Religion and Nationalism

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at the history of nationalism and its foundation on early Christianity in Europe and Islam in the Middle East and how ideas of national identity were once part of religious identity. The paper also discusses the change to international secularism as a result of the Lutheran Reformation and subsequent diaspora of Christian sects.

From the Paper:

"For a long time it was believed that religion played a large part in the formation of a nationalist culture in a country. Recently, however, it seems that religion is less necessary for a country to be nationalistic in recent years. Nationalism is the idea that your country is an important part of your identity, and that the maintenance and success of your country is fundamentally important to you. In many parts of the world, early forms of nationalism were based on religious beliefs and practices that the people of those countries held in common, but gradually religion lost importance in nationalism and had to be replaced with other things. Religious belief and nationalism were the major defining features of citizenship in the medieval world, but at some point this changed."

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