The Juxtaposition of Ritual Worlds. Maintaining Relationship in Anglican Indigenous Christian Funerals

Abstract

The juxtaposition and maintenance of inherited and indigenous rituals suggests there is something in each of those sources which are felt necessary to retain as both create and express identity and faith at the heart of the ritual processes. Counter to many conversations in liturgy which advocate for full inculturation as the goal, I suggest that acculturation, rather than inculturation, may be, for certain cultures and liturgies, the preferred ritual pattern, a ritual technique to continue two identities in the midst of diversity, especially in Christian communities who live in the ongoing reality of the move from colonialism to postcolonialism. To argue this assumption first requires a conversation between incarnationally-based inculturation and the newer conversation partners of hybridity and syncretism, placing that conversation in the context of colonial and postcolonial realities before turning to an example of acculturated funeral rituals amongst the Swampy Cree of Manitoba, Canada.