Religious Nationalism

Events of recent years have caused a resurgence of interest in both nationalism and religion as forms of political identity and sources of collective solidarity. This has been particularly true of, though not limited to, instances of political conflict and, in some cases, collective violence that to some observers appear to be motivated by nationalist and/or religious aspirations. These instances of religious politics and politicized religion include conflict in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians; the rise of a Hindu nationalist party in India and repeated instances of interreligious strife there; the increasing scope and power of the Religious Right in the United States from the late 1970s through the early 2000s; conflicts between the Chinese state and minority religious movements such as Falun Gong; a genocidal campaign in Sudan, in which both nationalist and religious motives seem to play a role; a long-standing war in Russia between the state and Chechen separatists, in which religious boundaries are interwoven with nationalist ones; a rise in western European nativism in the face of unprecedented immigration by religious minorities; complex internal and religious conflict in Iraq following the removal from power of Saddam Hussein; the rapid spread of Pentecostalism in Latin America and other parts of the developing world; and, perhaps above all, the rise of global networks of terrorists who claim to carry out their violence in the name of Islam—and who at the same time harbor political aspirations. All these examples have caused scholars and policy makers to revisit earlier views of secularization that saw unilinear modernization processes as leading to a reduction in religion's scope and influence over collective life. Though several decades ago, social scientists widely expected both nationalism and religion to wane as modernization proceeded, the consensus has now shifted, and both are recognized as among the most potent forces in the contemporary world.

Yet while there is scholarly consensus that to understand the contemporary world there is a need to understand the sometimes interconnected phenomena of religion and nationalism, there is little consensus indeed about basic conceptual and definitional approaches to them. Above all, there is a need to understand what forms relationships between nationalism and religion can take and, especially, whether or not the generalized phenomenon of “religious nationalism” can be said to underlie some or all of the recent global developments noted above. What would it mean for nationalism to be “religious”? To a considerable extent, this question depends on how scholars define “religion” and “nationalism.” While these issues may seem to be “academic,” they are an unavoidable starting point for the questions under consideration here.