I am pleased and excited to present below a brilliant analysis by Professor Ivan Strenski. You may contact me with your own ideas and/or reflections at 718-393- 1081 and/or RAK@libraryofsocialscience.com.

Best regards, Richard  Koenigsberg

PS: Below Professor Strenski's article is his essay, “Sacrifice: Bad Math, Bad Grammar.”

Dear Colleagues,

Richard has invited me to present a case of sacrifice in our present political situation. I am glad to do so especially in light of a specific case--the Trump indoor rally in Henderson, Nevada, Monday 14 September.

I found this rally especially rich in implications about sacrifice for at least one reason quite often going unnoticed, yet perhaps more troubling than any other. This is the case of self-sacrifice. But as such, it is open to interpretation as suicide! Which is it? But first, the facts

Analysis

1. Attendance at the Trump rally was voluntary. No one in attendance was compelled or coerced to attend. Gaining admission to the site of the rally was highly competitive.     
    
2. Nor, given the festive, holiday atmosphere of the crowd, and given the absence of protective masks or PPE worn by those gathered at the rally, the assembled seemed either unconcerned about the possibility of COVID infection, or unwilling to believe themselves vulnerable to infection and/or its graver health consequences.
    
3. Although I detected no evidence that the assembled welcomed infection by the virus, their general air of confidence in their own well-being might well suggest that infection was welcomed, or at the very least, discounted as dangerous. 
                               
4. To the degree sacrifice entails a ‘giving up’ of something valuable, because of the danger of COVID infection, the health and/or lives of people at the rally would seem the prime candidates for what would be sacrificed -- ‘given up.’ In this sense, the assembled were sacrificial victims, even though not victimized.
    
5. While Trump figured prominently at the gathering, he did not seem present in the role of sacrifier – the individual conducting the offerings.
    
6. Instead, given the adulation of the assembled crowd and their conspicuous attitude of devotion to Trump, his role in this incident of civic sacrifice was as its beneficiary, its object.  

Conclusion:

Understood as civic sacrifice, I argue that the most coherent interpretation of Henderson, Nevada Trump rally as sacrifice is that the assembled devotees of the president were willingly sacrificing their own health and physical welfare for the benefit of enhancing the status of the president. I reach this conclusion on the basis of the facts that

1. The assembled voluntarily ‘gave up’ the goods of their own future health prospects for the benefit of the president’s political purposes.
    
2. In this sense, the assembly, not the president, was agent of sacrifice–the sacrifier. The crowd was a self-destructive victim of its own attitudes and inclinations.
    
3. The assembled had not, therefore, been victimized by an external agent, but rather they themselves were willing sacrifices of their own health and welfare, made in the belief that the object of their devotion, their sacrifice – the president – would benefit thereby.

Ivan Strenski, 15 Sept 2020

“Sacrifice: Bad Math, Bad Grammar”

Ivan Strenski is the Holstein Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Book by Ivan Strenski   Why Politics Can't Be Freed From Religion   For information on ordering, please click here.

Soldiers sacrifice themselves in battle, but this doesn’t count as diminishment. It actually adds to whatever social body of reference is in play. So, the question is why and how can sacrifice add to the social whole, when, in the fact of destruction and death, it subtracts from the social whole by removing one of its members from the body of the living?

This bizarre and self-conflicted state of public values eventuates in what I call the ‘bad math’ of sacrifice. Sacrifice means loss, giving up or at least giving ‘of:’ destruction and, in many cases, death. But, characteristically, most talk promoting sacrifice acts as if these losses are in reality gains—a paradigm case of ‘addition by subtraction.’ Proponents of civic sacrifice in war, for example, routinely argue how the loss of lives in heroic combat actually counts as gain.

The question is how and why Civic sacrifice is about a kind giving to the community—that in turn produces moral obligation to give further and more broadly. This thesis can be tested empirically in the instances of so-called ‘suicide bombing.’

These deaths are regarded, both by the actors and their communities of reference, as ‘gifts’ to the community, requiring meaningful action in response. They are not meaningless suicides or mere acts of warfare.

Soldiers on the battlefield are seen as being led like ‘lambs to the slaughter’—a clear suggestion of analogies with ritual sacrificial killing. Or, soldiers may be seen as offering their lives on the analogy of Jesus winning salvation for the nation. Similarly, sacrificial death for Israel has as well always been held in high regard and likened to temple ritual.

What I find remarkable is how close to ritual senses of sacrifice the civic ones can become. If the sacrificial ritual ‘syndrome’ involves killing or destruction, giving gifts, cooking/transforming and eating/consuming communally, and finally consecration, do we find their analogies in civic sacrifice? I think so. For example, even when civic sacrifices are only partial —a ‘giving of rather than a total ‘giving up’ of a life, career etc., the ritual model seems to brood over the civic realm.

In terms of the civic sacrifice—a dying for country, or even paying one’s taxes—gift discourse seems prominent. Soldiers give up their lives for/to their country; good citizens give of themselves in paying their taxes or supporting the United Fund, for example. Similarly, in dying for country, the soldier, or at least their memory, becomes ‘sacred.’ A consecration occurs. They become heroes to us all, have their names inscribed in immortal stone, lend their names to public places and institutions, and so on.