"So if it is at once the symbol of the god and of the society, is that not because the god and the society are only one? ...The god of the clan, the totemic principle, can
therefore be nothing else than the clan itself, personified and represented to the imagination under the visible form of the animal or vegetable which serves as totem." Durkheim
With every craze - old or new - there comes a time when the fanaticism finally crosses the border into religion. Football is there, and is waving back at us.
The English culture (among with many others) has a prime example of the average Joe finding religion in new and in different forms, that form being Football. For example, instead of a man (let's call him Joe) taking his family down to Church on a Sunday afternoon, he would
rather take his family to a football match or to the local pub to watch the game. Joe no longer sees the Church as the place to go and worship God, he instead worships his
football team. Take the Cross, for instance, a symbolic effigy associated with Jesus. This man no longer sees the Cross, or Jesus for that matter as a religious symbol that means something to him. However he looks at his football teams logo, football shirt, and mascot as 'meaning something to him'. When he wears that football shirt he feels part of the clan, part of the religion, part of a religious system. That shirt means to him what the Cross
means to Christians. Durkeheim's theory on Totemism: the totem is above all a symbol, a material expression, of society. Just as a football shirt is the expression of English culture.
The question is: how far will we go, to find a new religion that actually means something to us?
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