The Physics of Society

“I will argue in this book that the fundamental physics of every socioreligious, cultural-religious formation consists of practices concerning holiness, purity and sacrifice. . . . Relocate the sacred, rearrange the boundaries of purity and pollution, revise its sacrificial procedures, and you have changed the fundamental physics of the society. A revolution here is the most profound of social revolutions, and it is the revolution achieved by Jesus in his cross and resurrection” (Peter J. Leithart, Delivered from the Elements of the World, 12).