Religion and Nationalism

I recently came across this interesting commentary at the Little Geneva blog:

"While only 52% of Europeans believe in God, 81% of Greeks do. It is no coincidence that 85% of Greeks claim to be "very proud" of their nationality, compared with a European average of only 41%. Religious fidelity goes hand-in-hand with respect for heritage."

This is actually quite true and many sociological studies have shown a close relationship between religious devotion and nationalist sentiment. Possibly one of the most recent studies written on this topic is Anthony D. Smith's book Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity, which argues that "sacred belief remains central to national identity, even in an increasingly secular, globalized modern world." In particular, Smith looks into the immeasurable influence that Christianity and the Bible had on European concepts of nationhood.

Smith is not alone in pointing out this important relationship between religion and nationalism. Smith himself admits he was influenced by the late Adrian Hastings, who wrote The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism in order to refute the Modernist school of thought which contends that nations are nothing more than "imagined communities" and products of the modern age. Another major contention made by the Modernists is that nationalism is by and large a secular phenomena. Hastings disagrees, arguing that:

"[r]religion is an integral element of many cultures, most ethnicities and some states. The Bible provided, for the Christian world at least, the original model of the nation. Without it and its Christian interpretation and implementation, it is arguable that nations and nationalism, as we know them, could never have existed. Moreover, religion has produced the dominant character of some state-shaped nations and of some nationalisms. Biblical Christianity both undergirds the cultural and political world out of which the phenomena of nationhood and nationalism as a whole developed and in a number of important cases provided a crucial ingredient for the particular history of both nations and nationalisms."
--page 4

How on earth could the Bible provide the framework for nationalism? some people would try to argue. Sadly in this day and age, a blind sense of universalism and multiculturalism which denies the legitimacy of ethnic and national devotion prevails very much within many so-called "Christian" circles. Their arguments are largely based on a perversion of certain Biblical verses (which I will address a little later).

Getting back to the topic, Adrian Hastings (along with Smith) argues that the Bible provided "a developed model of what it means to be a nation" through the example of the Israelites in the Old Testament. A nation was constituted by "a unity of people, language, religion, territory and government."(page 18) With the spread of Christianity across Europe, the Israelite model spread along with it. Since there is no political model expressed within the New Testament, the Church and Christian communities have often had to rely on the nationalist model of the Israelites for guidance on building a truly Christian society. And there are numerous cases throughout Europe where respective nations used the example of the Israelites as a mirror through which to see themselves. I already provided some examples of this in a previous post concerning the relationship between the story of Exodus and nationalism. It's quite clear that the Old Testament is filled with nationalistic themes.

Although it's obvious that nationalistic themes prevail within the Old Testament, few people realize that they also prevail within the New Testament as well. Many Biblical scholars have noted the strong nationalist overtones that are evident within the Gospel of Matthew, which identifies Christ intimately with the needs and concerns of the Hebrew people, a sentiment clearly expressed in Matthew 15:24. At the end of Matthew's Gospel, Christ commands the Apostles to go and "make disciples of all the nations" (Matthew 28:19). The event of Pentecost in Acts 2 also helps demonstrate that the division of mankind into nations is part of God's plan. Even the last book of the Bible, Revelations, states that the nations of world will be blessed and take their proper place in the New Jerusalem (Revelations 21:24, 26), which implies that the existence of nations will continue into eternity.

Yet many people will try to argue that nationalism and Christianity are incompatible, and will use St. Paul's words in Colossians 3:11 and Galatians 3:28 as their basis, which states: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus". First off, we must look at the context in which Paul was speaking in. During Paul's time, religious affiliation was often based on ethnicity, location, class, profession, and sometimes gender (the cult of Mithras, for example, barred women from membership). What Paul is stating is that those rules do not apply with Christianity, all are welcomed to belief in Christ and given the opportunity to receive salvation through him. This does not mean there are no differences between Christians, far from it. Paul states there's "no slave nor free", yet repeatedly states that slaves should obey their masters. He states there's "no male nor female", yet repeatedly talks about the different roles husbands and wives should play within the family. So clearly Paul is speaking from a metaphysical perspective. Besides, if Paul's words really did condemn ethnic pride, why does he boast of his own ethnicity in Philippians 3:5 along with Romans 9:3-5, 11:1?

There are several books and articles that demonstrate the close relationship between religion (in particular Christianity) and nationalist sentiment. Hastings and Smith are good sources to start off with. John Mark Ministries has a very interesting article, which goes further into the ways ethnicity and nationalism are seen in the Bible. Other good articles include "The Bible and Ethnicity" by Dewi Hughes, and "The Christian Doctrine of Nations" written by H. A. Scott Trask for American Renaisance. For a more specifically Catholic perspective on this issue, Fr. Stephen J. Brown's wonderfully written "What is Patriotism?" is highly recommended.