Christian Nationalism and the History of Religious Nationalism
Christian Nationalism and the History of Religious Nationalism
Christian nationalism is part of a much broader historical pattern in which religious identity, national identity, political sovereignty, territory, and collective memory become intertwined. Comparative scholarship on religious nationalism shows that this relationship can take many forms. Religion may provide symbols and narratives for national identity, national movements may adopt religious institutions and traditions, or religious and national identities may become so closely connected that belonging to the nation is implicitly or explicitly associated with belonging to a particular faith.
The history of religious nationalism therefore extends far beyond contemporary debates over Christian nationalism in the United States. Catholic nationalism in nineteenth-century Europe, Orthodox nationalism in Eastern Europe, Hindu nationalism in India, Islamic nationalist movements in Indonesia and Turkey, Sikh nationalism in Punjab and the diaspora, and Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar all demonstrate different ways religious traditions can contribute to conceptions of nationhood.
Across these cases, recurring themes include national exceptionalism, sacred territory, collective chosenness, historical memory, civilizational identity, religious education, perceived threats from outsiders, anti-colonial resistance, and disputes over the relationship between religious authority and the secular state.
Religion and the Formation of National Identity
Scholars have developed several approaches for understanding the relationship between religion and nationalism. Religion and nationalism may function as analogous systems of collective identity, religion may help cause or mobilize nationalism, religious symbols may become incorporated into otherwise secular nationalism, or religion and nationalism may fuse into a distinctive religious-nationalist ideology.
Religious nationalism frequently challenges a simple distinction between sacred religion and secular politics. Modern nation-states often inherited institutions, boundaries, historical narratives, and cultural assumptions that developed in societies shaped by dominant religious traditions.
Ideas of collective chosenness provide an especially important connection between religion and nationalism. Older religious narratives describing a community as chosen for a particular purpose can be transformed into modern beliefs that a nation possesses a unique historical destiny or civilizational mission.
Religious nationalism can consequently define national belonging not only through citizenship or territory but also through shared religious heritage, sacred history, moral tradition, or membership in a historic religious community.
Christian Nationalism in Comparative Perspective
Christian nationalism can be better understood when compared with other religious-nationalist movements. Although the political circumstances differ greatly across countries and historical periods, many movements share recurring patterns.
These can include:
- identifying a particular religion with the authentic national community;
- portraying the nation as possessing a special religious or historical mission;
- connecting national territory with sacred history;
- presenting religious traditions as foundations of law or political legitimacy;
- describing secularization as a threat to national identity;
- using schools and cultural institutions to transmit religious-national interpretations of history;
- distinguishing religious-national insiders from minorities or outsiders;
- invoking past conflicts as explanations for contemporary political struggles.
Comparative studies also demonstrate that religious nationalism is not necessarily opposed to modern political institutions. Religious-nationalist movements frequently operate through elections, political parties, educational institutions, constitutional debates, courts, media, and civil society.
Catholic Nationalism and European Nation-Building
Catholic nationalism played an important role in nineteenth- and twentieth-century European political thought. Catholic intellectuals in countries including France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, and Poland developed interpretations of national identity that challenged both liberal nationalism and secular political philosophy.
In Ireland, Catholic culture became closely connected with debates surrounding independence, cultural reconstruction, rural society, and the creation of a national identity distinct from Britain.
Poland represents another important example. Polish Catholicism became strongly associated with national memory through periods of partition, foreign occupation, communism, and post-communist political transformation. Contemporary Polish religious nationalism often draws upon this historical association between Catholic identity and Polish nationhood.
These cases demonstrate how religious institutions may become repositories of national memory when political sovereignty is threatened or absent.
Orthodox Christianity and National Churches
Eastern Orthodox Christianity provides another important model for studying religion and nationalism. The emergence of modern Balkan nation-states was frequently accompanied by demands for independent national churches.
The concept of ecclesiastical autocephaly—the right of a church to govern itself independently—often became connected with political sovereignty. As empires weakened and national movements developed, religious independence could become a symbol of national independence.
In Greece, Orthodox Christianity became closely associated with modern Greek identity despite Christianity's theological universalism. Serbian nationalism similarly drew upon Orthodox traditions, Saint Sava, historical memory, and interpretations of national suffering and resilience.
Russia illustrates tensions between several competing forms of religious nationalism. Ethnic Russian nationalism, Orthodox Christianity, Russian state identity, and broader civilizational concepts such as the "Russian world" do not necessarily represent identical political projects, even when they overlap.
Christianity, Education, and European Identity
Religious nationalism can also operate through educational and cultural policy rather than through explicitly theological political programs.
Hungary provides an important contemporary example. Political discourse surrounding education has increasingly connected Christianity, national upbringing, citizenship, and Hungarian identity.
Schools can become institutions through which governments transmit particular interpretations of national history and cultural inheritance. In such contexts, Christianity may function both as a religious tradition and as a marker of national or European civilization.
Debates surrounding immigration can further strengthen these connections when religious difference becomes a boundary between those regarded as national insiders and outsiders.
Hindu Nationalism
Hindu nationalism developed through the interaction of religion, colonialism, cultural reform, territorial identity, and political organization.
Modern Hindutva emerged partly from nineteenth- and early twentieth-century debates over Indian civilization, colonial rule, religious reform, and the meaning of national identity. Thinkers such as V. D. Savarkar helped articulate the idea that India could be understood as a Hindu civilization as well as a territorial nation.
Organizations including the Hindu Mahasabha, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Vishva Hindu Parishad, and eventually the Bharatiya Janata Party helped institutionalize different forms of Hindu nationalist political organization.
Historical interpretation plays an important role in Hindutva. Competing accounts of India's religious and political past can influence definitions of national identity, citizenship, territory, and belonging.
The Hindu nationalist case also demonstrates how religious nationalism can function through modern democratic institutions rather than existing solely as a rejection of modern political systems.
Islam and Nationalism
Islamic nationalism has developed differently across countries and historical circumstances.
In Indonesia, Islamic organizations and political movements participated extensively in anti-colonial nationalism. Sarekat Islam combined Islamic networks with mass political organization during the struggle against Dutch colonial rule.
After independence, Indonesian political leaders debated how Islamic principles should relate to the new national state. Disputes surrounding Pancasila and the Jakarta Charter reflected broader questions about whether national identity should be explicitly Islamic or accommodate religious pluralism within a common political framework.
The relationship between Islam and nationalism therefore cannot be reduced to a simple opposition between religious universalism and territorial nationalism. Islamic movements have sometimes combined transnational religious solidarity with strong commitments to particular national communities.
Turkey provides another variation in which Islamic identity, Turkish nationalism, territoriality, civilizational identity, exceptionalism, and opposition to secularism can become interconnected.
Sikh Nationalism and Diaspora
Sikh nationalism developed through the combined influence of religion, colonial administration, territorial politics, Partition, state restructuring, and migration.
British colonial rule transformed institutions and political identities in Punjab. The Partition of India in 1947 dramatically altered Sikh territorial aspirations and demographic geography.
Subsequent movements for a Punjabi-speaking state and later for Khalistan connected religious identity with questions of territory, political autonomy, and nationhood.
Migration added another dimension. Sikh nationalism became increasingly transnational as diaspora communities participated in political activism, fundraising, historical memory, and debates concerning Sikh sovereignty.
The Sikh case demonstrates that religious nationalism does not always remain confined to a particular territory. Diaspora networks can preserve or reshape national movements across generations and international borders.
Buddhist Nationalism
Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar illustrates how a religion often associated internationally with nonviolence and spiritual practice can also become incorporated into nationalist political movements.
Modern Burmese Buddhist nationalism has important roots in the colonial period, when British rule disrupted established relationships among monarchy, Buddhism, ethnicity, and political authority.
Nationalist organizations have sometimes portrayed Buddhism as endangered by competing religious communities. Narratives describing the religion as facing existential threat can transform the protection of Buddhism into a perceived national duty.
Movements such as the 969 movement and Ma Ba Tha connected Buddhism with ethnicity, commerce, morality, national identity, and the protection of "race and religion."
Some activists have described nationalist behavior not merely as political activity but as religiously meritorious action.
Colonialism and Anti-Colonial Religious Nationalism
Colonialism played a major role in the development of many modern religious-nationalist movements.
European imperial rule frequently transformed religious institutions, political boundaries, education systems, legal categories, and communal identities. Colonial states often classified populations according to religion and ethnicity, helping institutionalize distinctions that later became politically significant.
At the same time, religious institutions frequently provided organizational networks for anti-colonial resistance.
In India, Hindu nationalist thought developed partly through encounters with colonial administration, missionary criticism, religious reform, and debates about Indian civilization.
In Indonesia, Islamic organizations participated in anti-colonial mobilization.
In Burma, Buddhist reform and nationalist movements expanded partly in response to colonial rule.
In Punjab, Sikh political identity was transformed by British administration.
In Vietnam, religion, national independence, anticommunism, and state-building became intertwined during the country's transition away from colonial rule.
In Spanish America, locally rooted Catholic identities contributed to developing forms of political consciousness before the emergence of independent Latin American states.
Thus, religious nationalism has frequently emerged not only from ancient religious traditions but also from modern political transformations created by colonialism and empire.
Sacred Territory and National Homeland
Territory becomes especially powerful within religious nationalism when political geography acquires sacred meaning.
Religious narratives can create what scholars sometimes describe as "mythic maps" in which historical or scriptural events become attached to contemporary political territory.
A homeland may consequently be understood not simply as land occupied by a population but as a sacred inheritance connected with religious history.
This process can strengthen attachment to national territory while also intensifying disputes concerning borders, migration, minority populations, and sovereignty.
Hindu nationalist interpretations of India, Sikh territorial claims in Punjab, religious interpretations of the Balkans, and other nationalist movements demonstrate different ways territory can acquire religious significance.
Historical Memory and Mythic History
Religious nationalism frequently depends upon selective interpretations of the past.
Historical events may be incorporated into narratives explaining national suffering, survival, betrayal, chosenness, or destiny. Religious stories can similarly be reinterpreted as political narratives about contemporary enemies or national challenges.
Such narratives do not necessarily involve invented history. Rather, particular events may be emphasized, interpreted, commemorated, or connected with present political concerns while other aspects of history receive less attention.
Religious nationalism therefore often relies upon what can be described as mythic history: historical memory organized into a larger moral narrative explaining the identity and purpose of the nation.
Wars, persecution, religious conflicts, colonial domination, independence movements, and periods of foreign occupation can consequently remain politically significant long after the original events.
Exceptionalism and National Destiny
The belief that a nation possesses a unique mission appears repeatedly in religious-nationalist traditions.
This exceptionalism may be expressed through ideas of collective election, providential destiny, sacred responsibility, or civilizational leadership.
Religious concepts of chosen peoples provide one historical source for such ideas. When transferred into nationalism, these concepts can support beliefs that a particular nation has been assigned a special role in history.
Christian nationalism is therefore not unique in connecting national identity with ideas of collective mission. Comparable themes can appear within Jewish, Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist, Sikh, Catholic, Orthodox, and other religious-national traditions.
Religious Nationalism and the Secular State
Religious nationalism often emerges in tension with secular models of political authority, but the relationship is complex.
Some religious-nationalist movements explicitly oppose secularism. Others accept secular constitutional institutions while attempting to shape them according to religiously informed conceptions of national identity.
Religious nationalism may influence debates over:
- constitutional identity;
- education;
- immigration;
- citizenship;
- religious freedom;
- minority rights;
- public morality;
- national symbols;
- legal traditions;
- political sovereignty.
Modern religious nationalism is therefore not simply a survival of premodern religious politics. It is frequently a modern political phenomenon operating through the institutions of the nation-state.
Religious Nationalism in the Twenty-First Century
Religious nationalism remains politically significant across many regions.
Comparative international surveys indicate that substantial numbers of people in numerous countries continue to connect national belonging with the historically predominant religion.
At the same time, religious nationalism develops differently depending upon national history, demographic change, political institutions, religious traditions, colonial experiences, and patterns of secularization.
In some societies, religious nationalism responds to fears of declining religious influence. In others, it is connected with immigration, ethnic conflict, historical territorial claims, postcolonial identity, or efforts to define national culture.
Contemporary Christian nationalism should therefore be understood as one expression of a global and historically diverse phenomenon rather than as an isolated political development.
Conclusion
The history of religious nationalism reveals a persistent relationship among religion, political community, territory, historical memory, and national identity.
Christian nationalism shares important characteristics with other religious-nationalist traditions, including appeals to sacred history, national destiny, cultural inheritance, territorial belonging, religious morality, and distinctions between insiders and outsiders. Yet comparative history also shows that religious nationalism takes different forms depending upon institutional, theological, colonial, ethnic, and political circumstances.
Catholic nationalism in Europe, Orthodox nationalism in the Balkans and Russia, Hindu nationalism in India, Islamic nationalism in Indonesia and Turkey, Sikh nationalism in Punjab and the diaspora, and Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar illustrate the diversity of religious-nationalist movements.
These examples also demonstrate that religious nationalism is fundamentally modern in many of its political forms. It has repeatedly developed through encounters with empire, colonialism, secularization, democratic politics, mass education, migration, political parties, and the modern nation-state.
Understanding Christian nationalism historically therefore requires examining both the particular Christian traditions from which it emerged and the much broader global history of societies that have connected religious identity with the meaning, boundaries, destiny, and political authority of the nation.
Comparative Theory and Historical Development
| Sources of Religious Nationalism | Journal of the Council for Research on Religion | 2026
Special issue investigating how mythic history, sacred narratives, education, pilgrimage, law, institutions, and historical memory create and maintain religious-nationalist identities.
| Laura Silver et al. | Pew Research Center | 2025
Provides comparative survey evidence about the degree to which citizens across numerous countries connect the historically predominant religion with national membership and government.
| Geneviève Zubrzycki | Sociology of Religion | 2025
Reviews how scholars have conceptualized religious nationalism and argues that contemporary movements should be understood through both nationalism studies and the sociology of religion.
| Joseph Harder | Theological Reflections | 2024
Compares religious nationalism in the United States with developments in Central and Eastern European Christianity and places both against the long history of Christianity and political authority.
| The Repertoires of Religious Nationalism: The Case of İsmet Özel | Nationalities Papers | 2024
Examines six recurring dimensions of religious nationalism: religio-national identity, exceptionalism, religious territoriality, civilizational othering, sectarianism, and anti-secularism.
Reviews different relationships between religion and nationalism, including chosen-people traditions, religious exclusion, national policy, civilizational identity, and religion's influence on national identification.
| Mark Juergensmeyer | Religions | 2019
Places Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh nationalist movements within the broader resurgence of religious nationalism beginning particularly in the late twentieth century.
| Peter van der Veer | The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism | 2013
Explains how modern nationalism and modern forms of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and other religions developed partly through imperial encounters and nineteenth-century transformations.
| Neophytos G. Loizides | Nationalities Papers | 2009
Examines nationalism's capacity to combine with different ideological and religious systems and focuses on the adaptability of religious nationalism in southeastern Europe.
| Roger Friedland | Annual Review of Sociology | 2001
A foundational theoretical treatment arguing that modern national political orders are frequently saturated with religious symbolism and that religious nationalism challenges simple distinctions between religion and secular politics.
Catholic Nationalism and Nineteenth-Century Europe
| Marika Jeziorek | Democratic Theory | 2026
Places contemporary Polish religious nationalism within a longer historical genealogy in which Catholicism and Polish national identity were repeatedly narrated as mutually constitutive.
Reviews post-communist relations between Poland's Catholic Church, conservative political organizations, government, and changing patterns of secularization.
| Borja Vilallonga | Modern Intellectual History | 2014
Demonstrates that nineteenth-century Catholic intellectuals in France, Italy, Spain, and elsewhere developed explicitly Catholic theories of nationalism alongside better-known liberal nationalist traditions.
| Ruth Fleischmann | Palgrave Macmillan | 1997
Studies Catholic nationalism in the Irish Revival through Canon Patrick Augustine Sheehan and debates about Catholic culture, national reconstruction, rural society, and Irish independence.
Orthodoxy, National Churches, and Eastern Europe
| Zdenko Širka | Studies in East European Thought | 2026
Traces religious nationalism in Serbia through Serbian Orthodox history, Saint Sava traditions, ethnotheology, national resilience, and church-state relationships.
| Ionuț Biliuță | Wiley Blackwell Companion to Conciliarity in Modern Orthodox Christianity | 2025
Explores nationalism, ecclesiastical independence, and autocephaly as the Ottoman and other empires fragmented and modern Balkan nation-states emerged.
| Edwin Bacon | Politics and Religion | 2018
Uses Russia to distinguish inherited religio-national identity from consciously articulated ideological religious nationalism.
| Russian Ethnic Nationalism and Religion Today | Edinburgh University Press | 2016
Distinguishes Russian ethnic nationalism from the Russian Orthodox Church's broader civilizational concept of the “Russian world.”
| Nikos Chrysoloras | Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism | 2004
Investigates Helleno-Christian nationalism and explains how the Greek Orthodox Church became closely associated with modern Greek national identity.
Hungary and European Christian Identity
| Eszter Neumann | European Educational Research Journal | 2023
Studies the use of Christianity, nation, upbringing, and national identity in Hungarian education policy discourse between 2010 and 2020.
| Philip Barker | Politics and Religion Journal | 2022
Tests relationships among immigration, religiosity, nationalism, and Christian national identification across European societies.
Hindu Nationalism and Colonial India
| Ali Munhanif and Yuli Yasin | Ilmu Ushuluddin | 2023
Compares Hindu nationalism in India with Muslim nationalism in Indonesia through historical institutional development.
| Tanika Sarkar | Hindu Nationalism in India | 2022
Analyzes how Hindutva connects Hindu religious traditions, national territory, history, ritual, and political identity.
Examines the contemporary political expression of Hindutva and its goal of defining India principally through a Hindu civilizational identity.
Traces Hindu nationalist ideas to nineteenth-century religious and cultural reform movements formed partly in response to colonialism and Christian missionary criticism.
| Christophe Jaffrelot | Princeton University Press | 2021
Provides a broad historical analysis of Hindu nationalism and its development from nineteenth-century religious reform movements into contemporary politics.
| Manjari Katju | The Oxford History of Hinduism | 2019
Provides a historical overview of Hindu nationalism from early twentieth-century movements through the Hindu Mahasabha, RSS, VHP, and BJP.
| Reece Jones | South Asia Research | 2006
Shows how ideas of homeland and territoriality helped construct a Hindu-centered national identity in pre-Partition Bengal.
Islam, Nationalism, and Postcolonial State Formation
| Between Sharia and Secularism | Journal of Political Islam | 2026
Reviews debates among Islamic and secular-nationalist factions during the formation of the Indonesian state and negotiations surrounding Pancasila and the Jakarta Charter.
| Moh. Fahsin, M. Abdul Karim and Sujadi | Refleksi | 2026
Studies Sarekat Islam between 1911 and 1927 and the relationship among Pan-Islamism, anticolonial mobilization, and Indonesian nationalism.
| Islam dan Nasionalisme | PILAR | 2025
Reviews the contribution of Islamic organizations, clerics, and intellectuals to anticolonial nationalism and Indonesian national identity.
| Dikdik Baehaqi Arif et al. | Jurnal Civics | 2025
Examines Islamic nationalism during Indonesia's founding period through the thought and political activity of Ki Bagus Hadikusumo.
Sikh Nationalism and Diaspora
| Gurharpal Singh | Routledge Handbook of State, Nation and Nationalism in South Asia | 2026
Updates the theoretical study of Sikh nationalism using ethnicity, nationalism, globalization, diaspora, and religious-nationalism scholarship.
Reviews Sikh territorial politics from Indian independence through Punjabi Suba, the Khalistan movement, and later diaspora nationalism.
| Gurharpal Singh and Giorgio Shani | Sikh Nationalism | 2021
Reviews primordialist, instrumentalist, modernist, ethno-symbolic, postcolonial, diaspora, and religious-nationalist interpretations of Sikh nationhood.
| Gurharpal Singh and Giorgio Shani | Cambridge University Press | 2021
Provides a comprehensive history of Sikh nationalism from the late nineteenth century through the colonial era, Partition, postcolonial Punjab, Khalistan politics, and diaspora communities.
Buddhist Nationalism and Colonial Modernity
| Niklas Foxeus | Religion | 2019
Traces Burmese Buddhist nationalism to the colonial period and analyzes modern claims that defending Buddhism and defending the nation constitute the same moral obligation.
Colonialism, Empire, and Anti-Colonial Religious Nationalism
| Phi-Vân Nguyen | Journal of Asian Studies | 2018
Studies the Republic of Vietnam's attempt to channel religious nationalism into state-building under Ngô Đình Diệm between 1946 and 1963.
| Ana Díaz-Stevens and Anthony Stevens-Arroyo | Cambridge History of Religions in America | 2012
Examines Catholic identity and the growth of political consciousness in Spanish America during the Bourbon reforms between 1750 and 1790.
Sacred History, Territory, Memory, and National Identity
All URLs in this section were duplicates of sources already retained above. The repeated material concerned:
religious-nationalist mythic maps and territorial integrity; scriptural narratives and collective enemies; historical memory and religious conservatism; scriptural nationalism; exceptionalism; sacred homeland and religious territoriality; chosen peoples and national myth; nationalizing religion in the modern era.
