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The embrace of ritual in the Western World was first weakened by two things: the Protestant Reformation's movement against icons and ceremonialism and the Enlightenment's emphasis on rationalism. Historian Peter Burke, argues "the Ref- ormation was, among other things, a great debate, unparalleled in scale and intensity, about the meaning of ritual, its functions and its proper forms." Many Protestants con- cluded that the kind of rituals the Catholic Church practiced gave too much emphasis to empty, outward forms, rather than one's internal state of grace. They rejected the "magical efficacy" of rites to be able to do things like change bread and wine into the literal body and blood of Christ. The magical efficacy of ritual was attacked from the other side by Enlighten- ment thinkers. As discussed above, ritual is inherently nonrational since there is no practical relationship between the action and the end result. It is not rational to think that painting one's body before battle will offer protection, that a rite of passage can turn a boy into a man, or that smoking a peace pipe can seal a treaty. Thus, ritual began to be associated with the superstitions of primitive peoples. Suspicion of ritual again grew after World War II, in the wake of the way in which ritual ceremonies had been used to solidify loyalty to the Nazi cause. Cultural embrace of ritual then really began to unravel during the social move- ments of the 1960s, which emphasized free expression, personal freedom, and individual emotional fulfillment above all. Rituals — which prescribe certain disci- plined behaviors in certain situations, and require a person to forfeit some of their individuality in service to the synchrony and identity of the group — constrain spontaneity and the ability to do what- ever one pleases. Ritual thus came to be seen as too constraining and not suffi- ciently "authentic." For these reasons, the use of and partici- pation in rituals has been greatly curtailed. Or perhaps as historian Peter Burke argues, we've just replaced old rituals with new ones: "If most people in industrial societ- ies no longer go to church regularly or practice elaborate rituals of initiation, this does not mean that ritual has declined. All that has happened is the new types of rituals—political, sporting, musical, medi- cal, academic and so on—have taken the place of the traditional ones." But the new rituals – watching sports, attending music festivals, checking Facebook, shopping, visiting a strip club on your 18th birth- day — are light on nourishment and do not satisfy. Traditional rituals provided a mechanism by which humans could chan- nel and process that which was difficult to grapple with – death, maturation, aggres- sion – allowing the participant to discover new truths about themselves and the world. New rituals, if they can even really be called such, attempt to deny anything ugly in life (lest that lead you to close your wallet) and present a shiny, glossy façade — "confetti culture" – that facilitates pas- sive consumption and turning away from examining given assumptions. In our next article, we will argue that despite the cultural disdain for ritual, it is a human art form and practice which should be revived. It is true that ritual can be used for good or for ill, yet its benefit is so great that fear of the bad should not lead us to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Even if a man sees no place for ritual in his faith, he can have great use for it in other areas in his life (indeed, if his faith is com- pletely unritualized, he has all the more need for other kinds of rituals). We will ar- gue that even the most rational man might make room in his life for some "magic," and that while ritual may seem constraining, it can paradoxically be incredibly empower- ing and even liberating. How that might be so, is where we will turn next time.> The Art of Manliness Continued JOBS for TEAMS | 22 www.jobsfor teams.com JobsForTeams0214_manliness.indd 4 1/6/14 1:33 PM