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Course 21 · Lesson 6.1

What popular piety is, and why scholars take it seriously

10 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 21 outline

Module 1: The Theology of Worship

  1. What liturgy is: the word, the idea and the debate
  2. Worship in the Old and New Testaments
  3. Praying and believing: how worship shapes doctrine and doctrine shapes worship
  4. Word, sacrament and sign across the traditions

Module 2: How Christian Liturgy Developed

  1. The earliest descriptions: the Didache, Justin Martyr and the early church orders
  2. The liturgical families of East and West
  3. The Reformation and the revision of worship
  4. Liturgical renewal in the twentieth century

Module 3: The Christian Year: Calendars, Feasts and Fasts

  1. Sunday, the week and the hours of the day
  2. Easter, Holy Week and the dispute over the date
  3. Advent, Christmas and Epiphany
  4. Lent, the Orthodox fasting seasons and Protestant approaches to fasting
  5. Saints days and the second cycle of the calendar

Module 4: Sacred Space and Sacred Images

  1. From house church to basilica: the development of church buildings
  2. The meaning of church buildings: altar, table, orientation and the Orthodox and Gothic examples
  3. Icons and the Incarnation: John of Damascus and the Second Council of Nicaea
  4. Images and the Reformation: Lutheran, Reformed and Anglican approaches

Module 5: Material Signs: Incense, Water, Oil and Blessings

  1. Incense: Scripture, temple worship and its use in the churches
  2. Water: baptism, the renewal of baptismal vows and holy water
  3. Oil: anointing of the sick, chrismation, confirmation and ordination
  4. Blessings: what the church means when it blesses a person, a house or an object
  5. Sacraments and sacramentals: the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant vocabulary

Module 6: Popular Piety and Devotional Practice

  1. What popular piety is, and why scholars take it seriously
  2. Pilgrimage, relics, medals and pious objects
  3. The rosary, the Stations of the Cross, litanies and akathists
  4. How the churches have regulated and corrected popular devotion

Module 7: Telling Tradition from Superstition

  1. What the theologians mean by superstition, and why the line is hard to draw
  2. A method: source, date, doctrine, authority and consequence
  3. Case studies: apocryphal legends, magical formulas and invented history
  4. Honesty and respect in judging other people’s devotion

All courses

Program / Course 21: Liturgical Theology / Lesson 6.1

What you will learn

  • Define popular piety and distinguish it from official liturgy.
  • Explain why historians and church documents treat popular devotion as worth study.
  • Give examples of popular piety in Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant life.
  • Name the strengths and the risks that churches see in popular devotion.

The big idea

Popular piety is the set of devotions, customs and objects through which ordinary believers live their faith outside or alongside the official worship of the church. It includes pilgrimages, processions, home shrines, devotional songs, family customs and local feasts. For centuries scholars saw it as a corruption of true religion, but historians now treat it as a main way most Christians lived their faith. Churches both encourage it and correct it. Every tradition has its own forms, including Protestant ones.

Key terms

Popular piety (popular religiosity)
The devotions and practices of ordinary believers that arise from the people and are not part of the church’s official liturgy.
Devotion
A particular practice of prayer or honor, such as the rosary or devotion to a saint.
Folk religion
A phrase for beliefs and practices of ordinary people, which may blend with local culture. It is sometimes used neutrally and sometimes as a criticism.
Official religion
The teaching and worship set by a church’s authorities.
Syncretism
The mixing of elements from different religions, often used as a criticism when Christian practice is thought to absorb pagan ideas.
Enculturation
The process by which a faith takes root in a culture and is expressed in its forms.
Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy
A document of the Catholic Church from 2001 that discusses how devotions relate to the liturgy.

Background

For a long period scholars, often influenced by the Reformation or the Enlightenment, described medieval and village religion as ignorant superstition added to the pure religion of the church. This view has been challenged. Historians such as Eamon Duffy, in his study of English religion before the Reformation, argued that late medieval devotion was vigorous and shared by the clergy and laity together, not a corruption imposed from below. Others, such as Keith Thomas, studied the borderland between religion and magic in early modern England and showed that the boundary was fluid.

Church documents likewise take popular piety seriously. Vatican II said that the devotions of the Christian people are to be highly commended, provided that they conform to the laws and norms of the church (Sacrosanctum Concilium 13). Pope Paul VI, in Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975), spoke of popular religiosity as having both strengths and limits.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: What popular piety includes

Examples include pilgrimages to shrines, processions on feast days, the use of medals and candles, veneration of local saints, home altars, the Stations of the Cross, devotions to the Sacred Heart and the Passion, carols and hymns, and the customs around birth, marriage and death. Orthodox popular piety includes the veneration of icons at home, the blessing of baskets at Pascha, and visits to monasteries and holy wells. Protestant popular piety includes family Bible reading, camp meetings, revival songs, Scripture verses displayed in the home, prayer chains and Christmas customs. The categories overlap, since a custom may begin in the people and be adopted by the church.

Step 2: Why scholars study it

Most Christians through history never read theology but lived their faith through such practices. If one wants to know what belief meant in daily life, it is necessary to look at them. They also show how the faith reached people of every class, language and region, and how the official teaching was received and sometimes reshaped. Scholars today treat popular piety as a source and not only as a problem, and they try to listen to those who practiced it before judging them.

Step 3: How churches have judged it

The Catholic Directory of 2001 says that popular piety is a treasure of the church and a means of evangelization, but that it needs to be guided by the liturgy and the church’s teaching, since it can become distorted. It lists risks, such as seeking results by formula, confusing a devotion with the essentials of faith or being detached from Scripture and the sacraments. Orthodox pastors and theologians likewise value local customs and warn when they become magic or replace the sacraments. Protestants have often criticized the devotions of other traditions while forming their own, and some Protestant scholars now ask how to speak fairly of both.

Step 4: The strengths and risks

Strengths include warmth, the participation of lay people and families, the use of the senses, the passing of faith between generations, and a way for people with little education to pray. Risks include a loss of connection to Christ and the Gospel, the idea that a practice guarantees results, commercial exploitation, spreading of unverified stories and the setting of local custom above church teaching. Some risks are shared by all forms of piety, including those that look modern and Protestant, such as a ritual of formulaic prayer promised to bring blessing.

Step 5: What a person alone can do

Most popular devotions can be done alone or in a family: the rosary, the Jesus Prayer, a home altar, the reading of a psalm each day, the keeping of an Advent wreath. What a person alone should take care about is to test the practice against Scripture and the creeds, to ask a pastor if unsure, and not to take on practices with promises attached. The most common error in private practice is to follow a custom because it is attractive without asking where it comes from, which the last module addresses.

  1. Is this practice part of the church’s official liturgy or a devotion that grew among the people?
  2. How old is it, and what is the earliest evidence?
  3. What need does it meet for those who practice it?
  4. How does the church that uses it regulate it?
  5. Does it point to Christ and the sacraments, or away from them?
  6. What would a respectful critic say about it?

Examples

A village procession

In a Mediterranean village, the parish carries a statue of its patron saint through the streets on his feast day, with music and flowers. The priest walks in the procession. Some villagers see it as a festival and some as an act of prayer. Scholars would note both.

A Protestant camp meeting

In nineteenth-century America, rural families gathered for days of preaching, singing and prayer at camp meetings. The gatherings were long and emotional and shaped Protestant life for generations. They are a form of popular piety, although the term is usually applied to Catholic and Orthodox settings.

Home Bible

A family keeps a large Bible on a table, records births and deaths in it and reads from it on holy days. The book is honored. Whether this is reverence for the word or a misplaced use of an object depends on how the family understands it.

Different perspectives

Catholic

Popular piety is a precious expression of faith, to be encouraged and guided. It should lead to the liturgy and the sacraments. The church warns against superstition, ignorance and commercial misuse.

Orthodox

Popular customs are part of the life of the church, as long as they are in harmony with the faith and the services. Bishops and priests watch for abuses, and the line between pious custom and superstition is a matter of pastoral judgment.

Lutheran and Anglican

These traditions reformed popular practices that they judged contrary to Scripture, and kept or created others, such as hymn singing, household prayer and the Christmas customs. They value family devotion.

Reformed and evangelical

Many have criticized medieval devotions as unscriptural, and favor devotion centered on the word and prayer. Their own forms of popular piety, such as revival meetings and family worship, have been much studied by historians.

Scholarly

Historians and anthropologists such as Robert Orsi urge careful description of lived religion before judging it, and warn against assuming a sharp divide between the educated and the uneducated, or between belief and practice.

Why it matters

Most of what people mean by the faith in daily life belongs here. A student who can speak about popular piety with understanding can talk fairly with believers who practice devotions that the student does not share, and can also see the real risks without dismissing the practice. This lesson prepares the next ones, on pilgrimages, relics, rosaries and church regulation.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Popular piety is just ignorant superstition.

Correction: This was a common scholarly view, but historians and churches now treat it as a serious form of faith with strengths and risks.

Misunderstanding: Only Catholics and Orthodox have popular piety.

Correction: Protestants have forms too, such as camp meetings, family Bible customs, revival songs and Christmas traditions. They may not call them that.

Misunderstanding: If a practice is popular, it must be approved by the church.

Correction: Popularity is not approval. The churches test devotions against doctrine and may correct or forbid them.

Misunderstanding: If a practice is not in the Bible, it is false.

Correction: That is a position of some Protestants, but Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans and Anglicans hold that customs not in Scripture may be good. The test is whether they agree with Scripture and teaching.

Knowledge check

What is popular piety?

It is the set of devotions, customs and objects through which ordinary believers live their faith alongside the official liturgy, such as pilgrimages, processions, home shrines, songs and family customs.

Why do historians take it seriously?

Most Christians have lived their faith through such practices, so they show what belief meant in daily life. Scholars like Eamon Duffy have shown that late medieval devotion was vigorous and shared across clergy and laity, not just imposed corruption.

What risks do churches see in popular piety?

Practices may be treated as formulas that guarantee results, detached from Scripture and the sacraments, commercialized, or based on unverified stories. The churches encourage devotions that lead to Christ and correct those that do not.

Do Protestants have popular piety?

Yes, in forms such as camp meetings, revival hymns, family Bible customs and prayer chains. They often do not use that name.

Think it through

  1. Which of your own habits of faith would a historian call popular piety?
  2. Why might the educated look down on popular devotion, and what do they miss?
  3. How can a church guide a devotion without crushing it?
  4. What would you want to know before judging a practice you find strange?

Independent assignment

Describe a practice in its own terms

In your own notebook, write 400 to 600 words describing one popular devotion that is not part of your own tradition, using a source from within the tradition that practices it. Say what it is, what its practitioners say it means and what the church that guides it says about it. Then list two questions you would still want answered. Do not send this to anyone.

Further study