Religious Research Association, Inc.

The Sacred: Differentiating, Clarifying and Extending Concepts

Author(s): Matthew T. Evans
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Review of Religious Research, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Sep., 2003), pp. 32-47
Published by: Religious Research Association, Inc.
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THE SACRED:
DIFFERENTIATING,
CLARIFYING AND
EXTENDING CONCEPTS
MATTHEW T. EVANS
BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY
REVIEW OF RELIGIOUS
RESEARCH, 2003,
VOLUME
45:1,
PAGES 32-47
Disparate
uses
of
the term "sacred" are illustrated, and three
categories of meaning
are
suggested: religious, transcendent,
and set
apart.
The latter
concept
is
differen-
tiatedfrom
the other
two,
and its
conceptual
and
linguistic relationships
to them
explored.
The
set-apart
sacred is then
clarified,
and extended to include
things
set
apart 1) by
both individuals and social
groups,
and
2)
because
of
both natural and
supernatural
association. A new
typology of
the sacred is introduced
by intersecting
these
dimensions,
a nomenclature is
suggested,
and the
conceptual utility of
the result-
ing
constructs demonstrated
by applying
them to texts
from
the New York Times and
other discourse.
rT
he "sacred" is a
key concept
in the
sociology
of
religion and,
I will
argue,
an
impor-
tant
concept
in social
theory generally.
Yet
despite
its
importance
and
long pedigree
the
concept
remains
undertheorized,
and the term is
unselfconsciously
used in such
disparate ways
that
meaning
is sometimes unclear. Consider these uses in a recent
(Sep-
tember
2002)
issue of
Journalfor
the
Scientific Study of Religion
where the term is central
enough
to
appear
in the title or abstract:
* "Return of the Sacred:
Reintegrating Religion
in the Social Sciences"
(Ebaugh 2002)
*
Spiritual
transcendence refers to a
perceived experience
of the sacred that affects one's
self-perception,
feelings, goals,
and
ability
to transcend one's difficulties
(Seidlitz
et al.
2002:439).
*
"Claiming
Sacred Ground:
Pilgrims
and Politics at
Glastonbury
and Sedona"
(Tucker 2002;
This is a
review of the book
by
Adrian J.
Ivakhiv.)
In the first
example
it
appears
that "the sacred" is
simply being
used as a more
interesting
term for
"religion."
The reference is to the
organizations
and/or institutions of
religion,
as
in the book reviewed in Review
of Religious
Research
(Aho 2000)
entitled The Ambiva-
lence
of
the Sacred:
Religion, Violence,
and Reconciliation. In the second and third exam-
ples,
however,
the authors move into more difficult
conceptual
terrain.
By "experience
of the sacred' Seidlitz et al.
(2002:440 [quoting Larson,
Swyers,
and
McCullough 1998:20]; emphasis added)
are
referring
to "a
socially
influenced
perception
of either some divine
being,
or some sense of ultimate
reality
of truth"-what James
([1902]
1982)
called
"religious experience,"
and has since been named and
conceptualized
in a vari-
ety
of
ways (Evans 2002).
In other
words,
Seidlitz et al. use "sacred" here in reference not
to
religion
but to what
might
be called the
supernatural, divine,
or transcendent
reality
that
religion confronts, describes,
or mediates.'
Approaches
to the "sacred" in this second sense
will not be
developed
in this
article,
though
the
topic
is
properly
central to the scientific
study
of
religion,
and "it is
nothing
short of
shocking,
if one thinks about
it,
that the soci-
32
The Sacred
ology
of
religion
has
virtually ignored religious experience
as a venue for research and the-
ory" (Swatos 1993:xv).
The
meaning
of "sacred" is most
problematic
in the third
example,
where it modifies
"ground."
The review makes clear that the two
"spiritual places"
described
by
Ivakhiv
(Glastonbury, England
and
Sedona, Arizona)
"are
noteworthy
because of their
alleged
'ecospiritual' powers,"
but it is also clear that
they
"attract thousands of New
Age
travel-
ers each
year"
for social and historical reasons as well
(Tucker 2002:595).
Either
way-
and
surely
both in this case-the "sacredness" or
special set-apart quality
of the
place
is
conceptually
distinct from
any
transcendent
reality
that
may
have marked it as such or is
still manifest there.
Clearly,
the
set-apart quality
here
designated
as "sacred"
may
be shared
by places
and
things
that don 't have
any
connection to the
supernatural.
For
examples,
con-
sider the veneration described in this sentence from The McDonaldization
of Society: "Many
people identify strongly
with
McDonald's;
in fact to some it has become a sacred institu-
tion. On the
opening
of the McDonald's in
Moscow,
one
journalist
described it as the 'ulti-
mate icon of Americana"'
(Ritzer 1993:5).
Here the
set-apartness
denoted
by
the word
"sacred" differs
vastly
from the transcendent
reality
indicated
by
the same term used
by
Seidlitz et al.
(2002).
I chose these
examples
from
JSSR-fortuitously
united under a
single
cover-both
because
they
are recent
examples
of articles in which "sacred"
appears
in the title or
abstract,
and because
they serendipitously illustrate-quite
well in the first two
cases,
and
accept-
ably
so in the third-what I
propose
as a useful
three-category
scheme for
understanding
"sacred."
2
In broad
strokes,
the term "sacred" is
primarily
used:
1)
as a
dressed-up synonym
for
"religion"
or
"religious;"
2)
to denote "transcendent
reality"
or
"transcendent;"
and
3)
in reference to
things
set
apart
with
special meaning,
as in Durkheim.
Of course it is
possible
to
simultaneously
invoke more than one of these
meanings,
as in
"sacred shrine."
It is the Durkheimian
concept
that will be
developed
in this
paper,
but first I will illus-
trate further the varied
usage
of "sacred" in
scholarly
discourse,
suggest
how the
meaning
of
important concepts
like
"religion,"
"secular,"
and "secularization" are often bound to
one's
understanding
of
"sacred,"
differentiate the
set-apart
sacred from the
concepts
"reli-
gion"
and
"transcendent,"
and
provide
some
explanations
as to
why they
have been used
synonymously.
As one
step
towards these ends I
performed
a full-text search of articles in
top general sociology journals
for those in which the terms "sacred" and "secular" both
appear.3
The three
highest-scoring
articles-Leuba
(1913),
Becker
(1950),
and
Crippen
(1988)-span
the twentieth
century
and
help
to illustrate these
points.
Responding
to "a most remarkable recent
essay dealing
with the
conception
of
religion"
by
Durkheim
(who
was still
alive),
Leuba (1913) not so much
challenges
Durkheim as talks
past
him,
because
plainly they
attach different
meanings
to the term "sacred." Leuba is trou-
bled not
by
the thesis that the fundamental characteristic of
religion
is its concern with the
sacred,
but
by
Durkheim's insistence on the "social-traditional
origin
of the sacred"
(1913:325).
By
contrast,
Leuba maintains that "far from
being
the
only
source of
sacredness,
the tradi-
tional cannot be
considered,
in
any
true sense" even "one of its sources"
(1913:325; empha-
sis in
original). Sounding very
much like the German
theologian
Rudolf
Otto,
Leuba
explains
that "the
experience
of the sacred" is
always
characterized
by
33
Review
of Religious
Research
an element of awe ... fear held in check
by
admiration... neutralized
by curiosity
which the
mysterious-
ness of the sacred
object arouses,
and
by knowledge
of
ways
and means
by
which to enter into relation
with the sacred
power....
The sacred
object
has a hold
upon us,
we stand in
dynamic
relation with
it,
and
this relation is not one of
equal
to
equal,
but of
superior
to
inferior; i.e.,
we feel
dependent upon
it. Awful-
ness
(a complex
of fear and
admiration)
and the belief that the
great
and
portentous power
reaches down
to us and that we
may by appropriate
actions control it within certain limits seem to me the essential char-
acteristics of sacred
objects (1913:325-326).4
Far from Durkheim's
sociological
sacred,
"originating
in a
symbolic projection
of the clan
or tribal
group identity" (Oxtoby 1993),
Leuba's transcendent "sacred"
projects
its own
power
in the other direction. His
phenomenological approach
to the sacred is
unsurprising
given
that
religious experience
was one of Leuba's
major
concerns
(Stark 1965:97).
In his Social Forces article on "sacred and secular societies" Becker
(1950:361)
asserts
he "has
long
worked with the sacred-secular
dichotomy"
and is
prepared
to "deal with the
sacred-secular in some detail."
However,
his use of "sacred" moves well
beyond
Durkheim:
"a sacred
society
is one that elicits from or
imparts
to its
members, by
means of
sociation,
an
unwillingness
and/or
inability
to
respond
to the
culturally
new. .... A secular
society
is
one that endows its members with readiness and/or
capacity
to
change" (p. 363).
"Formu-
lated
differently:
a
society
that
incorporates
and sustains an
impermeable value-system
is
sacred;
one that embodies a
permeable value-system
is secular"
(pp. 363-364).
It sounds as
though
Becker is
describing
"traditional" versus "modem"
society-the
for-
mer,
"whether
analyzed by
the
nostalgic
scholars or the critics is a
society
that is charac-
terized
by homogeneity, religious
values . . . where little
change
is
occurring.
There is a
sense of shared
morality" (England
and Johnson
2001:10).
For
Durkheim,
no
doubt,
there
was a connection between the sacred and the traditional. In that
regard,
Leuba
(1913:324)
had set forth Durkheim's
conception
thus: "the sacred is a
specific quality belonging
to the
traditional,
to that which the individual finds
already made,
to
myths,
to
dogmas,
trans-
mitted
by society."
In Becker's
mind, however,
this association seems to have
fused,
and
"sacred"
appears synonymous
with "traditional." Becker's
usage
is
atypical,
but illustrates
how one's
understanding
of "sacred" is interlocked with that of its
sometimes-antonym
"secular,"
and therefore sometimes with
conceptions
of secularization. This
point
looms
large
in
Crippen's (1988)
article.
Crippen correctly recognizes
that Durkheim's sacred "need not refer to
any specific
domain
(let
alone a
'supernatural' one)" (p. 328),
and
accepts
Durkheim's definition of reli-
gion, modifying
it as follows:
Religions
are unified
systems
of beliefs and rituals relative to
conceptions
of the sacred
(that
which is set
apart
and/or
forbidden),
beliefs and rituals that
encourage
individuals to subordinate their
apparent
self-
interest in relation to the
collectively expressed
interest of
sovereign organizations (p. 326; emphasis
in
original).
When
rigorously applying
both of these
propositions-that religion
is based on the
sacred,
and that "sacred" here can mean
anything
that is set
apart-one
is left with an
overly
broad
conception
of
religion. Crippen applies
the
logic
and concludes that
any organization may
be termed
"religious"
if its
rituals, symbols,
or ideas
"encourage
individuals to subordinate
their
apparent
self-interest"
(p. 327).
An
outgrowth
of this
conceptualization,
which forms
the backbone of the
article,
is his
reinterpretation
of "secularization" as the
increasing
self-
subordination of individuals to the
"religions"
of nation-states and other abstract collec-
tivities,
rather than to the ideas and
authority
of
"religions"
as that
phrase
is more
commonly
understood.
34
The Sacred
DIFFERENTIATING CONCEPTS
The
Set-Apart
Sacred and
Religion
Crippen's
article illustrates how both
"religion"
and
"sacred,"
as well as their relation-
ship
to each
other,
have been
problematic concepts
since
Durkheim,
and because of him
(Stark, 2001).
Durkheim asserted that "all known
religious
beliefs,
whether
simple
or com-
plex, present
one common characteristic:
they presuppose
a classification of all the
things
... into two classes or
opposed groups
...
profane
and sacred"
(1951:52).
Later in The
Elementary
Forms he
famously
defined
religion
as "a unified
system
of beliefs and
prac-
tices relative to sacred
things,
that is to
say, things
set
apart
and forbidden"5
(1951:62).
There are three
problems
related to this
interesting
but flawed definition of
religion:
the
ambiguity,
breadth,
and foundational nature of "the sacred."
The first
problem
is that this central
concept
remains
vague (Stark 2001;
Stark and Finke
2000:89)
and
largely tautological-the
sacred is what the
group
defines as sacred.
Second,
(perhaps
to accommodate
Buddhism)6
Durkheim tried to leave himself some
wiggle
room
by choosing
a word that
may
connote
"religious"
and/or "set
apart"-a
term that is under-
stood as
referring
to
religion,
but not
necessarily
so.
Thus,
while the
phrase
"sacred
things"
is not
problematic by
itself when used as a reference to
religious things
or to
set-apart things
in
society, basing religion
on the sacred creates either a
tautology (i.e., "religion
is con-
cerned with
religious things")
or else
plants
the seeds for
unruly growth
in the
meaning
of
"religion" by
not
requiring
a
supernatural
referent,
or
any
other
particular
referent
(i.e.,
"religion
is concerned with whatever a
society
sets
apart").
Thus,
because it is based on a
substantively
unbounded
concept,
the third
problem
is the derivative nature of Durkheim's
concept
of
religion.
In terms of
conceptualizing religion,
the
sacred,
and their
relationship
to each other then
I
suggest
the
following:
As is
probably apparent,
I think we should maintain the restrictive
definitions of
religion
used
by early
scholars
(e.g.,
James
[1902] 1982:31, 53),
and cham-
pioned
in recent
years by
Stark and
colleagues (e.g.,
Stark
2001;
Stark and
Bainbridge
1996:39;
Stark and Finke
2000:89), limiting
the term to
systems
concerned in some
way
with the divine or
supernatural.
The
sacred,
on the other
hand,
should be
conceptualized
as
something
that
may
or
may
not be associated with the
supernatural. (The conceptual
and
linguistic relationships
between them will be
explored
in the section
following
this
one,
and this
point
will become a
major
focus of the final
section.) Lastly,
while there is obvi-
ously
mutual
overlap
between
religion
and the
sacred,
we must
reject
the
relationship
between them
suggested by
Durkheim (and therefore his definition of
religion
as
well).
Having
released
religion
and the sacred from the unidirectional tandem
relationship
posited by
Durkheim,
four
possible
scenarios
emerge
in its
place, depending
on how each
of the terms is
conceptualized
with reference to the
supernatural: 1)
Like Leuba
(1913),
one
may
see
religion
as
substantively
concerned with the
supernatural,
and "sacred" as
referring
to that same transcendent
reality,
in which case
they
are related
by
definition.
2)
Following Crippen (1988),
one
may
define
religion
as
referring
to
anything
to which one
subordinates
oneself,
and "sacred" as
simply
the "set
apart,"
in which case
they
are relat-
ed to the extent that a
particular
instance of the former
(e.g.,
the United
States)
and latter
(e.g.,
the U.S.
flag,
or national
anthem)
are associated.
3) My
own
approach
is to define
religion
as
substantively
concerned with the
supernatural,
but the "sacred" as
referring
to
the "set
apart."
In this case
again they
are related
only
when
they overlap-i.e.,
when a
35
Review
of Religious
Research
sacred
object
is also a
religious object. 4)
The final if
unlikely possibility
would be to define
religion
in
Crippen's
broad
sense,
but the sacred in terms of the
supernatural.
Stark
(2001:102) complained
that
"having equated religion
with the
sacred,
too
many
scholars have
proceeded
to discover the sacred
(hence
religion) virtually everywhere,
thus
depriving
the term of
analytical power." Maintaining
a restrictive definition of
religion,
while
more
explicitly expanding conceptions
of the
sacred,
allows one to
recognize
the sacred in
religion-and
other
spheres-without necessarily finding religion
in
everything
sacred.
Having
thus
distinguished
Durkheim's
set-apart
sacred from the sometimes-associated
concept
of
religion,
I will now
distinguish
this sense of sacred from
transcendent,
super-
natural,
etc.
The
Set-Apart
Sacred and Transcendent
Why
is the term "sacred" used to
signify
both the natural and
supernatural? Why
is it
that,
even as a technical
term, scholars,
journalists,
and others have used it in so
many
dif-
ferent
ways,
to describe both
otherworldly,
transcendent
things,
and the
dearly-held aspects
of the natural order and its institutions? We could
probably
blame both
scholarly impreci-
sion,
and
simply
the
vagaries
of
language.
In
any language,
of
course,
many
words come
to
acquire multiple
definitions and
connotations,
and this is
especially
true of
English,
made
synonym-rich by
its dual
(Germanic
and
Latin) linguistic pedigree.
The
conceptual
and lin-
guistic history
of the "sacred" is
especially interesting,
and merits brief
discussion,
given
its
importance
in the discourse of both
laypersons
and scholars of
religion.
"To the
Roman,
sacrum meant what
belonged
to the
gods
or was in their
power" (Colpe
1993:511). "Coming
from Latin
by way
of French" the word "sacred"
gradually began
to
appear
in the centuries
following
"the Norman
conquest
of
England
in the eleventh centu-
ry,
which
superimposed
a Latin
vocabulary
on a Germanic one"
(Oxtoby 1993:434).
This
was followed
by
a
partial separation
in
meaning
between the newer word "sacred" and the
older
Anglo-Saxon
term
"holy" (Oxtoby 1973:511),
which
generally
references the divine.
Summarizing
"three
copious pages
of material" on
"holy"
from the
Oxford English
Dic-
tionary Oxtoby (1993:434) says
that "the
usage
divides into three
categories:
first,
the attrib-
utes of God... or the
divine; second,
the attributes of
things
that derive their holiness from
association with
God;
and
third,
the attributes of
people
and actions
conforming
to what is
held to be God's
expectation."
When "sacred" entered the
language
it took some of this
"semantic
range
of
holy: specifically,
it
referred
to
respected
or venerated
objects
but not
to the divine
itself
and not to
persons
as individuals"
(Oxtoby
1993:434;
emphasis added).
"What was at stake in the extension of the word sacred in
English usage appears
to have
been an effort to describe the veneration accorded
by
human
beings
rather than to assert
that the
thing
in
question
had been hallowed
by
God"
(Oxtoby
1993:434;
emphasis added).
But as is clear from some of the
examples given previously,
use of the term in reference to
the
divine,
supernatural,
or numinous-and to
things
like
religion
that are associated with
the them-remains to this
day.
Another
important point
is that these distinctions in
meaning
do not
necessarily
find
par-
allels in other
languages-meaning
both that other
languages may
not have two
(or more)
such
corresponding
words
(see Figure 1),
and that even if
they do,
their connotations
may
not have
precise English equivalents.
To illustrate how this has resulted in
conceptual
mud-
diness I will
stay
with the
example
of
"holy"
and
"sacred,"
which
brings
us to the seminal
works of Durkheim
(1951),
Otto
(1976),
and Eliade [1959] 1987.
36
The Sacred
Figure
1
Selected
Language Equivalents
to
"Holy"
and "Sacred"
Language Term(s)
English holy
sacred
Latin sanctum sacrum
French saint sacre
German
heilig
Russian
sviaty
(Based
on
Oxtoby,
1973 and
1993)
As discussed
above,
in Les Formes Elementaires Durkheim
(1912:65)
defines
religion
as "un
systeme
solidaire de
croyance
et de
pratiques
relatives a des choses sacrees." His
"choses sacrees" is
generally
rendered "sacred
things,"
which seems
appropriate given
the
alignment
in
meaning
between "sacre" and "sacred"
(see Figure 1),
and
given
Durkheim's
conception
of
religion
as
manifesting society itself,
as
opposed
to
mediating
a transcendent
realm. And Otto's classic Das
Heilige (1947),
which
appeared
five
years later,
has come to
us as The Idea
of
the
Holy (1976),
which also seems
appropriate, given
his focus on the
numinous-though
we
may
owe this translation as much to fortune as to intentional
preci-
sion,
as will be shown.
The
conceptual
blur becomes
apparent
when we turn to Eliade's seminal work on the
sacred,
Le Sacre' et le
Profane (1965),
translated into German as Das
Heilige
und das Pro-
fane (1957),
and into
English
as The Sacred and the
Profane ([1959] 1987).7
His introduc-
tion to the work
begins
with
praise
and discussion of none other than Otto's Das
Heilige,
which he sees as
germane
with his own effort
([1959] 1987:8-10),
and he makes clear that
for him "the sacred
always
manifests itself as a
reality
of a
wholly
different order from 'nat-
ural' realities"
([1959] 1987:10)-"a reality
that does not
belong
to our world"
([1959]
1987:11).
Notes Andrew
Greeley:
"I felt for
many years
that Eliade's radical Platonism was
more a
metaphor
than a statement of his literal belief.
However,
he
autographed
a
copy
of
his
autobiographical
novel The Forbidden Forest for me with the
words,
'who is also
trapped
in the
labyrinth"' (1995:19).
For
Eliade, then,
"sacre" means
something very
different than
it does for
Durkheim,
though
in both cases it has been translated into
English
as "sacred."
Perhaps "holy,"
"transcendent,"
or some other term
connoting
an unseen order of existence
would better
capture
what Eliade means. In
any case,
it is
only familiarity
with these works
that allows one to
grasp
which
concept
the author is
trying
to
convey.
Note that in
German,
which lacks the
holy/sacred
distinction
(see Figure 1),
the titles of
both Otto's and Eliade's works
begin
Das
Heilige, yet
the title of the former has been trans-
lated into
English
as The Idea
of
the
Holy
and the latter
(from French)
as The Sacred and
the
Profane.
This calls attention to the
conflating
effect of
using
a
single
term to describe
37
Review
of Religious
Research
more than one
concept,
and
points
to the difficulties of
translation,
the
importance
of
pre-
cision in
writing,
and the
challenges
of
shifting
semantics across and within
languages.
Note too this translation of the
very
first sentence in Eliade's introduction to The Sacred
and the
Profane:
"The
extraordinary
interest aroused all over the world
by
Rudolf Otto's
Das
Heilige (The Sacred), published
in
1917,
still
persists" ([1959] 1987:8).
The transla-
tor,
Willard
Trask,
doesn't make the
sacred/holy
distinction,
and as hinted at
above,
neither
does John
Harvey,
who translated Otto's work. In
fact, Harvey
added this final sentence to
the end of
chapter
one: "This
attempt
we are now to make with
respect
to the
quite
dis-
tinctive
category
of the
holy
or sacred"
(Otto 1976:4).8
In
sum,
then:
In the
English-speaking world,
writers on the nature of
religion
in
general
have referred sometimes to the
holy
and sometimes to the sacred as
though
the
phenomena
were identical and the
terminology
a rather
incidental matter of
personal
taste. This has been true not
merely
when the
subject
has been mentioned in
passing apropos
of another
argument;
it has also been the case in critical works on this
very topic,
such as
Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the
Profane....
Eliade's
generation
has invested the sacred with the same
connotations that Otto's
generation
found in the
holy (Oxtoby 1993:434).
Before
turning
to the
set-apart
sacred I want to
provide
two
quotations
to
briefly
show
that "sacred" is sometimes used in reference not to a
specifically
transcendent realm in the
sense of
supernatural beings
and
such,
but also in a more
vague
or
general
sense to
any
experiences
and
things
that transcend the
ordinary, though
I will not elaborate further
upon
this distinction. First an
explicit
statement to that effect from Andrew
Greeley's
discussion
of
psychedelia
in the
early
70s:
"By
the sacred I mean not
only
the
other-worldly,
but also
the
ecstatic,
the
transcendental,
that which takes man out of himself and
puts
him in con-
tact with the basic life forces of the universe"
(1971:66). Second,
from a book
by
Andrew
Schmookler
(1993:5):
The
experience
of the sacred vibrates the
deepest parts
of our
being;
it
brings
our realization of
just
how
rich is the music of our lives. In
my
own
life,
those moments when
my
instrument has
opened up
to the
reverberations of the sacred stand almost as a different state of
being
from
my
more
usual,
more narrow
band of
receptivity.
Throughout
his
chapter "Nothing Sacred,"
as in this
passage,
it is never clear the extent to
which "sacred" refers to
set-apart
moments and
things
of
special
value vs. a
truly
tran-
scendent
reality.
As is often the
case,
and
though
the
concept
is central to the
chapter,
his
use of the term is unclear
(in
this case even after a careful
reading),
and he seems to assume
that the reader understands what is
meant, though
he never defines the term.
Having provided examples
of the various
ways
in which "sacred" is
used,
and
having
attempted
to
distinguish
the
set-apart
from the
religious
and
transcendent,
I now turn to the
set-apart
sacred
itself,
suggesting
an
analytical
framework that
highlights
and clarifies the
multidimensionality
of the
concept.
CLARIFYING AND EXTENDING THE SET-APART SACRED
We
impute
no
special
value to most of the
places
in which we
live, work,
and
play,
or
to the
objects
within them. We move to a new
city
for the
right
offer. We throw
away things
for which we have no more use. But what if the
city
is Jerusalem? What if those
things
invoke emotion-laden memories? One
may go
to
extraordinary lengths
to retain or
acquire,
to inhabit or
protect
what one considers "sacred."
Indeed, many
are
quite willing
to make
or
reject
remarkable
exchange offers-including
life itself-to
literally
or
metaphorically
hold
something
sacred.
38
The Sacred
I think the feature common to the
set-apart
sacred is its valuation
beyond utility,
and that
this mental
setting-apart
of certain
things,
sometimes
accompanied by
a literal
setting apart,
is
largely
based on non-rational
(which
is not
necessarily
to
say irrational) features,
like
their emotional value. Further
development
of these ideas is
beyond
the
scope
of this
paper,
but in
any
case,
the
concept
motivates,
shapes, constrains,
and
justifies
both individual and
collective behavior and
organization,
and like
gender, ethnicity,
and other
widely-used
schemas,
it orients human behavior across contexts. For these reasons the
set-apart
sacred
is an essential
concept
not
only
in the
sociology
of
religion,
but also in social
theory gen-
erally;
it has theoretical
utility
both in and
beyond
its traditional home in the
sociology
of
religion.
While Durkheim's use of the sacred as a foundation for
religion
is
unprofitable,
some
of his
descriptions
of the
concept
itself are useful. To
wit,
he
recognizes
both that "there
are sacred
things
of
every degree" (Durkheim 1951:53;
emphasis added),
and that there is
variation in sacred
types. (His
observation about
degrees
of sacredness will not be devel-
oped
here,
in favor of a
simplified categorical representation.)
As
examples
of the latter he
lists an assortment of
tangible
and
non-tangible things
that could be sacred-from
rites,
words,
expressions,
formulae, gestures,
and
movements,
to "a
rock,
a
tree,
a
spring,
a
peb-
ble,
a
piece
of
wood,
a
house,
in a
word,
anything
can be sacred. The circle of sacred
objects
cannot be
determined, then,
once for all. Its extent varies
infinitely" (Durkheim 1951:52).
Durkheim's notion that even "a
piece
of wood" can be sacred is illustrated in the writ-
ings
of
biological anthropologist
Richard
Wrangham,
who
says:
On a shelf in
my
office rests an
undistinguished piece
of wood the size of an airline
pillow.
Half-rotted
before it
dried,
it bears the
typical
scars of forest life: holes bored
by
beetle
larvae,
a tear from a
long-gone
branch,
cuts and scratches from the
jostlings
of
passing
animals. It's an
ordinary piece
of an
ordinary
tree,
just
like hundreds of other such
fragments
that could be found
during
a half-hour walk in
Uganda's
Kibale
Forest
(Wrangham
and Peterson
1996:252).
Wrangham may,
for
effect,
call it an
"ordinary piece
of an
ordinary
tree,"
but to him it's
obviously
far from
ordinary. Among
hundreds of similar
fragments,
this one has been lit-
erally
set
apart
on the office shelf of a Harvard
professor
because of the tremendous
sig-
nificance it holds for Dr.
Wrangham. (In
an
extraordinary display
of human-like
cognition,
a
chimpanzee
named
Kakama,
whom
Wrangham
had studied for some
time,
carried the
small
log
around as a
toy baby.)
This
piece
of
wood,
for
Wrangham,
has the character of a
sacred
object. Many
of us have such sacred
personal possessions.
As another
example
of the
set-apart
sacred consider the
changing
of the
guard
at the
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Would
anyone deny
that this is a sacred ritual? Yet describ-
ing
such
things
as "sacred" tends to introduce a
religious
flavor that
may
mask the some-
times secular nature of the sacred.
Furthermore,
in the Durkheimian
tradition,
"sacred"
tends to
suggest
a
group
construct,
though
in fact
something may
be sacred
solely
to an
individual. While these two ideas
may
not be new to
many
who read this
article,
I believe
that an
explicit
treatment of them will be
useful,
especially
when
coupled
with the intro-
duction of a
language
and
analytical
framework that makes them coherent in relation to
each other.
Along
these lines then I want to describe and
explore
these two extensions to tradition-
al
religiously-grounded
notions of the
set-apart
sacred.
First,
we must include not
only
that
which the
group upholds
as set
apart,
but also that which is held sacred
by
individuals. Sec-
ond,
as discussed
previously,
we must
recognize
that the
set-apart
sacred relates not
only
39
Review
of Religious
Research
Figure
2
A
Typology
of the Sacred
Sacred Source
Natural
Supernatural
Individual Personal
Spiritual
Sacred Holder
Group
Civil
Religious
to a
perceived supernatural
realm,
but also to
things
in the
secular, everyday
world. These
different dimensions of the sacred
may
be
organized
in a
simple typology. By intersecting
the two dichotomies-individual and
group,
natural and
supernatural-we produce
a use-
ful table that illuminates four different
categories
of the sacred.
To
put
it another
way,
we intersect two dimensions: the sacred holder
(the person
or
group
who holds
something sacred),
and the source of the sacred. I offer the
resulting
con-
cepts
as
simply
what Giddens calls
"sensitizing
devices"
(1984:326),
and
recognize,
as one
reviewer
put it,
that "there is
always
a certain
degree
of arbitrariness in these
constructs,
and one
person's
ham
may
be another's
grits."
For
example,
in contrast to
my
substantive
approach,
Demerath intersects "sacred
experiences
that are either
confirmatory
or com-
pensatory"
with those that are "either
marginal
or institutional" to
produce
a functional
typology
of the sacred
(2000:5).9
I will illustrate the
clarifying power
of these
sensitizing concepts by applying
them to
references in the New York Times in which the term "sacred" was used. This
approach
is
not without its
problems, given
that
1)
a word
may
be used
sarcastically,
as a
synonym,
or
in other
ways
to mean
something
other than what it
literally
denotes,
and
conversely,
2)
words other than "sacred"
may express
the
concept
of sacredness.
Thus,
we should rec-
ognize
the
concept
of
sanctity (or
"the
sacred")
not
only
when the
Hope
Diamond is referred
to as a "sacred icon"
(PBS 1999),
and when an author calls free markets the "sacred cow
of American
politics" (Gray 1998:3),
but also when a
sports
writer calls Yankee Stadium
"baseball's most-hallowed stadium"
(Bienvenu 1999),
or when Social
Security
and Medicare
are referred to as "the two most sacrosanct of
government programs" (Stevenson 1999).
Like the famous
object
and
widely accepted
economic
ideology,
the
sports
arena and
pop-
ular social
programs
are sacred
("hallowed"
and
"sacrosanct")
because of the
high
non-
rational value attached to them.
Examples using
adjectives
free of
religious
flavor could
also be found to describe this mental
(and
literal) setting apart
of
things
that are imbued
with
meaning
and
importance,
or connected with
identity,
and whose
perceived
violation
therefore elicits
strong
emotion.
Recognizing
that the link between denotation and connotation
may
not be direct and
obvious,
and that both
meanings
inferred and
meanings
intended are more
complex
than
explicit
definition
may
allow,
let us look at how the term "sacred" is
being
used
colloqui-
ally
in the United States. Toward that
end,
I did a textual search of the New York Times for
the two-week
period running
from
February
22nd to March 7th of 2001. I found that the
40
The Sacred
word
appeared
42 times in 32 different articles. Less than half of the references had
any-
thing
to do with a transcendent
reality
or
religion,
and in most of those that did it was sim-
ply
used as a
synonym,
as in "sacred music"
meaning "religious
music." As often as
not,
the word was used to
identify
land,
people,
values,
etc. that hold
great significance
for a
person
or
group
of
people,
and which are therefore
thought
to be entitled to
special respect,
deference,
protection,
and so forth. As Durkheim
said,
these sacred
things
were often those
that "interdictions
protect
and isolate"
(1951:56).
But unlike the common
understanding
of
Durkheim's
formulation,
or rather
extending
it,
the sacred
things
referenced here are both
collective and
individual,
religious
and
non-religious.
In other
words,
colloquial usage
of
the term "sacred" illuminates the
multidimensionality
introduced above.
DIMENSIONS OF THE SET-APART SACRED
Now let us
briefly
flesh out each of the four
categories
in the
typology, drawing
exam-
ples
from the New York Times articles and other sources.
(Interestingly,
all four of the cat-
egories
were
represented,
even in this small
sample!)
The Personal Sacred
That which
acquires special meaning
in the natural
(i.e., non-supernatural) experi-
ences of individuals is
designated
the
"personal
sacred." To
recognize
the
individually-held
sacred is not to
deny
social influence in what the individual holds sacred. For
example,
a
person may
save a flower between the
pages
of a book
partly
because flowers are
recog-
nized
symbols
of affection in the
person's
culture. The
point,
however,
is that the
particu-
lar flower is sacred
only
to that individual. Another
family
member
might accept guardianship
of "the flower
grandpa gave grandma
on the
day they got engaged,"
but the
object
is not
sacred to
larger
collectivities.
Anthropologist Wrangham's piece
of wood is an
example
of
the
personal
sacred. There was one
good example printed
in the New York Times
during
the
period
I examined:
Husfred-Norwegian
for domestic
tranquillity [sic]-is
a
quasi-sacred
value for Hans Olav. So is his
evening
ration of
Cognac
and Mahler and the undisturbed
enjoyment
of the
nightly
news
program (Eder
2001).
Here we have an abstract value
(tranquility)
held in such
importance
that an individual is
described as
holding
it sacred. One
suspects
that
interfering
with
it,
or his
nightly drinks,
music,
and news
program,
would result in sanctions of some kind.
To use another
example,
in his
interesting piece
"The Ghosts of
Place,"
Michael Bell
describes how location-evoked memories of others transform undifferentiated
space
into
place (which
is
differentiated, named,
has
meaning,
and is therefore
sacred).
The "sense of
the
presence
of those who are not
physically
there"
(Bell 1997:813)
creates what I would
call a
personal
sacred
place.
Our childhood
homes,
personal places
of
retreat,
and other
sig-
nificant familial and romantic
spots
are such
places
of the
personal
sacred.
The
Spiritual
Sacred
Things
that are sacred because of their
personal
connection with the
supernatural
seem
to be rare
nowadays. Certainly, though,
there have
been,
and continue to
be,
individuals for
whom
special
locations
(e.g., places
to commune with
God)
or
personal objects (e.g.,
a
divining rod,
or
magic implements)
are sacred because of their connection with a
spiritual
41
Review
of Religious
Research
realm.
Again,
in
my
small
newspaper sample
I found one such
example
of what I'm call-
ing
the
spiritual
sacred. The
speaker
wants it clear
that, contrary
to what those around him
might
think,
it is connection to a transcendent
God,
not the
past presence
of an historical
figure,
that confers
sanctity
to the land.
This land is
sacred,
not because
George Washington camped here,
but because God created it
(Newman
2001).
The Civil Sacred
The
category
of "civil sacred" is
perhaps
the most
interesting
to social
scientists,
includ-
ing
those who
specialize
in the
sociology
of
religion,
for much of the sacred in
contempo-
rary society
has more a civil than a
religious
nature. There were
many
references in the
Times to
things
that social
groups recognized
as sacred because of their
relationships
to
worldly
institutions and natural
processes,
rather than their
relationships
to a divine reali-
ty. Perhaps
the best
example
was this:
*Critics also assert that the 7.4-acre
[World
War
II]
memorial
project,
which will
require
the
lowering
and
shrinking
of the
[Washington D.C.]
Mall's
existing
Rainbow
Pool,
will make it
difficult,
if not
impossi-
ble,
for there ever to be another
gathering
akin to Martin Luther
King's
1963
rally. Simply put,
this is as
close to sacred
public ground
as the nation has-a
space
that itself memorializes America's
history
and
ideals
(Kimmelman 2001).
Here
again
are Bell's
ghosts
of
place, along
with the
symbolic
memorialization of a nation
state,
and its
group
ideals. Much could be written about the social
(and literal,
in this
case)
construction of the
sacred,
the contested
sacred,
and the
meaning
of desecration. From
war,
to
politics,
to
advertising,
much
energy goes
into the
creation,
co-opting, capturing,
and/or
desecration of sacred
things.
This
is,
of
course,
why
Osama bin Laden
targeted
the World
Trade
Center, Pentagon,
and
apparently
the U.S.
Capitol: they
are sacred icons of Ameri-
can
economic,
military,
and
political power.
Here are more
examples
from the Times of the
"civil sacred"-human
life,
canonized
writers,
and the
political power
to
grant pardons:
* The life of murder victims is so sacred that there are cases in which
society
must resort to the ultimate
sanction
(Firestone 2001).
* Even writers whom we now think of as
sacred,
like Zora Neale Hurston and
Emily Dickinson,
came dan-
gerously
close to
being
lost forever
(Rehak 2001).
* So if the business of
pardon-getting
became akin to traditional
lobbying,
what was
wrong
with that? Pamela
Stuart,
a
Washington lawyer
who has worked on
pardons,
said that the
power
to
grant pardons
should be
more sacred because it's a
safety
valve "for when there is a
miscarriage
of
justice;
it's not
something
that
should be lobbied like a tax bill"
(Lewis 2001).
Finally,
consider this statement from a theatrical
review,
which
nicely captures
what is for
Durkheim a
key aspect
of the sacred:
prohibition,
or
inviolability.
*
0, Leenane,
Leenane: that
inbred, claustrophobic
world in which existence has become so tedious that
nothing
is held
sacred-including matricide, patricide,
fratricide and suicide-if it livens
things up
a bit
(Brantley 2001).
In this
category
one would
place
the U.S.
flag,
a sacred civil
symbol
whose
protection
is
thought
to be so
important
that there have been numerous movements to amend the U.S.
Constitution in order to
protect
it.
The reader should note that the construct "civil
sacred,"
as here
used,
differs
markedly
from Bellah's
(1967) concept
of "civil
religion."
The latter is a kind of nationalized meta-
42
The Sacred
religion
that
truly
invokes,
even if
largely ceremoniously,
a collective belief in the exis-
tence of God and divine involvement in civic affairs. As in all
religions,
there are various
manifestations of the
set-apart
sacred in Bellah's "civil
religion" (e.g.,
occasions like the
Presidential
inauguration).
To the extent that such occasions are sacred to the nation-state
I would
place
them in this
category;
to the extent
they
are a sacred
part
of America's "civil
religion"
I would
put
them in the next
category,
"the
religious
sacred." Of course such a
cleanly-bounded
distinction is not
always possible (see "Blurry Category
Boundaries"
below),
but in
any
case,
though
Bellah
tangentially
describes
things
that
might
be labeled
"sacred,"
his
concept
"civil
religion"
itself refers to a form of
religion per
se,
not to the
sacred in the
set-apart
sense
developed
here.
The
Religious
Sacred
In the New York
Times,
assuredly
one of the more secular
newspapers,
there were rela-
tively
few
examples
of the
"religious
sacred,"
or references to
things
imbued with other-
worldly meaning according
to the definition of some
religious collectivity.
But here are two
clear
examples:
* Millions of
cows,
considered sacred in the
region,
are not eaten
by
humans
(Dugger 2001).
* Iran
correctly
reminded the Taliban that Islam does not
preach
the destruction of
objects
sacred to other
religions
and cultures. Last
night
the U.N. issued an
urgent plea
to
spare
the two
giant
Buddhas (New York
Times
2001).
The destruction of the
giant
statues of Buddha
by
the Taliban
regime highlights
the
light-
ning
rod for conflict that the sacred can be.
Indeed,
many
of the world's
great
and
lasting
conflicts are between communities
contesting
the sacred. Such conflict
may
be over own-
ership
or control of what two or more claimants
agree
is sacred (as with lands in the Mid-
dle
East),
over what one side
recognizes
as
sacred,
and the other seeks to desecrate or
destroy
for that
very purpose
(as
with the Buddha statues in
Afghanistan),
or over what one side
sees as
sacred,
and another
regards
as
profane
(as
with areas in Australia considered sacred
to native
aborigines,
but defined as tourist attractions
by
the
government).
BLURRY CATEGORY BOUNDARIES
We should
recognize
that these constructs are ideal
types,
and therefore have
fuzzy
boundaries in the real world. The distinction between individual and
group,
or natural and
supernatural,
is not as distinct in some
cultures-particularly
in the
East,
among oppressed
peoples
of the
West,
and in the
pre-Enlightenment
West-as
they
are in the modern West.
There was a
good example
of this in the Times:
* The Wailua [river area],
Derek
explained,
had been a sacred
area,
limited to the
alii,
the
Polynesian kings
and
royalty.
On its banks-still lined with tall
royal palms-there
had been several
heiau,
or
temples
(Strauch 2001).
It seems clear here that for the
Polynesians,
the
worldly
and
otherworldly,
and therefore the
polity
and
religious institutions,
were not at all
clearly
differentiated. The same could be
said of
Europe
in the
days
of the
Holy
Roman
Empire.
As another
example, Navajo
med-
icine bundles or
"jish,"
which refers to both the
"assemblage
of sacred
equipment"
and "the
bag-like
containers in which the
equipment
is
kept" (Frisbie 1987:9),
seem to
overlap
all
four
categories. They
connect with both
realities,
and
they
are
recognized
as sacred
by
the
Navajo people
as a
whole,
but also in a
particular way
to
given
individuals and families.
43
Review
of Religious
Research
A
Navajo jish
is sacred and those who use it
operate
in a ceremonial world where medical and
religious
beliefs are bound
together
in a
way
that
non-Navajos
sometimes find
incomprehensible.
As a sacred
item,
the
jish
is surrounded
by
all kinds of rules that demarcate its status and
provide
for its
protection
and
prop-
er use. These rules are known to
jish
owners and often to their families as well
(Frisbie 1987:9).
CONCLUSION
The term "sacred" is used in a
variety
of
ways,
and has remained a
poorly developed
concept
in the social sciences. To
clarify
matters I have described three
general
senses in
which the term is
used-religious, transcendent,
and set
apart-and conceptually
and lin-
guistically distinguished
the latter Durkheimian sense from the other two. I have also fleshed
out this
concept,
and extended it to include
things
set
apart 1) by
both individuals and social
groups,
and
2)
because of both natural and
supernatural
association.
By intersecting
these
dimensions I have introduced a new
typology
and nomenclature of the
sacred,
and illus-
trated its
conceptual utility by applying
the
resulting
constructs to both the
popular press
and to
scholarly
works.
Perhaps scholarly
discourse about the sacred has been
limited,
and
largely
confined to
the
sociology
of
religion,
because the sacred has been
over-narrowly conceptualized
in
terms of
group
totems, mores,
symbols,
and ritual activities set
apart
and oriented to the
supernatural
or
otherworldly-what
I am
calling
the
religious
sacred.
By focusing solely
on the
religious
sacred,
one
may
fail to
recognize
the similar
totems, mores,
symbols,
and
activities in social institutions like nation
states,
the
family, race, class,
and
gender.
Thus,
one
may
overlook the
applicability
of the
concept
to
superficially disparate phenomena,
such as the clamor over
alleged accessibility
of the Lincoln Bedroom in
exchange
for
large
political
donations,
and the backlash over the U.S.
Army's
decision to let all soldiers wear
the black beret
previously
reserved for the elite
Rangers.
As in much of
public
debate and
conflict,
there are
underlying
notions here of the sacred-in these
cases,
what I'm
calling
the civil sacred.
Our treatment of
people, objects, places,
etc.,
is also
guided
in
part by personal
valua-
tions of the
sacred,
even when social
groups
do not
recognize
such items as set
apart
and
imbued with
special meaning.
These, too, may
be oriented
by
both the natural and
super-
natural. The terms
proposed
for these
categories
of the sacred
are,
respectively,
the
per-
sonal
sacred,
and the
spiritual
sacred. The former could include
everything
from an
heirloom,
to one's
wedding ring;
the
latter,
from memories of
religious experience
to the locales of
transcendent
experience.
We all use the
concept
of the
set-apart
sacred. While I
hope
to have
distinguished
it from
other
concepts
referenced
by
the same
term,
clarified its
meaning generally,
and
highlighted
its
multidimensionality,
I do not
expect
that future use will
always
follow the semantic and
conceptual
distinctions here
proposed. Hopefully,
however,
the
conceptual
refinement
offered here will at a minimum
put
us in a better
position
to evaluate what a
given
author
means
by
the term.
*
Direct
correspondence
to Matt Evans,
Department
of
Sociology,
800
SWKT, Brigham Young University,
Provo,
UT 84602. Email:
matt.evans@byu.edu.
The author would like to
acknowledge
the
helpful
comments and
sug-
gestions
of the editor and four
anonymous reviewers,
and offer
special
thanks to Howard M.
Bahr,
who
provid-
ed valuable substantive and editorial feedback on several drafts. An earlier version of this
paper
was
presented
at
the annual
meeting
of the Pacific
Sociological
Association, April 1, 2001,
in San
Francisco,
CA.
44
The Sacred
NOTES
'Other
examples
of this less common
usage
of "sacred" include
Niemeyer's
"The
Recovery
of 'The Sacred'?"
(1989)
and Twiss and Conser's Experience
of
the Sacred
(1992), though
as a further illustration of
confusing
usage,
in the latter work
only portions
of these
"readings
in the
phenomenology
of
religion" (especially
in the first
section, "Religious Experience: Numinous, Mystical,
and
Feminist")
involve
experiences
with the transcendent
reality
mediated
by religion.
2Depending
on a
variety
of
factors,
dictionaries seem to
provide
four
(e.g.,
Merriam-Webster's
Collegiate
Dic-
tionary 1993)
to six
(e.g.,
American
Heritage Dictionary 2000;
The
Oxford
English Dictionary 1989)
modem-
usage
definitions
(the
essence of which are all
represented here,
or can be
produced by combining
two of these
meaning categories), plus
sub-definitions and archaic
meanings. Interestingly,
I have not found the term
recog-
nized as a
noun, except
in the obsolete and
very
old
plural
form
(see
OED
1989),
or in derived forms such as
"sacredness."
3I searched American
Sociological
Review
(1936-1997),
American Journal
of Sociology (1895-2000),
Social
Forces
(1925-2000), Contemporary Sociology (1972-1997),
and Annual Review
of Sociology (1975-1997).
4At one
point
in the article Leuba
(1913:326-327)
does seem to
temper
this
description
of the sacred as encounter-
with-the-numinous with a more Durkheimian
perspective.
5While Durkheim defines "sacred
things"
as "set
apart
and forbidden"
(1951:62; emphasis added),
I see the "for-
bidden"
aspect
of the sacred as
merely
one
possible
characteristics that
springs from
its
set-apartness,
rather than
a fundamental
aspect
of the sacred
along
with
set-apartness.
For
example,
as is often the
case,
the "sacred
public
ground"
described later
by
Kimmelman
(2001)
is
publicly accessible,
not forbidden.
6Stark and Finke
(2000:89-90; emphasis
in
original) suggest
Durkheim chose "sacred" and omitted a link to the
supernatural
because he believed
religion
existed in "all societies" but
mistakenly thought
Buddhism lacked
any
supernatural
elements. He therefore "felt it
necessary
to omit a
supernatural component
from his definition in
order to
salvage
the
generalization."
7The
publication
dates are somewhat
confusing
because
although
Eliade wrote The Sacred and the
Profane
in
French
(completing
it in
1956),
it was first
published
in German
(Eliade 1957).
Even
so,
Willard Trask would
have translated it for the 1959
English-language
edition from the
original
French
manuscript (Rennie 2001a,
2001b), though
the earliest French edition that I have been able to locate was not
published
until 1965
(see
Eli-
ade
1965).
8A comment in
Oxtoby's
article
(1993)
made me aware of
Harvey's
addition to the text.
9Demerath
(2000:5-7)
calls the
resulting
four cells The Sacred as:
"Integrative" ("marginal experiences
that are
confirmatory"), "Quest" (involving "compensatory marginality"), "Collectivity" ("the
institutional version of the
confirmatory syndrome"),
and "Counter-Culture"
(involving
"institutional forms with a
compensatory function").
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