religious nationalism

Actions create consequences

Please understand that I believe the overwhelming majority of people who see themselves as either religious or nationalists are not violent. But there is a subset in a number of places I want to discuss today. I am not, however, seeking to make all Believers or nationalists into violent communities.

One of the more notable trends of the past decade is increasing pervasiveness of religious nationalism. It’s tempting to assume that it only pertains to the aggressive linkage between violent Christians and a desire to advance nationalist causes in the United States. What is so important in my analysis is how commonly we see it in other religions and nations. I wonder whether this is a threat we are vastly underappreciating as we look at other seemingly more immediate challenges. Do these movements imply consequences for the international community?

The term religious nationalism often is ascribed in various online sources to Carlton Hayes, a Baptist-cum-Catholic Ambassador of Franklin Roosevelt to Franco’s Spain in the early 1940s. Hayes himself had a fascinating background. Born in 1882, he became a professional historian at Columbia University, serving at the pinnacle of his profession as a President of the American Historical Association during a period of strong anti-Catholicism in the academic world.

His initial specialty was German history but Hayes became increasingly interested in nationalism as a phenomenon. Hayes’s relationship with Francisco Franco as Roosevelt’s envoy was controversial because many liberals found him too accommodating to the Generalissimo’s Fascist views while Hayes argued Franco was more malleable than ‘totalitarian’ Hitler. (This debate seems, almost a century later, as irrelevant to those oppressed by either Hitler or Franco who both ruled with iron grips to prevent domestic opposition. Indeed, Hayes’s description of the difference between the types of regimes sounds strikingly similar to the late U.N. Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick’s famous article in Commentary that argued we could get along with authoritarians but not totalitarians. I suppose as both were writing from the perspective of U.S. interests they had a point but the nature of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes is still brutal on the receiving end.)

Hayes’s asserted that religious nationalism boiled down to nationalism functioning as a religion.

Most relevant today, however, is the interwining of religious beliefs and nationalist behaviour. Anna Grzymala-Busse, a scholar writing in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia, refers to the mixing of religious beliefs with national goals and identifications. She further expands that this phenomenon empowers what traditionally in America were non-governmental influence to affect, if not direct, policy. This can result in dramatic policy shifts or even violence if applied to its maximum lengths.

This action also generates the consequence of privileging those who ascribe to the relevant religion while marginalising those who do not. The act of focusing on ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’, as justified by the religion’s authoritative sources according to ‘sacred texts’, can become a wedge through any society. At its heart, religious nationalism creates ‘us versus them’ narratives—and associated consequences.

Thomas Jefferson began 1802 with a letter to the Danville Baptist Church of Connecticut citing a ‘wall of separation between Church and State’, one of the pillars of American society. Jefferson believed that separation prohibited the government from intervening between a man and his religious views to form the basis to the Establishment Clause of the Constitution which prohibits us from having a state religion in the United States. I have always found it somewhat odd when any denomination, usually Christian, advocates for the creation of a state religion since so many of our immigrants came at least in part to achieve freedom of religious oppression so characteristic in much of the remainder of the world. And we have Jefferson’s words regarding the ‘wall of separation’ so anyone can be quite certain of his meaning and concerns.

That is not to say that Christians have entirely appreciated Jefferson’s Wall, arguing instead that God’s intention was to make the United States a country to advance their religious aspirations in conjunction with the nation itself. Christian nationalism resurfaced strongly over the past forty years, roughly coinciding with the rise of Ronald Reagan anti-communism and the need for a smaller federal government apparatus, but the concept is hardly new. We have long tried to exclude ‘others’ from many groups throughout our history because of the range of belief systems this vast nation has attracted or because of the colour of their skin or their ethnic origins or gender. Christian nationalism has been strong more recently because we were in one of the cycles of greater religious fervour that wash through the nation periodically.

Like so many things, I am not a specialist on this topic though I do recognise it is not merely a social and religious movement in the United States. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 heralded a return to a theocratic state conflating Persian Shi’ite Islamic principles with the administration of internal governance and expanded influence abroad. The anti-Israel position Teheran has taken over the past decades certainly harbours Islamic nationalism.

The devastating manifestation of Sunni Islamic nationalism of Usama bin Laden needs little reminder. He personally interwove the concepts of destroying Christian and secular cultures. According to Lawrence Wright’s absolutely brilliant The Looming Tower, bin Laden and other Islamic theologians saw equated the infidel thoughts of the west with secular trends, thus justifying attacks against them. We see similar small scale evidence through attacks by Islamic State elements in Nigeria and West Africa, Pakistan, and even in the Indonesia bombings twenty years ago. Each instance replicated the need to cleanse society of western/secular/Christian elements while returning whatever nation to its supposed Islamic roots. The Sunni Islamic nationalists seem to obfuscate the distinction between their movements and some of the secular Arab nationalism of the region but the basis to their operational theory is that Christianity is at the root of problems, even those the latter is a Abrahamic religion tolerated in the Koran.

More recently, three new appearances of religious nationalism illustrate important warnings. Binyamin Netanyahu’s reliance on a Jewish nationalism in Israel indeed is new. Israel, founded primarily by secular Jews from the Ashkenazi world of Eastern Europe in the final decades of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, is demographically far different seventy-five years later. Today, Jews who consider themselves ‘ultra-orthodox’ and militate for the state to enforce religious strictures has quadrupled over the past thirty years, now consisting of more than a million within Israel itself.

Whatever Netanyahu’s aspirations to cling to power, he is also under significant pressure from the ultrareligious coalition partners who seek to expand Israel’s territory for both protection and because of the expanse of Judea-Samaria in the center of Jewish culture and history. The aggressive arguments for replacing Palestinian communities with Jewish settlers in the West Bank shows the depth of a Jewish nationalism essential to survival in their eyes. Put otherwise, the war in Gaza for vengeance against the 7 October attackers includes elements of strong Jewish nationalism more overtly than in prior conflicts.

Vladimir Putin’s unfettered usage of Russian nationalism to solidify coordination with the Russian Orthodox Church is a return to the atmosphere of czarist Russia. Putin has fomented attacks on religious minorities, particularly anti-Semitic and anti-Chechin (Muslim) sentiments, since he slid into power a quarter century ago. His war against the Islamic and other ethnic minorities invariably stokes Russian Orthodox nationalism, leaving no question of his self-confidence he can cultivate support from the average Russian. It’s difficult to see his war on Ukraine as nearly so personal if Vlodomir Zelenskii were not a Jewish democratically-elected leader aspiring in the years proceeding the conflict to western values.

Finally, Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalism is appearing increasingly virulent. India suffered horrible progroms during the months leading to the Partition in 1947. First elected as Prime Minister ten years ago, Modi’s exclusionary laws and exortations towards excluding the many other religious people of India is unapologetic, frequently on the cusp of exhorting nationalists to target fellow non-Hindu citizens. Modi has international stature as chief of the largest populated country on the planet but, within the traditionally secular Indian state, his obvious reliance on Hindu nationalist support means most of the citizens are facing gradual exclusion from decision-making or the policy goals of the government in Delhi. The associated shrinking of Indian democracy can have catastrophic implications for the Subcontinent as it exacerbates problems with Pakistan but also models attrocious behaviour for other multi-religious and multi-ethnic countries.

If religious nationalism were only an instrument of a single country, the phenomenon might be less dangerous. But it is manifested in other places such as Hungary under Viktor Orban with likely appearances in places as yet undiscovered. Religious nationalism is both an instrument and a goal which makes governing institutions all the more fragile in the hands of personally ambitious politicians.

in 1994 when I was the National War College core course director for The Geostrategic Context, I brought in Dr. Scott Appleby of the University of Notre Dame to discuss radicalisation as a possible trend in the global community. It raised a few eye brows as the world at that time had not yet witnessed 9/11. The February 1993 misfire at the World Trade Center and other seemingly unrelated violence did not register as important any more than Putin’s war against the Chechins unveiled his march to extend Russian Orthodox nationalism. Appleby answered my call by discussing the hint of nationalism under the guise of religious fervour but neither did he cite specific concerns nor we did we as students of national security strategy consider true implications.

I don’t pretend I have solutions to address implications of these movements. But actions do create consequences. These differing religious-infused nationalisms seem unlikely to cooperate as each has its own interests but a common belief among all of their supporters is the fear of extermination by those with different beliefs, thus justifying actions against perceived ‘existential’ threats. That has major implications for the world at a time when our focus increasingly in on China and political threats. Religious nationalism presents a far different threat to western liberal democracy where freedoms to exercise our beliefs are sacrosanct. The implications of these spreading movements is diabolical should they seek to impose their beliefs on their societies and others.

Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps these are insignificant movements but I worry they are more powerful and perhaps more coordinated than we realise. Any thoughts? I welcome your reactions to this column and all others. Please do send me your thoughts.

It was a cloudy day but the flowers of spring are beautiful.

Be well and be safe. FIN

‘Jefferson’s Wall of Separation’, usconstitution.com, retrieved at https://usconstitution.net/jeffwall.html

Jeane D. Kirkpatrick, ‘Dictatorships and Double Standards’, Commentary, 68:5, pp. 34-45.

Brandon Marlon, ‘Fact Sheet: Jewish Communities in Judea & Samaria’, TheTimesofIsrael.com, 19 April 2016, retrieved at https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/fact-sheet-jewish-communities-in-judea-samaria/

Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower. New York: Knopf, 2006.