Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the
American Flag
Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1999
by Carolyn
Marvin and David Ingle
The
authors develop Emile Durkheim's argument from The Elementary Forms of the
Religious Life. Durkheim argues as
follows: Religion provides meaning and purpose for members of society, social
control, structure and unity, and rituals for gathering members of society to
reinforce social norms. Today the sciences have provided meaning but have not
been able to order society and provide social control and norms.
Marvin and Ingle argue
that what these primitive societies had is a “totem” which gathers individuals,
providing a coherent set of values and norms through which all individuals
could make sense of their lives. What
science has not provided in modern America, the flag has provided. Following René Girard they argue that the
flag is a “totem” that creates myths of blood sacrifice around which American
society is based.
Although
Marvin and Ingle use “totem” I read this word as “idol.” The same effect comes from both words
perhaps. Any Christian who reads this
book cannot help but think of the Baal’s and idols of the Old Testament. The connections the authors make of the flag
with bloodletting and fertility so resemble those ancient religions that I
could not help but think that Marvin and Ingle did the work of a prophet in unmasking
the idols. The only question is why a
Christian did not write something like this first, as part of the prophetic
vocation of the church. But what the
church has declined God has risen up others to do in its stead. But of course René Girard wrote about this
sort of thing first and the authors rely on him heavily. (He is the second most
referenced author in the book besides Durkheim.)
One
of the interesting comparisons throughout the book is the religion of nationalism
with that of Christianity. This book
definitely advances the thesis that religion and the state imitate one
another. I would argue that religion
does not imitate the nation-state but the other way around: the State is a
fallen church. It seeks the common good
with the best of intentions, but fails.
It is thus evil in the sense that all evil is an imitation of the
good.
In
this sense the authors lean on René Girard’s theories. Girard posits a theory of mimetic desire in
which one
person desires the object that another has, which seems to bring a sort of
fulfillment to the other, that another person has. However the object is really not desired in and of itself or for
pragmatic value but it is desired only because it is desired by another. So what is desired is the desire of the
other. Marvin and Ingle claim that
revolutionary groups, gangs, and other “affilitative” groups are jealous of the
State’s monopoly on violence. As such
the differences between the “totem” and the groups that desire it’s killing
authority are minimal. The whole book
relies heavily on this mimetic rivalry scheme of Girard.
Another point they rely on Girard for is the idea
that society is created and re-created around the collective murder of
scapegoats. Marvin and Ingle claim that
Americans tell ourselves lies that it is not us who are violent but them. Thus after Sept. 11 we put all the violence
on the “terrorists” and refused to see our own violence. Indeed Marvin and Ingle claim that the
scapegoats are not the others but the insiders. It is the soldiers sent off to war who are our scapegoats. It is the deaths of our own that form our
society. For instance, they show that
WWII was a war that had the power and to some degree still does, to unify
America. In contrast the Gulf war left
only a few hundred Americans dead. So it did not have the lasting and deep
transformative power as WWII. If it
were simply about the number of enemies dead than any war should do to
reinvigorate the nation, but these examples (detailed much better and clearly
in the book) serve the purpose to show that it is really about sacrificing our
own, just as primitive societies sacrificed their own to the gods, we sacrifice
ours to our god.
The flag is a god that demands sacrifice. To desecrate the flag by burning it or
otherwise is to disrespect ancestors.
In primitive cultures, ancestors play an integral role in forming
society. Ancestors come alive in magic
rites, and watch over the living. The
authors show that the same is true in America.
For instance, when the issue of flag burning comes up, the critic says
that it desecrates the sacrifices of the dead in these wars. If the dead can be dishonored though, this
implies that they are around to care enough that it matters.
An
uncomfortable part of this book is the description given of all religions (and Christianity
is meant also). That all religions are
characterized by killing power. Is the God of Christians a god who has a monopoly
on violence? Is our God one whom we
simply transfer the organizing power of violence too? This is a claim made by some theologians (See Miroslav Volf Exclusion
and Embrace). But is the our
God? Is our God simply a “totem” or
“idol” against whom all powers and principalities and humans compete for
killing authority? I must confess my
discomfort with this description and yet I cannot escape the fact that YWHW is
a God who commands that we “shall not kill” and monopolizes that violence to
himself. Even in the New Testament Jesus
says that we should not fear man who can only kill the body but God who can
kill the whole person. Yet I think
there is a crucial aspect of the God of Christians that is missed if we leave
it at that. Our God is also one who has
chosen to love us, and has therefore limited himself (unlike the nation
state!). He has chosen not to use his
killing authority.
Which
brings me to the next point that I am uncomfortable with in this book. The authors attack nonviolence as well as
violence. Both are presented as
sacrificial rituals of bloodletting. I
am not sure they take into account that not all nonviolence is of the same
character (Yoder chronicles at least 24 different types in his book Nevertheless:
Varieties of Religious Pacifism).
Certainly the kind of violence King and Ghandi advocated calls for a
similar sacrifice as that of the military.
But I am not sure a pacifism rooted in the lordship of Christ does. But I will leave this for others to decide,
since I nevertheless find the charge challenging to deal with at this point in
time. And I am not sure I need to
refute it in this book review or anywhere else either. It may be true.
A
current relevant chapter for East Coast Mennonites is the chapter on
Sports. I am making specific reference
to Mennonite Appreciation Day at Shea Stadium, July 13, 2002, in which
Mennonites were bused in from in and out of New York City to be ‘appreciated’
by Met’s fans. The organizer, a Mennonite,
claimed in a telephone conversation that this was a way for Mennonites to get
together and fellowship, and that singing the national anthem was just
something one does before a ball-game (these are almost his exact words.) When confronted further about the greed of a
corporation using Mennonites to make more money, the idea was dismissed as
well.
The chapter on sports shows clearly that professional
sports (as well as all American sports) are a substitute and training for war
and being scapegoats. They point out
that the flag flying over the ballpark means something. So to does the war latent song of the
star spangled banner. (I will leave
what they say it means to you for you to read!) Sports teach values.
“These include effort, teamwork, and fair-play. Effort is sacrifice. Teamwork is identification and cooperation
with the group. Fair play is abiding by
totem rules.” The totem seeks to
organize killing power so that the correct people are killed. However the threat within society is that
violence will get out of hand. Hence
sports serve to organize killing power under the rules of the totem. War, violence and sports, are intertwined in
such a way that no Mennonite out to be caught dead at a major league baseball
game, especially singing the national anthem, especially courting the favor of
the totem’s number one teachers. I wish
Kirk King of the Met’s would read and understand this chapter. Maybe we would not have had this fiasco. But then we all tell ourselves lies that “it
cannot be all that bad” even in the face of the worst scenarios. So it is doubtful it would help either. Once a power is unmasked, we quickly put the
damn mask back on, because we are afraid to look the thing in the eyes and and
laugh at it.
This is an
excellent book. It should be widely read
and used in this society. It is a bit
repetitive sometimes, but then so are many writers (uh hum…Hauerwas
anyone!) It is a scholarly book, and
may be a hard read for some people to read, but I am not a good judge of
this. I recommend reading the article
in the www.jesusradicals.com library: ‘Blood
Sacrifice and the Nation: Revisiting Civil Religion’ from Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64 (Wint 1996), p. 767-780 at this link http://www.jesusradicals.com/main/library/marvin/123.html
. Then you can see if the writing is
accessible for you. And if the article
interests you the book will be even better.