Review of Roy A. Rappaport, Ritual and religion in the making of humanity.

The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 7 (2): 380-382 (2001).

This book is more than an academic treatise. As Keith Hart puts it in an impressive foreword (p. xiv), Rappaport is attempting ‘nothing less than to lay the groundwork for the development of a new religion adequate to the circumstances humanity will encounter in the twenty-first century’. Scientific detachment is a luxury we can no longer afford. Ifwe are to avert environmental and social collapse, the spell of monetarism must be broken. ‘If money becomes the standard by which all value is assigned and compared’, writes Rappaport (p. 454),‘then it itself becomes ipso facto the highest of all values’.

Such a stance amounts to ‘Idolatry’defined as the elevation of contingent, selfserving priorities to the status of Ultimate Concern (p. 455). Entailed also is the ‘Diabolical lie’– falsehood which not only masquerades as truth, but tampers with our capacity to suspect any difference. Enhanced success in such manipulation stems from ‘the increasing ability of ever smaller groups of men and ever more specialized, powerful and wealthy institutions to control the flow of ever greater volumes of information more comprehensively and the disposition of increasing concentrations of energy more totally’ (p. 449).

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Roy A. Rappaport – Ritual and religion in the making of humanity (Cambridge Stud. soc. cult. Anthrop.). xxiii, 535 pp., bibliogr. Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1999