A consideration of the liturgical idea in four talks and a discussion
1—Sacrifice in Primitive Societies by Godfrey Lienhardt
Reader in Social Anthropology in the University of Oxford
Society is not a contract but a liturgy, and at the centre of the liturgy is a religion.
' Sacrifices hold people together.' It is the purpose of this series of talks to suggest that this statement, made recently by a Zulu minister, applies to European societies. They have evolved as a complex of liturgical patterns, and their disorders and displacements must be attributed partly to the loss of their liturgy.