Liberating Rites: Understanding the Transformative Power of Ritual

By Tom F. Driver

In Liberating Rites: Understanding the Transformative Power of Ritual, Tom F. Driver illuminates the making of ritual by removing it from its churchly 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, to deepen feelings of communal belonging, and to transform the status quo. Driver looks closely at how ritual, viewed as creative performance, is essential to religion and to the movement from bondage to freedom, whether in society or the individual. His analyses use examples drawn from a wide variety of cultures and religions -- Haiti, Korea, South Africa, Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Hinduism, and more, in addition to the author's own North American Protestantism. The result is an accessible and engaging discussion, ideal for introductions to religion, the psychology of religion, the sociology of religion, and studies in ritual and liturgy. Many general readers also will find the book fascinating because it makes explicit so many unspoken feelings about the human longing for rituals that 'work,' combining meaning with power.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1419642103
• ISBN13: 9781419642104
• Release Date: August 2006
• Publisher: BookSurge Publishing
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.1" x 0.7" x 6.1"

Customer Reviews

Essential Book

While I feel uncertain about the necessity for renaming the book, I unhesitatingly recommend it to everyone with any interest in or connecting to Christianity (or any monotheistic expression of relationship to the Divine), ritual, ceremony, religious anthropology, or desiring a scholarly but readable source to develop work in postmodernism relative to shifting our understanding of what is essential to religious sensibility and the more mysterious portions of human condition.In short. I dug it. It's also an excellent entry to an applied understanding of Liberation Theology.