in a less degree in the cults which claim the allegiance of the lower
leisure class and of the middle classes. There is a reversion to the
use of colored lights and brilliant spectacles, a freer use of symbols,
orchestral music and incense, and one may even detect in "processionals"
and "recessionals" and in richly varied genuflexional evolutions, an
incipient reversion to so antique an accessory of worship as the sacred
dance. This reversion to spectacular observances is not confined to the
upper-class cults, although it finds its best exemplification and its
highest accentuation in the higher pecuniary and social altitudes. The
cults of the lower-class devout portion of the community, such as the
Southern Negroes and the backward foreign elements of the population,
of course also show a strong inclination to ritual, symbolism, and
spectacular effects; as might be expected from the antecedents and the
cultural level of those classes. With these classes the prevalence of
ritual and anthropomorphism are not so much a matter of reversion as of
continued development out of the past. But the use of ritual and related
features of devotion are also spreading in other directions. In the
early days of the American community the prevailing denominations
started out with a ritual and paraphernalia of an austere simplicity;
but it is a matter familiar to every one that in the course of time
these denominations have, in a varying degree, adopted much of the
spectacular elements which they once renounced. In a general way, this
development has gone hand in hand with the growth of the wealth and the
ease of life of the worshippers and has reached its fullest expression
among those classes which grade highest in wealth and repute.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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