Chapter 17 Student Activities

Ritual Symbols on Campus

Have your students describe one of the rituals peculiar to your campus. Ask them to consider how this ritual fits or does not fit the definition of a rite of passage. Ask them what symbols are used to give meaning to the ritual. This assignment can be written up and graded or used as the centerpiece of a classroom discussion.

Religious Symbols Project

A previous project suggested that “symbols are everywhere.” Religious symbols are probably the most powerful and meaningful symbols that people interact with. They must be understood from an emic perspective. The simplest religious icons, sometimes unknown to outsiders, can speak volumes to insiders.

• For this project you will be interpreting symbols associated with world religions and developing one of your own.
• Choose common symbols associated with Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. Research these symbols online.
• Describe the meaning that each symbol has to members of that particular religion. What ideas or reminders do they spark in the minds of practitioners? How could these symbols be misunderstood by an outsider who didn’t understand them in context?
• After this exercise, you should have some ideas about what makes an effective religious symbol. Using that knowledge, can you design a symbol of your own? Choose something that is personally meaningful to you (it can be anything). Design a simple symbol that conveys the depth of meaning behind it.

Identifying Religious Symbols in Local Religious Services

Have your students attend a religious service they are not familiar with to observe the use of religious symbols in the ritual. Have them describe the structure of the ritual and the apparent meaning of one or two of the prominent symbols they have observed. We recommend that you encourage your students to treat this as an observation exercise, although in many churches people may want to recruit your students to become members. We recommend that you advise students that their interest in this congregation will prompt many older adults in the congregation to recruit them as many smaller churches are always eager to get new members. Students may go to a service in small groups and present their findings to the class or write up an individual or joint report. We discourage your students from interviewing members of the congregation about the ritual symbols because they will generally hear standard interpretations and miss what symbolic messages were being presented. In New England, for example, one of our students attended a Unitarian Universalist church in a rural community, with no stole or robes, no stained glass, and a very plain interior—the pastor wore a simple dark suit. The one exception was at the moment of the collection when an old and elegant bag of fine black velvet on a pole was moved up and down each pew. The elegance of the velvet bag contrasted sharply with the otherwise stark interior of the church, an observation that would have been lost if the student had interviewed the pastor. Have students write a report or use the material in a class discussion.

Creating Your Own Ritual Symbol

This exercise works equally well for all class sizes. About a week before you discuss the anthropology of religion, institute a daily ritual in your class. At the beginning of class have everyone be silent, and when they are silent, draw some symbol on the board with some solemnity and care. The symbol can be anything at all, from a simple triangle to a more complex symbol like the singer Prince’s former name, a glyph he briefly used in the 1990s. Turn to the class and announce that it is the “center of knowledge in the universe” or something equally vague that might have a deeper underlying meaning. At the end of the class period have the class be silent again and erase your symbol with solemnity. Every day at the beginning of class put the symbol up on the board and end class by erasing it as before. After a few days, you may want to ask one of the students to erase your symbol and, later still, have a student draw it on the board.

After a couple of weeks, this ritual will be part of your classroom routine, and because of the social participation in applying and erasing it, your symbols will come to have meaning for your students. When you begin discussing religion and ritual symbols during the semester, ask students what meaning this symbol had and how this meaning came to be associated with your unique symbol.

In the Name of God Activity

Show the film In the Name of God (1992), which chronicles the events leading up to the destruction of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, India, by a Hindu nationalist mob. The documentary explores the dangerous intersection of religion and politics, particularly within the traditional Indian caste system. Have the students discuss the intersection of politics and religion in this case and how it is similar to or different from how religion and politics intersect in the United States.

Magical Death Activity

The film Magical Death, cited in this chapter, covers religious rituals and beliefs that probably seem strange to non-Yanomamo students. But based on the definitions proposed by Tylor, Wallace, Geertz, and Welsch and Vivanco, they meet all the criteria of religion.

• For this activity, view the documentary Magical Death by Napoleon Chagnon and Timothy Asch (about 30 minutes long).
• Review the study guide at www.der.org/resources/study-guides/magical-death-study-guide.pdf
• After viewing Magical Death as a group, spend some time discussing the ways that the Yanomamo rituals depicted in the film illustrate attributes of religion. How do these rituals compare, in form and function, to those students are more familiar with?