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The study of Haitian Vodou—imagining its historical development, interpreting the poetics of its mythology, analyzing its social functions—leads, almost invariably, to the consideration of the effects of hegemony. The symbolic representations and actual manifestations of local and global power have continually impacted Vodou. The aesthetics and ritual implications of Vodou flags (drapo Vodou) in many ways encapsulate the social and political history of Haiti; a past marked by displacement, fragmentation, simulation, and hybridization. This dissertation is presented as a focused study of drapo Vodou in which I examine how the flags embody or signify the adaptive merging of African and European cultural behaviors. In my analysis, I concentrate on evolution and iconography of drapo Vodou and the stylized ways that banners are paraded during ceremonies. These foci offer perhaps the most direct means of getting at the full historical, social, and theological implications of the flags. My central thesis is that, in both form and function, drapo Vodou are patterned after the banners used by the institutional centers of power (e.g. the military and the church) that have dominated Haitian society since the colonial period. I argue that the national and regimental standards carried by colonial and post-colonial military forces, the processional banners employed by Catholic religious orders, and the ensigns used by Masonic lodges have all served, to varying degrees, as models for drapo Vodou. Each of these root traditions, it can be argued, is patently European in origin. Nonetheless, as used in Vodou rites, ceremonial flags play a crucial role in the continued recognition and worship of African or African-inspired deities (lwa ) within Haiti. For this reason, I believe that the study of drapo provides a unique opportunity to delve into the processes by which Vodou practitioners (Vodouists) have transformed European material representations of power (both mundane and otherworldly) into symbolic manifestations of the lwa. The hypotheses regarding the evolution, iconography, and ritual significance of drapo Vodou presented in this dissertation are based on data generated from library and museum research in the United States and fieldwork in Haiti.
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The paucity of actual flags in Judaism, despite multiple scriptural and liturgical references, is an anomaly. We review the role of flags in Jewish texts and history, noting the connection between flag-waving and the announcement of the messianic era. This connection, a difficult subject for Jews in the context of Christianity’s enthusiastic adoption of flags, may explain the anomaly. The exception to Judaism’s flag taboo is the minor holiday of Simchat Torah, when children wave flags in a celebratory procession. The origin of this folk custom is obscure and unattested in rabbinic literature, but it appears to date to the 17th century, around the time of the Judaism’s largest messianic outbreak. We hypothesize that Simchat Torah flag-waving arose as a circumscribed indulgence of an otherwise prohibited activity, and that over subsequent centuries this meaning became less intelligible. Judaism’s association between flags and messianism, and the consequent flag-waving taboo, persist to this day. This makes the Simchat Torah flag a Tylorian “survival”, an intact but unintelligible custom.
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Many Lutheran churches in America place the United States and Christian flags in the sanctuary, very frequently on the chancel. This article focuses on the current use of the United States flag in the sanctuary and examines the history of how it came to be introduced. Contrary to myth, the flag did not enter primarily as a symbol of loyalty among German immigrants during the First World War, but rather came in unheralded alongside the service flag, and stayed there through the Second World War and beyond. Sometimes it accompanied church construction or renovation. Such flag use—an apparent contravention of the separation of church and state—is explored through the concept of banal nationalism. These flags are “unwaved”; they remain static in the sanctuaries of many Lutheran churches today, which creates a unique type of civil religion in America.
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- flags and religion
- American flag in churches (1)
- banal nationalism (1)
- Biblical banners (1)
- Biblical flags (1)
- Biblical standards (1)
- cultural anthropology (1)
- drapo Vodou (1)
- flag display (1)
- flag displays in churches (1)
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- flag history (1)
- flag processions (1)
- flag use (1)
- flags and Christianity (1)
- flags and civil religion (1)
- flags as art (1)
- flags in Judaism (1)
- flags in religion (1)
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- flags in the Bible (1)
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- Jewish flags (1)
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- Messianic flags (1)
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- Old Testament (1)
- patriotism (1)
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- religious flags (1)
- religious rites (1)
- religious use of flags (1)
- rituals (1)
- Simchat Torah (1)
- Simchat Torah flags (1)
- symbolism (1)
- unwaved flags (1)
- Vodou flags (1)