We need to consider the many ways, in civic society, that we have lost a sense of the sacred. This has had a huge impact on the struggles going on in America right now. It isn’t about religion per se, and it isn’t just one party or end of the spectrum. It has happened to all of us. I’d like to consider what the sacred is, where it has been lost and the implications of that, why it has been lost, and how we can get it back. Along the way, in researching this article, I have discovered some fascinating shared concerns and impacts between left and right, possibly opening the door to sympathy for both sides.

What is the Sacred?

Sacred, in its original meaning, meant to “set apart”. That could be physically, as in how the inner sanctum of holy sites are set apart from the common area. We also set apart areas for monuments or mementos for those we have lost. But it also means to set apart certain ideas, concepts, principles, values, activities, or roles. We set certain things apart from the profane (the everyday, ordinary, and superficial) for special respect, significance, and as holding important meaning.

For example, the role of the teacher has often been seen as a sacred responsibility, because it involves the upbringing of our children. Someone who takes care of the elderly is also fulfilling a more sacred role in society, because they also care for our loved ones when they cannot care for themselves. The role of police officer was a sacred responsibility because of the central importance of laws that maintain peace in society and how that needs to be done without bias or corruption. Police officers, firefighters, and soldiers also risk their lives to save others and protect the country, and for fulfilling these sacred roles deserves respect and gratitude.

So, when there is corruption or abuse found in someone serving in one of these roles, there is more outrage and a desire for justice than there would be if an accountant, marketing manager, or street cleaner were found to be corrupt. Not that people don’t always want justice – but it cuts deeper and offends more on a visceral, personal level (and it should) because we hold certain roles to a higher standard.

When there is a funeral or a ceremony to remember a tragic event, you can feel the sense of the sacred. And when we celebrate our country, there has in the past been that sense of the sacred as well. That is because certain ideas and principles are ‘set apart’ as being more foundational, crucial, and important to the thriving and survival of our society. When we celebrate our independence from a monarch, we are celebrating the ideas of personal liberty and government of the people, by the people, for the people.

These principles are somehow different than the principle that you shouldn’t run around the swimming pool, or that you should use your blinker when turning in a vehicle – even though both of those are principles of safety. There is something deeper going on here. The founding fathers spoke about these principles of human rights and democracy as being part of natural law. That is, they emerge from the deepest aspects of the nature of a human being, what it means to be human, and what is natural and necessary to human flourishing.

When an object, place, principle, idea, activity, or role touches on the deepest, most profound and foundational aspects of human thriving or survival, that is when a sense of the sacred tends to emerge the most. Religious ideas don’t start out sacred. They are sacred because their believers look at them as essential to human well being. The same for all of our civic concepts.

 

The Sacred Has Been Lost

As I described the above examples of respect for our police and a sacred celebration of our country, it must have sounded to many like some idyllic fairy tale of a golden time in America. Or, it may have sounded like so much propaganda about American ‘exceptionalism’. While nothing so pristine has ever been universally practiced in America, it is clear that something has changed.

The complaints of conservatives may sound very similar to what I’m saying. They bemoan those who protest the police and show such disrespect and hatred. They see people waving the American flag upside down or even burning it – what they knew was once a sacred symbol to all Americans. They see those working for worker rights or against extreme wealth inequality as undercutting the principles of free markets, which have brought great prosperity and power to the country. And, of course, they see people leaving the churches in droves.

But liberals are also complaining about what essentially amounts to a loss of the sacred. The reason they are so angry with the police is because what was supposed to be a sacred responsibility has been abused and corrupted. When they see police who treat some citizens differently than others, they are outraged by the violation of the sacred principle that all Americans are supposed to be equal in the eyes of the law. When they see police who arm themselves and behave like a military force, they see this as a violation of the sacred principle that Americans should not be policed by de facto military forces. They fly the American flag upside down as a symbol that we are in distress, and they burn it to show that it has burned its own principles and that the symbol no longer applies. This protest comes from a love of those sacred principles and outrage at their violation.

Conservatives and liberals both fight for sacred principles. And the irony is, they are not even principles that are contradictory to or exclusive to one another – they are the same principles all Americans have always valued. Most conservatives were also raised to be proud that everyone was equal in the eyes of the law in their country. They also feel the flag represents something that their country is failing to live out perfectly. And while they are fond of saying “love it or leave it”, I think they could also be convinced that “…work to improve it” is a patriotic value.

And liberals want so badly to be able to respect our police. They want them to be reformed so that they are no longer violating sacred American principles, like human rights, equality, due process, minimal force. They want them to be free of the corruption whereby the ‘blue line’ makes them think that includes covering for these misbehaviors in their fellow officers. And they wish that the officers doing these things would consider the role of police officer to be as sacred as the protesters think that role should be.

Most liberals in America are not against the free market generally. Most are not ‘communists’. Most of them live and work in a free market economy and have no problem with that. Many are business owners themselves. But they also realize that completely unregulated capitalism leads to human rights abuses, harm to the community, and extreme imbalances of wealth that end up harming even the competitive environment needed for a free market to operate. What’s worse, these extreme conglomerations of wealth and power become a threat to democracy. All of these concerns are violations of sacred rights, and show a loss of the sacred in our society.

All of the principles and values Americans hold sacred are, at their heart, the same on both ends of the political spectrum. Yes, there are some people of actual evil intent who are just seeking power, especially in some leadership roles. But for the vast majority of Americans, the differences between liberal and conservative are in the execution – how best to go about supporting and respecting them. And the reason these are at odds is a matter of what information each side is acting upon.

Does a liberal understand the importance of respecting legitimate authority and tradition? Does a conservative understand the importance of calling out authority and tradition when it undermines deeper values? I think they both can, but their actual understanding of what is going on in society and the proportionality of what problems are more prominent and less prominent are all opposite. That is about our information bubbles, which is outside the scope of this article. For now, the important point is recognizing the overlap of the sacred between us, our loss of it, and our shared need to regain it.

 

How the Sacred was Lost

There are some kinds of things we see when society loses a sense of the sacred. These could be symptoms of losing the sacred, but they could also be causes – it’s more of a ‘chicken or the egg’ recursive feedback kind of relationship.

Cynicism

When shocking amounts of disregard for sacred principles take place, or shockingly high profile examples take place, this can lead to a loss of belief in the principles. A feeling that they are just some fantasy. For the country, one of the first big shifts in modern times was the Watergate scandal. This had a profound psychological impact on people and how they saw their government and, indeed, all values. It was certainly formative on the tumultuous late 1960s and the aftermath in the 70s to come.

For those who imagine the only alternative to cynicism is naivete, they might say this was a healthy ‘waking up’ from the abuses of power – and that may be. But, nevertheless, so began a rise of American cynicism. And this is both a cause and result of the loss of the sacred.

Commodification

With cynicism and its disbelief in the idea of sacred principles, comes a more transactional mindset. All that matters is money and power when everything is up for sale to the highest bidder. Even ideals like ethics, justice, etc are just another commodity with a price. Thus begins a feedback of corruption, leading to more cynicism, leading to more loss of the sacred.

This was the ‘me generation’ of the late 1970s, and the ruthless materialism and consumerism of the 1980s. Greed was ‘good’ and these transactional mindsets become nearly devoid of any notion of the sacred whatsoever. That absence is so extreme, that when such a person runs up against a principled person, they sometimes cannot even comprehend their motives. They see only betrayal or some other kind of power play, rather than thinking they might actually believe the things they are saying about ethics or principles. One example of this was Trump (whose purely transactional psyche was molded by these times) being totally oblivious as to why James Comey, sworn to be loyal to the constitution, wouldn’t pledge loyalty to him.

Alienation

Cynicism and commodification work together to create a feeling of disconnection and isolation. You can’t form real relationships if there are no real shared values and everyone is being transactional. A society without the sacred becomes unmoored. Even if it remains orderly, it lacks moral authority. Law becomes procedure. Politics becomes theater. Work becomes drudgery. The sacred, when absent, creates a vacuum where people seek belonging in more dangerous substitutes: cults of personality, conspiracy theories, or violent ideologies.

 

Anomie

A strange word, but it means “a sense of normlessness and meaninglessness”. It doesn’t even have to be a sacred, ethical, or important norm – any large-scale and rapid change of even superficial norms can create fear, discomfort, and the world feeling groundless. The fact that you used to be able to go into a Blockbuster on Friday nights, and peruse the movie VHS covers on the shelves before grabbing some snacks – and now that business model is impossible and they are all gone – can seem minor. But these kinds of things can end up being a big deal when a lot of them are accumulated.

Cultural Normlessness

While there is the technical definition of racist no one outside of college students and professors uses, and which might apply to all of us – I don’t believe most conservatives are racist in the sense they hear the word. Meaning, with exceptions to be sure, I don’t believe most conservatives think consciously to themselves, “I hate that race, and they are inferior, and should be treated differently abd given less rights”. I think most of them are being honest when they say they don’t care about race and would hire anyone, etc. They simply aren’t aware of all the ways in which their actions or supported policies have racist consequences, or the need to take responsibility for that, despite their intentions.

That being said, when a neighborhood begins to look less like Mayberry on “The Andy Griffith Show” and more like one in Mexico City, the reaction of white people there isn’t always or only because they hate Mexicans. A big part of what’s going on has to do with that Blockbuster thing. It’s not just that the people around them have a different shade of skin. It’s the fact that they now can’t understand half the conversations going on as they walk down the street; that the music coming out of the houses sounds different; and the number of people in a house or how often they are outside or what kinds of activities they are doing are all different. And any human being, especially late in life, will find changes around them to be uncomfortable. It’s nice to visit places that are different from what you are used to – but it’s also nice to come home. Inevitably, some begin to feel like they can no longer go home. And they will wonder if those other people are thinking the same things about them. And these frustrations and suspicions will put a filter on how they look at and judge all their interactions and what kinds of political arguments they are convinced by. This, by the way, happens to and with every human race and every political persuasion.

What we have to do is figure out how to deal with these things mindfully, and without shame or reservation. These kinds of responses are not in the same category as cross burning KKK or Nazis, and our approach to such people should be very different. When conservatives feel like they are being painted with that kind of brush it is understandably insulting and enraging. But if we don’t figure out how to acknowledge, devilify, and address this phenomena – others will. Actual racists use this kind of talk about ‘rapid cultural change’ to justify the unstated solution of segregation and exclusion of marginalized groups.

Instead of using oppression and power to ‘hold back’ inevitable change, we need to find ways to dissipate the stresses of change and create more openness to new experience through greater empathy. I remember a white woman posting in a group that some Hispanic people had moved in down the street, and how uncomfortable she was because they were strangers and ‘different’. I told her she could always go introduce herself, maybe bring them a welcome gift, and get to know them. Her response seemed to suggest she found that incredibly difficult or unimaginable. But these are the kinds of interactions we need more of.

Political Normlessness

Another feeling of ‘normlessness’ happens when we see our political leaders doing and getting away with things never thought of as acceptable before. What has been revealed in the last decade or so, is just how much of our political system and constitution relies on the presumption that there are certain norms of decency that will keep leaders in line. There are so many rules that don’t have any real teeth or consequences, but at the time they were formed, no one imagined that someone would be so brazen as to defy them. Or, they thought the population would be incensed enough that this would exceed party loyalty and they would vote the person out, impeach them, etc. For example, the norm that although the Department of Justice is under the Executive branch, that the president would never get involved in or direct specific investigations, so as not to look biased or that they are using it as a personal weapon.

Many major corporations seemed to be coming along with the advances we have seen over the last century in inclusion and human equality. While some businesses are led by sincere people with good intentions, none of us were naive to the fact that it was profit motive in many cases. But the fact that businesses will do what the people want in order to be more profitable was, itself, a stable norm of society. Lately we have seen a disappointing number of corporations bend the knee and abandon these advances for backward looking policies, merely on the corrupt threats and extortions of power-abusing leaders currently in political power. This is another source of disturbing normlessness.

Normlessness gives one the surreal feeling that the world is falling out from under their feet. I’ve given examples of conservative and liberals having this experience, and it is one of the things that leads to and intensifies loss of a sense of the sacred.

 

Getting Back the Sacred

You can’t artificially manufacture the sacred. But you can begin, by acknowledging that the sacred is important, that it matters whether we have it, and to try to make it personal for you. That means, in your own life and profession, you will try to think about what is sacred, and ways of keeping that at the forefront in your mind and heart.

Once we have made that commitment, we can begin by reconsecrating the sacred. Here are some ways we might do that…

Ritual and Symbol

Try not to think of ritual as being merely about religion. A 21 gun salute is a ritual, the national anthem at the start of a ballgame is a ritual, etc. There are public and private rituals. These are important because we make an outward physical statement that is ‘set apart’ from the normal kinds of activities we do. And in doing so we make it ‘more real’ to ourselves.

Storytelling

Historical, spiritual, and cultural stories remind us of who we are, what we’ve suffered, and what we strive for. In recent decades, we have begun to identify harmful or marginalizing aspects to many of the predominant stories which were either untrue or focused on the wrong people, acts, or ideals. But what we need to do now is rebuild some common stories that are true – both literally true and convey true principles. We need to move down our left and right branches until we find the most rudimentary values at the root of where those two branches split. Then we can look at what kinds of stories can be recognized that hold up that shared value.

Moral Commitment

When people act with integrity, even at great cost, it renews the sacred. It gives people something to believe in, and inspires. We need more people showing that personal sacrifice is worth making for the sacred. I think we all acknowledge these are hard times. But hard times call us all to heroic action. If you are surrounded by corruption – don’t retire, don’t leave the country, don’t step down. Stay and fight, and if they can simply beat you or fire you or kill you – then make them do that act. Let the world see you lose for something that’s worth it. You will be watering the seeds of the sacred – a tree you may never see. This may not apply to all people in all situations, but this kind of thinking is one way we begin to break away from transactional mindsets.

Set Limits and Boundaries

Reassert that some things are not for sale, not for entertainment, or not for negotiation. There are big political ways to hold these lines, but they really begin with the little things in our individual lives. I have often turned a program off or refused to engage in certain media or entertainment, because it seemed to somehow change me or undermine a value or principle. What we watch, what we do, how we react, and what we tolerate matters – because it has the power to change us. We need more mindfulness on this.

Community

In a shared or public ritual, we also create a shared experience that helps with connection. We should think about ways of consecrating roles in our professions, our subcultures, our families, our neighborhoods, our city, and our nation.

The loss of a shared religion has meant we have lost that common expression of shared values. We need to think about the kinds of sacred civic values that both the left and right share at the most fundamental level. Then maybe we can create some kind of public events to consecrate and celebrate them, which both ends of the spectrum could feel worth attending together.

 

Conclusion

In short, the sacred is not just a religious category—it is what makes a life or a society feel worth living. It is meaning crystallized, defended, and lived out. And though it can be desecrated, it can also be restored—through reverence, courage, and shared purpose.

 

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This article also appears in The Beacon Hand.