Sacramentarian

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˌsækɹəmənˈtɛəɹi.ən/

Definitions

1. A person who holds particular theological views about the nature and significance of religious rites, especially communion
2. Someone who emphasizes the spiritual power and sacred efficacy of religious rituals and ceremonial observances in Christian worship
3. A theologian or believer who attributes mystical or divine significance to sacramental rites rather than viewing them as merely symbolic acts

Etymology: Sacramentarian is a fairly transparent formation: it combines "sacrament" with the suffix "-arian," which marks a person who holds or follows a particular doctrine or belief. The sacrament itself comes from Latin "sacramentum," a word that originally meant a sworn oath or a pledge of money deposited in a legal dispute, and only later took on the religious sense of a sacred rite. The suffix does most of the work here. Words like "unitarian," "humanitarian," and "librarian" share it, and in each case it turns a noun into a name for an adherent or practitioner. A sacramentarian, then, is someone whose position is defined by how they regard the sacraments, namely as channels of real spiritual power rather than as mere symbols.

Synonyms: sacramentalist, ritualist

Antonyms: secularist, agnostic