Sacrifice without God
Durkheim said that “society” was the god to whom primitive peoples sacrificed, the totem standing in for the clan for which it served as totem.
We might say, But of course. As FS Naiden ( Smoke Signals for the Gods , 277) has recently pointed out, by the time of Durkheim and Robertson Smith, most sacrifices in European experience didn’t involve a god at all - the Mass being the main exception. They were precisely what Durkheim said they were, sacrificed to Patria, Societas, Motherland.
Sacrifice without gods was the norm in 19th-century France, and Durkheim merely projected this Eurocentric sacrifice onto the elementary forms of religious life.
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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