Sunday Morning Church Service This Essay Should B

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Sunday Morning Church Service This Essay Should B

This is the prompt of the assignment.

The ritual can be a public ceremony such as a Sunday morning church service, a rite of passage such as a wedding, or even a ritual held in the home.

1) Write a brief introduction discussing your own religion/religious views/religious experiences. If you do not have any religious beliefs/practices/etc. yourself than discuss your experiences with religion indirectly via the culture you belong to. (i.e. if you live in America and watch TV or read a newspaper Religion and Politics have long been intertwined, so even if you did not grow up within a specific religion you have some exposure to religion via various aspects of America culture.)

2) What religious ritual did you observe? Include religion (be specific), ritual, and location.

3) Describe the ritual that you observed. This should be an approximately three to four page description of what you observed, including a description of the setting, participants and religious specialists. At the end, make sure to include a paragraph or two on your own thoughts and responses to what you observed.

4) How would you classify this ritual? Was it prescriptive or situational? Was it periodic or occasional? How would Wallace classify the ritual (e.g., therapy, social rite of intensification, rite of passage, etc).? Make sure to include all three classifications.

Explain why you classified the ritual the way you did.

5) Describe the symbols you observed, making sure to include the meaning of each. Include symbolic elements of time and space if appropriate.

6) How would you classify the ritual specialist (i.e., priest or shaman)? What characteristics led you to that decision?

7) Was there any evidence of altered states of consciousness? If yes, what characterized the altered state? How was the altered state achieved?

8) What is the worldview of this religion? How was this worldview reflected in the ritual?

9) Compare/contrast the ritual to a religious or secular ritual that you grew up with/are more used to.