 119-123)

➡ Don’t worry about this section

➡ Main point: “belief” is complicated!!

Cognitive Approaches

• Study of the brain

• Luther Martin (note: he is NOT Martin Luther!)

• Non-reductionist (Whitehouse)

• Reductionist (Guthrie, Boyer)

15 16

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pareidolia

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19 20

21 22

23 24

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Belief 2: The Study of Religion

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• Protestant Reformation (Christianity)

• Martin Luther: 95 Theses (1517)

➡ Catholic church: institution b/t person and God; “over-emphasis” on rituals

➡ New Testament (Paul): Faith over works:

“You have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

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Study of Religion

• Tylor: Religion is belief in spiritual beings

• Why this focus?

➡ Protestant Christian view(NOT universal view)

➡ Faith over works

• Scholars of religion from Protestant cultures

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Study of Religion

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Belief?

• Problems with thinking that religion is all about belief?

1. Language issues involving “belief”

➡ Various meanings in English

➡ No equivalent word for “belief” in some languages

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Study of Religion

• Problems with thinking that religion is all about belief?

2. Sometimes belief is not (that) important

➡ Different traditions

➡ Different people within the same traditions / communities

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Study of Religion

Ritual 1:What is “Ritual”?

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What is Ritual?

• Ritual = stuff people DO➡ But which stuff?? (Nye p. 129–33)

➡ Not necessarily repeated (e.g., rite of passage)

➡ Many definitions!

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• Nye: ritual as “meaningful action” (p. 133–34)

➡ Meaning is not about the act itself

➡ About relation between act and person

➡ Same action might be meaningful for one person/time/place but not others

➡ Examples?

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What is Ritual?

Today’s Song

• “New Shoes” by Paolo Nutini (2006)

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“New Shoes”Woke up cold one Tuesday,

I’m looking tired and feeling quite sick,I felt like there was something missing

in my day to day life

Hey, I put some new shoes on,And suddenly everything is right,

I said, hey, I put some new shoes on and everybody’s smiling, it’s so inviting,

Oh, short on money,but long on time,Slowly strolling in the sweet sunshine

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Islamic Cultural Centreof Quebec City

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Rev. Dawn Leger (Anglican)Christ Church in Stouffville, ON

Eucharist

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Eid al-Fitr(Tajikistan)

Langar (Sikhism)

• Vegetarian food service in Gurdwara

• Free to all

• Principles of equality / no discrimination

• “the light of God is in all hearts”(Guru Granth Sahib)

• Golden Temple (Amritsar): feed approx. 80,000 people / day

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What is Ritual?

• Ritual = stuff people DO (i.e., actions)

➡ But which stuff??

➡ Many definitions!

• Ritual as meaningful action

➡ Meaning is relational➡ Meaning depends on the people and the

context

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Ritual 2:Ritual Studies

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Ritual Studies

• Ritual studies challenged academic assumption that religion was only about belief➡ Focus on

ACTIONS

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Ritual Studies

• Crisis in the 1990s (Nye p. 148)

• If so many things can be called “ritual,” is this really a useful term?

• Change in focus: ritual theories used for interpretation, not as description

➡ Theories as tools for understanding actions, and not for labelling them as “ritual” (or not “ritual”)

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Old question: “Is this action a ritual?”

New question: “What does this action mean?”

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Ritual Studies1. Ritual studies showed that actions were

important in religion

➡ Religion was not only about belief

2. Shift in focus within ritual studies

➡ From “Is this action a ritual?” to “What does this action mean?”

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Film Analysis

• Ritual paragraph:

➡ Do not worry about whether an action is a “ritual” or not

➡ Simply use a theory of ritual to analyze any action(s) you like

➡ Question: what does the action mean?

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Ritual 3: Ritual Theories

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Ritual Theories

• Emile Durkheim (society)

• Sigmund Freud (neurosis)

• Harvey Whitehouse (memory)

• Malory Nye (power)

• Arnold van Gennep (rites of passage)

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Ritual Theories

• Many theories focus on the FUNCTION of ritual (not “content”)

➡ Not about (symbolic) meaning(e.g., bread = body of Christ)

➡ About the effect of the action(s) on participants

➡ Film Analysis!

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Emile Durkheim

• Ritual binds people together (p. 141-2)

➡ Ritual does not just express relationships: “the performance of rituals actually creates those relationships”

➡ Regular attendance at religious site (church, mosque, synagogue, temple, etc.)

➡ Other examples?

➡ Lion King?60

Hakuna Matata

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Sigmund Freud

• Ritual = neurosis (p. 143)

➡ Repetition brings comfort; avoids real problem(s)

➡ Might be true sometimes (not always): but need to know context

➡ Examples?

➡ Lion King?

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Hakuna Matata

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Harvey Whitehouse

• Rituals and memory (p. 143-4)

➡ “Imagistic” mode: high intensity (dramatic and/or traumatic)

❖ E.g., wedding, funeral, assault

➡ “Doctrinal” mode: mundane repetition (routine)

❖ E.g., daily prayer, national anthem

➡ Lion King?67 68

Imagistic

Imagistic

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Doctrinal

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Doctrinal

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Doctrinal