Ritual
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2006
Publisher
Wiley-Blackwell
Abstract
Soon after the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in New York City on September 11, 2001, photographs of missing relatives were put up at local hospitals and buildings used by rescue services. As hope faded that the missing might be found alive, these posters gave way to memorials. All around New York City, people posted messages to individuals who had died, and many fashioned small altars that allowed them to share something of their distress and bewilderment. In one community an altar for the dead soon incorporated pictures of neighbors who, one by one, were determined to have been among those killed. Strangers brought flowers and joined impromptu prayers. At the site itself — “Ground Zero” — workers and community leaders orchestrated a series of ad hoc rituals over the course of the following months, from brief honor parades given to the remains of dead firemen found in the debris to the closure sought by the final, solemn escort for an empty stretcher and the last steel girder.
Chapter of
The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion
Editor
Robert A. Segal
Recommended Citation
Bell, C. M. (2017). Ritual. In The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion (pp. 397–411). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405168748.ch23
