Editorial: Ritually Speaking

I’m ceded — I’ve stopped being Theirs—The name They dropped upon my faceWith water, in the country churchThe name They dropped upon my faceIs finished using, now,And They can put it with my Dolls,My childhood, and the string of spools,I’ve finished threading — too—

Baptized, before, without the choice,But this time, consciously, of Grace—Unto supremest name—Called to my Full — The Crescent dropped—Existence’s whole Arc, filled up,With one small Diadem.

My second Rank — too small the first—Crowned — Crowing — on my Father’s breast—A half unconscious Queen—But this time — Adequate — Erect,With Will to choose, or to reject,And I choose, just a Crown—

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) Poem 508

This poem allows us a glimpse inside the mind of the American poet Emily Dickinson. In hindsight, she regards the incorporation ritual that she participated in, or rather underwent as a ritual patient in her home church, as a failure. “Baptized, … without the choice”: identity had been imposed on her, without internalisation and authentication on her part and without follow-up rituals like public profession of faith and holy communion. That identity—exemplified in the name conferred upon her at the sprinkling rite through a solemn speech act—is “finished using, now.”

Rituals can be found wanting or considered flawed, exploitative or denigrating. Such an assessment is always made from an individual’s or group’s point of view and in relation to a specific procedure, goal or outcome.¹ Hence, rituals can simultaneously fail and succeed.

When the ritual agent, the Congregationalist minister in the Amherst country church, sprinkled the baptismal water on Emily Dickinson’s face, and did so in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost whom he represented, it was most likely a flawless scripted performance, whose efficacy neither he himself nor anyone else in the church doubted. This was after all a “special agent ritual”² in which the agent, the minister performing the rite, was viewed as connected to a “culturally postulated superhuman agent”: the Triune God. Therefore, for both pastor and flock this sprinkling rite not only had performative efficacy, but also postulated or “believed” efficacy, which is so crucial when (some of) the expected effects cannot immediately be experienced.³

“Infant baptism,” or rather “infant water sprinkling,”⁴ is one of those rare instances of ritual where a participant, the ritual patient, participates unknowingly and (semi)-unconsciously in the ritual event. (Note that Emily refers to herself as a “half unconscious Queen.”) It could be argued, however, that even the most passive ritual participant exercises some kind of agency. All participants in a ritual are doers:⁵ this applies to the performers (“agents”), the recipients (“patients”), and even the wider congregation of members or audience of bystanders and witnesses. When the water (the “instrument”) was sprinkled on the forehead of baby Emily, she was “crowing,” the poem says. There was as yet no demonstration of her “Will to … reject,” but neither was there full consciousness. For the greater part of the rite she was unaware, passive, and disempowered. She embodied this as she was held close to her father’s breast.⁶ In retrospect Emily decides that this rendered the ritual a failure, for her.

Rituals can fail in multiple ways and from various perspectives. The typology offered by Grimes⁷ can assist in classifying types of ritual imperfection and failure. So far we have looked at ritual as (embodied) action, and the failure on this level and from the ritual patient’s point of view is in terms of ritual “violation” (type 4).⁸ Reflecting a moral judgment, the rite, involving an unsuspecting baby, was considered demeaning: it imposed false expectations on the ritual patient and curtailed her freedom as she grew up. Viewed from the wider historical-theological context, it can be deduced that for the special agent, the church leader(s) involved, this was not a case of ritual violation at all. The helplessness of the ritual patient, baby Emily, put in contrasting focus the sovereign initiative of God...