Here in Green Bay, the battle over the English resolution has exposed the discomfort that quietly accompanied the shift from a largely homogenous town united in devotion to the Packers football team to a city where Hmong farmers pick cilantro and onions in community gardens and Mexican flags flap from cars on the Cinco de Mayo holiday.
American history is particularly rife with religious groups that can be seen as cults, such as the devoted followers of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, or the Mormons united through their devotion to Joseph Smith.
Republican activists and voters are united by their devotion to limited government and consistently seek a more conservative and uncompromising party.
The boys, 12 to 15 years old, are united by their devotion to their tiny motorcycles, and they aren't alone.
As for schools, although late in the day the Tories came up with the notion of money following pupils, successive Conservative education ministers had neither the mettle nor the cunning to confront an educational establishment united in its devotion to the "comprehensive ideal .In this section Not just for the posh Smoke signals Coming unstuck Stuffed Who runs the police?
While it is easier to point to diversity than to simplicity or clarity among those who early expressed faith, it must also be said that from the beginning the believers insisted that they were, or were intended to be, or were commanded and were striving to be, united in their devotion to the essence of their faith tradition.
Theodore Roosevelt, 1901: We are now indeed one Nation, one in fact as well as in name; we are united in our devotion to the flag which is the symbol of national greatness and unity; and the very completeness of our union enables us all, in every part of the country, to glory in the valor shown alike by the sons of the North and the sons of the South in the times that tried men's souls.
In 1988, united by a nerdish devotion to Ralph Lauren and an implicit understanding that department-store security guards were ill-equipped to deal with packs of forty or fifty kids at once, they christened themselves the Lo Lifes.
And a swarm of viewers on a weekend afternoon may lack the dignity of the religious processions which marked the Egyptian calendar, but those people, too, are united in a kind of devotion.
Despite their disagreements and separations, Goldman and Berkman would share a mutual devotion for decades, united by their anarchist principles and love for one another.
Of course, Germany owes its post-war recovery and wealth to its people and their hard work, innovation and devotion to a united, democratic Europe.
