Losing Our Religion: What Homeland Security can Learn from a Dead Religious Historian
Etiquette dictates that polite conversation should not broach the topics of politics and religion. But, since this forum and our sister feeds throughout the “cohort-sphere” have examined politics and policy extensively, why not complete the set of conversational taboos and take a look at our spiritual selves as congregants within the religion that is homeland security?
By calling homeland security a type of religion it is important to say that this essay is not an attempt to proselytize, or to compare the homeland security enterprise with any particular faith. Instead, this is a look at some of the characteristics that are intrinsic to religions generally, and compare them to characteristics to homeland security organizations and those who work within them.
When making this comparison it may be easy to see these similarities through the lens of doctrine and belief — that homeland security practitioners are in service to society, or the Constitution, or its laws, or safety, the way observant Catholics venerate Jesus, or Mary, or the Gospel. That may or may not be true, but the similarities are more abstract and touch nearly everything we do.
Those of us who are within law enforcement agencies, fire departments, the military, disaster response, and other corners of homeland security speak of our work in religious language. We speak of service to a purpose greater than ourselves; we describe our jobs as “our calling.” Many of us wear a uniform that is changed into the way a priests don their vestments; transforming us into something significant and with meaning. We sanctify objects and space. We engage in ritual and repetition thorough our daily briefings and field training. We have unique rites of passage.
Sacred Space
The religious historian Mircea Eliade described many of the intrinsic characteristics of religion and mythology as acts that separate the sacred from the profane. Those acts were done through both the practice of religious rituals, and the sanctification of space. This was an imitation of the creation myth, where order (cosmos) was created from disorderly, unholy space (chaos). As Eliade put it; “to organize space is to repeat the work of the gods.”[i] These holy spaces transcended heaven and earth; the temple served as the gateway between the two.
When we think about these spaces, from Jacob’s Ladder extending from Beth-el, or the minaret of a mosque, or the great metal doors and dome of a cathedral, we see examples of that conduit between sacren and profane; cosmos and chaos. It is not difficult to find this same representation in the firehouse, the police precinct, or the court-house. Each of these spaces is purpose-built and in many ways utilitarian, but in others, they are transcendent and evocative of the ethics of the institutions within those buildings. Eliade might argue that even the utilitarian nature of these buildings is religious in its own way, asserting “to organize space is to repeat… the work of the gods.”[ii]
Eliade also contemplated what destruction of these sacred spaces meant for “religious man”, and that their destruction represented a return to chaos akin to the end of the world.[iii] Many of us have witnessed something like this in our professions — for me it was when I, like so many others, witnessed the attack on the World Trade Center on television. The Trade Center housed the field office where I began my career, and my immediate concern was for the safety of my colleagues who still worked there. In the days that followed, I grieved for the buildings themselves — because for me, it was sacred space. It was a place where my friends and I had worked together for years, in communion. In that way, I felt like the Athenian witnessing the desecration of the Parthenon; or the Israeli, seeing the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The loss of life in these instances is literal and immediate, the spiritual loss is enduring.
Spiritual Time and Myths
Eliade also described an intrinsic trait where time is viewed in cycles. At each turn of that cycle, sacred events are retold in festivals or holidays. Repeating these rites brings participants closer to the sacred, and more like them.[iv] In life, time is linear, moving inexorably forward; but sacred time repeats itself again and again, reminding participants of the virtues, struggles and lessons embodied in their myths.
In homeland security we also exist in linear and cyclical time. Linear time is found in the investigation, the recovery effort, the state of constant vigilance. Cyclical time is found in our daily briefs, where we repeat the tenets of our profession, review protocols, and remember epic successes and tragedies. In the brief, we remember, then we prepare. We make cosmos from chaos.
Initiation
Toward the end of The Sacred and the Profane Eliade explores rites of initiation, where youth endure ritualistic trials that signify their rebirth into adulthood. In one ritual, novices enact being eaten by a mythical monster from the underworld, where their former selves are “digested” and they are regurgitated as mature members of their tribe.[v]
For most of us, the training that initiated us into our calling may have been less dramatic than being spat-up from the belly of the beast; for a few it might have been worse. For all of us, it was a transformative experience that instilled the ethos of our tribes. We enter as individuals, we are broken down, and then we are rebuilt as part of a collective group of that moment, and part of a mythology that extends before and after our individual careers.
What This Means for Homeland Security
If homeland security is a religion, then arguably it has the strengths and weaknesses that religions have, too. Religion can give common identity and purpose, but it can also divide. Also, there is a fine line between being devout and dogmatic. In an enterprise that, in many ways, was thrust together by necessity, are we too true to the faith systems embodied in our “components” at the expense of broader purpose of homeland security? Is this the core stumbling block; that the mythology and tradition that gives our agencies their identities interfere with the multi-disciplinary nature of homeland security? Basically, does homeland security need to be a religion unto itself?
Although this is an examination of the homeland security enterprise as a whole, a lot about its meaning and purpose can be found in the mission statement within Department of Homeland Security’s website. Here, DHS lists the as its “core values”:
· Integrity: Service Before Self
· Vigilance: Guarding America
· Respect: Honoring our Partners
Beyond those values, DHS defines its mission broadly, ranging from counterterrorism, to border and immigration security, to cybersecurity, to disaster resilience. In this sense, the department itself is broad, employing nearly a quarter-million and working with millions of “partners” throughout the homeland security enterprise. Within that group, to achieve that broad mission, are the constituent agencies and specializations that are unique and disparate; ideally they are all working to a common purpose. It is that purpose that needs to be, ultimately, what we hold sacred.
For more from De-Fence take a look at our other articles:
- Would you Report your Family Member?
- It’s the Majority, Stupid…but, should it be?
- The Few, the Proud, the Cyber Workforce
[i] Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The nature of Religion, trans. Willard Trask (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1959), 32.
[ii] Ibid
[iii] Ibid pg. 33
[iv] Ibid 69–70
[v] Ibid 189–190
