Lifecycle Rituals: Christianity

"This essay examines the toga virilis coming-of-age ceremony in the Roman household and argues that the gentile rite of passage is an important social context in which to understand Paul's interpretation of baptism, particularly of the pre-Pauline baptismal formula of "putting on Christ" (Gal.3:27).

"This article explores two interrelated aspects of Rom 6:1–11: the connec-tion between baptism and participation in Christ, and the meaning of the future-tense verbs in vv. 5 and 8. Paul’s appeal to baptism pointsto a twofold connection between the
rite and the Christian life. Baptism initiates the believer into a life of union with death and resurrection, which has implications for how the baptized ought to behave in the
present ... "

"Early religion scholars stressed the importance of institutionalized "rites of passage" to integrate and reinvigorate groups themselves. Surprisingly, little work, however, has explored the efficacy of such rites for the religious lives of individuals. Although research has examined the transformative role of semi‐institutionalized rites like short‐term mission trips and pilgrimages, we shift the focus to consider the potential influence of more fundamental initiation rites such as baptism, first communion, and bar/bat mitzvahs ... "

"When Christians of different traditions talk about what they share in faith and practice, at the top of the list would be the universal sacrament of baptism in the Name of the Father and of the Sonand of the Holy Spirit. In the light of this, there has emerged agrowing imperative that the various churches affirm the mutual recognition of baptism on the basis of the shared belief that there is "one Lord, one faith, one baptism." Given its foundational significance, why is it that baptismal practice seems often to trivialize this fundamental rite of Christian incorporation? In the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, the rite for Holy Baptism embodies are covered sense of the significant role which baptism plays in the Christian life. But if in our common pastoral practice that significance is undermined, our sense of the magnitude of this sacramental act will be undermined as well ... "

"Christians believe that when someone dies, they are judged by God. The righteous go to Heaven and the sinners go to Hell. Christians believe that Hell is the separation from the love of God ... "

" ... After ten years as a parish priest, and after many conversations with parishioners and with other clergy, I am convinced that, where death and the afterlife are concerned, most Christians are functionally Neo-Platonists. Neo-Plationism was an influence on many early Christian thinkers, Augustine among them; it tended to find the soul not only superior to the body, and an entity quite separate from the body, but saw the body as in many ways an encumbrance, something we will be happy to escape ... "