This article demonstrates that ritual plays an ambivalent role in the interaction between religion and violence. Ritual triggers and gives meaning to violence, or it enforces peace and coexistence. The first part of the article defines the ambivalence of ritual in the context of violence. The second part surveys standard rituals of peace and violence from Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The third part focuses on the ambivalent nature of Orthodox Christian rituals.
Religion is a phenomenon that inspires trust, love, joy and awe as much as it inspires fear, terror, pain and suffering. It does so through narratives that are moving or terrifying, through rules that are soft or draconian, and through rituals that either stimulate pleasure or inflict pain or even death. The power of ritual dwells upon the ability to emotionally manipulate the individual through various motivational symbols that operate with social abstractions and give life its meaning. Neither a philosophical impression nor any law possesses such power to weld together the individuals into a homogeneous group as ritual does.
To define what ritual is in its essence is a daunting matter. However, it becomes easier to describe or explain what ritual does.
In sociologic terms, ritual represents one of the three pillars of belief, which together with doctrine and ethics make up what is known as an organised religion. These three pillars make up the structure of religion in its most basic character, and they can be found in any form of religious activity from any place, and any time in history. Because religion attempts to answer the most basic questions of human self-awareness –
a unified system of
The functional role of ritual is to inspire the seeker to bring order in a context dominated by chaos, to create collective certainty in times of ambiguity, to create new meaning, to redefine or to dismantle an extinct intimation in a spiritually controlled ambiance. This is because, as logotherapy informs, people need meaning to survive (Frankl
Rituals also separate the structure of life between matters that are numinous and foul. While numinous matters are charged with moral significance and symbolic truisms, foul matters are symbolically rejected and accursed. This is because, within the ambiance of ritual, sacredness is created, recreated and enforced.
Rituals are also anchored in the objectification of
Religion performs violence through ritual in symbolic and realistic ways, and as such, ritual has a central place in religious violence. Symbolic violence is often the precursor of real violence because it anticipates, stirs and prepares the individual for an upcoming confrontation. By demonising adversaries, symbolic violence charges the foe with the most repulsive and dangerous qualities which need not to be avoided only but eliminated altogether.
Whether performed against an external foe or against an internal suspect, religious violence contains a strong variety of rituals that may impose torture and terror against the intruder, as much as they can impose punishment for defying civic rules or the potentate.
Based on archaeological data, the earliest forms of religious violence were mostly associated with totemic rituals, ancestors worship, animism and rites of passage. Sacred pain was administered to make one worthy of being part of the group, or to be accepted by the gods. To prove worthy one had to accept self-mutilation, self-inflicted pain, deprivation, starvation, penitence, genital mutilation, self-mortification and even suicide (Alcorta & Sosis
prolonged kneeling, standing, and prostration; fasting; sleep deprivation; dancing to exhaustion; self-flagellation; and bodily mutilation are common practices across religious traditions. (p. 578)
The rationale of the initiation rituals can be understood and explained primarily as the group’s attempt to ensure the cooperation of each member. By administering sacred pain, the group tests the future member’s loyalty and readiness to die. To investigate this, the uninitiated has to be tested via rituals which in some cases involve beatings; isolation; deprivation of food, water and sleep; bodily mutilations and torture. The psychological benefit of such experience is that it increases the self-worth of the uninitiated, while the group becomes (re)sanctified and reinvigorated in its cohesiveness by the experience of ritual itself. As Condace S. Alcorta and Richard Sosis write:
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The primitive societies understood that intragroup violent competition could threaten the survival of the group. As the fury of the competitors turned deadly and could not be stopped, it was crucial to release it into something else; perhaps an external entity which lacked the capacity to retaliate.
The external entity, or the
Capitalising upon the initial success of the sacrifice, the leader has to remind his community that any deadly competition ought to be avoided. He does so by re-enacting the sacrifice with regularity; only this time as a symbolic expression and with non-human victims. This is a pedagogical event in which the entire group has to participate. As René Girard noted, the use of this limited violence in the context of sacrifice becomes ‘nothing more than the regular exercise of “good” violence’, (Girard
One might be tempted to regard ritual violence as a contested area of the just war thinking because of the natural ambiguity projected by the symbol itself within the logic of causality. In spite of this temptation, it is a fact that political rituals are infused with acts of symbolic violence. Such symbols not only coagulate human emotions in face of potential violence but also become platforms that justify preemptive strikes. In this sense, the desecration of a sacred place or object, or the spiritual offense brought against a holy person, represents taboos that cannot be broken (Little
Conclusively, religion endorses and sustains both peace and violence by providing spiritual narratives that give meaning to life and death, and by altering or changing the moral standards of the community. The relationship between the spiritual narratives and the moral standards is solidified in the public consciousness through the power of ritual.
Qualitative empirical studies have demonstrated that in its essence, religion is a phenomenon of trust and stability (Girard
In its history, the comfort that religion took with real and symbolic violence had been expressed through rituals of ‘bloody’ and ‘bloodless’ sacrifices which displaced the deadly fury of rivals into a scapegoat that was unable to retaliate. As such, scapegoating rituals became instruments for social stability, and tools for acquiring political power.
Today, the relationship between ritual and violence in organised religions continues to follow the pattern of ambivalence. Contemporary religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam and others, display complex ecosystems in which rituals are used either to generate peace and understanding, or to radicalise their followers, by demonising adversaries and justifying violence against them. Even if disguised as innocent melodramas of cultural expression, the furtive power of rituals goes hand in hand with doctrinal teachings and sacred texts, as they craft new patterns of behaviour.
In Hinduism, ritual violence was developed during the Brahmanic period (BC 1000 through AD 400) on the venues of
As the recent events in Sri Lanka demonstrate (Gregg
Mahayana Buddhism identifies five circumstances in which the act of killing is justified and commended as a ritual act. (1)
Biblical Judaism often combined the act of worship with war, whereby a prayer had a direct impact over the success of the military. One classical sample of such ritual behaviour – which was adopted by Christianity and Islam – is the episode from Exodus in which the success of Israel depended on Moses being able to raise his hands in prayer:
As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up – one on one side, one on the other – so that his hands remained steady till sunset. So, Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword. (Ex 17:11–13)
At the same time, violence-oriented rituals invoke ritual killing of enemies (including their livestock), as an act of worship; often performed on the basis of mythical battles against Israel’s mortal enemies (Eisen
However, Biblical Judaism included also the
Contemporary Jewish rituals continue to express religious ambivalence. The peace-oriented rituals involve morning prayers (
The peaceful and the violent aspects of the Muslim rituals are linked with the centrality of Mecca, and with the question of leadership. Muslim worship takes several forms such as
One of the five pillars of Islām is the
In Islam, rituals of violence are conducted prior and during military confrontations; mainly as acts of encouragement, and as forms of spiritual discipline designed to ensure that the battle is conducted for the benefit of Islam. Ritual violence is directed against external enemies, as well as internally, as a devotional symbol. When directed against external enemies, Islam practises two chants for mobilisation, the
In Orthodox Christianity, the relationship between ritual and violence subscribes to the general configuration of religious ambivalence.
The metaphorical representation of violence through symbols, rites, rituals and sacred art plays a significant role in the way Christianity understands itself. Symbols of violence such as
Defined from within, the Orthodox ritual represents ‘the totality of acts, forms and holy establishments through which the Church honors God, and administers the sanctifying grace to the believers’ (Braniște
The ambivalence of ritual is perhaps best represented by the Eucharist; the most significant ritual of Orthodox Christianity. While, in an allegoric sense, the Eucharist is a ‘cosmic liturgy’ which includes and celebrates the entire creation – should one take Maximus the Confessor in a literal sense (Urs von Balthasar
In Orthodoxy, any liturgical act ought to echo the spiritual teachings of the Church, while also reminding the believers what moral conduct is expected of them. The language has to be carefully selected in order to accurately reflect and even impose the dogmatic teachings. A
In general terms, the Orthodox Christian ritual has to be centred on Jesus Christ, and it has to be structured around the history of salvation (Braniște
The subject of worship is
The social structure replicated by the ritual is exclusively hierarchical. As a representation of an ideal world, the Church is considered infallible in its Christ–centred hierarchical structure, while its members, including the clergy, are considered fallible indeed (Biserica Ortodoxă Română
The public control of ritual is the exclusive privilege of the clergy. The Orthodox clergy follow a very clear hierarchy which has specific ranks and specific duties. It includes
As for laity, their public role in the ritual is limited to various chores, such as
The gender ambivalence of ritual is revealed by the dichotomy between contents and performance. While ritual includes female saint veneration and reputes Virgin Mary as ‘more honorable than the Cherubim, and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim’ – that is above the world of the celestial beings – down on earth women are excluded from joining the superior clergy (Behr-Sigel & Ware
In the Orthodox understanding
In the Eucharist the
As a longitudinal sequence of events, time is organised in line with the saga of salvation, and the liturgical calendar is organised in line with Christ’s role of prophet, priest and king. Christ’s role of prophet is underscored by the range of feast days that make up the period of the
Liturgical time also involves time set aside for personal devotion of the believer. Aiming toward the forgiveness of sins and the eternal life, the Orthodox devotion includes periods of time dedicated for spiritual exercise to be practised in the form of thought control and physical abstinence.
As an exercise of devotion, the Orthodox ritual focuses primarily on the individual and less on the group. Guilt, which can only be expiated through acts of sacrifice, gave rise to extreme forms of manifestation culminating with martyrdom. As physical needs often pose grave dilemmas in one’s struggle for spiritual ascent, the act of devotion itself came to be interpreted as a form of spiritual warfare, particularly by the desert fathers and the philokalic tradition in general.
Focused on the concept of
All day long in the burning heat he would collect stones in the desert by the sea and build with them continually and make cells, and then he would retire in favor of those who could not build for themselves. Each year he completed one cell. And once when I said to him: ‘What do you mean, father, at your great age by trying to kill your poor body in these heats?’ And he answered thus: ‘It kills me, I kill it.’ I never knew him stretch his legs and go to sleep on a rush mat or on a bed. But he would sit up all night long and weave ropes of palm–leaves to provide himself with food. (MacDermot
The harsh treatment of one’s own body was performed because it was the body that caused the spiritual failure of the monk. For a monk, this failure was similar to that of the
On account of its spiritual infallibility, the Orthodox Church has never adopted a Just War theory (Simion
The Church of Christ, which understands war as essentially the result of evil and sin in the world, supports all initiatives and efforts to prevent or avert it through dialogue and every other viable means. When war becomes inevitable, the Church continues to pray and care in a pastoral manner for her children who are involved in military conflict for the sake of defending their life and freedom, while making every effort to bring about the swift restoration of peace and freedom.
During war, the Orthodox Church prayed for peace, and also warned its members not to kill, for killing in war was still murder. For instance, Canon 13 of Basil the Great stated that any soldier who killed on the battlefield was to be deprived from receiving communion for 3 years (Mantzaridis
In the contemporary context, the collective Orthodox thinking favours an obvious sense of ambivalence. For instance, while the Russian Orthodox Church blesses weapons of mass destruction as a show of aggression of the Russian state (Simion
During the late 6th century, the Byzantine military manuals started to include specific guidelines for religious rituals to be performed in the military camps before and during battle. The rituals included blessings of soldiers, blessings of flags and liturgies, as well as rituals of religious burials for the fallen warriors.
In preparation for the battle, the generals had the duty to ensure that the proper rituals had been conducted in order for God to grant victory with minimum casualties.
O general, before all else, we enjoin upon you that on the day of the battle your army should be free from sin. The night before, the priests are to offer fervent prayers of intercession. Everyone should be sanctified and so, by words and deeds, they should be convinced that they have the help of God (Taktika, 14.1). (Stoyanov
According to the same source, the flags and other military symbols needed a particular attention within ritual:
A day or two before the combat, the tourmarchs should see that the standards are blessed by the priests and then present them to the standard-bearers of the tagmata (Taktica, 13.1). (Stoyanov
In preparation for the battle Maurice’s
Whether the bandon or tagma is in service with the rest of the army or is camping someplace by itself, the ‘Trisagion’ must be sang, and the other customary practices observed, early in the morning before any other duty and again in the evening after supper and the dismissal (Strategikon, 7.17). (Stoyanov
During the battle, the same source prescribed:
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Leo VI also specified how those fallen in the battle should be treated:
Show particular concern for the burial of the dead .… Reverence for those who have died is always good and holy. It is especially necessary in the case of those who have fallen in battle, for it is with them that piety must manifest itself (Taktika, 16.11). (Stoyanov
By the 10th century, such religious rituals were part of the daily routine of the Byzantine army. As the
The burial of the dead triggered the creation of ample memorial services that defined how such heroes were to be remembered by the posterity. In such a context, the violent death caused by the fury of war (or religious persecution) became associated with a particular doctrinal construal. In the name of devoutness, the real stories were skewed in ways that turned the moral qualities of a hero into archetypes of holiness. Paradoxically, the rituals constructed around such fallen heroes become epicentres for collective healing through forgiveness and reconciliation.
The uncontested effectiveness of ritual to create collective meaning, to concentrate political power, and to solidify the group, had been evident in the history of human civilisation. As ritual plays an ambivalent role in the encounter between religion and violence, the purpose of sacred violence is to end conflict through sacrifice and scapegoat, and to test the loyalty of the individual through initiation. Today’s living religions demonstrate that sacred violence not only generates peace and war, but it also gives meaning to life. In this sense, Orthodox Christian rituals provide the believer with a set of sacred representations necessary to achieve salvation and immortality, while ensuring the damnation of those who either challenge its legitimate existence, or fail to embrace Orthodoxy. Therefore, if there is any missionary goal behind ritual, that would be the mission to make the world a safer place by fighting fire with fire or, as an Orthodox Christian paschal hymn puts it, by ‘trampling down death by death’.
The author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article.
Cf. BBC
Insofar as my own testimony counts as evidence, in 2008, when I visited North Korea, I was instructed not to point fingers at anything, particularly at slogans, as this was regarded by the authorities as deeply insulting, and as a potential crime against the leader.
Biserica Ortodoxă Română,
For instance as Orthodox Christians generally deplored war and refused the sanction of killing, the Orthodox Patriarch Polyeuktos refused the petition of Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas to have his slain soldiers declared martyrs (McGeer
The ritual aspect of Muslim beheadings has been recognised even by military analysts such as Ronald H. Jones in his report