A couple more questions regarding religious practice for Kiln of the Soul.
We aren’t interested in sacraments. That concept arose long after the New Testament times. We do have two prominent ritual practices: communion and baptism.
Communion need not be confined to the elements consumed in the New Testament version of the Seder. Wheat bread and grape wine reflect what was commonly available in the Mediterranean Basin and the Middle East. Digging back into the Old Testament references, I sense that any type of grain locally available is fine, as long as it is baked without biological leavening. A chemical leavening agent is okay.
While fermenting the bread is forbidden, it is also not required for the drink. It can be any cultivated fruit crop, fermented or not. And since our American food production industry is so deceptive, I would not push for literally local sourced food for communion, only the type of stuff you know is cultivated in your area.
Here in the American Heartland, I could use the juice of apple, peach, pear, blackberry, strawberry, and a few others because they are all cultivated in Central Oklahoma where I live. I think we should prefer one fruit type, though, and not blended fruit drinks. And for bread, we could use wheat, barley, corn (maize), oats, rye, and a few others, but again, not mixing more than one type — and baked, not boiled or fried.
Use your imagination: cornbread (no wheat flour) and peach juice, or rye crackers and watermelon wine, etc.
Baptism is taken from the Hebrew mikveh. The original was a ritual bathing to signify a purity of allegiance to Jehovah. I reject the common liturgical notion that it symbolizes the Holy Spirit falling upon you. It’s a bath; whether by immersion or pouring, you get soaking wet all over the body. A sprinkling would not be enough under Moses, and it won’t do today.
While it might have been rather frequent in the Old Testament, it became a one-time event in the New Testament upon one’s initial submission to Christ as Lord. We are not a denomination; we don’t require that you pass through it again. On the other hand, if you sense in your own convictions that your previous ritual experience wasn’t fully valid, I’ll be glad to walk you through it again.
It is not at all necessary that you perform the ritual in the hands of clergy or anyone else. That wasn’t required in the Old Testament. There may be a lot of reasons one might want that attendance, but in all the cases I see in Scripture, it had more to do with the baptized person giving a testimony in favor of the teaching of the person calling to baptism. Having someone officiate isn’t of the essence of the ritual itself; having someone witness is.
You can make a ritual of many passages of life. Ordination is really simple, with praying and laying on hands. When I do weddings, I just consult with the bride and groom, but no ritual is required, only some kind of public witness that the two are married. Likewise, there is nothing special required for funerals. Hebrews had a cultural revulsion for cremation, but I don’t.
