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Ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, various voices in the Russian public sphere have been trying to make sense of Russia's new place in the world, its geopolitical horizons, and the identity of its people. One of the dominant trends that have emerged is Orthodox imperialism, which combines religious symbols and narratives with a geopolitical vision of Russian expansion and "reunification". This article provides an overview of the Russian Orthodox imperialist voices, analysing the political norms and identities they have enabled. Our investigation shows that by advancing a programme that combines geopolitical restoration and eschatological religious mission, Orthodox imperialism offers an ideological solution to the problem of Russia's lost great-power status. This solution, however, does not envisage a bright future for Russia or the world. On the contrary, it remains firmly fixated on the past, foretelling of an apocalyptic disaster if Moscow does not regain its former imperial glory and exercise its divine role as a "restrainer" to any global domination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religion has become an increasingly pronounced force in American politics, most notably among White evangelicals, nearly two-thirds of whom identify with Christian nationalism. This group contends that conservative, biblically rooted Christian values should determine the social and cultural landscape of our society and seeks to pass laws that help actualize this goal. This article explores the fundamental beliefs that enable White evangelicalism's compatibility with Christian nationalism. More specifically, it considers how the myth of America's Christian origins prompts a yearning for Christendom that—when coupled with a theological shift from a strict non-interventionist two kingdoms doctrine to a more fluid conception of kingdoms and laws—allows White evangelicals to cordon off Jesus's life and teachings from their political activities. This relegation of Jesus to the Christian's spiritual life enables White evangelicals to pursue a Christian ordering of society that is estranged from the person of Christ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study seeks to examine the process by which han was established as a core emotion in salpurichum (salpuri dance), and uncover the background and triggers leading to its formation. From the early 20th century to the early 1960s, salpurichum was known as the "impromptu", "heoteun", and "handkerchief" dance, and it included an aspect of playfulness. However, since the mid-1960s, it has been increasingly interpreted as an expression of women's sorrow, reflecting the view that the tradition encapsulates women's suffering. In the 1980s, in the wake of the shamanic origin hypothesis proposed by Byeong-ho Jeong, the historical value of salpurichum was legitimized. It was performed at protests and was used as a shamanistic dance in accordance with this hypothesis. Accordingly, it began to be interpreted as a women's and national han. Concurrently, the authoritarian government promoted shamanism as part of Korea's indigenous identity during the 1988 Seoul Olympics, with salpurichum emerging as a representative traditional dance imbued with han. Therefore, the incorporation of han into salpurichum can be seen as a result of the nationalist political agendas advanced by two opposing groups. After salpurichum was designated as a national intangible heritage in 1990, han was academically completed and salpurichum became institutionalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Israel's founding, being a "Jewish state" has been central to its self-representation. However, Israel has struggled to identify what that means. This article examines the strength of Jewish nationalism in Jewish Israeli public opinion. It draws on a recent survey of 200 Jewish Israelis for a qualitative and quantitative investigation of public responses to religious nationalist statements. These findings offer a utilizable survey short scale for measuring Jewish nationalism and to understand how Jewish Israelis are interpreting these statements. This study is a necessary step to empirically evaluating religious nationalism in the "Jewish state". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Friedrich Schleiermacher emerged as a prominent advocate for German nationalism in the Wars of Liberation from Napoleonic domination in the early nineteenth century. Alongside his work as a pastor and theologian in Berlin, and also as the co-founder of the University of Berlin, Schleiermacher developed German nationalism from a distinctly Protestant perspective, one that sought the preservation of Protestantism in the German lands under Napoleonic domination. While it would be an overstatement to suggest that Schleiermacher's nationalism was anti-Catholic, he certainly sought to preserve and maintain Protestantism in the German lands. His vision of the German nation-state emphasized Germany's role as a divine instrument of God's will in the world. He assumed the cultural unity of the peoples in German lands, that is, an area of land in which the peoples are bound together by the common use of the German language. In his distinct role as a pastor, theologian, and academic, he was devoted to the cultivation of German national consciousness and the establishment of a German nation-state. Schleiermacher's work would help to provide a cultural foundation for the emergence of the German nation-state more than half a century before the establishment of the German empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) is not merely a theorist of religious toleration but also a theorist of religious radicalization. By exploring how religious dissenters experienced religious conformity as a kind of mental and spiritual torture akin to conventional forms of corporeal punishment, I demonstrate that Bayle's influential defense of toleration and liberty of conscience hinges on his account of the psychological mechanism of religious radicalization. Demands for religious conformity do not convince dissenters of their error but of their lack of zeal for their faith. Bayle's plea for toleration, more broadly, urges us to reflect on the ways that we invite those who are different from us into dialogue or risk alienating them even further, an urgent concern today as extremist religious and nationalist views are on the rise across the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Johann Gottlieb Fichte's philosophy of religion combines revolutionary pathos with Christian convictions and transcendental philosophical insights. The result is a bourgeois philosophy of religion that preaches freedom, equality and brotherhood, expects the national upswing of a still-longed-for Germany based on the example of revolutionary France, and praises all this as a continuation of Kant's philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the role of selected motifs of prayer depicted in the works of first-wave Russian emigrants in the creation of a certain type of national mythology. The starting point of the considerations is a reflection on the status of emigrant literature at the time of its creation, during the period of political changes in the Soviet bloc, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and today. From the beginning, émigré literature has served as a certain treasury of images and symbols, which are treated as necessary elements for maintaining the national identity of emigrants. The article presents selected motifs from the works of Ivan Shmelev's The Year of the Lord and Pilgrimage, and Boris Zaitsev's Saint Sergius of Radonezh, showing prayer as an element of ritual, as a collective request, and as an act of deep contact with God. The analysis of the selected examples shows that regardless of the literary form, narrative perspective, or the way the subject was presented, the writers showed prayer motifs in a patriotic context, while mythologizing pre-revolutionary Russia and bringing the idea of "Holy Rus" to life. In the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been an increased interest in emigrant literature, and the ideas contained therein have proven to be very important for the formation of the new national consciousness of Russians. Today, due to another political change in Russia and its political isolation, émigré literature is of renewed importance in Russian circles. The writers whose works are discussed in this study are regarded as the main Orthodox writers of the twentieth century, and the image of praying Russia is again the basis for building a new national identity. The study concludes with the observation that the value of emigrant literature should be studied in the context of the time of its creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, various voices in the Russian public sphere have been trying to make sense of Russia’s new place in the world, its geopolitical horizons, and the identity of its people. One of the dominant trends that have emerged is Orthodox imperialism, which combines religious symbols and narratives with a geopolitical vision of Russian expansion and “reunification”. This article provides an overview of the Russian Orthodox imperialist voices, analysing the political norms and identities they have enabled. Our investigation shows that by advancing a programme that combines geopolitical restoration and eschatological religious mission, Orthodox imperialism offers an ideological solution to the problem of Russia’s lost great-power status. This solution, however, does not envisage a bright future for Russia or the world. On the contrary, it remains firmly fixated on the past, foretelling of an apocalyptic disaster if Moscow does not regain its former imperial glory and exercise its divine role as a “restrainer” to any global domination.

This article argues that from the end of the 19thcentury, the debate about anti-Semitism became a marker for a wider dispute focusing on the meaning of national identity. Integrating the Jews into the polity was part, and even a justification, of the Enlightenment political project and of the democratic state. However, while the Jewish question was fundamental for politics and philosophy in the Enlightenment, in our time, as the Enlightenment fades, the Muslim question takes its place. This article argues that the goal of integrating Muslims into the Western democratic polity under a culturally blind, egalitarian and secular type of non-discrimination has proven to be unsuccessful. Moreover, rather than pitting racist nationalists against liberal democrats, it has triggered a "civic confrontation" in liberal political thought, between liberal multiculturalists and supporters of religious freedom who understand, on the one hand, and secular democratic integrationists, on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study seeks to examine the process by which han was established as a core emotion in salpurichum (salpuri dance), and uncover the background and triggers leading to its formation. From the early 20th century to the early 1960s, salpurichum was known as the “impromptu”, “heoteun”, and “handkerchief” dance, and it included an aspect of playfulness. However, since the mid-1960s, it has been increasingly interpreted as an expression of women’s sorrow, reflecting the view that the tradition encapsulates women’s suffering. In the 1980s, in the wake of the shamanic origin hypothesis proposed by Byeong-ho Jeong, the historical value of salpurichum was legitimized. It was performed at protests and was used as a shamanistic dance in accordance with this hypothesis. Accordingly, it began to be interpreted as a women’s and national han. Concurrently, the authoritarian government promoted shamanism as part of Korea’s indigenous identity during the 1988 Seoul Olympics, with salpurichum emerging as a representative traditional dance imbued with han. Therefore, the incorporation of han into salpurichum can be seen as a result of the nationalist political agendas advanced by two opposing groups. After salpurichum was designated as a national intangible heritage in 1990, han was academically completed and salpurichum became institutionalized.

Since Israel’s founding, being a “Jewish state” has been central to its self-representation. However, Israel has struggled to identify what that means. This article examines the strength of Jewish nationalism in Jewish Israeli public opinion. It draws on a recent survey of 200 Jewish Israelis for a qualitative and quantitative investigation of public responses to religious nationalist statements. These findings offer a utilizable survey short scale for measuring Jewish nationalism and to understand how Jewish Israelis are interpreting these statements. This study is a necessary step to empirically evaluating religious nationalism in the “Jewish state”.

This study examines how Christian–Muslim relations are presented in Syrian history textbooks and deployed by the embattled regime of Bashar al-Asad in its quest for legitimacy both at home and abroad since the eruption of the war that displaced half the country's population. To that end, Critical Discourse Analysis is applied to selected texts from the school curricula stressing the harmonious coexistence between the country's only two officially recognized faiths (Islam and Christianity), in addition to the Syrian Christians' commitment to national unity from time immemorial, as nationalist discourses retrospectively assert. The historical narratives in question are juxtaposed with the ideological inconsistencies of the Arab nationalist Ba'th party that has ruled Syria since 1963 vis-à-vis religious sects and minorities, while being discussed against the backdrop of the recent geopolitical developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hindu nationalism operates on a global scale today. Evinced by the transnational networks of the Sangh Parivar and the replication of strategies such as amending textbooks and patriotic rewriting of history, politics and discourse of Hindu nationalism are not solely contained to the territorial boundary of the nation. In this globalized battle for and against Hindu nationalism, the United States of America serves as an important site. In light of this, this article puts together existing scholarship on diasporic Hindu nationalism with late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century deterritorial history of Indian nationalism to present a broader framework for historicizing Indian activism in the US. It argues that while long-distance Hindu nationalism in the US cannot be traced before the 1970s, examining the early experiences of Indian activists in the US offers useful insights with which to evaluate the ongoing battles of Hindu nationalism in the US and opens another field of enquiry: Hindutva's counterpublic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Christian nationalism is a significant religious and political ideology in Ghana, a west African country whose population is 70 per cent Christian. In Ghana, Christian nationalism is not simply Christians seeking to make their collective voice heard on issues of national interest. Instead, Christian nationalists pursue a religious and political project with the aim of remaking Ghana according to their values and beliefs. To embed and consolidate influence, prominent Christian nationalists in Ghana both cultivate 'insider' status with powerful political elites and develop a high media profile in order to promote their views, encourage the government to adopt their policies, and increase the number of followers. This article makes two main arguments. First, Christian nationalists in Ghana seek to change public policy to remake the country according to their understanding of Christian morals and ethical behaviour. Second, Christian nationalists in Ghana pursue their goal—to build the kingdom of God on earth—in three main ways: (1) strong support for Ghana's national cathedral, seen as a celebration of national unity and social cohesion; (2) attacks on alleged immorality of Ghana's LGBTQ+ community; (3) vilify followers of minority religions to encourage the view that Christianity is the most appropriate religion in Ghana and that other religions are inferior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1902, the Norwegian Missionary Society (NMS) sent its first missionaries to central Hunan, China, to preach and set up a local Lutheran Church. Missionaries in China traditionally had a sense of religious superiority. At that time, Chinese Christians were experiencing a series of national crises, and their desire for self-reliance correlated with a rise in the national consciousness. Hunan's Christians demanded autonomy for the Church, causing tension with the Western missionaries' sense of superiority. The Central Hunan Lutheran Church realized a balanced transfer of authority through contradiction and dialogue. The establishment of a Chinese and Western Council aided gradual realization of Hunan Christians' demand for self-reliance, and in 1922, the rise of an anti-Christian movement with strong anti-imperialist sentiments triggered further moves toward Church independence. However, local churches faced many difficulties and progress was slow, owing to the economic situation, the lack of material foundation, local Christians' weak theological foundation and a highly mobile population. This article examines how Christians in Hunan responded to the huge gap between their own will and the conditions they faced, illustrating the historical process of cross-cultural cooperation as cultures collided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s philosophy of religion combines revolutionary pathos with Christian convictions and transcendental philosophical insights. The result is a bourgeois philosophy of religion that preaches freedom, equality and brotherhood, expects the national upswing of a still-longed-for Germany based on the example of revolutionary France, and praises all this as a continuation of Kant’s philosophy.

This article seeks to integrate the "Indian swami" with the "global guru" and reflects upon why Vivekananda's teaching was conveyed so differently to different audiences. It argues that Vivekananda's distinctive form of "counter-preaching" had its roots in Adhikari-bheda, a tradition that seeks to tailor spiritual instruction to the needs and capacities of individual aspirants. I will show how he applied this technique to larger audiences because he believed that "truth" had a relative dimension that had to account for cultural difference. I investigate how instruction in Hindu "man-making" and spiritual democracy in India was matched by lessons designed to counter "muscular Christianity" in Euro-America. Vivekananda wanted both to reinforce a vision of eastern wisdom and counter western (and at times Indian) prejudices, whilst also attempting to shift entrenched but fallacious generalizations in each arena. In working within this seeming contradiction, I will show how his nationalism and universalism were inextricable, and also tied to his innovative formulations of Advaita Vedanta, karma yoga, and especially "practical Vedanta". I will conclude by explaining how his methods generally sought to pull his audiences away from extremes. The kaleidoscopic qualities of his teachings, I will suggest, explain why his legacy has been so variously deployed by both the right and left in contemporary Indian political culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Chinese-speaking academic community, the topic of Confucian cosmopolitanism is intricately linked to the concepts of "Tianxia" and "Datong", carrying significant political implications. This context arises from the tension between the Confucian vision of a borderless world order and the reality of the bounded nation-state system since the late 19th century. This modern situation constitutes the dual predicaments for Confucian cosmopolitanism: the contradiction between the logic of Datong and the logic of national empowerment, as well as the conflict between the specific Confucian identity and the universal concern for the world. Represented by notable figures like Liang Qichao, modern scholars have devoted themselves to resolving these predicaments. On one hand, Liang, in contrast to his teacher Kang Youwei, emphasized the coexistence of the global ideal and the nation-state system. He proposed the concept of a 'cosmopolitan nation,' which not only considers nationalism as a stepping stone toward cosmopolitanism but also views the nation as an organizational form with the world as its ultimate purpose. This response addresses the first predicament. On the other hand, Liang redirected the focus of cosmopolitanism to the individual, establishing a connection with the core Confucian value of Ren. He interpreted the ideal of Datong as the awakening and refinement of each individual's kinship consciousness, thereby mitigating the constraints imposed by Confucian identity and the national narrative on the discourse of cosmopolitanism. This tackles the second predicament. Reflecting on these modern predicaments not only sheds light on the political reasons underlying Confucian cosmopolitanism but also reveals its broader dimension as a universal ethical concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about a particular construction of nationalism at the hands of Romesh Chunder Dutt (1848–1909), the well-known exponent of 'economic nationalism', in colonial Bengal from 1870 onwards till his death in 1909. In this construction of nationalism, which today scholars would best describe as 'cultural nationalism', the categories 'Hindu' and 'national' converged and became conflated. Through a discussion of Dutt's 'literary patriotism', the paper seeks to answer why it was so in the case of someone like R C Dutt, and what implications we can draw from this regarding our understanding of colonial Indian nationalism and its origins. With reference to Dutt, Sudhir Chandra pointed out that the neat distinction that we draw between 'economic nationalism' and 'cultural nationalism' is fallacious. The paper reiterates and reinforces this argument by showing how cultural and political nationalisms were enmeshed together in the case of R C Dutt. Furthermore, the glorious past that Dutt reconstructed through his literary patriotism could not but be a Hindu past; he was not a vilifier of Muslims, but somehow he shelved the question of the place of Muslims in his construction of Indian nationhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Culture war, as an analytical category, is a modern means of cultural struggle between antagonistic positions that seeks monopoly over the legitimate representation of one's own identity. It constructs culturally contestable relations between substantive elements such as life, religion, nation, status or race, which are heavily invested with sacredness, turning the world of values into a fundamental battleground within the civil sphere. The culture war, more than a conflict of ideological interpretations, is a struggle for meaning, and therefore directly affects the question of identity, as particularly affected by the return of emotions. Hence its link with nationalism. From this perspective, and attending to the North American and European, more particularly French, spheres, the article has a bearing on the nature and characters of nationalism as fuel for cultural wars, with the aim of rethinking nationalism and its relationship with patriotism in order to arrive at a renewed idea of patriotism as an antidote to national-populism, constituted today as a privileged place for national worship and cultural warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aqa Musa Naghiev Karbala'i (1849–1919)—an oil magnate from Baku and a significant figure in the modern history of Baku and Azerbaijan—and his multiple identities are the focus of this article. Alongside his National-Azerbaijani identity, Naghiev's religious identity was divided between the Shi'i Muslim and Bahá'í identities. The circumstances in which Naghiev was born and raised, and lived, especially during his adulthood—as a Shi'i who had converted to the Baha'i faith, living among the majority Shi'i Muslim population who were generally alien to Baha'is—dictated, at times, the need to carefully maneuver between these two religious identities. The Baha'i principle of hikmat provided Naghiev with the appropriate means for this during his lifetime. The problem, however, is in the way his identity has been engineered and presented in Azerbaijan's national historical consciousness as an Azerbaijani-Muslim, concealing his Baha'i religious identity, in spite of his public activities for Baha'is and the Baha'i community, which included financing the building of the Baha'i Spiritual Assembly in Baku (Ruhanie) and being the chairman of its management committee. In this article, I explain this complex picture of Naghiev's multiple identities through the use of primary (documents from national and private archives, and interviews) and secondary sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an anthropological look at sacred textuality by exploring the social and theological structure of Jewish religious nationalism in Israel and the West Bank. It argues that the study of sacred texts serves as a medium through which Jewish religious Zionists articulate what it means to return to an ancestral homeland. It demonstrates how the study of these sacred texts is implicated in the cultivation of two different structural modes through which religious Zionists relate to ideas of homecoming. On one side, homecoming rests in a revolutionary force of intellectual insight; on the other, it is expressed through the mystical and mysterious force of prophecy. In a broader sense, this article critiques the reticence of anthropologists to engage seriously with the broader theological ideas that are expressed through a textual medium that can be so much a part of the everyday experiences of individuals living in text-based societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religion influencing politics and politics impacting religion to achieve its own, very non-religious, goals are determining the reality of contemporary states and of global politics. Mutual relations between religion and nationalism have proven to be one of the most complex and unequivocal challenges shaping contemporary states in the areas of both their domestic and their foreign policies. This article is an attempt to compare two cases which are often wrongly perceived as twin models of links between religion and politics, namely Poland and Hungary. In both states, based either on actually present or on "constructed" Christian values, myths and symbols religious–national narratives have been developed by leading politicians (Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland and Viktor Orbán in Hungary) linked directly to the sacralization of ethnos (nation) and the ethnicization of religion. The conducted analysis has a theoretical character. The sacralization of nation and the ethnicization of religion occurring in Poland and Hungary are presented against quite different historical and cultural backgrounds and levels of religiosity/secularization in both countries. In order to explain this specificity, an analysis is performed upon a broader historical and cultural context and upon a specific understanding of religion and nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that from the end of the 19thcentury, the debate about anti-Semitism became a marker for a wider dispute focusing on the meaning of national identity. Integrating the Jews into the polity was part, and even a justification, of the Enlightenment political project and of the democratic state. However, while the Jewish question was fundamental for politics and philosophy in the Enlightenment, in our time, as the Enlightenment fades, the Muslim question takes its place. This article argues that the goal of integrating Muslims into the Western democratic polity under a culturally blind, egalitarian and secular type of non-discrimination has proven to be unsuccessful. Moreover, rather than pitting racist nationalists against liberal democrats, it has triggered a “civic confrontation” in liberal political thought, between liberal multiculturalists and supporters of religious freedom who understand, on the one hand, and secular democratic integrationists, on the other.

Populism and civilizationism have transformed the politics of many countries. Many scholars consider them the biggest challenges to democracy since the rise of fascism and communism in the first half of the last century. The close affinity between populism, civilizationism, and rightwing politics has also been analyzed and recognized in many countries from Turkey to India to the US. However, there are three areas that distinguish the appearance of civilizationism in Israel. First, in contrast to many other countries, civilizationism in Israel is not a new phenomenon. It has been an essential part of Israeli nationalism or Zionism since the early 20th century. Second, unlike many countries, Jewish civilizationism in Israel is an article of faith for all major Israeli political parties. It is not a slogan raised only by the rightwing, conservative part of the political spectrum. Finally, one observes an affinity between civilizationism and populism. Civilizational rhetoric is the mainstay of populist leaders, such as Trump, Erdogan, etc. In Israel, populism and civilizationism have no special relationship as civilizationism is mainstream politics. All politicians, populists and non-populists, have to pay homage to Jewish civilizationism; otherwise, they will not succeed. This paper analyzes the Israeli founding fathers' statements, the Declaration of Independence, Israeli state symbols, the revival of the Hebrew language, the Law of Return, the first debate in the Knesset, and the more recent Nation-State Law to demonstrate how Jewish civilizationism is old, mainstream, and not exclusively populist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research is to present a new model for understanding ethnonationalism: the dynamic ethnonationalism model, which depicts ethnic nationalism as an entity comprised of inherited elements as well as selective and changing ones. According to this new concept, ethnic nationalism, which is usually thought of as a "closed" given kinship, also has a flexible and voluntary nature, similar yet not identical to civic nationalism. Ethnic nationalism is indeed based on inherited elements—innate religion, descent, language, territory, etc., that are not subject to individual choice. However, each ethnic and sub-ethnic group re-interpret and re-implement these elements differently according to changing circumstances, perceptions and competing interests. This theory is examined through changes in immigration and naturalization policies which occurred in various ethnic states. The de- and re-ethnicization processes, the inclusion and exclusion trends engendered by changing boundaries of the ethnic collective, analyzed in this research, serve to illustrate the dynamic construction of ethnonationalism, managed by its multiple interest groups and policy makers. Following a concise review of the connection between ethnonationalism and citizenship throughout the world, the research delves into the Israeli case. The evolving boundaries of the Jewish-Israeli collective and the dispute concerning its definitions ("Who is a Jew") offer a detailed demonstration of the dynamic ethnonationalism model. The Jewish-Israeli case, which is usually viewed as the ultimate example of rigid ethnicity based on religious stringencies, exhibits how ethnicity contains competing subjective interpretations ("Sub-Jew-ctivity") that are simultaneously exclusive and inclusive. Thus, the integration of contradictory ethnic definitions into Israel's laws and policies exhibits a dynamic, hybrid and "soft" ethnic national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how Christian–Muslim relations are presented in Syrian history textbooks and deployed by the embattled regime of Bashar al-Asad in its quest for legitimacy both at home and abroad since the eruption of the war that displaced half the country’s population. To that end, Critical Discourse Analysis is applied to selected texts from the school curricula stressing the harmonious coexistence between the country’s only two officially recognized faiths (Islam and Christianity), in addition to the Syrian Christians’ commitment to national unity from time immemorial, as nationalist discourses retrospectively assert. The historical narratives in question are juxtaposed with the ideological inconsistencies of the Arab nationalist Ba’th party that has ruled Syria since 1963 vis-à-vis religious sects and minorities, while being discussed against the backdrop of the recent geopolitical developments.

In 1917, in the context of extreme anxiety of a rural Catholic population during a period of war, revolutionary upheaval, and anticlerical politics, the apparition of St Mary to three children near the Portuguese village of Fátima stirred up emotions that have created a cult that is still attracting hundreds of thousands of pilgrims each year and that has found followers all over the world. How did this happen? One has to look at the history of changing meanings related to the cult of Our Lady of Fátima, its integrative energy, and the global spread of the cult. The fact that, most recently, immigrants with Hindu and Muslim background are also among the pilgrims to Fátima speaks of the unpredictable cross-cultural and cross-religious possibilities of this cult, in which gender aspects of a female deity play an important role. This paper will analyze the various periods of the cult from its beginning in 1917 and the roles of secularism, the Salazar regime, Colonialism, the Cold War, and migration from and (later) to Portugal, in order to find insights into a fascinating global cult and how it has changed and adapted to a society that has developed a new attitude towards traditional Catholicism. While the history of the Cult of Fátima has been studied before, this article seeks to introduce a global and, at the same time, long-term historical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the diasporist French Jewish political group, Le Cercle Gaston Crémieux, founded in 1967 "to promote a diasporic Jewish existence without subjugation to the synagogue or to Zionism". In contrast to either an assimilationist model which demanded the acceptance of French national identity in the public sphere, or a Zionist model of Jewish nationalism, the Cercle offered a model in which the state of exile and diaspora becomes constitutive of Jewish identity, positioned as an alternate mode of being-in-the-world defined against white Christian European nationalism. Yet to expose the historically constructed, socially contingent nature of European nationalisms that claim the status of organic and natural, the Cercle had to imagine a particular narrative of the historical construction of Jewishness, and this social constructionism conflicted with the almost ontological, metaphysical status they wanted to accord to Jewish exile and otherness. Thus the Cercle failed to imagine an anti-national model of Jewishness, but this failure sheds light on larger fault lines in the possibility of a Jewish politics. The paper concludes that the Cercle's imaginal diasporic Jewishness tries to enable the articulation of other forms of minority identity, suggesting that this failure may nonetheless prove politically productive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on Mikom Zeqo's (1949–2020) work Syri i Tretë ("The Third Eye", 2001) as a New Age reworking of Albanian Bektashism. The success of this book, and the recognition that Bektashi authorities themselves accorded it, make it highly representative of Bektashi neo-intellectualism and beyond: it is a cross-section that enables us to investigate the complex reworking of Sufi knowledge in a post-secular environment, such as Albania. This article examines this specific work while outlining a history of the Bektashiyya from the Ottoman era to the post-socialist Albanian period and highlighting its doctrinal and practical developments. Syri i Tretë is the expression of a secularist engulfment of post-socialist or even post-secular religion, which Bektashism embodies. Thus, Zeqo's work expresses a common trend in Albanian society that is beyond the members of the Bektashi community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars today regard Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen as a supporting player in the American efforts to drum up support for the Cold War; however, this view limits Sheen's influence to the years he spent on television hosting his program, Life Is Worth Living (1952–1957). Yet, by the time Sheen left his program, he had been part of public discussions of religion and American politics for almost thirty years. Before his 1930 debut as an authoritative Catholic voice in America, Sheen had become a decorated Catholic scholar, both in his home country and in Europe, earning him a papal audience and broad support in the American Catholic hierarchy. His early contributions to public discussion were sophisticated adaptations of Leonine Catholic social teaching to American circumstances. Critical to his teachings was his view of the American people as the source for political legitimacy. In this respect, he defied the more reactionary clergy of Europe; however, Sheen's views were vital to his efforts to distinguish why America had a just war against the totalitarian governments of the Axis powers but also a duty to spare people who were as likely to be victims of the regime as they were supporters. Sheen carried this distinction into the Cold War, in which he called for Americans to support the Russian people by opposing totalitarian government there. Therefore, Sheen never advocated the "us vs. them" nationalism so common among Cold War propaganda, which is consistent with his initial opposition to the Vietnam War and his only partial reconsideration of that opposition later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In so doing, they also address the question of whether there is an "elective affinity" between nationalism and religion but have to answer this negatively because similar phenomena can be found in cultural religion and within atheist groups. Religious Nationalism, Fundamentalism and the "Clash of Civilizations" Today, "political religions" largely implement the model of civilizational confrontation described by Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" concept, and often the leaders themselves recognize and are proud that they can implement the concept of such a great scholar like Samuel Huntington. Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism; Routledge: London and New York. According to Alfred Bustanov and Michael Kemper, "in spite of the state's attempt at defying globalization, Russia's Islam remains strongly shaped by global processes of individualization and the privatization of religion, which make religion a big marketplace for individual choices and bricolages" ([15]). [Extracted from the article]

In the Chinese-speaking academic community, the topic of Confucian cosmopolitanism is intricately linked to the concepts of “Tianxia” and “Datong”, carrying significant political implications. This context arises from the tension between the Confucian vision of a borderless world order and the reality of the bounded nation-state system since the late 19th century. This modern situation constitutes the dual predicaments for Confucian cosmopolitanism: the contradiction between the logic of Datong and the logic of national empowerment, as well as the conflict between the specific Confucian identity and the universal concern for the world. Represented by notable figures like Liang Qichao, modern scholars have devoted themselves to resolving these predicaments. On one hand, Liang, in contrast to his teacher Kang Youwei, emphasized the coexistence of the global ideal and the nation-state system. He proposed the concept of a ‘cosmopolitan nation,’ which not only considers nationalism as a stepping stone toward cosmopolitanism but also views the nation as an organizational form with the world as its ultimate purpose. This response addresses the first predicament. On the other hand, Liang redirected the focus of cosmopolitanism to the individual, establishing a connection with the core Confucian value of Ren. He interpreted the ideal of Datong as the awakening and refinement of each individual’s kinship consciousness, thereby mitigating the constraints imposed by Confucian identity and the national narrative on the discourse of cosmopolitanism. This tackles the second predicament. Reflecting on these modern predicaments not only sheds light on the political reasons underlying Confucian cosmopolitanism but also reveals its broader dimension as a universal ethical concern.

This article seeks to integrate the “Indian swami” with the “global guru” and reflects upon why Vivekananda’s teaching was conveyed so differently to different audiences. It argues that Vivekananda’s distinctive form of “counter-preaching” had its roots in Adhikari-bheda, a tradition that seeks to tailor spiritual instruction to the needs and capacities of individual aspirants. I will show how he applied this technique to larger audiences because he believed that “truth” had a relative dimension that had to account for cultural difference. I investigate how instruction in Hindu “man-making” and spiritual democracy in India was matched by lessons designed to counter “muscular Christianity” in Euro-America. Vivekananda wanted both to reinforce a vision of eastern wisdom and counter western (and at times Indian) prejudices, whilst also attempting to shift entrenched but fallacious generalizations in each arena. In working within this seeming contradiction, I will show how his nationalism and universalism were inextricable, and also tied to his innovative formulations of Advaita Vedanta, karma yoga, and especially “practical Vedanta”. I will conclude by explaining how his methods generally sought to pull his audiences away from extremes. The kaleidoscopic qualities of his teachings, I will suggest, explain why his legacy has been so variously deployed by both the right and left in contemporary Indian political culture.

Culture war, as an analytical category, is a modern means of cultural struggle between antagonistic positions that seeks monopoly over the legitimate representation of one’s own identity. It constructs culturally contestable relations between substantive elements such as life, religion, nation, status or race, which are heavily invested with sacredness, turning the world of values into a fundamental battleground within the civil sphere. The culture war, more than a conflict of ideological interpretations, is a struggle for meaning, and therefore directly affects the question of identity, as particularly affected by the return of emotions. Hence its link with nationalism. From this perspective, and attending to the North American and European, more particularly French, spheres, the article has a bearing on the nature and characters of nationalism as fuel for cultural wars, with the aim of rethinking nationalism and its relationship with patriotism in order to arrive at a renewed idea of patriotism as an antidote to national-populism, constituted today as a privileged place for national worship and cultural warfare.

The political impact of Dr. Eleanor Lansing Dulles has not been assessed in her capacity as a power broker who brought her theological understandings to Cold War United States policy. The deep influence of both her brothers—Allen, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and John Foster, Secretary of State under Dwight D. Eisenhower—on global affairs and diplomacy has been the topic of myriad studies. Works draw extensively on family biography, noting that both "nature and nurture" brought religion to US foreign policy. Including Dr. Dulles in the analysis provides nuance and complexity to definitions of Christian nationalism and underscores the legacy of both missionaries and religious thought in US foreign relations during the early Cold War. Contextualizing religiosity through a study of gender and the Dulles family legacy of female missionaries into the Cold War narrative builds upon the existing literature of the Dulles family, religion, and Cold War diplomacy to challenge concepts such as Christian internationalism, Christian nationalism, and Left–Right binaries. Diplomacy is revealed as her form of Christian missionary work in the secular sphere. Eleanor Lansing Dulles became a missionary not for a religion, but for a nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religion influencing politics and politics impacting religion to achieve its own, very non-religious, goals are determining the reality of contemporary states and of global politics. Mutual relations between religion and nationalism have proven to be one of the most complex and unequivocal challenges shaping contemporary states in the areas of both their domestic and their foreign policies. This article is an attempt to compare two cases which are often wrongly perceived as twin models of links between religion and politics, namely Poland and Hungary. In both states, based either on actually present or on “constructed” Christian values, myths and symbols religious–national narratives have been developed by leading politicians (Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland and Viktor Orbán in Hungary) linked directly to the sacralization of ethnos (nation) and the ethnicization of religion. The conducted analysis has a theoretical character. The sacralization of nation and the ethnicization of religion occurring in Poland and Hungary are presented against quite different historical and cultural backgrounds and levels of religiosity/secularization in both countries. In order to explain this specificity, an analysis is performed upon a broader historical and cultural context and upon a specific understanding of religion and nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe.

The paper examines the role of religious narratives in the on-going Russo-Ukrainian conflict. The literature on religious nationalism offers several ways in which religion plays a role in national identity narratives. The strong connection between the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and the Russian state have been well-known. The narrative of the "chosen" nation and "third Rome" have fueled Russian neo-imperial national discourse of Russkii Mir (Russian World) which shapes Russian Foreign Policy in the "near abroad". The Church is used as tool to shape and disseminate these narratives, as a means for justification of Russian aggression in Ukraine. This paper seeks to analyze the role of the religious narratives of Russia neo-colonial and post-colonial nationalism in Ukraine. It argues that Ukrainian religious nationalism, should it develop, will do so in response to the Russian actions driven by the ideological religious narrative. President Poroshenko's decision to support the recognition of an autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) in 2018 was a valiant effort to aid in the construction of Ukraine's anti-colonial religious national narrative. Prior to the Russian invasion, there seemed to be relatively weak public support for the religious nationalist narrative in Ukraine. The evidence shows that commitment to religious pluralism continues to be prevalent in Ukrainian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Introduction to this Special Issue on '"Love Jihad": Sexuality, Reproduction and the Construction of the Predatory Muslim Male' provides a theoretical overview and suggests an analytical lens for how to understand "Love Jihad" and related notions of Islamization through marriage, sexuality, and reproduction. We define "Love Jihad" as the notion that Muslim men intentionally and strategically allure and entrap non-Muslim women with the intent to marry and convert them to Islam as part of an Islamization project. We suggest a two-fold understanding of the concept of "Love Jihad". First, the concept needs to be understood as a globalizing trope, originating from India and spreading to a wide range of cultural and national contexts across the world. Second, we propose to understand the specific term "love jihad" beyond its referential specificity, and thereby broadening it into an analytical concept for exploring related concepts (such as "sexual jihad" and "demographic jihad"), as well as related notions of Muslim men as sexual predators (in certain geographical settings known as "rapefugees"). We therefore include in our analysis related notions such as Islamic womb fare, "grooming", "The Great Replacement", and "unethical conversion" in marriage where they relate to flows of gendered nationalist imaginaries of the Muslim "Other". The aim of this Introduction—as well as the Special Issue—is to contribute to the study of Islamophobia as a global phenomenon and to deepen our understanding of the gendered imaginaries of anti-Muslim nationalist formations across the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research is to present a new model for understanding ethnonationalism: the dynamic ethnonationalism model, which depicts ethnic nationalism as an entity comprised of inherited elements as well as selective and changing ones. According to this new concept, ethnic nationalism, which is usually thought of as a “closed” given kinship, also has a flexible and voluntary nature, similar yet not identical to civic nationalism. Ethnic nationalism is indeed based on inherited elements—innate religion, descent, language, territory, etc., that are not subject to individual choice. However, each ethnic and sub-ethnic group re-interpret and re-implement these elements differently according to changing circumstances, perceptions and competing interests. This theory is examined through changes in immigration and naturalization policies which occurred in various ethnic states. The de- and re-ethnicization processes, the inclusion and exclusion trends engendered by changing boundaries of the ethnic collective, analyzed in this research, serve to illustrate the dynamic construction of ethnonationalism, managed by its multiple interest groups and policy makers. Following a concise review of the connection between ethnonationalism and citizenship throughout the world, the research delves into the Israeli case. The evolving boundaries of the Jewish-Israeli collective and the dispute concerning its definitions (“Who is a Jew”) offer a detailed demonstration of the dynamic ethnonationalism model. The Jewish-Israeli case, which is usually viewed as the ultimate example of rigid ethnicity based on religious stringencies, exhibits how ethnicity contains competing subjective interpretations (“Sub-Jew-ctivity”) that are simultaneously exclusive and inclusive. Thus, the integration of contradictory ethnic definitions into Israel’s laws and policies exhibits a dynamic, hybrid and “soft” ethnic national identity.

Scholars today regard Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen as a supporting player in the American efforts to drum up support for the Cold War; however, this view limits Sheen’s influence to the years he spent on television hosting his program, Life Is Worth Living (1952–1957). Yet, by the time Sheen left his program, he had been part of public discussions of religion and American politics for almost thirty years. Before his 1930 debut as an authoritative Catholic voice in America, Sheen had become a decorated Catholic scholar, both in his home country and in Europe, earning him a papal audience and broad support in the American Catholic hierarchy. His early contributions to public discussion were sophisticated adaptations of Leonine Catholic social teaching to American circumstances. Critical to his teachings was his view of the American people as the source for political legitimacy. In this respect, he defied the more reactionary clergy of Europe; however, Sheen’s views were vital to his efforts to distinguish why America had a just war against the totalitarian governments of the Axis powers but also a duty to spare people who were as likely to be victims of the regime as they were supporters. Sheen carried this distinction into the Cold War, in which he called for Americans to support the Russian people by opposing totalitarian government there. Therefore, Sheen never advocated the “us vs. them” nationalism so common among Cold War propaganda, which is consistent with his initial opposition to the Vietnam War and his only partial reconsideration of that opposition later.

This article focuses on Mikom Zeqo’s (1949–2020) work Syri i Tretë (“The Third Eye”, 2001) as a New Age reworking of Albanian Bektashism. The success of this book, and the recognition that Bektashi authorities themselves accorded it, make it highly representative of Bektashi neo-intellectualism and beyond: it is a cross-section that enables us to investigate the complex reworking of Sufi knowledge in a post-secular environment, such as Albania. This article examines this specific work while outlining a history of the Bektashiyya from the Ottoman era to the post-socialist Albanian period and highlighting its doctrinal and practical developments. Syri i Tretë is the expression of a secularist engulfment of post-socialist or even post-secular religion, which Bektashism embodies. Thus, Zeqo’s work expresses a common trend in Albanian society that is beyond the members of the Bektashi community.

Particularly pushed by the Edmund Burke Foundation and its president Yoram Hazony, the political movement of National Conservativism is largely based on specific concepts of nation, faith and family. Driven by the mission to overcome the violence of liberalism, identified with imperialism, national conservatives shape potent international and interreligious alliances for a religiously based system of independent national states. The article gives an outline of the main programmatic pillars of National Conservativism at the example of Yoram Hazony’s The Virtue of Nationalism, one of the current ideological key works of the movement. It will show how its political framework is based on a binary frame of liberalism (identified with imperialism) versus nationalism, the latter supported as the way forward towards protecting freedom, faith and family. The analytic part will focus on the use of religious motifs and the construction of a specific kind of Judaeo-Christianism as a means of exclusivist theo-political nationalism. It will be shown that Hazony’s nationalism is no way to overcome violence, but a political theory close to theo-political authoritarianism, based on abridged readings of Scripture, history and philosophy. It severely endangers the foundations of democracies, especially with regard to minority and women’s rights, and delegitimizes liberal democracy and religious traditions positively contributing to it.

The emergence of German neo-Pietism after the Napoleonic Wars appeared to contest the dominance of orthodox Protestantism, mainly in Prussia, but also in other German lands. However, nineteenth-century neo-Pietists forged a different kind of relationship with the orthodox than that of the early Pietists and the orthodox about two centuries earlier. Although challenging each other during the 1820s, from the 1830s onwards, neo-Pietists and the orthodox joined forces to confront rational theology, liberalism, and modern nationalism. This article departs from the existing scholarly discussion about these developments in arguing that the Pietist–orthodox alliance, which merged with political conservatism, did not necessarily apply a reactionary policy. Acknowledging the impact of the new liberal trends, these Christian devotees introduced an alternative national ideal that was based on their religious and political views. Invoking the ideal of a German Christian State, the rival Christian strands became woven into a modernized force which fostered a specific German national identity. This was characterized by ecumenical Christianity, a specific understanding of religion, a deep devotion to the German people, and nationalization of Judaism. Theirs was not a democratic nation-state, but an amalgamated model which combined a historic relation to Christianity with new efforts to redefine collective identity in a national age.

I examine Hungary’s Catholic arts industry and its material practices of cultural production: the institutions and professional disciplines through which devotional material objects move as they become embedded in political processes of national construction and contestation. Ethnographic data come from thirty-six months of fieldwork in Hungary and Transylvania, and focuses on three museum and gallery exhibitions of Catholic devotional objects. Building on critiques of subjectivity- and embodiment-focused research, I highlight how the institutional legacies of state socialism in Hungary and Romania inform a national politics of Catholic materiality. Hungarian cultural institutions and intellectuals have been drawn to work with Catholic art because Catholic material culture sustains a meaningful presence across multiple scales of political contestation at the local, regional, and state levels. The movement of Catholic ritual objects into the zone of high art and cultural preservation necessitates that these objects be mobilized for use within the political agendas of state-embedded institutions. Yet, this mobilization is not total. Ironies, confusions, and contradictions continue to show up in Transylvanian Hungarians’ historical memory, destabilizing these political uses.

Times of crisis push human beings, a clannish creature, to retreat into closed societies. Anthropologically, this can be explained with concepts such as pseudospeciation, group narcissism, or parochial altruism. Politically, the preference for closed societies results in our modern world in nationalism or imperialism. Henri Bergson’s distinction between static and dynamic religion shows which type of religion promotes such tendencies of closure and which type can facilitate the path toward open society. Bergson rejected nationalism and imperialism and opted for an open patriotism with its special relation to dynamic religion. Dynamic religion relativizes political institutions such as the state and results today in an option for civil society as the proper space where religions can and must contribute to its ethical development. It aligns more easily with a counter-state nationhood than with a state-framed nationalism. Whereas Bergson saw in Christianity the culmination of dynamic religion, a closer look shows that it can be found in all post-Axial religions. Martin Buber, Mohandas Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy, Abul Kalam Azad, and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan exemplify this claim. After World War II, Catholic thinkers such as Jacques Maritain or Robert Schuman by partly following Bergson chose patriotism over nationalism and helped to create the European Union. Today, however, a growing nationalism in Europe forces religious communities to strengthen dynamic religion in their own traditions to contribute to a social culture that helps to overcome nationalist closures. The final part provides a positive example by referring to the fraternal Catholic modernity as it culminates today in Pope Francis’ call for fraternity and his polyhedric model of globalization that connects local identity with universal concerns.

Right-wing populists across many western countries have markedly intensified their references to Christianity in recent years. However, Christian communities’ reactions to such developments often vary significantly, ranging from disproportionate support in some countries to outspoken opposition in others. This paper explores the role of structural factors, and in particular of Church–State relations, in accounting for some of these differences. Specifically, this article explores how Church–State relations in Germany and the United States have produced different incentives and opportunity structures for faith leaders when facing right-wing populism. Based on quantitative studies, survey data, and 31 in-depth elite interviews, this research suggests that whereas Germany’s system of “benevolent neutrality” encourages highly centralised churches whose leaders perceive themselves as integral part and defenders of the current system, and are therefore both willing and able to create social taboos against right-wing populism, America’s “Wall of separation” favours a de-centralised religious marketplace, in which church leaders are more prone to agree with populists’ anti-elitist rhetoric, and face higher costs and barriers against publicly condemning right-wing populism. Taking such structural factors into greater account when analysing Christian responses to right-wing populism is central to understanding current and future dynamics between politics and religion in western democracies.

With Quebec’s croix de chemin (wayside crosses) as a jumping off point, I explore the importance of heritage creation as the province transitioned away from pre-Vatican II Catholicism in the 1960s and 1970s. I include two ‘sites of memory’: fieldwork with contemporary cross caretakers and archival materials from a major government-funded inventory of the crosses in the 1970s. Heritage professionals have generally implied that Catholic objects lose their sacred meaning to become objects of nation-building, while caretakers view them as still-active objects of devotional labour. Regardless, I find that both parties view themselves as laying claim to “modern” ways of interacting with religious objects, while also assuming that a cohesive national identity rests in part on promoting a rural Catholic past. More broadly, I argue that neither side can be fully understood without attention to the convergence of three trends in the 1960s and 1970s: Quebecois and other emergent nationalisms, Catholic liberalization, and the rise of an international heritage industry.

This article analyzes the development and framing of Catalonia’s “Law on Centers of Worship”, an innovative law dedicated exclusively to the regulation of religious temples that was passed by the regional Parliament in 2009. The law was a legal novelty in Spain, as well as in Europe, where regulations pertaining to places of worship are typically folded into regional or municipal laws and ordinances dealing with zoning and construction. My analysis highlights how the law aimed not only to address the challenges generated by the proliferation of places of worship serving religious minorities, but also to legally reinforce and symbolically affirm Catalonia’s political autonomy and cultural distinctiveness vis-à-vis Spain. I place particular emphasis on how the temporal confluence of heightened nationalist mobilization, on the one hand, and tensions surrounding ethno-religious diversification, on the other, contributed to the development of a legal innovation that integrated the governance of religious diversity within the broader nation-building project. This article’s findings illustrate the role of historical timing and conjunctural causality in shaping the dynamic nexus between religion, law, and politics.