Most people, and many Christians especially, think they dislike ritual. In reality, we are doing ritual all the time. Whether we go to the mall, brush our teeth, or go to church, there are almost always elements of ritual, whether recognized or not. The liturgical and ecumenical theologian Geoffrey Wainwright describes ritual like so:
“It must be made clear form the start that I am not using ‘ritual’ in the pejorative sense of ‘mere ritual’ which it sometimes bears among Protestants. I mean ritual in the descriptive sense of regular patterns of behaviour invested with symbolic significance and efficacy. On my sense of the word, even those communities which pride themselves on their freedom from ‘ritual’ will generally be found to use ritual; only they will not be aware of it, and so will be unable either to enjoy its pleasures to the full or to be properly vigilant about its dangers. Similarly it may be important to state that liturgy (and, much less often, cult) is here used of the public worship of the Church, with liturgical (and cultic) as convenient adjectives. Liturgy leaves room within itself for those spontaneous or extemporaneous forms of worship which some Protestants favour as an alternative to what they class as ‘liturgical.’ If the word liturgy is allowed to retain from its etymology the sense of ‘the work of the people’, it hints at the focal place and function which I ascribe to worship in the Christian life as a whole. Into the liturgy the people bring their entire existence so that it may be gathered up in praise. From the liturgy the people depart with a renewed vision of the value-patterns of God’s kingdom, by the more effective practice of which they intend to glorify God in their whole life.”
Another of my intellectual heroes, James K.A. Smith, has given new force to recognizing the power of ritual not just in religious life but in culture as a whole. In addition to his many books on the subject, his lecture “Redeeming Ritual” is worth your time.
So the question is not a simple, “ritual: yes or no?” but whether or not we are conscious of the rituals that make up our lives, the liturgies which form us each day. Charles Duhigg has written of The Power of Habit, which describes how rituals, when made intentional, can create new, healthy patterns of life and behavior.
And that’s what it comes down to with the church. Are our rituals effectively making us saints, or reinforcing the individualistic, shallow, consumer liturgies to which we are constantly exposed? Ritual is our friend, because there is no escaping its shaping influence in our lives. But the constant question to ask is: to what end is this liturgy forming us? Because remember, even this is a liturgy:
Source: Wainwright, Doxology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 8.
Uniting Grace 