A Protestant reading of ritual shapes modern secular concepts like scapegoat

Evidence

It is precisely the radicalized Protestant idea that “true religion” requires belief in “individual responsibility” and that ritual practices occupy the domain in which magic and superstition also flourish that gives us our oversimplified secular sense of the “scapegoat” as a person who is blamed for the misdeeds of others. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 472

Categorization

• XREF: Direct evidence for the reader’s core thesis that ‘secular modernity’ quietly privileges Christian (specifically Protestant) norms — corroborates the vaulted Cooper thread.
• SEED: Essay angle: how Protestant anti-ritual assumptions silently structure what counts as ‘rational’ moral-legal concepts, applied to Islamic legal practice.
• ADDENDUM: Connects to the ‘sacrifice’ article’s framing of ritual meaning being read through Protestant-modern lenses.