Rituals in Abundance
Critical Reflections on the Place, Form and Identity of Christian Ritual in our Culture
by G.M. Lukken
Rituals are closely linked with culture. This book is a consideration of Christian ritual in our culture. It was originally written particularly with an eye to the ritual developments in The Netherlands, which can be considered as representative for our Western European culture. It has been revised and expanded for the English edition. As in other European countries, in the 1960s Dutch society witnessed a serious crisis in ritual. The situation was paradoxical. While, under the influence of the Second Vatican Council and the Liturgical Movement, in the Catholic churches there was a great creativity with regard to ritual, ritual was gradually disappearing from the society at large, and participation in Christian ritual was rapidly draining away. A religious void arose. However, since then the situation has changed fundamentally. Rituals were rediscovered in the 1990s, indeed to such an extent that one can now speak of ‘rituals in abundance’. In this book the author sketches out the directions and sets out signposts for where ritual is going in contemporary culture. He traces the peculiar characteristics of ritual, indicates what shifts have taken place, and tries to further define the identity of various rituals. In doing this, he concentrates on the question of the place of Christian ritual in our culture. How is Christian ritual connected with the many rites in our culture? What new shape is it taking on in our culture? In the midst of the other rites, what is the peculiar identity of Christian ritual? In this book the accent is on the anthropological approach to Christian ritual: it works from the bottom up. The book seeks answers to the questions being asked in the discipline of ritual studies, which particularly since the second half of the 1980s has arisen as an important realm or stage on which different disciplines studying ritual come together.
- By (author) GM Lukken
Other Titles in this Series
Doing Ritual Criticism in a Network Society
Online and Offline Explorations into Pilgrimage and Sacred Place
Volume 29
Friedlicher Kreuzzug und fromme Pilger
Liturgiehistorische Studien zur Heilig-Land-Wallfahrt im Spiegel deutschsprachiger Pilgerberichte des späten 19. Jahrhunderts
Volume 27
The Embodied Space of Worship
Liturgical Signs and Liturgical Bodies in Contemporary Finnish Orthodox Lay Worship
Volume 33
Worship in the Network Culture
Liturgical Ritual Studies. Fields and Methods, Concepts and Metaphors
Volume 28
Patterns and Persons
A Historiography of Liturgical Studies in the Netherlands in the Twentieth Century
Volume 25
Bonding in Worship
A Ritual Lens on Social Capital in African Independent Churches in South Africa
Volume 30
The Sound of Worship
Liturgical Performance by Surinamese Lutherans and Ghanaian Methodists in Amsterdam
Volume 26
From Fast to Feast
A Ritual-Liturgical Exploration of Reconciliation in South African Cultural Contexts
Volume 19
The Presanctified Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite
A Comparative Analysis of its Origins, Evolution, and Structural Components
Volume 21
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