There comes a moment in every young man’s life when something shifts. His questions deepen, his choices begin to carry weight, and his world grows wider than his own reflection. Cultures recognised this moment and marked it – with blessing, with challenge, with community, with truth. Yet in the modern West, boys now cross these thresholds silently, often invisibly, without the ancient scaffolding that once shaped their hearts, imaginations, and moral lives. This is why rites of passage still matter. They are not decorative. They are transformative.
Across human history, ancient cultures developed extraordinary ways to guide boys into adulthood. Anthropologist Arnold van Gennep observed that all rites of passage share three movements: separation, transition, and reintegration. Victor Turner later named the in-between as liminality – that vulnerable, potent space where the old self falls away and the new self has not yet emerged. Nearly every civilisation created rituals to guide boys through this space: Jewish bar mitzvah grounding adulthood in Torah, memory, and responsibility; Indigenous initiation ceremonies teaching boys their place in Country, community, and Dreaming; medieval knighthood binding strength to virtue through vows. Although each tradition differed, all understood a common truth: a boy becomes a man not by age, but through formation. None of these rituals were merely symbolic; they were spiritual, ethical, and communal curricula designed to shape the soul. The question facing us now is simple: why did every culture consider this necessary?
Philosophers, too, recognised that growth requires guidance. Plato believed the soul must be trained in harmony – reason, emotion, and desire rightly ordered. Aristotle insisted that virtue is formed through practice and community. Confucius taught that moral adulthood arises through ritual, reverence, and relationship. Aquinas affirmed that grace builds on nature, that human development must be shaped, not assumed. In short, human beings do not simply mature. We are formed. And boys especially need frameworks that teach them how to channel strength toward goodness, passion toward responsibility, and freedom toward service. A rite of passage is the philosophical answer to the ancient human question: How does a boy become a man of character?
We now live in a world where achievement is celebrated but transformation is neglected; where behaviour is managed but identity is rarely named; where boys know how to perform but not always how to become. Without initiation, we end up with confidence without humility, independence without belonging, ambition without purpose, strength without tenderness, and adulthood without wisdom. The soul cannot thrive on self-construction alone. It needs communities that call forth what it cannot yet name in itself.
Scripture is thick with liminal moments: Jacob wrestling in the night, Moses before the burning bush, Samuel waking in the quiet temple, Mary listening in the hush of her room, Jesus standing in the Jordan. God meets people at thresholds. And so do rites of passage. This liminal space – neither child nor adult, neither old identity nor new – is spiritually potent. Turner writes that in liminality a person becomes both no longer and not yet. This is precisely where boys discover who they are, what they value, what they fear, what they hope for, and what they are capable of becoming. Rites of passage create a safe container for this sacred uncertainty.
In ancient cultures, elders stood at the centre of initiation, men who embodied the virtues boys were to learn: honour, courage, restraint, wisdom, compassion, perseverance. Today, many boys receive their so-called mentorship from social media, celebrity culture, or online influencers who profit from bravado, anger, or ego. A rite of passage restores the rightful place of elders: men who are good, steady, and reflective; men who show that strength can be gentle, responsibility can be joyful, and faith can be lived with humility. Young men deserve apprenticeship in goodness.
Ancient rites also understood that a rite without virtue is merely an event. They existed not to dramatize adulthood, but to anchor it. At their best, rites of passage gave boys courage shaped by conscience, strength shaped by service, freedom shaped by responsibility, identity shaped by community, purpose shaped by wisdom, and belonging shaped by story. The Christian tradition does the same. Jesus formed His disciples through experiences that demanded maturity, generosity, and courage a slow initiation into a new way of being human. This is the heart of every meaningful rite: not to impress a boy, but to awaken him.
We are living in a time of profound moral disorientation for young men — confusion about identity, expectation, purpose, and belonging. Rites of passage do not solve everything, but they create a pathway where none may exist. They tell a young man, You are not alone. You are capable of goodness. You are needed. You have responsibility. You are becoming. And perhaps most importantly: We see who you are becoming, and we bless it.
In a world starving for men of depth, tenderness, courage, and moral clarity, rites of passage are not quaint. They are essential. They return young men to themselves. They return them to community. They return them to God.
The Female Theologian 