ABSTRACT
An outstanding issue from the previous chapter that cannot be ignored is the relation of liturgy to ritual. While an expert on ritual behaviour like Catherine Bell will discuss liturgy and ritual as if the former is simply a particular instance of the latter, some would consider this to be an outsider’s view based upon a sociological rather than a theological perspective. The Benedictine liturgist Fr. R. Kevin Seasoltz, for example, although agreeing that ritual is a constitutive aspect of the religious life, is also very insistent that Christian liturgy and ritual behaviour, though related, should not be conflated (2005: 49). He argues that the religious rituals studied by anthropologists like Turner, Douglas, Geertz, Durkheim and others are predominantly social phenomena. They indicate a specific repetitive activity within a delimited sphere, whereas liturgy, as Catherine Pickstock has shown, is always organised around ‘some privileged transcendent signifier’ (2000: 159). The Orthodox priest and theologian Fr. Alexander Schmemann is also careful to specify the distinctive role of liturgy from ritual. One of the key differences, says Schmemann, is that ritual sets apart and sanctifies members of a community according to a prescribed set of social norms, without ever substantively altering those norms. But liturgy is not accountable to social norms; instead, it has an authority able to challenge and even change social norms since it is ‘the actualisation in this world’ of a ‘world to come’ (cited in Lloyd 2011: 74-75). Indeed, for Schmemann, the authoritative character of liturgy is able to impel change in theological propositions, inasmuch as theology takes its direction from liturgical practices. And yet, while recognising the differences highlighted by these authors and others, this capacity to effect real change is not exclusive to liturgy, but is evident in certain key definitions of ritual and occasionally in actual artistic practices.
