Liberating Rites: Understanding the Transformative Power of Ritual

by Tom F. Driver

Overview

This book shows how necessary ritual is to human freedom and to social processes of liberation. It aims to reflect upon the deep human longing for ritual and to interpret it in the light of our physical, social, political, sexual, moral, aesthetic, and religious existence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367010454
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/28/2020
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Also by Tom F. Driver — Preface — Ritual Pathways — Introduction — Ritualizing: The Animals Do It and So Do We — Modern Warfare: The Loss of Ritual Pathways — Priest and Shaman: Two Pathways of Religious Ritual — Modalities of Performance — Ritual, Theater, and Sacrifice — Ritual's Two Siblings: Performance in the Confessional and the Ethical Modes — Ritual's Social Gifts — Order — Community — Transformation — Conclusion — Christian Sacraments as the Performance of Freedom — Appendixes

Editorial Reviews

Driver (theology and culture, Union Theological Seminary) illuminates the role of ritual by removing it from its liturgical wrappings and presenting it as something raw, basic, and central to all living beings. He examines the varied ways humans use ritual to give order to their lives, looks at how ritual creativity and performance are central to enacting religious beliefs, and discusses the ways in which rituals serve to transform individuals into members of communities. For use in undergraduate courses ranging from introduction to religion to psychology or sociology of religion. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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