According to Pew Research, "The Japanese flag, for example, includes a hinomaru, or rising sun – representative of Shinto spiritual roots within the former Japanese empire."

The central emblem is the Aztec pictogram for Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, the center of the Mexica (Aztec) empire. The eagle symbolizes the sun and is a representation of the victorious god Huitzilopochtli, who "bowed" to the Mexica and their power. The snake may represent the figure Quetzalcoatl, who was traced back to Teotihuacan and was the mythical establisher of state authority and power in Mesoamerica. The cactus (tenoch) is emblematic of Tenochtitlan and thus the entire symbology represents the divine establishment of the Mexica in their capital city, Tenochtitlan (lit., "the place of the cactus").

The flag of Bhutan draws from the Durkpa Tibetan Buddhist tradition and features Druk, the Thunder Dragon. Druk, it is believed, divinely approved the establishment of Bhutanese Buddhism with a clap of thunder.

While arguments have been made that the sun in the center of the flag is an example of the European motif of the "sun in splendor," Diego Abad de Santillán, and others, have argued that the "Sun of May" is a representation of the Incan deity Inti.

The Union Jack of Great Britain, as well as its descendant flags throughout the commonwealth, "make reference to three Christian patron saints: the patron saint of England, represented by the red cross of Saint George, the patron saint of Ireland, represented by the red saltire of Saint Patrick, and the patron saint of Scotland, represented by the saltire of Saint Andrew." (Wikipedia)

Also called Taekkuk (referring to the Yin and Yang halves of the circle in the center of the flag) the Korean flag exudes balance and harmony.

The red and blue circle in the center is called 'Taeguk', the origin of all things in the universe. The central thought is perfect harmony and balance: A continuous movement within the sphere of infinity, resulting in one unit. The blue part of 'Taeguk' is called 'Eum' or in Chinese, Yin, and represents all negative aspects of the balance while the red part is called 'Yang' and describes all the positive apects. The circle itself represents unity - bringing together the negative and the positive, while the Yin and Yang represent the duality. Examples of duality are heaven and hell, fire and water, life and death, good and evil, or night and day

The four trigrams at the corners (called 'Kwe' in Korean) also represent the concept of opposites and balance.

Whereas Saudi Arabia's flag is explicit, the Iranian flag is more cryptic in its symbology. The central emblem is a highly stylized composite of various Islamic elements: a geometrically symmetric form of the word Allah and overlapping parts of the phrase lā ʾilāha ʾillà l-Lāh, (There is no God Except Allah), forming a monogram in the form of a tulip it consists of four crescents and a line.

This flag uses the most recognized symbol of Jewish identity and wider community -- the Star of David. Still, the earliest Jewish usage of the symbol was inherited from medieval Arabic literature and Kabbalists who used the symbol for talismanic properties in amulets (segulot) where it was known as the Seal of Solomon.

The central symbol in the Indian flag is the Ashoka Chakra, itself a depiction of the dharmachakra; represented with 24 spokes. According to Wikipedia, "When Buddha achieved nirvana (Nibbana) at Gaya, he came to Sarnath on the outskirts of Varanasi. There he found his five disciples (panch vargiya Bhikshu) Ashwajeet, Mahanaam, Kaundinya, Bhadrak and Kashyap, who had earlier abandoned him. He preached his first sermon to them, thereby promulgating the Dharmachakra. This is the motif taken up by Ashoka and portrayed on top of his pillars."

According to the Slovak government, "The double silver cross allegedly symbolizes the tradition of St. Benedict, St. Cyril and St. Methodius, but in reality this is a Christian symbol for older resurrection of Jesus Christ, which was used in Byzantine Empire since the 9th century."

The Arabic inscription on the flag, written in the calligraphic Thuluth script, is the shahada or Islamic declaration of faith:

لَا إِلٰهَ إِلَّا الله مُحَمَّدٌ رَسُولُ الله

lā ʾilāha ʾillā-llāh, muhammadun rasūlu-llāh

There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God.[1]

The shahada in the Saudi flag, with individual words highlighted in different colours. Word order shown by colour key at bottom. (Read from right to left)

The green of the flag represents Islam and the sword stands for the House of Saud. (Credit, Wikipedia)

Why 1/3 of Countries Have Religious Symbols on National Flags

January 28, 2015

Yes, you read that right. According to Pew Research, 64 nations around the world fly "national flags that include religious symbols."

Pew further clarified the flags according to the religions they represent:

“Of the 64 countries in this category, about half have Christian symbols (48%) and about a third include Islamic religious symbols (33%), with imagery on flags from the world’s two largest religious groups appearing across several regions.”

— Pew Research

And if the number of religious standards flapping in the wind is a surprise for you, that's nothing compared to national anthems which contain religious themes. Upwards of 126 different nations have explicitly religious titles, themes, lyrics, or metaphors embedded in their official state song. That's somewhere between 64-66% of nations (depending on your worldwide count, ranging from 189-196 sovereign countries).

So much for the separation of church and state.

While different nations have different notions of the separation of church and state and others make no distinction nor erect any partition between the two, many (if not most) countries have some imperative to differentiate between the role, expression, or function of religion and state respectively. Still, this is a tricky issue seeing as religion continues to play a role, whether explicitly or implicitly, in the formation of many a nation-state -- not to mention "national identity."

*For more on religion and culture, follow @kchitwood

Indeed, there are varying degrees of delineation between "church" and "state" depending on the legal parameters and constitutional mandates that speak to the appropriate relationship between religion and politics in each respective nation. While there may be laws governing the separation, there are varying degrees of distance wherein religion and state function as two independent bodies or wherein pluralism is tolerated, but there is still an official state religion (a la in the United Kingdom). In addition to being known as "separation of church and state," the idea is encapsulated by other concepts such as secularism, disestablishment, religious liberty, pluralism, or constitutional tolerance. Essentially, the idea of "separation of church and state" is fluid, and thus slippery, to comprehend and apply.

Beyond this nebulous concept of "separation," why do so many countries appeal to religious symbology in elements for their national imagery and imaginary?

It seems to me that mixing religious symbols with state power is still, despite the augury of the prophets of secularization, a viable option for nation-states and institutions to offer a relative degree of control to their leadership in a world ever more chaotic because of economic, political, and social instability and time-space compression due to the forces of globalization. “The use of a simple symbol in a film, a book or an advertisement says far more than any wordy explanation ever could” wrote Adele Nozedar in The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Signs and Symbols, “Signs and symbols, our invention of them and understanding of them, transcend the barriers of written language and are the very heart of our existence as human beings.” Thus, symbols are powerful. And religious symbols even more so as it reaches beyond this temporal realm into eternity. Thus, if a nation or leader is looking for an anchor to unify and stabilize her people, religious symbols seem a robust option.

Indeed, these religio-political symbols might be said to offer what David Morgan calls a “web of communication," giving the nation an almost iconic status. Morgan talks about the "sacred gaze," which denotes any way of seeing that invests its object—an image, a person, a time, a place—with spiritual significance. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Morgan investigates how viewers incorporate and attend to religious symbols and images and how that encounter furnishes a social, intellectual, and perceptual construction of reality. Essentially, Morgan argues that religious symbols -- be they Protestant, Catholic, or otherwise -- are not to be viewed in isolation. Rather, they must be seen within their social contexts, which includes more than theological ideas, but devotional attitudes and practices, everyday rituals, personal testimonies, and "the sacred space of the home." Building on this proposition, it would be fair to say that these symbols in the flags are powerful regulators of human passions and perspectives on others, especially in the context of nation-states.

Basically, these flag symbols not only solidify an independent group identity, but attempt to create a political or national identity that cuts across urban centers, rural villages, regions, or states. In countries where religious pluralism dominates, or there are significant religious minorities, this may mean that these flags cut across religious boundaries as well, in order to regulate not only institutional relationships but personal and familial ones as well. These religious symbols are able to do so, because they are attached to a symbol of massive power -- the national flag -- which produces a sense of awe, enormity, and transcendent grandeur that in turn provides a shared reference point for members of a community with similar, or in some cases dissimilar, world views. While religious minorities may contest the symbology, the symbol is able to -- because of cultural, social, economic, or religious context -- unite enough of the nation to provide a mainstay for shared civic character.

Even countries without explicit religious symbol rely on the same potency of shared imagery. In the U.S., our flag may be bereft of religious images, but the waving Stars and Stripes resplendent in the wind has been known to evoke iconic ecstasies and rapturous emotions in the patriotic members of the U.S.'s civil religious. Has it not? While the U.S. flag doesn’t employ an explicitly religious symbol it is still imbued with attendant symbolical meaning and religious effect.

According to Emile Durkheim’s definition, religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices which unite individuals in to one moral community. While Durkheim may certainly be critiqued, the sociality that religion provides cannot be denied. If the role of politics and state institutions is to establish its hegemony over a people and have the same people accept that state's authority as normative for their lives, both individual and communal, then religion, as a cultural phenomenon, becomes a primary tool wherein to establish said community and suffuse its compliance to state-craft with divine intimations. Religion is the soothsayer of the magic of state.

As such, a religious symbol in a flag is used to great effect as a sibyl of state authority. Hence, why so many nations around the world employ such images even today in what is supposed to be an every more globalized, pluralistic, and secularized modern world.

*For more on religion and politics, you may want to read "Is Kim Jong-un a god? 'The Interview' and the Juche idea."

*For more on religion and culture, follow @kchitwood

A foreigner at the table: migrating through the Velija

December 9, 2014

I am a foreigner at this table. A sojourner making my way through a labyrinth of strange foods and unfamiliar custom.

It is Christmas Eve — a traditional time for traditional foods like hot cocoa, cranberry sauce, and cookies…certainly not a “Christmas” carp. And yet, it is carp we eat, at least for now. Besides the carp we will dine on kapusta (sauerkraut or cabbage), “baby Jesus food” (oatmeal or Cream of Wheat), hay rolls, pirohy (pirogies), stuffed prunes, and bitter vegetables. While there are cookies and sweets awaiting at the end of this strange feast — flaky pockets of poppy seed and cherry Solo jam (kolacky), a spiced nut roll (orechovnik), and zazvorniky ginger cookies — they are not your typical Christmas sweet course.

Yes, there is much to come. For now, we begin humbly. At the head of the table, Paul passes the oplatky shipped in from Slovakia and imprinted with saintly images of Jesus, Mary, magi, shepherds, stables, and a single star. The light wafer touches everyone’s hands, passed around the table with respect and reverence, attended by silent smiles and centuries of meaning making. Finally, it reaches me — the newcomer, the outsider, the foreigner. Once everyone has oplatky in their hands Paul invites us to don the mass-like bread with a dollop of honey. Many of us do, to help the wafer make its way past the roof of our mouth where it strives to stick. Then, the blessing. Paul prays for family, friends, with thanksgiving, and for blessing. Amen. Veselé Vionece! Merry Christmas!

For second and third generation Slovaks and other West Slavic people (Czechs, Poles, some Russians, etc.) in the U.S., the velija — a representative meal of remembrance of the nativity narrative of Jesus of Nazareth and his parents Joseph and Mary — is a staple of Christmas festivities. Deviating from the customary “American” holiday meal, the velija is a tradition still celebrated by select Slovaks and Czechs as a connection to the “home country,” their childhood memories, and an homage to the ethnic identity forged in urban enclaves in Chicago, Cleveland, Newark, New York, and Pittsburgh in the beginning of the 20th-century.

“When I am preparing the meal, it is my connection to everyone who has gone before me,” said Treena Rowan, a Slovak connected to the Czech Center and Museum in Houston, Texas. “Everyone in the old country still makes the meal and so do I, we are connected this way,” she said.

Akin to the didactic nature of the Jewish Seder meal, the velija is a representative feast, literally a Christmas “vigil,” with each portion symbolizing a part of the Christmas narrative and the life of Jesus. While traditions in different households vary, there are a few staple selections. Before the meal begins, many families place hay on, or under, the table to remember the manger and leave an extra place at the table for a traveling stranger or deceased relative. After prayers and blessings, the eldest person in the household, or the father of the family, passes around oplatky, a communion-like wafer imprinted with images from the Nativity topped with honey. “This symbolizes the sweetness of Christ and Christmas,” said Rowan, “the pictures look like little postcards from the original Christmas.”

Following the oplatky and making the sign of the cross with honey on the forehead, the family starts in on other courses including kapusta (a sauerkraut and mushroom soup), representing the bitterness of Christ’s suffering, pirohy dumplings filled with sauerkraut, potato, cheese or lekvar (prunes) and carp. While carp is not readily available in the U.S., many families still eat fish, betraying the meal’s Catholic intonations connected to that church’s traditions of fasting during the season of Advent (the 40 days prior to Christmas, a time of reflection, anticipation, expectation, and hope). The whole meal is accompanied with wine, for luck and in remembrance of Jesus’ sacrifice. At the close of the meal, families enjoy kolacky, strudels filled with poppyseed, nuts or fruit filling and wrapped in such a way as to hearken back to the baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes. There are also nut rolls and bobalky, stuffed dough balls, to eat while children sing kolady, or Christmas carols. Zazvornikys may be served with coffee or tea as the family and friend settle in, but that is an American addition, where coffee is king.

While the traditions may vary from house-to-house, or from culture-to-culture, every family who keeps the velija shares the same sentiments. Linda Steinbart (nee Gereg), a third generation Slovak, celebrates the velija every year as she has done her entire life. She reflected, “This meal was handed down from my Grandma Cepela, to my mom, and now I carry on the traditional meal. It was and continues to be a time of bonding with family on Christmas Eve.”

It is with Linda and her family that I celebrated my first velija, but not my last. I married into this seriously Slovak family, wedding Linda’s daughter Elizabeth. Or, in Slovak transliteration, Elszebet. She hopes that, as a transplant, I not only appreciate the tradition, but carry it on in our family for years to come. So potent is their Slovak bloodline that despite my European mutt heritage (English, German, Norwegian, and Scottish) our own children would still be half-Slovak.

Steinbart intimates that it is our obligation to institute the velija in our own family. Being the only member of her family who continues to put on the velija, she believes the tradition is dying off. She said that the addition of spouses, grandchildren and relocation has all changed the meal and dampened the desire to learn about the family’s Slovak heritage or celebrate the traditional Christmas Eve meal. This has led to difficulties in finding rare items like the imprinted oplatky. “Our main source, a Catholic Church in Chicago, closed,” she said, “before computers it took hours of research and networking to locate sources for oplatky.”

Even though the meal changed and the tradition is waning, she makes the effort each year, “When mom died the tradition become less important, but I could not let go of the warm memories and to this day I bring extended family into our home to share this wonderful meal.” She prays that her children will carry on the Slovak tradition.

In Houston, a young woman by the name of Julie Marencic, a fourth generation Slovak, cooks pirohy and passes the oplatky each year in her household as well. Having since been married and moved to Houston for work and study, my wife and I celebrate the velija with Julie and her husband Andy, their children Paul and Elyse. Just as we passed the oplatky with family in Phoenix, we now share in the meaning of the meal with these friends become family because of our shared Slovak heritage. Asked whether the tradition is dying off, Marencic replied, “I am fortunate to be married to someone who has similar traditions to my family.” For Marencic and all those who maintain the velija, it is the only way they can imagine celebrating the sacred winter holidays.

“Something about going through the old ways, your body, your mind and your heart respond to it. There is something in the DNA that says, ‘this is how you celebrate Christmas,’” said Treena Rowan. For those with Slovak heritage, the velija and other Slavic Christmas traditions may be the only thing that connects them to their ancestral roots. For that reason alone, it is worth the effort to resurrect long-established recipes and to put on the meal for family and friends.

Mary-Ellen Fillo, a popular radio personality, said, “I never celebrate the Slovak side of my heritage except on Christmas Eve.” She said, “As distanced as I am from my ancestors, there is a peace to celebrating roots, even for one night. And there is comfort in having family around you and sharing in something that is personal and warm as you remember what the evening is all about.”

As some Slovaks move away from the velija and others pine for what is lost in cultural transmission, this foreigner has migrated through this meal. Rootless in heritage, without any strong Christmas traditions other than what popular culture and Coca-Cola has given me, I have moved into the Slovak world, and fellowshipping with a new family and yoking myself with new friends, through the meal.

This year, I am no longer a stranger. My wife bakes the kolackys and zazvornikys, Julie rolls the orechnovik, and Andy and I fight over the last of the lekvar — the stuffed prunes. The wrestling gets more playfully forceful as the wine continues to flow. I hide the hay for the children to discover and beam with pride over the zazvorniky stars that I myself rolled out to bake. But, significantly, I no longer sit at the right of Paul, my father-in-law, but instead I open the oplatky and pass it around. I am the one who speaks the blessing and explains the meaning of the courses. To my right is Paul, Andy's young son. As the oplatky rests in his hands he novicely looks to me with a quizzical look. I grab the honey, place some on the wafer bearing the theotokos — the image of Mary, “the mother of God” — and, as a migrant into an imagined Slovak-American community, pass on a tradition that transports those at table through time and space — to Slovakia, Chicago, and Bethlehem.