Christianity inverts God from beneficiary of the sacrifice to the sacrifice itself-- from lion to lambchops. Not a bad trick, but it doesn't seem to have had much effect. In modern times, it's always the "Christians" who are the first to demand blood. That's the trouble with idealism. You can't live up to it, so pretty soon you fall into the same old patterns of anxiety-hatred-violence. Yet the image of your own perfect "righteousness" remains in place and excuses whatever terrible things you do.
Ehrenreich devotes many pages to the curious enthusiasm with which the European warrior class embraced this thoroughly anti-warrior religion. Though communion is supposed to keep the spirit of Christ alive in his followers, perhaps unconsciously it promotes the sense that they themselves are now the predator beasts to whom this sacrificial offering was made. (Idle speculation like this, however, does not appear in Blood Rites.)
Ted