Priests and ritual specialists: who they are and what they do

Priests and ritual specialists are the officiants of an organised religion who perform its blessings, protective rites and exorcisms. Many religions keep a place for what looks like magic inside the faith, such as the Hindu pandit's fire offering, the Catholic exorcist, the Tibetan lama's protection rites, the Shinto kannushi's purification, the Jewish ba'al shem and the Muslim imam reciting ruqyah. This page looks at how institutions handle power they regard as legitimate.

Rite and authority

Priestly rites are defined by tradition and lineage. A Hindu priest is born into or trained in a ritual line, a Catholic priest is ordained, a Shinto priest is trained at a recognised school. The authority comes from the institution and not from a personal gift. Priests commonly describe their work as worship and prayer, and not as magic, a distinction scholars say is often contested. The line is not the same everywhere: a rite that one tradition calls a blessing, another may call a spell.

Magic or religion

Scholars once drew a line: religion asks and magic compels. Later writers dropped the line as unworkable, since prayer, sacrifice and compulsion overlap in most traditions. The Catholic Church has a formal rite of exorcism, revised in 1999 and carried out by authorised priests, and a long tradition of blessings. Medieval Christians believed sacramental items such as holy water had power, which Protestants later rejected as superstition. They also keep records, calendars and texts, and in many societies priests were the first literate class.

Gender and exclusion

Priesthood is male in many traditions, including the Catholic and Orthodox churches and most Brahmin ritual. Women lead rites in Shinto, in Vodou and Candomblé, in Korean shaman practice, and in several Buddhist and Protestant settings. Class also shapes access: temple priests may refuse low-caste worshippers, and caste discrimination in temple access has been challenged in Indian courts. Within Christianity, the Catholic Church has had both a line of exorcists and a series of rules against selling blessings for money.

Misuse and reform

Priests have been accused of abuse in the name of deliverance, of exploiting the vulnerable for payment, and of staging miracles. Reform movements, such as the Protestant Reformation and the Arya Samaj in India, attacked priestly ritual. In many countries today, pastors in Pentecostal churches lead deliverance services that some scholars compare with older exorcism, with benefits for some and harm for others. Protestant, Salafi and modernist critics have often opposed ritual specialists as intermediaries who stand between a person and God.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

Etruscan religion: sailko, CC BY 2.5, source

Maya mythology: Unknown author, Public domain, source

Rabisu: editor Austen Henry Layard , drawing by L. Gruner, Public domain, source

Ancient Egyptian afterlife beliefs: Hunefer, Public domain, source

Greco-Roman mysteries: Varrese Painter, Public domain, source

Eleusinian Mysteries: No machine-readable author provided. Marsyas assumed (based on copyrig, Public domain, source

Inca religion: Chronicler Martín of Murúa (Cronista Martín de Murúa), Public domain, source

Temple at Uppsala: Olaus Magnus, Public domain, source

Religion of the Shang dynasty: Unknown author, CC0, source

Ancient Egyptian religion: Moh hakem, CC BY-SA 4.0, source

Marie Laveau: E. W. Kemble, Public domain, source

Aztec religion: Unknown author, Public domain, source

Goryō: Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839–1892), Public domain, source

Priests and ritual specialists