Politics of Religion and Nationalism

Ferran Requejo, Klaus-Jürgen Nagel, Ferran Requejo, Klaus-Jürgen Nagel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317566052
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

There are numerous examples of how religion and nationalism intertwine. In some cases, a common religion is the fundamental marker of a nation's identity, whereas in others secular nationalism tries to hold together people of different religious beliefs.

This book examines the link between religion and nationalism in contemporary polities. By exploring case studies on India, Russia, Israel, Canada, Chechnya, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Belgium, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Sri Lanka, Catalonia and the Basque Country, it seeks to understand the relationship between these two key societal forms of diversity and assess the interaction between religious and nationalist perspectives. Expert contributors examine a variety of phenomena, including secular nationalism, secessionism, and polities in which religious pluralism is evolving.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, religion and politics, nationalism, federalism, secession, political philosophy, racial and ethnic politics and comparative politics.

1
Nationalism and religion

Friends or foes?

Klaus-Jürgen Nagel and Ferran Requejo

In the field of research of political science and other social sciences the relationship between nationalism and religion has often been mentioned, but without identifying clear reasons for the ambiguities and contradictory trends that comparative politics appears to show. On the one hand, religions have fascinated humans for thousands of years. Human brains seem to be attracted to religious ideas, and religious practices have been linked with different ways of organizing political coexistence in specific human societies.¹ Religious and cultural differences are here to stay (and grow) in modern-day democracies. A harmonious world, without antagonisms, Isaiah Berlin pointed out, is not only impossible, but simply inconceivable.² On the other hand, state or non-state nationalisms seem to be contemporary phenomena linked to a more general trend of group belonging that seems to be both historical and universal in human collectivities.

A few years ago, the United Nations clearly established that a politics of recognition is an integral part of the struggle for human dignity (Human Development Report 2004). Moreover, it established that national and cultural freedoms, which include both individual and collective dimensions, are an essential part of the democratic quality of a plurinational society. Furthermore, it stated once again that when analysing legitimacy in plurinational contexts one often observes a juxtaposition between the perspectives of the paradigm of equality (equality vs inequality) and the paradigm of difference (equality vs difference). This juxtaposition interacts with the individual and collective rights of liberal democracies. As a result, values such as dignity, freedom, equality and pluralism become more complex in plurinational contexts than in those of a uninational nature. The overall challenge of plurinational democracies can be summed up in the phrase ‘one polity, several demoi’.

On the other hand, if we turn our attention to liberal democracies, it is clear that all of them conduct processes of nation building that promote the predominant national identity among their citizens, even when this kind of state nationalism is implicit or ‘invisible’. Over the last two decades, analyses of democratic liberalism have shown the normative and institutional biases of traditional approaches (liberalism 1), which are of an individualist, universalist and stateist nature that favour the majority national groups of plurinational democracies. An alternative liberal-democratic approach (liberalism 2) has stressed the value that the national and cultural spheres have for individuals, both in terms of their self-image and self-respect, as well as in practical terms and in terms of the understanding of the societies in which they have been socialized or in which they live. Therefore, this second perspective uses political and moral arguments to demand that state institutions and practices adopt measures in favour of the political and constitutional recognition and accommodation of a state’s national pluralism.³

The classic institutional measures offered by comparative politics in order to achieve the practical accommodation of national pluralism are basically of three types: federalism (in a broad sense, including processes of ‘devolution’, confederations, associated states, etc.), consociationalism and secession. While the first two types of measures have been studied for a number of decades using both theoretical and normative models and the analysis of different empirical cases and comparative analyses, secession has received renewed analytical attention in recent years, especially in plurinational contexts. One consequence of this has been the analytical refinement of the literature on normative theories of secession.

‘Nationalism and religion have had an ambivalent relationship’, said Jürgensmeyer (2006: 182). However, for a long time this has been neglected in theories of nationalism. Basically designed to prove nationalism’s modernity, the influential works of Gellner (1983), Hobsbawm (1994, 1992) or Anderson (1991) have not given much space to religion, at least not to its contemporary role. For example, Gellner points out that the period of European nationalism goes together with secularization. Religion is only interesting here in so far as it is favourable to nationalization (Protestantism) or hinders it (Islam). In a similar way, Hobsbawm sees religion as a quarry for constructing the nation. He argues that modern nationalism treats religion with distrust, as a possible obstacle to its monopolistic dominance of people’s minds. Although nationalists resorted to saints, icons or pilgrimages when inventing national symbols, rituals or collective practices in order to give the community a sense of continuity, for Hobsbawm and his followers this remains merely artificial. Nationalists could have used (and do use) other types of symbolic elements, and whether they choose religious ones or not does not make much difference in the end. Let us consider some other scholars who have analysed a number of scattered elements of this duality.

Social historian Miroslav Hroch (2007), who is mainly concerned with national movements of small nations and their protagonists, does not dedicate much space to religion in his comparative studies either.⁴ However, he does present some empirical evidence to show that the clergy is one of the principal protagonists of such movements, at least when they change from cultural to political movements. Contemporary ethnologists like Fredrik Barth (1969) acknowledged religion as a possible marker for establishing boundaries between ethnic groups, but while markers tend to persist in spite of interaction, the significance of their content may be lost. In contrast, Anthony Smith, who generally acknowledges the importance of the features of earlier ethnic groups for the configuration of later nationalisms, shows some concern for the continued existence of the ‘powerful religious myth of ethnic election’ (1999: 332), which is, however, only characteristic of some religions. Smith sees parallels between religion and nationalism that go beyond those of a merely formal nature, but he also insists on functional similarities between the belief systems and their practices.

The role of religion in nationalism has not always been downplayed. For Carlton J. Hayes (1960, 1942, 1937), the first systematic author to compare nationalisms, they were, as the title of his last book bluntly put it, ‘a religion’.

Nationalism, like any religion, calls into play not simply the will, but the intellect, the imagination and the emotions. The intellect constructs a speculative theory or mythology of nationalism. The imagination builds an unseen world around the eternal past and the everlasting future of one’s nationality. The emotions arouse a joy and an ecstasy in the contemplation of the national god who is all-good and all-protecting, a longing for his favours, a thankfulness for his benefits, a fear of offending him, and feelings of awe and reverence at the immensity of his power and wisdom; they express themselves naturally in worship, both private and public. Again like any other religion, nationalism is social, and its chief rites are public rites performed in the name and for the salvation of a whole community.

(Hayes 1960: 164–5)

So, for Hayes, a Jew converted to Catholicism, nationalism was obviously not a ‘true’ religion (1937: 18): ‘The religion of nationalism superficially resembles real religion: it has dogmas; it has a cult, with holidays and ceremonial observances; it appropriates religious, even Christian, phrases and formulas; and it instils in its worshippers a strong sense of obligation and devotion.’ In a time when any universal and supernatural religion is ‘assailed or threatened by the religion of nationality’ (1937: 19), only a recovery of the ‘true’ faith can limit the pernicious effects of the ‘false’ religion of nationalism. Features of nationalism like ‘an absolute and exclusive loyalty to the national state’, its ‘feeling of superiority and haughty pride in respect of foreign peoples, coupled with imperialism and belligerency’, its performance as a ‘pagan religion, and adoration of one’s nation and its government’ have to be fought against. On the other hand, nationalism’s ‘application of patriotism to nationality’ can be saved, because if ‘rightly understood’ it is ‘compatible with Catholic Church doctrine and tradition’ and can also be ‘an antidote to that poisonous form of materialistic internationalism’ (1937: 21, 33) displayed by communism. To sum up: ‘contemporary nationalism, in its extreme form, . . . is a rival religion, a resuscitated and fanatical paganism’ (1942: 11). It first erupted during the French Revolution (1942: 1), and it was, during Hayes’s time of writing, represented by Italian fascism and German national-socialism, but was also to be found in the Soviet Union, and its effects can only be mitigated by both the ‘sane’ nationalism and the ‘sane’ internationalism of religion.

In Josep Llobera’s modern interpretation (1994: 146), ‘nationalism tapped into the same reservoir of ideas, symbols and emotions as religion; in other words, . . . religion was metamorphosed into nationalism.’ Other classical authors like Hans Kohn and Eugen Lemberg, according to the overview provided by Schulze Wessel (2012), strengthen the notion of two basic, clearly distinguishable, periods of history, one marked by religion, the second by nationalism, and stress the similarity of functions that religion and nationalism perform (integration, world interpretation, reduction of contingency and political legitimacy), as they are, according to Lemberg, based on the same anthropological premises. Where, according to Kohn’s famous dichotomy, religion is not substituted by civic nationalism (patriotism), that is, in the ‘East’, religion forms part of the anti-Enlightenment elements that are so characteristic of ‘non-Western’ nationalism. This approach, by putting religion and nationalism on the same footing in order to denounce the totalitarian potential they share, may however have blurred the difference between them (Grosby 2001).

Now it would of course be a mistake to neglect those authors that, from different points of view, have questioned the modernist standpoint. Liah Greenfeld (1996), for example, presents late medieval and early modern England as the first case of nationalism, a long time before the Enlightenment, industrialization and secularization, and the French Revolution. Adrian Hastings, from another perspective, sees nationalism not as a substitute for Christian religion in Europe, but claims that: ‘The nation and nationalism are both . . . characteristically Christian things’ (Hastings 1997: 186). Its origins are in the gospels, even in the Old Testament, while later developments of Christianity ‘shape’ not only nations, but also nationalisms (1997: 187). In so far as nations and nationalism have appeared outside Europe, this is due to an imitation of the Christian world, even if the imitators, initially, wanted to ‘Westernize’, rather than Christianize (1997: 186).

For Conor Cruise O’Brien (1988), nationalism, as an ideology or doctrine, comes from France and Germany, and may have been eclipsed today, while as a collective emotional force, it made its first appearance in the Bible and is ‘indistinguishable from religion; the two are one and the same thing’, when ‘God chose a particular people and promised them a particular land’ (1988: 2). When Christianity became the official cult of the Roman Empire, this brought its territorialization ‘and ultimately its nationalization’ (1988: 11). In France, where the fusion of religion and nationalism began long before the French Revolution, rendering the kingdom ‘holy’ (more than the king), ‘holy nationalism’ became ‘the ideology of a powerful territorial State’ (1988: 19), a process that brought Christianity down from heaven to earth. In modern times, ‘it seems impossible to conceive of organized society without nationalism, and even without holy nationalism, since any nationalism that failed to inspire reverence would not be an effective bonding force.’ No signs are to be found ‘in the direction of superseding nationalism’ (1988: 40–41). However, this author establishes a difference between three kinds of ‘holy nationalism’: 1) one based on the idea of a chosen people, meaning pride, but also humility (God may drop it, too); 2) the idea of the holy nation – ‘that is, chosen people with tenure’, where the ‘holy nation’ however, ‘is still under God’, but which may come near to type; 3) where there is no longer ‘any entity, or law, or ethic superior to the nation’ (1988: 42).

This short review of some classic texts shows that ‘the varied and complex history of the relationship between nationalism and religion cannot be reduced to a linear sequence’ (Greenfeld 1996: 176).⁵ The theoretical debates on the relation between religion and nationalism therefore leave us with some unanswered questions:

• Is nationalism the result of the decline of religion (during the Enlightenment), or did it emerge during times of intensive religious feeling (the Middle Ages)?
• Is it particularly shaped by Christianity?
• Is nationalism intrinsically secular (and the result of secularization) or is it intrinsically religious?⁶
• Is nationalism the religion of modernity, is it the substitute for religion, or is it its functional equivalent?

‘Interaction’ may be the right term to qualify the relationship between nationalism and religion, opening the way for new typologies based on empirical research, including the world outside Europe and America. While, according to Ian Markham, ‘historically, religion has always had a central place in the nation’ (2001: 631), this was to provide either ‘justification’ of authority, or a ‘framework’ for the good ruler, whose politics should only in the last instance serve a religious end (2001: 632). Even if, according to Markham, for liberal theories of the state, religion should not be relevant in either case, today it is still ‘one of several factors shaping nationalism’ (2001: 635).

However, it is often more than that. In analysing 15 cases of secessionist threads, Martin Dent (2004) found ‘a difference in religion . . . as a most important element in the creation of a separate national identity, even among those whose religious observance is perfunctory’ (2004: 202), as in former Yugoslavia. And this seems to be a worldwide phenomenon, not dependent on which particular religions are involved: Chechnyan Muslims fear Russian Christians, Muslims from minority ethnic groups fear Burmese Buddhists, South Sudanese Christians are afraid of Sudanese Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists fear secular Chinese, Tamil Hindus are afraid of Singhalese Buddhists, etc.

If generalizations fail, typologies may be helpful. Distinguishing between secular and religious nationalism may work. Barbara-Ann Rieffer (2003), addressing the absence of a discussion about religion in the literature on nationalism, classified the latter into three types, religious nationalism, instrumental pious nationalism and secular nationalism. While in the first case religion is clearly essential for the content, development and success of the national movement or nationalism, in the second case it is only one source of legitimacy for national leaders developing new political institutions. And in the third case, specific religious traditions are either ignored or rejected by nationalists.

Other scholars like Mark Jürgensmeyer (2006) and Paloma García Picazo (1997) identify a mutual instrumentalization of nationalism and religion. Jürgensmeyer in particular identifies secular nation-states with a kind of nationalism that usually rejects religion, at least in Europe and America, but he also finds nation-states that rely on ‘religious images and identities’. On th...