Occasional Religious Practice: Ritual Efficacy in Fragmented and Overlapping Ritual Systems
by Sarah Kathleen Johnson, doctoral candidate in Liturgical Studies at the University of Notre Dame and a Visiting Fellow at the Toronto Mennonite Theological Centre.
Occasional religious practitioners attend religious services occasionally rather than routinely, most often in association with specific occasions, such as holidays, life-course transitions, or personal or communal crises. Survey data suggests that what I am calling occasional religiosity is the dominant way Canadians relate to religion in the twenty-first century. Drawing on preliminary findings from ethnographic research centred on Anglican baptisms and funerals in Toronto, this work in progress explores questions of ritual efficacy in fragmented and overlapping ritual systems. In increasingly nonreligious and religiously diverse social contexts, what is Christian ritual doing and meaning for participants with a range of relationships with the church?
Sarah Kathleen Johnson is
a doctoral candidate in Liturgical Studies at the University of Notre
Dame and a Visiting Fellow at the Toronto Mennonite Theological Centre.
Her research at the intersection of sociology of religion and liturgical
studies explores the ongoing roles of Christian worship in a changing
Canadian religious landscape. She has published in journals including Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, Studia Liturgica, Worship, The Hymn, and the Conrad Grebel Review and is the worship resources editor for Voices Together,
a new hymnal and worship book for Mennonites in Canada and the United
States, and the editor of a companion volume for worship leaders.
