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This chapter covers the period leading up to the birth of the Muslim national state of Bosnia‐Herzegovina within Yugoslavia in 1968, the frictions and difficulties associated with that birth, and the rebuilding and expansion of the new state up to the 1980s. The last part of the chapter discusses religious nationalism in Bosnia‐Herzegovina in the late 1980s and early 1990s and the role of the Bosnian and Herzegovinian ulema in this development.

The first part of the chapter gives a brief account of the bloody fratricidal war fought in Croatia and Bosnia‐Herzegovina in 1991–5, which resulted from ethnic nationalistic revolutions aimed at destroying the multiethnic federation of Yugoslavia founded by the communists, and establishing independent homogeneous states. Further wars would continue in 1998 (between the Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo) and in 2001 (between Albanians and Macedonians in Macedonia). The main part of the chapter discusses religion and nationalism in these successor states – Islam and Muslim nationalism in Bosnia‐Herzegovina, Catholicism (the Madonna of Medjugorje) and Croatian nationalism in Bosnia‐Herzegovina and Croatia, and the Orthodox Church in Serbia (and Kosovo), Macedonia, and Montenegro. The remaining two sections of the chapter discuss saint making in Croatia in the late 1990s, and the role of religious organizations in the international peace process.

The first chapter begins by examining the issue of nations and nationalisms. It considers the symbolic and narrative nature of nationalism and looks at the quasi‐theological currents that lie at the heart of national constructions. This leads to a discussion of present‐day instances of Christian nationalism, most notably as found in current American religious and political culture. The chapter then considers specific examples of where Kierkegaard's philosophy has already either been used to support nationalist ideologies, or in opposition to them with special attention paid to the work of Schmitt, Dooley and Westphal. Since no Kierkegaardian critique of religious nationalism has yet been extensively elucidated, it is hoped that, by considering Kierkegaard's political import together with his Christian concerns and intended Christian audience, an additional element and strength of his social critique will become more fully apparent.

This chapter illustrates how “political” talk was considered unspiritual and inappropriate in the American congregations of Northtown Baptist and Lifeway Assembly of God. But even though both churches avoided politics, they enforced an informal understanding that good Christians voted Republican. The chapter describes how religion and partisanship became fused, as members mapped their subcultural identity and drew on narratives of religious nationalism. Political influence did not work through explicit persuasion or deliberation, but rather through implicit cues about what political affiliations were for “people like us.” These political cues were so powerful precisely because they were distanced from the dirty business of politics; instead, they were woven into the fabric of everyday religious life.

This chapter focuses on the Bhats’ tactical narration of their religious history, and specifically the manner in which they present themselves as alternately Hindu or Muslim in order to gain employment as political propagandists for both India’s secular Congress Party and Hindu-nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (B.J.P.). The chapter also examines how Bhats “cast” traditional Rajasthan in a puppet drama sponsored by a state-run bank meant to teach Indians an ethic of saving their money and planning for the future. Bhats are not entirely serious about the claim explored throughout the book that they are the former bards of kings. Instead, claims of royal ancestry are just one tool in a repertoire of tricks that Bhats use to advance in contemporary India. Bhat speech about kings, then, is less representative of true claims to royalty and more indicative of a bardic cleverness which forms a deeper basis of Bhat identity claims in contemporary Rajasthan.

The last two decades or so have seen a spectacular transformation in the perception of the importance of religion in the contemporary world among Western intellectuals. Whereas religion was previously dismissed as irrelevant and kept apart from more respectable objects of intellectual discussions, it has emerged as the focus of numerous, though not always well-informed, discussions. This surge in interest follows a worldwide resurgence of religion in the modern world that even the most hardened secularists find hard to deny. This phenomenon is obvious, but what are less so are the reasons for this rise and the dangers that it represents. One of the explanations often proposed is the thesis of the return of the sacred, the irruption of tradition in a world that had forgotten its sacred roots. This chapter argues against this hypothesis, showing that the resurgence of religion is not a return of the repressed past but a function of contemporary developments, particularly of the loss of vitality of some of the fundamental narratives of the Western Enlightenment and of their institutional expressions within the new global context. To illustrate some of the political implications of the rise of conservative religiosity, it focuses on South Asia where religious resurgences have led to the rise of religious nationalisms. These ideologies have been adopted by large political movements, which have attempted to impose it as state ideology, with particularly destructive consequences. Far from being limited to South Asia, these developments illustrate some of the possible dangers associated with the contemporary religious resurgence, which may be far from benign, contrary to the arguments made by some of the more perceptive scholars of religion.

Chapter 3 explores traditions that confer sacred meaning and power onto landscapes; the communities compared—one largely Euroamerican and the other South Asian—both strove to transplant their South Asian traditions onto North American terrain during the late twentieth century. Here, the increasingly utopian Rajneesh community that briefly settled in eastern Oregon in the 1980s is contrasted with diasporic Hindu communities whose ongoing religiously informed settlements are labeled as heterotopian. This chapter argues that whereas the Rajneesh community's abstracted utopian vision enabled settler dynamics reminiscent of colonial times, Hindu diaspora communities’ sense of sacred terrain that is historically and religiously—and therefore more realistically—layered creates settlements that tend to steer clear of colonizing impositions. Despite these differences that ultimately distinguish failed and successful settlements, a shared challenge faced by these communities has been an ironic “indigenous” nationalism that likewise expresses itself in religiously laden, utopian claims on the land.

The release of the controversial Egyptian film Bahibb issima (I Love Cinema), directed by Usama Fawzi and written by Hani Fawzi, in the summer of 2004 triggered a heated debate of national proportion. Not only has the film propelled the Egyptian Coptic community into the very heart of the public sphere but it has also confirmed the Coptic community as a new player in the cultural politics in Egypt, a challenging new force for the Egyptian state to contend with in the latter's balancing act of secularism and religious nationalism. The crisis surrounding Bahibb issima may be viewed as the culmination of a complex situation that had been developing over more than a decade during which the Egyptian state was compelled to step up its efforts to contain further exposure with regard to the Coptic question both locally and globally and to engage in manufacturing a new image of national unity.

The chapter focuses on the formation of Southern national ideology. Examining the creation of Southern religious nationalism provides another perspective for viewing the strong relationship between the development of Southern separatism and religion. The chapter presents a comparative analysis between the writings of Northern and Southern clergymen and it is further stated that the rhetorical unity between them caused the development of Southern religious nationalism. Both Northern and Southern clergymen expressed similar views on religion and politics and provided a providential interpretation of history. During the secession crisis, they looked back to biblical history for guidance and justification. The political disunion threatening the Union was depicted as a result of judgment by God. The concept of the United States as the Redeemer Nation is presented. Finally, the chapter looks into the incompatibility of the Northern and Southern clergymen regarding the issue of slavery.

The manner in which the interrelatedness of culture, society, and politics has unfolded in India over the last hundred years or so has made the secularism debate today also a debate about religious nationalism and fundamentalism. Its controversial nature comes partly from ideological differences concerning the role of religion in society and partly from conceptual ambiguities that are common in such situations. This book is a contribution to these ongoing debates on secularism and fundamentalism. In the study of the religious traditions, it is concerned primarily with ideas (and ideologues) and events, rather than with institutions. Religious pluralism as ideology—as secularism—is more than the recognition of plurality; it is an intellectual and moral commitment that has emerged as a contentious issue in contemporary India.

Chapter 2 solves the puzzle posed in Chapter 1 by revealing that the New Sanctuary Movement had religious targets as well as political ones, aims that required the creation of a new, interfaith immigrant rights network. In recent decades, the rise of the religious right in the U.S. increasingly associated religiosity with conservatism and nationalism, threatening the identities and public authority of religious progressives. This contentious religious context motivated some religious progressives to create an explicitly interfaith immigrant rights movement, simultaneously challenging both immigration policy and the religious right's dominance. Since recognizing New Sanctuary's religious goals, not just its political ones, better explains its emergence, this chapter introduces the concept of multi-target social movements, movements simultaneously challenging authority in multiple institutional arenas, and begins to distinguish them from other types of movements, a task continued in the remainder of the book.

This chapter describes how postwar Mennonite nationalism was an accidental phenomenon. While previous leaders, especially in the USSR and the Americas, had portrayed their confession in separatist national terms, these assertions were largely discontinuous with the late 1940s. Rather than an inevitable confession-wide awakening, religious nationalism was a temporary response to historical contingencies. While its resurgence confirms the pervasiveness of collectivist thinking in war-torn Europe, it also raises questions about the nature of its appeal among minority populations. Mennonite nationalism, for all its reach, had few true converts. Refugees adopted it to access desirable services, but were often reluctant to discard Germanness; North American aid workers found it politically expedient, but many privately considered it theologically bankrupt.

Philip S. Gorski’s chapter provides historical context for progressive religious groups’ use of civil religious rhetoric. Through an analysis of Barack Obama’s efforts to resurrect the civil religious tradition during his two campaigns and terms as president, this chapter revisits and reconstructs the vision of American civil religion that was originally advanced by Robert Bellah in 1967. The chapter shows that the American civil religion is woven out of two main threads: the prophetic religion of the Hebrew Bible and an Anglo-American version of civic republicanism. It also distinguishes the civil religious tradition from its two main rivals: religious nationalism and radical secularism.

In June 1929 the Mexican hierarchy reached a settlement, known as the arreglos, with the Mexican government that ended the armed uprising in Mexico. Initially, many Cristero supporters in the United States felt hopeful that peace would come at last, but sporadic religious uprisings of the 1930s, known collectively as the Second Cristiada or La Segunda, prolonged the violence in the Mexican countryside. This chapter describes the activities of the Cristero diaspora during the 1930s, as Mexican Cristero supporters in the United States continued to organize in opposition to the Mexican government. In contrast to the 1926–29 period, however, their approach became less militant. Instead, they focused on educational campaigns, publicity, political activism, and long-term organizational efforts. These activities helped to foster a religious nationalism that stood in stark contrast to the revolutionary nationalism promoted by the Mexican state.

This chapter discusses the Anglo-Scottish Union for three hundred years. The Anglo-Scottish connection has been remarkably stable and indeed rarely questioned by political interests north of the Border. Culloden Moor and its brutal aftermath did not entirely end the tensions within the Union. Religious ‘nationalism’ was a basic factor in Scotland. The material and the world of ideas were two major influences on the Scottish governing classes. The cult of national heroes became one of the most popular ways of linking urban Scotland with its history. Most Scots remain committed to the Union. However, the good times presented have not resulted in a final stability in the relationship. It is suggested that, in its tercentenary year, the Union is far from stable but may still have much more resilience than media speculation in the spring of 2007 proposed.

In the early 1950s Sonny Blount and his friend Alton Abraham formed Thmei Research, a secret society devoted to the study of the origins and identity of black Americans. This chapter examines the group’s polemical broadsheets—typewritten commentaries that combine biblical hermeneutics, millenarian warnings, and religious diatribes of various kinds with Africanist mythology, creative etymology, and critical pronouncements on the Cold War. Tracing the emergence of these ideas from soapbox gathering sites in the South Side’s Washington Park, the chapter connects the contentious Ethiopianism of the broadsheets to a resurgent current of religious nationalism in black Chicago at a moment when the city’s European immigrant communities were developing a “harder” white racial identity. The broadsheets draw creatively on Afrocentric mythologies and New Age theosophy to reimagine all of human history—from Biblical lineages and ancient geographies to twentieth-century American pop lyrics—as a racial lie. Carrying the meaning of ancient events forward to explain racial oppression in 1950s Chicago, the Thmei authors also strive to make black emancipation not a distant dream but an ever-present possibility. In the process, these texts furnish important insights into how Sonny Blount became Sun Ra.

This case study of India analyzes the use of hate spin in Narendra Modi’s triumphant 2014 election campaign. The Sangh Parivar network of Hindu nationalists targeted the Muslim minority through classic hate speech in order to mobilize the far right and unite the caste-riven Hindu majority behind the Brahmin-dominated BJP. The Hindu right also conducted a systematic campaign to manufacture extreme offendedness against historical writing perceived as defaming their religion. India’s legal system has been unable to contain hate spin. Laws against incitement are poorly enforced, offering little protection for vulnerable groups facing violence. At the same time, laws intended to preserve harmony by regulating insult have created a de facto right to be offended, which is used by hate spin agents to demand censorship of legitimate speech.