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Ordination is formally linked to five traditions in this atlas: Buddhism, Christianity, Eastern Orthodoxy, Judaism and Roman Catholicism, each carrying its own distinct note. The disagreement is not only about the gesture that sets a person apart for office; it runs on into what the gesture actually does.

One Gesture, and One Different Mechanism Entirely

The laying on of hands is the commonest gesture, used in Jewish semikhah and in Christian ordination to the diaconate, presbyterate and episcopate alike. Buddhist upasampada works by an entirely different mechanism: a quorum of ordained monastics before whom a motion is put and recited three times without objection, procedural rather than physical, a decision the community declines to block rather than a touch conferred by one person on another.

What the Gesture Confers Is Disputed Inside Christianity Itself

Catholic and Orthodox teaching hold that ordination imparts an indelible character and the capacity to consecrate, a permanent change in what the ordained person IS. Much of Protestantism, carried within the same wider Christian link, treats ordination instead as the recognition of a call and the orderly appointment to a function that belongs in principle to the whole church, a change in what the ordained person DOES rather than in what they are. The same word, the same gesture in most cases, and two different accounts of what it leaves behind.

Where To Read More

• OrdinationInitiatory PracticesOrdination, the practice this page differentiates across five traditions
• BuddhismDharmic (Nontheistic)Buddhism: upasampada, a monastic quorum putting a motion recited three times without objection
• ChristianityAbrahamic (Monotheistic)Christianity: ordination to the diaconate, presbyterate and episcopate by the laying on of hands
• Eastern OrthodoxyChristianityEastern Orthodoxy: ordination imparts an indelible character and the capacity to consecrate
• JudaismAbrahamic (Monotheistic)Judaism: semikhah, the setting apart of a person to religious office by the laying on of hands
• Roman CatholicismChristianityRoman Catholicism: ordination imparts an indelible character and the capacity to consecrate