ABSTRACT

The previous chapter ended on the point that it is unhelpful to make a distinction between religious belief and religious practice. Being religious is not simply a matter of holding certain ideas in the head – it also involves doing things. Most obviously, religion is done through rituals, or ritual actions (although not all rituals are necessarily religious), and I will examine below the many ways we can try to understand and interpret ritual. But the practice of religion is not only to be found in rituals; rituals are just one particular type of bodily place in which religiosity is practised. More generally religion is practised in the lives people lead, their daily activities, and in how they interact with other material things, such as texts, objects, and places.