Ritualizing Solidarity

Examining the relationship between ritual and solidarity in a community of difference, this chapter suggests that ritual offers an embodied script through which people practice the work of togetherness and improvise common belonging. It begins with accounts of how bilingual Holy Week liturgies at St. Mary of the Angels “mix people up on purpose.” It then examines these rituals of ecclesial solidarity in conversation with theorists Catherine Bell, Émile Durkheim, Edith and Victor Turner, Selva J. Raj, Adam Seligman, and Robert Weller. Arguing for an expansive, ecological understanding of practice and a view of ritual solidarity distinct from the Turners’ communitas, it proposes that we view the bodily vernacular of ritual as the language of community. Prevailing studies of multiethnic congregations emphasize the role of ritual in transcending cultural differences. Refuting such claims, this chapter shows that effective ritual does not erase difference but affirms it, inviting participants to join with others in their otherness.