Book Review: Emerging ritual in secular societies: a transdisciplinary conversation / Crafting secular ritual: a practical guide

Review of: Gordon-Lennox, Jeltje (ed.). Emerging Ritual in Secular Societies: A Transdisciplinary Conversation. London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2017; Gordon-Lennox, Jeltje. Crafting Secular Ritual: A Practical Guide. London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2017.

With these two books, Gordon-Lennox gives new impetus to the art of secular ritual, especially to the practical aspect of it. She claims that in the past 40 years, despite the important first collection of essays on secular ritual by Gluckman, Turner, and Moore, not much attention has been devoted to particularly secular rituals. Gordon-Lennox does not claim for Emerging Ritual in Secular Societies to be the sequel of the 1977 Secular Ritual, but nevertheless she makes a strong connection between the two volumes. If the 1977 collection started the conversation on the topic, this 2017 edited volume is intended to continue the conversation. Indeed, all chapters in the book discuss some aspect(s) of secular ritual, showing the broad variety of secular and emerging ritual practices.