The nation’s sacred aura lets patriotism capture and tame universalist religions.

Evidence

Nationalist devotion bears comparison with religious zeal. At times, the two directly merge, as in Zia’s Islamic nationalism. Although not a believer, Hiroko can appreciate the comfort that faith in a divine power may provide. However, when morality gives way to moralizing, and when that moralizing is used to excuse acts of violence, she finds faith unconscionable. Her principled antinationalism has a Joycean strain: she chooses to fly by the nets of nationality and religion (though significantly not language). — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 431 (#expands, via linked claim)

All so-called modern, liberal nation-states thus combine the so-called rational, reflective, civic form of allegiance to the state with a so-called intuitive, instinctual, ethnic allegiance to the nation. That heterogeneous formation, “Britishness,” grounds the United Kingdom, the political entity, as an “imagined community.” As that great patriot, Enoch Powell, observed: “The life of nations, no less than of men [sic], is lived largely in the mind.” Britain’s rational and constitutional foundations are given lived meaning and texture through a system of cultural representation. They are grounded in the customs, habits, and rituals of everyday life, the social codes and conventions, the dominant versions of masculinity and femininity, the socially constructed memory of national triumphs and disasters, the imagery, imagined landscapes and distinctive national characteristics which produce the idea of “Britain.” These aspects are no less important because many of them are “invented” (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1993). — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 360 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Nationalism and religious zeal can merge into a shared fanaticism. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 431; Modern nation-states fuse civic and ethnic forms of allegiance into a single imagined community. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 360; Nations are bounded by principle in a way universal religions were not. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 39 (+2 more)

Related

• Modern nation-states fuse civic and ethnic forms of allegiance into a single imagined community. (similarity 0.86)
• Nations borrow religion’s sacred aura even when claiming universality (similarity 0.85)
• Nationalism and religious zeal can merge into a shared fanaticism. (similarity 0.82)
• Religion and nationalism mutually constitute identity and resist clean separation (similarity 0.81)
• Nationalism must be read against prior cultural systems, not political ideologies (similarity 0.81)
• Nationalisms vary in how fully religion defines them rather than merely residue (similarity 0.80)
• Secularist bias hid that nationalism and religion fused while remaining distinct (similarity 0.80)
• National identity becomes nationalist ideology only through emotionally charged crafting against others. (similarity 0.80)
• Nations are bounded by principle in a way universal religions were not. (similarity 0.80)
• Nationalism can only be judged through its particular instances, not abstraction (similarity 0.79)
• Religion and nationalism fuse when religious symbols represent the nation (similarity 0.79)
• Nationalism is an ideology while national identity is a shared cultural base (similarity 0.79)
• Religion fuses with nationalism only when it legitimizes actual state governance (similarity 0.79)
• The nation was born from the decline of dynastic and religious legitimacy. (similarity 0.79)
• Religion and nationalism are fused throughout secular Zionism, not only in religious nationalism. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Nationalism and religious zeal can merge into a shared fanaticism. #expands (0.85) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 431
• Nations generate identity and allegiance by functioning as symbolic communities of representation #expands (0.80)
• Modern nation-states fuse civic and ethnic forms of allegiance into a single imagined community. #corroborates (0.75) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 360
• Nations are bounded by principle in a way universal religions were not. #qualifies (0.75) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 39