The Encyclopedia of World Religions

402 S sadhu, sadhvi

grounds. Others objected to it because they favored animal rights, or at least the humane treatment of animals. A few religions, however, did sacrifice animals. An example is S ANTERÍA , a religion with African roots. True to its heritage, Santería requires its adherents to sacrifice chickens. Toward the end of the 20th century the town of Hialeah, Florida, was disturbed that adherents of Santeria were sacrificing chickens. So it made animal sacrifice illegal. In June 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the law. The court found that Hialeah’s law had only one purpose: to prohibit a religious practice. That violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ( see CHURCH AND STATE ). The First Amendment guaran tees all Americans the right to practice their reli gions freely and without government interference. That guarantee extends to practices that may be unpopular, such as animal sacrifice. Further reading: Maurice Bloch, Prey into Hunter: The Politics of Religious Experience (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Jeffrey Carter, ed., Understanding Religious Sacrifice: A Reader (New York: Continuum, 2003); The Girard Reader, James G. Williams, ed. (New York: Crossroad, 1996). sadhu, sadhvi Hindu holy men and women, respectively. There are considerably more sadhus than sadhvis. The names sadhu and sadhvi denote people who are pursuing a sadhana, a way of life that leads to some ultimate goal. According to Hindu tradition ( see H INDUISM ), during the last stage of life a man renounces his possessions, family, and identity and wanders while pursuing spiritual lib eration. In actual practice, sadhus and sadhvis adopt a life of renunciation at many different ages, some of them very young. It is virtually impossible to count or clas sify the many different kinds of sadhus and sad hvis. Some are entirely independent and live off by themselves. Many others belong to organized groups. These groups are distinguished from one

known as haoma. Some Jewish prophets insisted that justice and a pure heart were more important than sacrifices. When the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in J ERUSALEM in 70 C . E ., J UDAISM gave up sacrifices altogether. During the PILGRIM AGE to M ECCA Muslims offer a sacrifice in memory of A BRAHAM ’s faithfulness when G OD asked him to sacrifice his son. A major feast marks this day. Christians do not sacrifice animals, but they have often used the image of sacrifice in talking about J ESUS . The Catholic and Orthodox churches teach that the E UCHARIST makes present the sacri fice of Jesus on the cross. Protestants often use the language of sacrifice to talk about personal moral ity instead. THEORIES OF SACRIFICE People who sacrifice have many different ideas about how sacrifices work. Scholars do, too. Their theories are suggestive, insightful, and sometimes outlandish. None are definitive. One common theory has maintained that sac rifice is a gift to gods or spirits. A formula that the Romans addressed to their gods sums this theory up nicely: do ut des, “I am giving to you, so that you will give to me.” Another theory has seen sacrifice as an occasion for human beings to com mune with the sacred; this communion brings all sorts of benefits. Adolf Jensen, an anthropologist, once suggested that sacrifice originally reenacted events that certain myths ascribed to the beginning of the world. Walter Burkert, a scholar of Greek religions, derived sacrifice from the need to cope with the anxiety that comes from killing animals. Rene Girard has argued that sacrifice was a way to deflect violence that threatened to destroy society from within; sacrifice directs that violence onto the sacrificial victim instead. In a much different vein, some have suggested that Mesoamericans sacri ficed human beings in order to make up for a lack of protein in their diet. SACRIFICE TODAY At the beginning of the 21st century animal sacri fice was a controversial practice in North America. Some North Americans objected to it on religious