Sources of Religious Worship

“This interesting book, which contains copies of many beautiful pictures, helped me to understand more about the importance of ritual and how I can connect to ritual acts.”—Marjan Sikkel, Camphill Correspondence

“This is a marvelous account by Christian Community priest Bastiaan Baan of religious ritual.... It is very clear and enjoyable to read.”—Anthroposophical Society of Great Britain

C O N T E N T S:

Introduction

1. Forms of Worship in the Stone Age
2. Nature Religion and Ancestor Worship
3. The Patriarchs in the Old Testament
4. Jewish Ritual and the Temple of Solomon
5. Mithraism
6. The Origin of the Christian Ritual
7. The Development of the Eucharist
8. Christianity and Renewal
9. The Sacrament of Bread and Wine
10. The Senses in the Sacrament
11. Ritual and Visual Art
12. The Unborn and the Dead in Ritual
13. Hierarchies and Adversary Powers
14. The Future of Ritual

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Bastiaan Baan

Bastiaan Baan was born in 1949 in The Netherlands. After finishing Waldorf school, he studied to become a class teacher. He worked and studied for a year in Los Angeles, worked with teachers in Gandhi Schools in India, and then became a class teacher in a Waldorf school in The Netherlands. After seven years of teaching, he studied at the seminary of The Christian Community in Stuttgart. After his ordination as a priest in 1981, he worked in several congregations in The Netherlands until 2013, when he became the director of the priest training of The Christian Community in Spring Valley, New York. In 2019, he returned to The Netherlands, where he lives with his wife, four sons, and ten grandchildren. Several of his books on spirituality and religion have been published in English.