Let’s preface everything by saying that religious symbols make poor symbols for a country. Even in the most devout religious areas, I doubt that adherence to a particular religion exceeds 90 % of the adult populace. Certain areas claimed and will claim more but usually this is backed up by serious threats to the less devout. Still large swaths of the world use religious symbols to represent all its people. We at Many Rants choose to rate those countries.
First of all the crescent and star on some Muslim nation flags does not represent Islam. It’s actually a holdover from the Ottoman Empire and dates back to long before Mohammed. We will ignore this symbol.
The Christian world dares to symbolize many of its residents with flags with a cross. Most obvious are the Scandinavian countries with their sideways cross. Since it is traditional to have flags wider than they are tall and since the most common Christian cross is taller than wide, the sideways cross seems like a satisfactory solution.
Still it’s a distortion. More satisfying is the Israeli star of David. No distortion of the symbol is involved and it makes a quite effective flag. This point goes to Israel.
But some countries might claim more religiosity than Israel. The obvious example is Britain with its famed “Union Jack” flag. This flag consists of a central cross and an ‘X’ in the background. Now X’s are also crosses so really this symbol is a double cross (don’t ask me why any country would trust Britain with such a symbol). It was centuries ago when Britain first outdid other countries in its religiosity symbolism.
But Britain had many colonies. Many of these colonies took to having the Union Jack be the top left hand corner of the flag. So a whole host of nations had the double cross (and because of this, I deem them also as untrustworthy).
In the Southern hemisphere, especially in Australia and New Zealand (Down Under and Down Underer), the Southern Cross constellation became a symbol for them. They put this on their respective flags. So Australia and New Zealand have the Union Jack as well as the Southern Cross. They both have a triple cross flag.
Now it seems like it’s just a game. Israel could put Stars of David on its flag like wallpaper. In fact like the United States did with its simpler, non religious stars. Israelis could show themselves as being 20 times more religious than even Australians.
Of course, Christians have long had an answer to this challenge. Which would be the first Christian nation to symbolize itself in plaid? We don’t know but we bet one nation would. From there it’s just an issue of finer and finer resolution of the crossed line patterns.
Apparently Christians would win the religiosity wars because their symbol is so simple. But wait. Some new religion might evolve that uses the pixel as it’s symbol. The country of this religion will then have the most religious flag in all existence.
