Religious nationalism since the 1970s is a desecularizing movement worldwide, not ancient revival

Evidence

Although mentioning the word “Jerusalem” (let alone its parallels and metaphors) implies a long history, I will argue that the phrase “Serbian Jerusalem” and the related discourses comparing Serbs and Jews are recent phenomena. Such discourses have been introduced by the Serbian nationalist movement since it began developing in the 1980s. The key role of the Church and the use of sacred sites and historic monuments as the evidence to sustain territorial claims were first introduced by the modern Serbian state in the early twentieth century and were then revived at the end of it. To begin with, a Kosovo-centered Serb history is, among other things, an example for the nationalist practices that Hobsbawm and Ranger call “the invention of tradition.” Furthermore, the strong showing of religion in nationalist movements is not a revival of an ancient religion but the late modern and postmodern desecularizing of all three monotheistic religions – Christianity, Judaism, and Islam – that has been resurgent worldwide since approximately the 1970s (Huntington 1996; Kepel 1994). — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 1498

Categorization

• XREF: Strengthens the book’s chapter-1 opening claim (ch1) that the ‘religious’ framing of conflicts is recent. Also bears directly on the MOC hypothesis — testing whether sacralized religion-as-racial-marker is a general nation-state feature (Serbia as non-Western-adjacent but Christian-Orthodox case). — connects to: Sacralized national identity emerges amid state collapse crises to rally mobilization — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 1466; Religious nationalist antagonism developed in the West before being exported elsewhere.; Christian nationalism is a global, not uniquely American, phenomenon (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Global secularization reversed in the mid-1970s toward religious revival #corroborates (0.90) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 261
• Religious political ascendance in the late twentieth century was a global, not Muslim-specific, phenomenon #corroborates (0.88) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 314
• Christian nationalism is a global, not uniquely American, phenomenon #expands (0.82)
• Popular nationalism in the Arab world turned more religious over time #exemplifies (0.78)
• Religious nationalism intensifies during social crises regardless of demographic religious decline #qualifies (0.75) — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 197
• Religion’s resurgence reflects political instrumentalization, not personal piety #complicates (0.73) — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 1664
• Local demographics shaped whether nationalism took religious or secular form #complicates (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3473