Some people find religious rituals to be comforting and moving experiences; other people do not. I personally do not feel a need for religious rituals, and those in which I have participated did not particularly inspire, comfort, or move me. Different responses to rituals and different feelings about them are part of the diversity inherent in human experience. It is not unlike the diversity of tastes in food, art, music, and so forth. While most people are reasonably accepting of differences in tastes, some people believe that a person who doesn’t participate in particular rituals cannot be a true Christian (or Jew or Muslim or Hindu, depending on the believer making the judgment). That bias against orientations that exclude rituals is a mystery to me, but I don’t lose any sleep over it.
Before I go more deeply into the subject of ritual, I want to be clear about what I mean by it. Rituals, routines, and ruts have some things in common, but they are not precisely the same. What they have in common is that they are actions performed repeatedly by humans, actions that can be comforting but that can also be mindless and meaningless. A ritual, a routine, and a rut can involve action without awareness.
A ritual is a sequence of actions devised and intended by an individual, a group, or an organization, to fulfill some ceremonial function or to connect the participants with a higher invisible power or powers. Some rituals are believed to fulfill divine commandments and thereby facilitate the salvation of the participants.
A routine can be any actions repeatedly performed in the same way, perhaps even at specific times, without necessarily involving any sense of religious effect or ceremonial function. Rituals are usually routines, but not all routines are rituals.
A rut is a routine that a person finds confining. Usually people in a rut want to get out of the routine in which they find themselves. Rituals and routines can become ruts, but they are not necessarily ruts.
The founders of the Unity School of Christianity, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, were, as far as I can tell, like me in their indifference to performance of ritual. Charles Fillmore had some interest in the meaning behind ritual, but did not institute rituals as part of Unity worship. His attitude is reflected in his comments on the communion ritual: “Jesus called the bread He had blessed His body and the wine His blood. Out of this came the symbolic rite of the Lord’s Supper. All symbols are useful to the extent that they point man to the realities for which they stand. When this reality is discerned the symbols are understood.” Fillmore appreciated that symbols in rituals could direct our attention to invisible realities, but discernment of those realities is the important thing, not the symbols and rituals themselves.
I do not believe that Jesus intended to institute any rituals. I believe that the followers of Jesus, in an effort to emulate him, instituted rituals based on incidents in his life. Thus, Jesus’ baptism by John, a one-time incident, became a ritual. A ritual was also made out of the story of Jesus’ last supper with the disciples.
The church could just as well have chosen other incidents in the life of Jesus to turn into rituals. According to the Gospels, on several occasions Jesus fed his disciples bread and fish, but eating fish sandwiches has not become a ritual practiced in the church—unless you count church-sponsored fish dinners. In fact, according to the Gospel of John, Jesus’ last supper with the disciples occurred after his resurrection. They ate grilled fish and bread. That supper has a better claim of being the Last Supper and would support a ritual of eating fish sandwiches. Once Jesus and his disciples plucked grain on the Sabbath. Why isn’t that a church ritual? I believe one could easily come up with convincing rationalizations for making rituals out of eating fish sandwiches and plucking grain. If I were interested in rituals, I would do it myself.
If anything, the pattern of Jesus’ life reflects an attitude of breaking traditions rather than of establishing rituals. According to the Gospels, he broke sabbath laws on several occasions. He created a disturbance in the temple in Jerusalem, indicating his opposition to the ritual center of his people. He told his disciples that it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles and to eat whatever was served to them wherever they went, indicating his indifference to kosher laws. He touched and ate with people who were considered “unclean.” This pattern in Jesus’ life was not lost on Charles Fillmore, who wrote, “Jesus was an iconoclast, and He made it His special business to break nearly every rule of action that the priests had evolved.”
The case for Jesus’ iconoclasm and unconventionality can be pressed even further by noting some of his sayings. Some of his words, torn from the context of his life and teachings as a whole, could be construed as advocating violation of the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments say, “Honor thy father and thy mother.” Jesus said, “If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14: 26) Jesus appears to be advocating hatred of parents as opposed to honoring them. The Ten Commandments say, “Thou shalt not steal.” Jesus said, “But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man, then he may indeed plunder his house.” (Mark 3: 27) That statement, out of context, almost appears to be advice on how to get away with theft. The Ten Commandments say, “Thou shalt not kill.” According to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus said, “The Father’s kingdom is like a person who wanted to kill someone powerful. While still at home he drew his sword and thrust it into the wall to find out whether his hand would go in. Then he killed the powerful one.” (Thomas 98: 1-3) Many scholars believe that this is an authentic saying of Jesus. If so, again considered superficially and out of context, Jesus appears to be advocating killing and giving advice about how to succeed. The point I’m trying to make here is not that Jesus opposed the commandments, but that he expressed himself in a very unconventional and iconoclastic way. Unconventional and iconoclastic people tend to set themselves against conventional rituals and traditions rather than in support of them.
Children are conditioned to obey their parents, teachers, governmental laws, and, perhaps to a lesser extent, religious authorities. That conditioning can become a comfortable way of being. It is easier to go along with the rules and rituals than to risk consequences of disobedience and nonconformity. Charles Fillmore recognized both the childhood conditioning of obedience and the value of transcending that conditioning by seeking the Father within us: “Mortal man loves to be dominated and whipped into line by rituals and masters, but divine man, the man of God, oversteps all such childish circumscribings and goes direct to the Father for all instruction.”
Jesus Christ, through His nonconformity and iconoclastic behavior, risked rejection by society and punishment by governing officials. Why did He take those risks? His inner guidance, His Father within Him, directed Him to challenge conventions. Socrates followed a similar path, as did Martin Luther, George Fox, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Charles Fillmore, Myrtle Fillmore, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and a host of other reformers and original thinkers. The greatness of reformers and original thinkers lies at least partially in their willingness to follow inner, higher impulses that go against conventional ideas and practices. In other words, greatness often requires getting out of a rut, breaking routines, rejecting conventional rituals.
I do not claim that mere nonconformity and rejection of ritual makes a person great or superior in any way. I only claim that some great and spiritual people have rejected conventions and rituals and did not need ritual to mediate their relationship with Spirit. I also claim that many common folk like me do not need ritualistic mediation either. In alignment with the founders of Unity and other spiritual teachers, I believe that Spirit is present and accessible always, with or without ritual. If folks find meaning and connection with Spirit in ritual, that is great. If folks find meaning and connection with Spirit without ritual, that is great too.
Some things about rituals can be counterproductive to human progress and harmony. Many people believe that rituals really do something; this is a delusion. For example, if wedding rituals really joined two people until death did them part, people who took those vows would never get divorced, which clearly is not the case. If the wedding ritual does not truly affect a lifetime bond, there is no reason to believe that baptism truly makes a person a Christian or that the Lord’s Supper truly makes a person part of the body of Christ. Consequently, people who believe in the efficacy of wedding, baptism, and Communion rituals are deluded. What matters are not the rituals but the intentions and dedication of the participants. If the intentions and dedication are present in a person, the rituals are at best a public expression of intent and dedication and at worst irrelevant. If the intentions and dedication are not present in a person, the rituals are at best misleading and at worst a public lie.
Another problem with rituals is that they can be unnecessarily divisive. The historic split between Protestants and Catholics was essentially a disagreement about the significance of rituals. Protestants held that justification and salvation were effected through faith alone and so rejected the Catholic concepts that sacraments effected justification and salvation. Martin Luther and John Calvin did not join together in Christian fellowship during the Protestant Reformation mainly because of disagreement over the meaning of the Lord’s Supper. Luther maintained that the body of Christ was “really present” in the bread, while Calvin insisted that the body of Christ was “spiritually present” in the bread. I am not able to grasp the distinction between being “really present” and “spiritually present” because, to me, the spiritual is real. Still other reformers insisted that the bread was only symbolic. Others argued about baptism. Was baptism of infants efficacious, or did baptism have to be an adult decision? In short, Christianity was splintered by arguments about the meaning and performance of rituals.
In summary: (1) For some people, rituals are a meaningful element of their spirituality, and so they can follow the teachings of Jesus and participate in ritual. (2) Since Jesus was unconventional and iconoclastic, however it is improbable that he intended to establish any rituals. Consequently, one can follow the teachings of Jesus without participation in any rituals. (3) Furthermore, spiritual and human progress often involves the rejection of conventions, including conventional rituals. (4) Rituals can be meaningful, but they can also be counterproductive and divisive.
Rituals are neither inherently helpful nor inherently counterproductive. Therefore it behooves us, for the sake of social harmony and progress, to accept and honor both those spiritual paths that use ritual and those that do not.
Jim Gaither is chairperson of metaphysical studies and skills at Unity School for Religious Studies and author of The Essential Charles Fillmore (Unity Books, 1999). His column Metaphysical Musings appears regularly in Unity Magazine