The notion that all deeply felt conviction is sublimated religion is not new. The political theorist Samuel Goldman calls this “the law of the conservation of religion”: In any given society, there is a relatively constant and finite supply of religious conviction. Likewise, Einstein compared the human race to a small child in a library full of books written in unfamiliar languages: “The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. Being the sole proprietor of Vibranium means that other countries and corporations are willing to pay T’Challa billions just to part with a small amount of the extremely rare and precious metal. There is pride in not being proud. There were significant differences between the practices of Muslims of African origin and those of South Asian background. By late 1989, the Gorbachev regime’s increased tolerance of religion began to affect the practices of Islam and Russian Orthodoxy.

The Department of Religion and Theology seeks to graduate students who are knowledgeable in the scriptures and develop students who pursue and embrace a vocation of ministry and learning for the common good. BCNZ offers a wide range of study venues and modes including Residential at our Henderson Campus in West Auckland, Regional Learning Centres (throughout NZ), and Distance Learning through our Extension Studies Department. I have already started construction of the three prayer house in West Bengal, one is in Masagram , Ajhapur and another is at Hooghly, which is 100 kms from Howrah. In his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King Jr. wished that “one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.” The very idea that a nation might have a creed-a word associated primarily with religion-illustrates the uniqueness of American identity as well as its predicament. And because shame over the Holocaust is considered a national virtue, the country has at once a strong national identity and a weak one.

This is because America itself is “almost a religion,” as the Catholic philosopher Michael Novak once put it, particularly for immigrants who come to their new identity with the zeal of the converted. It was reported on 11 June 2007 that the singer George Michael and his partner Kenny Goss were interested in purchasing the piece for around £50 million. Today, as an officially recognized religion, it claims approximately two million followers throughout Vietnam; in certain parts of the Mekong Delta, as many as 90 percent of the population of this region practice this tradition. The French concept of laïcité requires religious conservatives to privilege being French over their religious commitments when the two are at odds. Put in a $10 bill, take out two fives. One year passed, and the gods started worrying that the famine would wipe out humanity. Despite his creativity, however, Patton did not succeed in his goal of creating “a religion for one world.” The very assumptions of A Religion for One World were shaped by the Protestant Christian heritage out of which Universalism came. No longer explicitly rooted in white, Protestant dominance, understandings of the American creed have become richer and more diverse-but also more fractious.

Conflicting narratives are more likely to coexist uneasily than to resolve themselves; the threat of disintegration will always lurk nearby. On January 6, the threat became all too real when insurrectionary violence came to the Capitol. The last time I came back to the United States after being abroad, the customs officer at Dulles airport, in Virginia, glanced at my passport, looked at me, and said, “Welcome home.” For my customs officer, it went without saying that the United States was my home. After an enormous battle, Baldur is defeated, and despite being given an opportunity to retreat, he attempts to strangle Freya, forcing Kratos to kill him. In democracies without a pronounced ideological bent, which is most of them, nationhood must instead rely on a shared sense of being a distinct people, forged over centuries. An American who moves to Germany, lives there for years, and learns the language remains an American-an “expat.” If America is a civil religion, it would make sense that it stays with you, unless you renounce it. Violence has a way of taming passions, at least as long as it remains in active memory.