Requiem for Memorial Day: Dissent in the Redeemer Nation

OBSERVERS OF RELIGION IN AMERICAN LIFE HAVE POINTED TO THE EXISTENCE of a ritual cult of the dead in Memorial Day. This analysis came first in the studies of social anthropologist William Lloyd Warner as part of the fifth volume of his Yankee City series. In The Living and the Dead and then in The Family of God' Warner set the tone and the schema for the interpretations of such scholars as Robert Bellah and Conrad Cherry.2 According to these students of the American scene, the Memorial Day rites of American towns constituted sacred collective representations and a modern cult of the dead. Based on a system of sacred beliefs and enacted in dramatic rituals, the Memorial Day practices related the living to considerations which transcended their ordinary existence. The cult put into organized form those sentiments about death which almost everyone in the community shared. What were these sentiments? Basically, they were generalized fears of death which the mundane, social reassurances the culture provided did not efface completely: fear of the death of fellow men and women, of loved ones, ultimately of oneself. To dissolve these fears, common action on a common problem was needed; and at hand in the existing cult of Memorial Day was