The Sacred at War: the nature of ANZAC Day as ‘sacred’ This paper will examine the extent to which ANZAC Day can be classified as a ‘sacred’ event in modern Australian society. By applying the works of Mircea Eliade and Emile Durkheim, this paper will argue that ANZAC Day can, to an extent, be considered a sacred event. In saying this, there are some problematic aspects with this conclusion. Both Eliade and Durkheim operated on the presumption that all ‘modern’ religion and practices concerning the sacred could be traced back to the “primitive” religions and practices, such as the religions of the Indigenous Australian peoples. Eliade examined sacrality through a 1 phenomenological lens, declaring humanity to be homo religiosus; that is, regardless of a person’s secularity, they are unconsciously religious by nature. Eliade argues that “archaic thinking”, the 2 beliefs and systems held by ancient tribes, persists to present day due to mankind’s subliminal religious nature. Sacred events are replaced by public spectacles such as sporting games or 3 memorial services, which function similarly in that they generate intense emotions and centre on a single “sacred” time which “transcends” profane time and everyday life. ANZAC Day certainly 4 shares these qualities in modern Australian society as both a day of specific commemoration and R.L. Stirrat, “Sacred Models,” Man 19, 2 (June 1984): 200; Elizabeth Coleman and Kevin White, 1 “Stretching the Sacred” in Negotiating the Sacred: Blasphemy and Sacrilege in a Multicultural Society, ed. Elizabeth Coleman and Kevin White 68 (Canberra: ANU E Press, 2006); Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 13 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1912) “The Reality of the Sacred: Mircea Eliade” in Daniel L. Pals, Eight Theories of Religion 197 (New York 2 and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Ivan Strenski, “Mircea Eliade: Turning the ‘Worm of Doubt’” in Thinking about religion: An historical introduction to theories of religion, Ivan Strenski, 219 (Oxford: Blackwell Pub, 2006); Mircea Eliade, Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), 42-43; Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of Religion, (New York: Harcourt, Brace) 165 Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and The Profane, 165; Gordon Lynch, The sacred in the modern world: A 3 cultural sociological approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) 11 Ivan Strenski, “Mircea Eliade: Turning the ‘Worm of Doubt’” 219; Mircea Eliade, Cosmos and History, 4 42-43