Ritual is normally defined as gestures and, often, linguistic actions that follow a preestablished schedule and have a communicative purpose. Anthropologist Roy Rappaport (1926–1997) defined ritual as "the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers" (p. 24). According to this minimal definition, rituals occur among animals and human beings. Religious rituals are a subgroup of human rituals. A more specific definition depends on the definition of religion, which normally refers to ultimate values or transempirical beings.

Ritual is related to phenomena such as rite, cult, service, liturgy, ceremony, and feast. Rite often designates a single ritual act, ritual a series of rites. Quasi-synonyms such as cult and service designate a subclass of religious rituals. Liturgy normally means the spoken part of a service. Ceremony designates religious and nonreligious rituals, often with a connotation of something superficial, formal, less important. Feast can designate a class of rituals with a connotation of the uncontrolled, chaotic, and a violation of norms.

Ritual is normally understood as being a collective phenomenon. The Scottish scholar W. Robertson Smith (1846–1894) regarded religious rituals as more basic than doctrines or individual convictions, rituals being common for a group and relatively durable, while doctrines and convictions may vary individually and are more vulnerable to changes over time. French philosopher and sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) regarded rituals as the occasions where the holy is articulated and preserved. Religion, the rational core of which is a society's morals, ideals, and principles, is mediated to the individual participants when they gather together to form a community. The assembly also signifies a rupture with the routines of daily life. Therefore, a certain effervescence, conditioned by group psychological mechanisms, often arises, where the individual participants experience a moment of self-forgetfulness and of collective identity. Hereby the individual's obligation toward common ideals is strengthened; new ideals may also develop more or less spontaneously in such gatherings. All religion, and in fact all social fabric, from the most archaic to the most modern forms, presupposes gatherings with at least a touch of effervescence.

Henri Hubert (1872–1927), Marcel Mauss (1872–1950), and Arnold Van Gennep (1873–1957) described a basic syntagm in three parts for all rituals: first, the participants are drawn out of the profane, daily world; second, the central acts are performed; finally, the participants are reconnected with the profane. Van Gennep pointed out the universal occurrence and significance of rituals of transition and initiation

The effervescence of ritual and its partial violation of norms was elaborated by Roger Caillois (1913–1978) and Georges Bataille (1897–1962), who emphasized the extravagant consumption of values in feasts and offerings. Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) saw ritual as an occasion for the abolition of historical and linear time and for contact with archaic notions of the origin of the world and the regeneration of life. Victor Turner (1920-1983) analyzed the central part of initiation, the phase of liminality, as a state where the structures of normal life are suspended, the normal differences between the participants are replaced with a temporary community and brotherhood or sisterhood (a communitas), and often the initiates are under strict surveillance of ritual leaders with extensive authority. Typically, the initiates are instructed in the mythic and normative foundation of their society, but alternative understandings of life and norms may also be articulated. Turner has seen tendencies to formations of permanent forms of communitas in, for example, monastic movements and pilgrimages. According to Turner, the fertile chaos of liminality has been the origin of theater and performance.

Walter Burkert (1931–) and René Girard (1923–) both emphasized bloody sacrifice as a central ritual; here a group of human beings mitigates internal aggression by directing it toward a designated animal, which is slaughtered and sometimes eaten. Inspired by ethological studies, Burkert stressed the origin of rituals in the life of animals; rituals are sequences of actions, where an original pragmatic purpose has been replaced by a communicative content. To Burkert, different rituals can have different origins. Girard assumed that rituals of all types have been "generated" by a common original form, which is the spontaneous expulsion of a common adversary, a scapegoat. The structure "all-against-one," common in many rituals, is such a remnant of the primeval scene.

To Rappaport, who combines a Durkheimian inspiration with phenomenology of religion, semiotics, theory of speech acts, and evolutionary theory, the ritual is the place where linguistically formulated norms and conventions are made obligatory for a group of human beings; ritual is "the basic human act." Purely linguistic meaning is conventional and open for misuse (lies) and misunderstanding (Babel). In order to withstand disintegrating tendencies from without or within, every group of human beings must commit its members to a certain amount of consensus and predictability. By their mere participation in a ritual—that is, by their self-submission under its preestablished rules for acts and linguistic utterances—the participants signal that they give up a part of their subjectivity and commit themselves to a common universe of norms and significations, in spite of their own "inner" thoughts and feelings. Therefore ritual typically includes performative, self-committing speech acts. The relative "weight" of ritually mediated meaning is reflected in the fact that ritual demands not only the thoughts and feelings of the participants, but also the presence of their bodies.

At least in Protestant-Christian theology, rituals have been problematic since the age of Enlightenment. Already in the early Reformation, the sacraments, which are key examples of rituals, were interpreted as preaching in other forms. Often rituals have been considered external, figurative, affective, and possibly infantile or archaic, and in any case secondary in relationship to rational theology, which necessarily is formulated in symbolic language, spoken and written. Normally the marginalizing of ritual does not assume the shape of a polemic, which aims at abolishing ritual altogether, but rather a disinclination for a proper reflection on it. On the other hand, rituals are often appreciated by those who want to keep a strong emotional dimension in church services.

See also SEMIOTICS

HANS J. L. JENSEN