 Political sociologist Anthony Squiers argues that these texts act as the sacred writ of the American civil religion because they are used as authoritative symbols in what he calls the politics of the sacred.The politics of the sacred, according to Squiers are "the attempt to define and dictate what is in accord with the civil religious sacred and what is not.It is a battle to define what can and cannot be and what should and should not be tolerated and accepted in the community, based on its relation to that which is sacred for that community."