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Moya Kneafsey wrote: > The moderators feel that "enabling communication" should include > avoiding undue offence, listening and participating in the debates. While waiting for the list owners to be more specific, I recommend this paper Blood sacrifice and the Nation: revisiting civil religion http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/fcm/jaar.htm and especially this passage: "...Carlton Hayes... argued that Western nationalism adapted many features of Christianity, in the shadow of which it first appeared. Citizens are born into the nation-state, Hayes observed, just as supplicants once were born into the Church. They have no choice but to be citizens, just as medieval Christians were compelled to embrace the faith of their birth. The social geographer Wilbur Zelinsky observes that the contemporary American flag has a visual power and presence for its believers that is comparable to the medieval crucifix. We agree. The flag in high patriotic ritual is treated with an awe and deference that marks it as the sacred object of the religion of patriotism. The flag is the skin of the totem ancestor held high. It represents the sacrificed bodies of its devotees just as the cross, the sacred object of Christianity, represents the body sacrificed to a Christian god. The soldier carries his flag into battle as a sign of his willingness to die, just as Jesus carried his cross to show his willingness to die. Both the cross and the flag mark the border, the transformative point at which the believer crosses over into death. In both Christianity and nationalism the violently sacrificed body becomes the god renewed--in Durkheimian terms, the transformed totem. In Christianity the revivified totem is the risen Christ. In American nationalism the transformed totem is the soldier resurrected in the raised flag. On the basis of his sacrifice the nation is rejuvenated. As the embodiment of sacrifice, the flag has transforming power. Certain acts cannot be performed except in its presence. It must be kept whole and perfect, as holy things are, and ceremonially disposed of when it is no longer fit to perform the functions of the totem object." -- Paul Treanor %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%