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Article: Manifest destiny adapted for 1990s' war discourse: mission and destiny intertwined.
- Article from:
- Sociology of Religion
- Article date:
- December 22, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Association for the Sociology of Religion. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Roberta L. Coles *
A nation is more than the land it encompasses, the number or kind of people residing in it, or the economy it generates. Rather it is, in the words of Benedict Anderson (1983), an "imagined community" constructed through selectively remembered and embellished events, myths of origin, heroic stories, and proclaimed values. These transcendent symbols constitute the nation's civil religion, a set of myths that seeks consensus, attempts to provide a sacred canopy to a diverse community, and gives meaning to the community's existence (Williams and Alexander 1994; Fairbanks 1981). Williams and Demerath (1991) suggest that America's civil religion no ...