The Akedah as Governance Myth

Abstract

Some of our oldest and most powerful myths focus on sacrifice as a means of gaining power, strengthening relationships, and binding a community together. The oldest of these myths emphasizes blood sacrifices as the most powerful for this purpose. Our current American myths emphasize nearly the opposite: that success can be obtained without sacrifice. This article examines the implications of this fundamental shift on civil society. The author takes the Akedah—the Old Testament story of the binding of Isaac—as a central point in the evolution of the sacrifice myth. In particular, the author explores the evolution of “sacrifice” from ritual blood offering in a religious context to that of labor undertaken in a social context.

Keywords

governance civil society sacrifice storytelling war

Storytelling is central to public administration. We engage in storytelling explicitly in the classroom through the use of case studies and simulations as teaching devices. In practice, we tell stories to help others make sense of public policy—public administrators are storytellers when they construct narratives to explain policy decisions to the public they serve (Weick, 1995). Storytelling is sense making. As White (1999) points out, “All research is fundamentally a matter of storytelling or narration” (p. 6). Science is built on the interpretation of data, which is simply the narration of our attempt to make sense of that data—to find and express meaning in patterns. Language is the basis for our knowledge: We do not properly know a thing until we are able to express it, until we can tell its story (even if only to ourselves). Put differently, we do not properly know anything until we can put it into words. Kant’s view is that we cannot apprehend reality itself (noumenon) but only insofar as it appears to us (phenomenon). In other words, as Farmer (1995) sums up, “Physical reality, as it is in itself, is beyond our seeing” (p. 18). What we are left with, then, is our account of what we have seen. In this view, we are constituted by language. “Any statement we make, whether from common sense or from systematic inquiry, presupposes the use of a language and is brought forth as a story” (White, 1999, p. 7). Language defines us, shapes us, and locates us in our physical and social environments. Our language shapes the world we see and forms our picture of the world as we wish it to be (Farmer, 2010).

It is curious, then, that we do not more often explicitly study the ways that we construct and interpret the stories used to make sense of our world. This article addresses one such set of stories, examining stories of sacrifice. Specifically, I contrast traditional narratives of sacrifice as a religious and civic sense-making phenomenon with the meaning (often the lack of meaning) that modern Americans find in stories of civic sacrifice. I examine the modern notion of sacrifice through our responses to war, ranging from the Revolutionary War through the War on Terror. I am particularly concerned with the ways that sacrifice in battle impacts the bonds of civil society and how our changing understanding of sacrifice may have a larger impact on our social bonds. At its heart, the act of sacrifice requires communal acknowledgment. We must all participate, at least by granting consent, if an individual act of sacrifice is to have larger social meaning. I utilize the Akedah—the story of the binding of Isaac—as a critical point in the evolution of stories of sacrifice to show how we have inverted sacrifice, displacing it from a meaningful social rite to an internal and often post hoc afterthought.

Accordingly, this is an occasion of interpretive research in the spirit of Rein (1976), White (1992, 1999), and Farmer (1995). The subject of interpretive research is the meanings that we attach to the norms and values that govern our social interaction (White, 1999). Rather than the thing itself, interpretive research focuses on the ways that we look at the thing. Farmer’s analogy, that the object of study is not the star field seen through a telescope but the telescope itself, is apt. That is to say, interpretive research is reflexive. It locates the researcher within the research, examining how we create our framework of understanding—the “set of assumptions and social constructions” that inform why we understand what we understand (Farmer, 1995, pp. 12-13). Its goal is to improve understanding of phenomena—both to the scholar studying a phenomenon as well as to those actors with lived experience of the phenomenon (White, 1999). It is also a normative endeavor, speculating on how the adoption of a different set of assumptions and constructions would affect how and what we understand (Farmer, 1995). In other words, as Rein puts it, interpretive research constructs an interpretive narrative of the past and present so as to build a “moral for future actions [to] suggest, for example, how the future might unfold if certain steps are taken” (Rein, 1976, pp. 265-266). Put simply, stories not only tell us who we are, they also tell us who we might aspire to become (White, 1992). By exploring stories of sacrifice, I hope to establish a perspective on sacrifice in the modern civic sphere. Doing so should not only improve our understanding of sacrifice and its impacts on society, it should also speculate on how to change that understanding—how to tell new stories that may affect society in more helpful ways.

Because interpretive research is personal, normative, and reflexive, this project is decidedly postmodern. That is to say, it is not concerned with uncovering a universal truth. Rather, it is concerned with truths situated within a context of time, place, and audience. Interpretation is transitive—it requires subject and object. We interpret a phenomenon for some audience and within a particular social context. As either the audience or context change, the story changes as well. There is no universal perspective. Rather, we all wear Kant’s glasses: With blue lenses, the world appears blue; red lenses tint the world red; and so on. Postmodernism denies that we can achieve an objective, “un-lensed” perspective—a grand narrative in Lyotard’s terminology (Lyotard, 1984, p. xiv). For Lyotard, the modern age was characterized by the quest for universal, objective truth. The postmodern, in turn, recognizes the situational context within which we interpret and narrate truth and therefore embraces localized narratives. Regarding the stories that we tell about sacrifice, my position is that we are caught in tension between grand and localized narratives—we may be largely operating according to localized narratives, but we cling to a belief in the metanarrative. We experience sacrifice locally, as a personal event, but often want to understand that same event as a universal theme. As an example, consider the ways that we construct narratives around Columbine or any similar school shooting. The local experience—the personal tragedy of the victims and their families—is constructed for the larger social audience as a sacrificial drama. As the sacrificial story is constructed, we look for a grand narrative, a way of connecting to that local experience. Thus, a local tragedy becomes a referendum on the state of American youth, of the educational system, of popular music, of parenting, or of some other topic—the subjects are elevated from perpetrators and casualties of a criminal act to ideal types in a sacrificial drama centered on social values (see, for example, Birkland & Lawrence’s (2009) discussion of media framing to make sense of Columbine and Fast’s (2008) examination of school shooting as ritualized violence).

This causes all sorts of problems, among them a reluctance to accept and embrace the local narrative insofar as it diverges from an idealized construct—the metanarrative. We live with and operate within the structure of the localized narrative—it describes the conditions on the ground, so to speak. However, we retain the metanarrative as our mental idealized model of how things should be. Think of the ways that the perpetrators and victims in school shootings lose their identity as individuals as they become idealized types; the perpetrators in particular become icons for “troubled youth,” their attitudes, habits, and dress are taken as significant markers of other potential evildoers. The attraction of making localized reality conform to an ideal vision prevents us from accurately assessing local conditions and is a factor in the fuzziness of many public administration concepts. Because “we all know what bureaucrats do,” we are unable to fully/faithfully/accurately observe and reflect on what they may actually be doing. Because “we all know what sacrifice is,” we apply the label “sacrifice” to any number of situations and retroactively fit those situations to the idealized model.

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” (Genesis 22:1-2)

The English word “sacrifice” comes from the Latin words sacer and facere, “to make sacred.” “Sacred,” in turn, refers to the gods and things in or of their power; it also connoted something set apart. This can be seen in “sanctum” and “sanctuary.” It is also present in many cultures’ traditions that priests or holy men were, by virtue of their profession, set apart from everyday society, isolated socially—by special codes of conduct, or spatially—living in monasteries or other communities. This notion that something holy is set apart is also present in the Hebrew word for holy, kadosh (root ש-ד-ק). For example, Moses removes himself from the community to receive the Ten Commandments, going alone to the top of mount Sinai while the people remain behind, kept within strict borders on pain of death (Exodus 19). Similarly, when Aaron makes atonement for the people, he removes himself from the community, entering the inner sanctuary alone to commune with the divine (Leviticus 16). In both cases, these individual acts, made in isolation, were intended to strengthen social bonds, bringing the Hebrews closer together as a people as well as closer to their god, although in both cases the people remain physically separated from their god.

What is particularly relevant here is that the act of sacrifice—of making something holy—entails ideas of relationship and location. This article examines stories of sacrifice and how the ways in which we talk about sacrifice have changed over time. Specifically, I compare the meaning and practice of sacrifice in the ancient world with its meaning and application in modern American society. I argue that the story of the Akedah is a critical moment of change in how sacrifice is understood. Furthermore, I argue that our modern conception of sacrifice is undergoing a fundamental change that impacts our society in ways that have not yet been explored and is deserving of further research. I examine this shift by contrasting the ancient religious sacrifice of the Akedah with the modern American civic sacrifices made in times of war.

Understanding Sacrifice

My focus here is not on the act of sacrifice itself but on the stories that we tell about sacrifice—how we tell these stories and how that storytelling informs our understanding of what we take a sacrifice to be. As an event, sacrifice, particularly in its traditional form, is a rather simple and straightforward act. However, the attempt to attach meaning to the act is much more complicated.

At the heart of sacrifice is the notion that ordinary actions and objects can be transformed when coupled with purposeful human intent (Durkheim, 2001). The rituals that accompany sacrifice are designed to focus and maintain that intent during that transformation. They come in an astonishing range: Sacrifices may be proscribed by location in time and space or by procedural order, by who may or may not participate or witness the sacrifice, or they may require particular clothing or implements, language or movement. All of these help to set the sacrifice aside—to separate it from the course of normal social life. Tension is inherent in sacrifice as it is an act that simultaneously separates and draws us together. Durkheim (2001) alludes to this tension through his discussion of sacrifice. He notes that the religious and the profane cannot exist in the same space and time. He asserts, however, that the sacred is prone to “infiltrate” the everyday world—that which is separate naturally seeks connections (p. 237). Thus, religious prohibitions, including the rituals of sacrifice, are intended to formalize and control the relationship between the sacred and the profane, the separate and the common. We may more clearly begin to examine the relationship between sacred and profane by examining the narrative of sacrificial rituals: We can get at what is meant by looking at what was done.

Of relevance here are what I see as three basic characteristics of sacrifice. First, there is a physical component, an object to be sacrificed. Whereas prayer may be wholly internal—we can pray quietly and within ourselves—sacrifice needs an outward expression—some thing must be sacrificed. Second, that thing is used up—the sacrificial object is consumed in some manner. This consumption operates on several levels. Fundamentally, in the case of human or animal sacrifice, the “life principle” is consumed by the God as the sacrificial object is killed (Durkheim, 2001, p. 253). This separation of life from body may be sufficient for sacrificial purposes. However, the body is often further consumed.¹ Greek and Jewish traditions distinguish between “complete” sacrifices (Holokautein; olah) where the sacrificial object is entirely burnt, and “commensal” sacrifice (thyesthai; korban), where the sacrificial object is shared between man and God—part of the sacrifice is burnt and part is consumed by some or all participants (Detienne, 1989, chap. 1; Dodd, Mead, & Co., 1916). The final characteristic is that of process: The consumption of the sacrificial object is structured by a ritual—there is a method for ensuring a proper sacrifice (Burkert, 1985, chap. 2). There is a vast literature devoted to describing and classifying types of sacrifice. However, my focus here is not on the acts of sacrifice but on the meaning that we impute to sacrifice—examining the intent behind sacrifice and the ways that we conceptualize sacrifice.

The difficulty that we have making sense of sacrifice is reflected in the scholarly literature, where a variety of categories for understanding sacrifice emerge. First, some hold that in our modern societies, sacrifice is an empty concept. It has no real meaning but “lends itself to insubstantial theorizing”; “one can say anything whatsoever about it” (Girard, 1977, p. 1). In this vein, Jean-Luc Nancy (1991) has called for “the end of real sacrifice and the closure of its fantasm” (p. 21), and Keenan (2005) has urged us that it is time to “sacrifice sacrifice” (p. 1). In this view, the sacrificial act is empty of meaning and should therefore be abolished, as action without intent is worthless. This is of real concern as sacrifice is a label retroactively applied to bloody acts as a way of elevating them by imputing meaning after the event (cf. discussion of school violence, above). The notion of sacrifice has itself become an altar on which to lay our social violence.

For others, however, sacrifice is real and comprehensible. Sacrifice establishes a contractual relationship with the divine (Frantzen, 2004; Girard, 1977; Sweet, 2003). “Poets recount how the God remembers the sacrifice with pleasure or how he rages dangerously if sacrifices fail to be performed” (Burkert, 1985, p. 57). The covenant with Abraham is repeatedly expressed in contractual terms, as god spells out the benefits that will accrue to Abraham and his family for obedience to his god (see, for example, Genesis chap. 17). More generally, this contract is repeated to the Jewish people. In exchange for observing the commandments, god promises to watch over them in surprisingly concrete terms, ensuring, among others, that the rains come at the proper season and the grass grows (Deuteronomy 11:13-15). In this view, ritual and sacrifice are the mechanisms with which we communicate with our gods (Burkert, 1985). The act of sacrifice renews the covenantal ties; sacrifice bridges the gap between us and the divine (Durkheim, 2001).

Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia was the fulfillment of a contractual relationship with Artemis, whom Agamemnon had previously offended. Until he made this sacrifice, Artemis would withhold the winds needed to launch his army at Troy (Euripides, 2004). Thus, sacrifice can also be seen as an attempt to control a greater power’s behavior. All that is necessary to compel god to behave in known and understood ways is to uphold our end of the contract. Seen in this light, sacrifice is a means of ensuring stability in an unpredictable world.

Developing this theme, sacrifice can be seen as substitution. We offer sacrifice to appease a greater power. A measure of protection from a larger power is gained through an offering. By giving it something else, we are spared from the power’s direct attention (Girard, 1977; Sweet, 2003). In this view, the sacrificial object stands in for the larger community. Greek cities maintained a pharmakos, an outcast or vagabond, at civic expense. In times of civic crises, the pharmakos would be beaten and driven out of the city, taking with him the problems afflicting the city (Burkert, 1985, sec. 4.5; Girard, 1977). Similarly, the high priest of the Jews would ritually cast the sins of the community onto a goat, which was then driven into the wilderness (Leviticus 16:5-10). Girard (1977) notes that for sacrifice to succeed, the victim must resemble in some way the object that it replaces: What is given to the god must share some characteristics with the thing in whose stead it is offered up. However, these victims differ in one critical way: They are not tied to the community as are the beings they replace on the altar (Girard, 1977). In other words, sacrificial victims are located outside the community; their relationship with the larger community is at best a weak one. Agamemnon was able to sacrifice Iphigenia, for example, because he was acting in his capacity as war leader and so identified more closely with his soldiers and his need to launch his army. He was more a king and warrior than a father. Rather than removing ourselves from a relationship with our god, we drive away a stand-in, allowing the contract to continue. As will be seen later, one concern with modern civic sacrifice is that we do not drive away the other but isolate those who make sacrifices on our behalf. In particular, the shift from our experience in World War II (WWII), where 80% of the Americans were involved with the war (Putnam, 2000), to less than 1% who are directly touched by the War on Terror (Jaffe, 2011), has significant implications for our civic structure.

Sacrifice may also be a means of strengthening the social bond. This is the view of sacrifice as social policy (Frantzen, 2004). For Burkert (1985), it is fundamental to the formation and maintenance of community: “Social order is constituted in the sacrifice through irrevocable acts . . . every community, every order must be founded through a sacrifice” (p. 55). Our willingness to sacrifice defines our communal identity (Sweet, 2003). As Marvin and Ingle (1996) note, “What is really true in any community is what its members can agree is worth killing for, or what they can be compelled to sacrifice their lives for” (p. 769). It is this deep interpersonal connection that grounds their assertion that communal identity is a kind of religion and that sacrifice for the good of the community is sacred.

On a more prosaic level, sacrifice functions as a safety valve, a means of venting social violence in a controlled manner (Girard, 1977, chap. 1; Marvin & Ingle 1996; Smith 1999). Sacrifice channels violence and directs it outward, dissipating the threat that violence poses to the social structure. The ritual of sacrifice is really the ritual of killing. It allows a community to direct and contain the violent impulse, channeling it outward away from the community and onto an outcast. This stance presumes that people are inherently violent and that the tendency toward violence will build until it is released (Girard, 1977; Smith, 1999). The sacrifice is a substitution of the sacrificial object for the community; it is a sacrifice by the community for the community—the community is the protagonist and recipient of the sacrificial act. “Sacrifice . . . .reconsolidates the group. This is why we die for the flag and commit our children to do so” (Marvin & Ingle, 1996, p. 774). War traditionally is a promoter of national identity and unity. The gladiatorial games of ancient Rome were also a powerful means of renewing social bonds through sacrifice. The communal experience of witnessing suffering and death was an explicit social policy of Roman emperors aimed at placating and unifying the masses (Futrell, 2006, chap. 1; Hopkins, 1983).² Similar claims have been made about modern sports—that at least part of what brings us together to watch violent sports is the possibility of injury (Cornell, 2002). In these examples, society itself is the higher power to which we offer sacrifice. Very much in the vein of Odin, we offer sacrifices of ourselves to ourselves.

The Binding of Isaac

The story of the Akedah itself is told sparsely (Genesis 22:1-19). God tests Abraham, commanding him to take his only son Isaac and sacrifice him as a burnt offering (olah) on a mountaintop. Abraham dutifully chops wood and sets off with Isaac and two servants. On reaching the mountain, he leaves the servants, takes his knife and fire, and loads the wood onto Isaac. Together they climb the mountain. When Isaac asks about the sacrifice, Abraham replies that God will provide. He then proceeds to build an altar and to bind his son on it. With his knife in hand for the killing stroke, Abraham is stopped by an angel and is made aware of a ram caught in a thicket nearby. Sacrificing the ram in Isaac’s stead, Abraham is blessed as the father of a great people. The episode closes with Abraham coming down the mountain to his servants and returning home.

This brief story is a pivotal episode for understanding sacrifice and has profound implications for the role of sacrifice as social policy (Burkert, 1985; Frantzen, 2004). The elements of traditional sacrifice rituals are present: A contractual relationship is established—after sacrificing the ram, Abraham is blessed as the father of a great people. Note, however, that it is not clear whether the reward is given for the sacrifice of the ram or for the nonsacrifice of Isaac. The notion of substitution is present as well, although in a new form, as the ram is ultimately substituted for Isaac. As a means of strengthening the social bond, however, the Akedah is more problematic. On one hand, the episode results in the assurance that Abraham’s tribe will be a great people—surely an indication that his society will grow. On the other, it is difficult to imagine that Abraham’s relationship with Isaac is stronger as a result of this episode. Indeed, modern readings emphasize what is left unsaid in the biblical account: Although the ram is killed in Isaac’s place, Isaac disappears from the story after he is bound. From the reader’s perspective, he remains bound on the mountain: The psychological impact takes the place of his father’s knife. For the rest of his life, Isaac is portrayed as a quiet, stay-at-home figure, largely under the sway of his extended family (Levine, 2001). This perspective, of the Akedah as an ongoing, internal mental and spiritual sacrifice, may be seen in Israeli responses to the War of Liberation, Six-Day War, and Yom Kippur War (see Sagi, 1998). Netiva Ben-Yehuda’s recollection of the War of Liberation typifies this perspective:

They told us to go to the army to defend the country so we went. . . . I always say that we are the Isaacs. God spared Abraham the trauma, but Isaac, who lay on the altar on his back and, through the ropes, saw his father thrusting a knife, lived with it for the rest of his life. (quoted in Sagi, 1998, p. 57)

The Akedah restructures relationships by focusing on what is left unsaid and by internalizing sacrifice and decenters the sacrificial act in space and time, with profound consequences.

A traditional interpretation of the Akedah understands it as an explicit response to human sacrifice, particularly the Phoenician practices of child sacrifice in times of civic crises (Hertz, 1975; Moberly, 1988; Stacker & Wolff, 1984). In this interpretation, Abraham actively refutes the practice of child sacrifice, particularly the Phoenician practice of child sacrifice.³ In a fundamental shift away from the notion that sacrifice is the foundation and binding force in society (Durkheim, 2001; Girard, 1977; Marvin & Ingle, 1996), the story consciously refounds the social order on a basis of nonsacrifice. Abraham’s sacrifice of the ram in Isaac’s stead demonstrates that the intent is more important than the action—God is interested in our devotion, not our blood.⁴ By shifting the focus away from the object and action of sacrifice and onto Abraham’s devotion to God—his willingness to unquestioningly lead his son to death as well as his willingness to spare his life—the Akedah moves the foundational mythology of ancient Jewish society away from totemism and ritualized violence and toward a moral community.

The focus on intent—internal devotion—decenters sacrifice with far-reaching consequences for religion and state. On one hand, it allows Judaism to survive the destruction of its central Temple and accompanying loss of its sacrificial practices (McClymond, 2008). It is quite remarkable that a tribal society bound together by daily sacrificial requirements and focused on a central Temple in Jerusalem can not only survive but also thrive, following the destruction of that Temple. However, the Jews make this shift with seeming ease. The morning service provides a daily reminder, recalling Yohanan ben Zakkai’s words following the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, “There is another way of gaining atonement even though the Temple is destroyed. We must now gain atonement through deeds of lovingkindness” (Avot d’rabbi Natan 11a, quoted in Harlow, 1985, p. 15). This position is grounded in Hosea 6:6 (“Lovingkindness I desire, not sacrifice”), although this theme may be found throughout Jewish tradition. Micah 6:6-8 similarly argues that good deeds or mercy are more desirable to God than sacrifice (“the LORD has told you what is good . . . to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God”). Rabbinic commentary has canonized this orientation through the observation that “on three things the world stands. On Torah, on service [of God], and on acts of human kindness” (Pirke Avot, 1962, 1:2). Sacrifice has become personalized and internalized. No longer do we have to bring an object to a specific place and at a specific time to offer sacrifice. Rather, we become the agents of sacrifice, directing our own actions toward a higher purpose. As a consequence, sacrifice is no longer a social, delineated experience. We determine the time, place, and objects of sacrifice. As Isaac disappeared from the Akedah, so it is not always clear when we get off the altar and walk down the mountain.

A second consequence of the Akedah is that the timeline of sacrifice is profoundly altered. Sacrifice had a definite timeline, culminating with the death and consumption of the sacrificial object. However, when the object of sacrifice is removed, there is no longer a definite endpoint for that sacrifice. As internal devotion manifested through prayer and good deeds replaces sacrifice through consumption of some external object, the process of sacrifice extends indefinitely. Put simply, when a sacrifice is no longer physically consumed, it is not possible to tell when we have sacrificed enough, when our end of the contract has been fulfilled. The notion that traditional sacrifice is no longer desirable is echoed in the sentiment that man is justified by his works (James 2:24; Pirke Avot 1:2). This transformation is problematic, as the terms of sacrificial offerings are detailed with a high level of specificity (e.g., Numbers Chapters 28-29 enumerate appropriate sacrifices for various occasions. Numbers 28:9 lists the Sabbath offerings: two male yearling lambs and 2/10 ephah of fine flour mingled with oil.) However, a similar description of the quantities of good works is nearly absent from widely accessible modern sources.⁵ Rather, exhortations toward good works are often phrased as maxims that can be approached but never achieved (e.g., “Seek justice; defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow”—Isaiah 1:17. “Love your neighbor as yourself.”). We do not expect to achieve justice or successfully defend the oppressed in the same way that one could bring lambs, flour, and oil to the Temple and fulfill one’s obligations. Internalizing sacrifice prevents its expression and acceptance by an outside party—we never fully give up our good works to god or a higher power but retain them within us, with the result that sacrifice is never successfully achieved. With traditional sacrifice, the focus is backward looking, on the sacrifice that has been offered. Internal, decentered sacrifice is forward-looking, emphasizing the good works that have yet to be done.

A modern example of this shift in perspective may be seen in the U.S. military’s stop-loss policy that allows for service members’ active duty contracts to be involuntarily extended. Title 10, Section 12305 allows the president to “suspend any provision of law relating to promotion, retirement, or separation” of service members who are deemed essential to national security (United States Code, 2010). At his discretion, the president can restructure the contract that military personnel operate under, requiring them to make additional sacrifices on behalf of their country. For soldiers, stop-loss can feel like the agreed-upon terms of a contract of sacrifice (X years of active duty service in exchange for Y benefits) are being retroactively rewritten, with no clear end to the relationship established.

The Akedah expresses fundamental shifts in the perception of sacrifice. Although modern sacrifice in the civic sphere differs in essential ways from ancient sacrificial practices, the foci of sacrifice remain: an emphasis on the relationships established through sacrifice and the role of sacrifice in locating individuals in either a civic or sacred context. The central elements of contract, substitution, and the social bond may also be found in modern notions of sacrifice, albeit to substantially different effects. In the remainder of the article, I argue that the transformation of sacrifice embodied in the Akedah permeates modern civic sacrifice and has had significant impacts on society.

And we have seen our national character in eloquent acts of sacrifice.

-George Bush

Bush gives up golf ‘in solidarity with troops’

Guardian.co.uk headline

Sacrifice in Modern America

As may be expected when jumping across cultures, hemispheres, and several thousand years, the object of examination has changed considerably. However, because we have been telling stories of sacrifice continually across the span of culture, space, and time, it is easy to focus on the story as it is currently being told and not consider the endpoints. I shift now from the ancient world to modern American society. I then focus more particularly on the ways that we tell stories of sacrifice in war, contrasting those stories against the ways that we are constructing narratives of sacrifice about the War on Terror.

In doing so, the context of sacrifice shifts from a primarily religious to a primarily political environment. Ancient sacrifice was first and foremost a religious activity. Religion was an official, sanctioned function of the state; the state, in turn, depended on religion as a source of its legitimacy. Ancient Jewish society, for example, was a theocracy: Religious precepts dictated the shape of the state. Greek and Roman societies endorsed state religions; cities and regions each had their own patron Gods and associated festivals. As was seen in the case of the pharmakos and Phoenician child sacrifice, civic crises were addressed through appeal to the divine. In the modern Western world, the obverse is true. Religion is not a state activity but rather is constitutionally separated in America. As the state framework dominates the framework of civic life, I focus on civic engagement and sacrifices made for the good of the civic whole. This is not to say that private individual religious practices are not important, nor is the state separated very far from the forms and function of religious practice. Indeed, much of the structure of ancient religious and sacrificial expression has been subsumed in the structure of the state.

In many ways, the rise of the nation-state came about as nationalism assumed the narrative of religious life and sacrifice. The example of ancient Israel as theocracy comes immediately to mind, as does the transformation of Rome from multifaced pagan state to dictatorship, monolithic in political and religious authority, through its development as religious center and independent political entity. Hitler’s propaganda melded political and religious narratives:

We are not a movement. Rather we are a religion. (Hitler, 1935)

Woe to them who do not believe. These people have sinned . . . it is a miracle of faith that Germany has been saved. Today more than ever it is the duty of the Party to remember this National Socialist confession of faith and to bear it forward as our holy sign of our battle and our victory. (Hitler, quoted in Waite, 1993, p. 30)

Hitler saw religion and politics as very much occupying the same space and persecuted the Church at least in part to create a social void that National Socialism could fill (Hitler, 1941; Rauschning, 1940). Hitler consciously used the structure, imagery, and language of religion in his propaganda, as in his framing of the Blutfahne (Blood Flag) as a sacred object (see also Hahn, 1934; Hitler, 1992 [Speech, December 18, 1926]; Waite, 1993, pp. 27-33).

Carlton Hayes has examined the religious nature of American nationalism, arguing that it was shaped by a Christian context and shares many of its features (Hayes, 1966). More specifically, the foundational elements of the American state have been accorded religious status—we speak of historic sites from the Revolutionary and Civil Wars as shrines, and denote battlefields as hallowed ground. Zelinsky has pointed out that the American flag has a power and presence comparable with that of the medieval crucifix (Zelinsky, 1988). The flag may be considered a sacred object, as may be seen in recent attempts to constitutionally prohibit its desecration. Indeed,

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. (Marvin & Ingle, 1996, p. 770)

The idea of the nation has become the religious totem. The ancestral totem that Durkheim saw as the basis of “primitive” religious societies has been internalized and identified as the self. Christianity promoted the narrative of the violently sacrificed body as totem—the god renewed. Nationalism completes the transformation of the fully-god, fully-man sacrifice into the body of the soldier sacrificed for his country and “resurrected” under the flag. What is renewed here is not the physical body of the sacrificed soldier but the nation itself (Marvin & Ingle, 1996). As Marvin and Ingle point out, one consequence of this shift is to fully internalize the notion of sacrifice. In the ancient world, sacrifice of outsiders—of someone separate from the community—was a means of releasing tension and the violent impulse, and further binding a community together. Now, however, the sacrifice of the other has largely lost its meaning, as we focus not on the deaths of the other, but of our own: “If the ritual purpose of war were merely to kill the enemy, the deaths of some 40,000 or more Iraqis would have made a lasting contribution to American national unity” (Marvin & Ingle, 1996, p. 772). Instead, narratives of the American victims of 9/11 were at the heart of our initial civic unification behind the War on Terror, and we continue to count the cost of war in American lives and give little public thought to Iraqi and Afghan losses.

War: Sacrifice on the Altar of the State

War has become the prototypical ritual of the nation. Although other civic rituals also shape our social identity, the finality and transformation of blood sacrifice in battle is preeminent (Marvin & Ingle, 1996). However, although war may guarantee blood, it does not always realize fruitful sacrifice; war sacrifices may imperil the social bond rather than strengthening it. For wars to be successful as sacrificial instruments, at least two conditions must obtain.

First, the impact of war must extend throughout society. It must have the consent and support of the whole. Recall Girard’s assertion that one function of sacrifice is to quell violence and direct a society’s violent impulses outside itself. The implicit, shared knowledge that society grows stronger by offering a part of itself to violence at the hands of others is one of our deepest secrets (Marvin & Ingle, 1996). The myth of the Minotaur centers on this very notion of a community united by a sacrificial delegation. Regardless of how open this secret is, “the group becomes a group by agreeing not to disagree about the group-making principle” (Marvin & Ingle, 1996, p. 771). The sacrifice must extend sufficiently throughout society to seem to touch every member of the group (Marvin & Ingle, 1996). Although the knowledge of the role of sacrifice may remain secret, the effects of the sacrifice must be felt by members throughout the social spectrum. However, the sacrifices of war have not always been shared broadly, as examination of public responses to war shows.

The Revolutionary War remains “at the heart of American identity. . . . Images of Revolutionary heroes and martyrs have frequently been used . . . to imagine and explain . . . what America means” (Purcell, 2002, p. 1). However, merely dying on the battlefield did not create martyrs. Rather, the dead were elevated by the “search for meaning among the community of the living” (p. 19). In revering Revolutionary War dead martyrs, the public participated in their sacrifice and became shareholders in a vision of “vast America” as well as owners of the ground where blood had been spilled. For example, George’s Cambridge Almanack contained detailed accounts of battles and listed those killed at Lexington and Concord as a means of “perpetuating the heroic deeds of your brave and renowned Countrymen” and bringing awareness of those sacrifices to a greater public (George, 1775, p. ii). Bringing war sacrifices to the wider collective memory meant that the public could own the consequences of sacrifice—that the land bought with American blood belonged not to the casualties but to the American people (Purcell, 2002). From early in the war, national leaders sought to memorialize war dead as martyrs to liberty in a conscious attempt to unify the country behind the war effort as well as the cause of liberty (see, for example, Purcell’s discussion of the commemoration of General Montgomery, 2002). The commemoration of the Revolutionary War was a conscious attempt to construct a public memory of the war that downplayed social divisions and created a vision of a unified nation—less “records of what happened as . . . shared images of what past events were supposed to mean” (Purcell, 2002, p. 5).

Similarly, the Civil War remains laden with meaning. It engaged society broadly on both sides of the conflict. “Loyal soldiers, both Union and Confederate, satisfied . . . the classical republican ideal of a virtuous citizenry willing to sacrifice for self-government” (Costa & Kahn, 2008, p. 262). As with the Revolutionary War, the memory of the Civil War was constructed around “sacrifice on both sides to the ‘last full measure of devotion’” (Costa & Kahn, 2008, p. 186). The power of that sacrifice continues to be felt through the interest in history, visitation of battlefields and reenactment of battles, the power of Civil War symbols, and a continued discussion of the significance of the war. In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln elegantly captured the role of martial sacrifice in nation-building. He first noted that it was the sacrifices on the battlefield that consecrated the land. However, he continued that this was only a beginning and that society was obligated to continue the “unfinished work” by ensuring the rebirth of the nation as a democracy (Lincoln, 1863). Tellingly, Senator Charles Sumner commented that the Gettysburg Address, by making this connection explicit, was more important than the battle itself (Basler, 1953). It is not death itself, but what we make of those deaths, that is important—a societal acknowledgment of death that impacts and renews social bonds across a society.

There can be no question of the profound effects of WWII on American society. The sacrifices that civilians and service members made during WWII have led to them being labeled as “the Greatest Generation” (Brokaw, 1998). Battlefields and graveyards have become popular destinations; WWII veterans are revered figures. Military service touched wide swathes of American society. Celebrities and entertainers served. Professional athletes served in sufficiently large numbers to cancel or curtail seasons in multiple sports. The military has been credited as a driving force behind racial integration, as Americans of all backgrounds were called onto serve together. Putnam (2000) notes that nearly 80% of the men born in the 1920s served in the military.

Civilian support for the war effort included sacrifice and rationing of a wide array of consumer goods. In the 1st month following President Roosevelt’s appeal for rubber, 400,000 tons of scrap rubber was collected. Volunteers grew up to 40% of all vegetables, collected waste paper, metal and other materials, and sold war bonds (Putnam, 2000). Volunteerism did strengthen social unity: “You just felt that the strangers sitting next to you in a restaurant, or someplace, felt the same way you did about the basic issues” (Bill Gold, quoted in Hoopes, 2002, p. xii). The bonds between soldiers were significantly stronger. Surveys revealed intense loyalty—to the point of sacrificing their lives for their comrades—as a primary motivator for U.S. combat troops (Stouffer et al., 1949). Ambrose characterizes combat squadmates as “closer than friends, closer than brothers . . . their trust in, and knowledge of, each other is total” (Ambrose, 2001, p. 10). Gray’s assessment is more direct: “At its height, this sense of comradeship is an ecstasy . . . men are true comrades only when each is ready to give up his life for the other, without reflection and without thought of personal loss” (Gray, 1959, pp. 45-46). Ambrose returns this sentiment, describing members of E company as “prepared to die for each other; more important, they were prepared to kill for each other” (Ambrose, 2001, p. 68). Here again, clear connections to notions of sacrifice as contract and as a means of strengthening social bonds may be seen.

The legacy of Vietnam is one of confrontation, protest, and dissent, not of social unity and shared sacrifice. Unlike soldiers returning from WWII, service members returning from Vietnam were not greeted as heroes and paraded through our cities. Public conception of soldiers leaving to serve in Vietnam was of the draftee—someone conscripted to service, taken off for sacrifice rather than a volunteer willing to make himself a sacrifice if necessary; draft-dodging occupied the public discourse in ways that it had not in previous wars. The commemoration of returning soldiers was often of the social outcast and/or criminal—consider the stereotype popularized in films such as Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, and Rambo.

The conflict that America experienced over the Vietnam War may be illustrated through the controversies surrounding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. President Nixon had ordered the construction of a crypt for a Vietnam Unknown at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the dedication of which was framed by aides as “Nixon’s Gettysburg Address” in hopes that the Administration could work a similar feat of national healing and unity (Allen, 2011, p. 95). However, an unidentifiable casualty could not be found and the crypt was covered over. In 1984, President Reagan dedicated the Vietnam Unknown, invoking Lincoln and noting the occasion as one when Americans could “transcend the tragedies of the past . . . [and] . . . trust each other again” (Reagan, 1984). Fourteen years later, the tomb was opened and the remains exhumed amid charges that the identity of the soldier had been deliberately withheld to allow the tomb dedication to move forward. The decades-long struggle to create, fill, and then empty the tomb has been characterized as sacrilege (Allen, 2011). Like Isaac in the Akedah, the Vietnam Unknown has disappeared from the altar. In this case, however, the disappearance unravels the sacrificial moment. The negation of the ritual mirrors the devaluing of the sacrifice that was seen in response to Vietnam.

Support for the War on Terror is problematic. Although it initially enjoyed widespread political support, it touched relatively few Americans. In response to the War on Terror, President Bush enjoined Americans to “enjoy life the way we want it to be enjoyed,” (Bush, 2001) and was widely criticized as telling us to go shopping, not to “accept the sacrifices that war implies” (Spiers, 2003). In other words, the war exists outside the civilian economy and there is little or no interface for civil society into the war effort. The war seems to exist largely outside civil society itself: A 2002 poll found that although roughly 70% of college students supported the war, almost the exact number would evade military service or refuse to serve overseas (Fienberg, 2002). We are no longer prepared to die for what we will kill for, an orientation that disrupts the sacrificial and civic contracts. It seems problematic at best that we want only to observe one half of the contract.

These positions can also be found among the military as well. Junger’s account of his experiences with the 173rd Airborne in the Korengal valley closely mirrors reports of the intense bond of soldiers from WWII:

Men form friendships that are not at all sexual but contain much of the devotion and intensity of a romance. . . . That bond is the core experience of combat and the only thing you can absolutely count on. . . . the willingness to die for another person is a form of love that even religions fail to inspire. (Junger, 2010)

However, Carr’s study of combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder recounts a participant on duty in Iraq, under the U.S. stop-loss policy, who declared himself unwilling to serve in the theater any longer, as he “no longer saw the war as worthy of any sacrifice, much less that of his own life” (Carr, 2011, p. 485).

These sentiments have been viewed as the outcome of war becoming increasingly abstract. In separating the question of whether the nation should go to war from the question of whether I (or any individual citizen) should go to war, we have not only separated personal from civic sacrifice, we have also lost a fundamental connection to the state and a collective sense of the public good (Ryan, 2002). As the Akedah internalized sacrifice, so have we internalized our obligations to the state, holding patriotism more in our hearts than in our public deeds.

A second characteristic of war as successful sacrifice is that there must be a definite outcome (Marvin & Ingle, 1996). Sacrifice is a transformative occurrence; by moving between the material and spiritual worlds, sacrifice redefines space and time. Abram becomes a new person—Abraham—as a result of sealing his covenant with God, a motif that is repeated throughout the Old Testament. Location in time and space is defined by sacrifice. The Jews become a people as a result—again, community is founded through sacrifice; the Western calendar has its origin in Jesus’ death. More prosaically, we define ourselves in the context of sacrifice, the Greatest Generation and the postwar Boomer generation. American wars have traditionally had a definite endpoint that could be conceived in time (the destruction or capitulation of enemy forces) and space (progress could be seen clearly on a map, as territory was gained or lost). The War on Terror, however, is distinct in this regard as it has no such defining features. We began the war before we understood who we were fighting. John McCain famously stated that we could continue fighting for 100; 1,000; or 1,000,000 years (Corn, 2008). Interestingly, in making that statement, McCain defined military success not in terms of geography but in casualties. In other words, we will continue to send soldiers to die as long as soldiers are dying. Sacrifice becomes its own end, sustaining itself through self-directed offerings. This circularity seems a clear instance of sacrifice as an empty concept—a phantasm that can mean anything.

Unbinding Isaac: Making Sense of Civic Sacrifice

I began with Durkheim’s observation that the meaning of sacrifice lies in the notion that purposeful human intent can transform ordinary actions and objects (Durkheim, 2001). In this sense, sacrifice is policy, in that it attempts to bring into being a vision of the world as it should be. We sacrifice part of our income to taxes, for instance, in the hopes that doing so will bring about a better world for us. My aim here, however, has been to better understand the impact of the sacrifices that the members of our armed forces make on our behalf. I return to the five categories for making sense of sacrifice discussed above. Recall that sacrifice can be viewed as follows:

a contractual relationship—a means of ensuring stability in an unpredictable world

a means of strengthening the social bond, where a shared sense of what is worth killing for, and dying for, form the deepest of social connections

substitution, where the victim stands in for a larger group

a social safety valve—a controlled means of releasing tension and violence, and

an empty concept

These understandings of sacrifice can be seen, alone or in combination, in each of the wars that America has engaged in. The Revolutionary War, for example, was consciously commemorated so as to strengthen the social bond, firming citizen commitment to a new nation. Subsequent wars have explicitly drawn on this. The Civil War was similarly memorialized so as to strengthen the social bond and repair the civic wounds that the war had itself caused; Nixon attempted to recall this through his efforts toward an unknown soldier for the Vietnam conflict. The Civil War can also be understood as an effort to ensure stability of a way of life (sacrifice as contract). WWII presents striking examples of sacrifice as substitution, with entire groups being scapegoated. The Nazi program of genocide was without precedent in its attempt to sacrifice entire groups of people to alleviate perceived ills. The Japanese attempt to subdue the Chinese through the systematic slaughter of populations of captive cities may also be read as sacrificial substitution (Chang, 1997). In America, sacrificial substitution may be seen in the internment of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans in “war relocation centers.” Substitution may also be seen in the War on Terror. From the war’s origins against an unknown foe, we engaged in substitution, as we constructed narratives of appropriate locations (Iraq, Afghanistan) and rationales (retribution, weapons of mass destruction) for the war. More recently, the FBI has substituted mainstream Islam for terrorism, as a training guide for field agents contends that “main stream American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers” and that more devout Muslims are more likely to be “violent” (Gawthrop, quoted in Ackerman, 2011). An entire group is being held accountable for the actions of a few individuals who may or may not have ties to that larger group. This also seems to be evidence of how Girard used ressentiment—a suppressed desire for revenge. A society may not be capable of communal sacrifice and will therefore be unable to heal itself. It is then left with unfulfilled desires for revenge that are often expressed through perpetual judgment of the other (Girard, 2001). In the Akedah, Isaac disappears after the substitute sacrifice; in this case, the entire capacity for the sacrificial act has disappeared leaving us to wander without purpose.

Conclusions

Insofar as this is an examination of an ongoing narrative, there is no conclusion as the story is not over yet. The narrative of sacrifice continues to exist in the social sphere. Individual cases within that narrative thread may end, but the larger narrative theme will continue. However, there is a bifurcation of that larger narrative theme; both branches have significant implications for civic society. On one hand, we no longer sacrifice in a meaningful way. President Bush’s claim to have given up golf as a personal sacrifice in honor of our collective war dead (Guardian, 2008) is a striking example of Girard’s (1977) and Nancy’s (1991) concern that sacrifice has become an empty concept. Framed in terms of the Akedah, Isaac is still bound on the altar and blood still flows, but Abraham is absent—there is no meaningful intent behind the action. The danger inherent in this conclusion is that the social bond is weakened. If one role of sacrifice is to renew the social bond, strengthen community, and resolve social tensions within a group, then that renewal is reduced as sacrifice becomes an empty gesture. One consequence of the Akedah was to shift emphasis from the physical act of sacrifice to the intent behind those actions. When that intention is removed, we are left with emptiness and reflex action. I doubt that civic society can long survive with such a void at its center.

The other branch of the narrative follows from this emptying of sacrifice and the tensions between localized and grand narratives—of living the experience of empty sacrifice while reaching for the grand narratives of sacrifice-as-meaning. When we are left with action—with the mechanics of sacrifice—we apply meaning to that action. Cases of violent action are recast as sacrifices to make sense of them. We have, in effect, reverse-engineered sacrifice.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interests with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Aaron Wachhaus is an instructor at Penn State Harrisburg. His work examines the ways that public services and functions are moving beyond traditional government structures and processes. More specifically, his interests include the use of networks and platforms as organizational tools as well as means of delivering public services. He advocates the development of new theoretical perspectives to better understand emerging governance trends and the relation between public and state. He is the editor of Public Administration Quarterly and the Journal of Health and Human Services Administration. His work as previously been published in Public Administration Review and Administrative Theory and Praxis.

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