The `Sacred' Dimension of Nationalism
| DOI | 10.1177/03058298000290030301 |
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| Author | Anthony D. Smith |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
© Millennium: Journal of Int ernational Studies, 2000. ISSN 0305-8298 . Vol. 29, No. 3, pp. 791-814
791
The ‘Sacred’ Dimension of Nationalism
Anthony D. S mith
The art of inter-state politics has been traditionally dominated by the problem of order.
While there have been periods and types of politics that have valued turbulence, even
anarchy, in the name of freedom and unfettered self-expression, these have generally
been seen as temporary aberrations and the reaction has been usually strong and swift.
Or so, at least, it seemed till recently. In the last decade, the Cold War certainties were
suddenly destroyed, and a new multipolar world emerged, riven by strong popular
currents within a more fluid framework of cross-cutting interests and regulations. The
situation is paradoxical. On the one hand, there has been an unprecedented growth of
bureaucratic conventions and treaties governing inter-state relations; on the other
hand, we are witnessing a host of popular insurrections, ethnic persecutions, attempted
secessions, and ‘national’, that is, inter-state conflicts.
To many, it seems as though the bitter lessons of the Second World War have been
forgotten. They see a reversion to earlier beliefs and ideals which they hold
responsible for ethnic persecution, terror, and bloodshed. Among these, they single out
nationalism and religion. Most of the world’s ills, the y aver, flow from these ideals
and beliefs; until they burn themselves out, there is little chance of international order
and peace. To make their point, they cite the combination of nationalism with a return
to ‘fundamentalist’ religion, which in such places as India, the Middle East, the
Balkans, and Northern Ireland have embittered formerly peaceful relations between
peoples and generated protracted and bloody conflicts. For Mark Juergensmeyer, such
‘religious nationalisms’ have become a major force in world politics seeking to wrest
the nation from the arms of the secular state. Religious nationalisms have the potential
to become the successors of communism; were they to combine, they could challenge
the hegemony of the secular West in a ‘new Cold War’. In this latterday ‘clash of
civilisations’, to use Samuel Huntington’s concept, world religions like Islam and
Orthodox Christianity have succeeded capitalism and communism as the bases of
major political cleavages and have re-emerged as the fundamental zones of conflict.1
1. The ro le of religion in contemporary internation al politics is sometimes equ ated with the impact of
‘fundamentalism’. But this con cept is prob lematic, as is i ts application t o cases within different world
religious traditions. More important, the international consequences of ‘fundamentalist’ versions of
religion are not easy to discern. See the essays in Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds.,
Fundamentali sms Observed (Chicago: Chicago Un iversity Press, 1994). Samuel Huntington’s religious
civilisations, on the other hand, clearly ov erarch and rival nation s and their nationalisms, but it is
difficult to see ho w mobilisation on these lines can b e maintained in the relative absen ce of institutional
frameworks and ritual exp ressions. See The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of the World Order
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). Similar doubts apply to Mark Juergensmey er’s suggestion of a
new Cold War along h istoric religious li nes, whereas there is little evidence of unity even among
Millennium
792
Three Models of Religion and Nationalism
Such views have not gone unchallenged. For critics, this kind of pessimistic analysis is
just one example o f the tendency to understand contemporary society and politics in
terms of the primordial attachments of kinship, language, race, custom, and territory.
According to this view, such basic attachments characterised traditional society, but
they have no place in a modern, secular, rational world of rules and interests. Yet, they
have survived ‘deep down’, alongside the civil order of the rational modern state, only
to re-emerge the moment crisis threatens and the international framework is radically
destabilised, particularly in the formation of new states of Africa and Asia.
Interestingly, in his seminal essay, Clifford Geertz separated the desire for
citizenship in an efficient state and civil order, which he called ‘nationalism’, from
sub-national primordial attachments which responded to identity needs and whose
unfettered ethnic expression could threaten the civil order.2 Latter-day pessimists who
are loosely influenced by primordialism tend to conflate nationalism with the
primordial attachments of ethnicity and religion, and oppose them to modern, rational
interests and the secular state. But this view is flawed by it s failure to define key
terms, a lack of historical refinement, and an inability to see that ‘tradition’, customs,
religion, and ethnicity are interwoven with ‘modernity’, secularism, reason, and
bureaucracy serving modern interests as much as those of earlier ages.3
In this essay, I want to argue that the se views are partial, and tak en on their own,
misleading . If we adopt a more functional an d Durkheimia n perspective we may
see in nationalism a particular form of ‘political religion’ whose tensions with
traditiona l religions have led to a growing politici sation of religion, as well as the
messianisatio n of politics and the elevatio n of the ‘people’. By distingui shing
various levels of analysis—official, popular, and underlying—the nation can be
grasped as a ‘sacred commu nion of citizens’, a felt and willed commu nion of all
those who assert a parti cular moral faith and feel an ancestral affinity. Its sacred
properties he lp to create cohesive natio nal i dentities and engender a se nse of
national self-con fidence and exclusivity, attribute s whic h i n turn feed into the
conduct of international politics, a s a force for stability a s well as disorder and
destruction .
The latter idea, that nationalism is a p rime source o f international disruption has a
wide following. A more sophisticated, if equally pessimistic, view of the relationship
of religion to nationalism was put forward by Elie Kedourie. His analysis opposed a
Islamic peoples. See T he New Cold War? Religio us Nationalism Confronts the Secular St ate (Berkeley,
CA: University of Californi a Press, 1993)..
2. See Clifford Geertz, ‘The Integrative R evolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the
New States’, i n The Interpretation of Cultures (London : Fontana, 1973) and th e discussion in Anth ony
D. Smith, Nationa lism and Modernism (London: Routledge, 1998), chap. 7.
3. The persistence of ‘traditi on’ and traditional forms and values in modern societies and th eir complex
interweaving with ‘modernity’, was noted as far back as th e l960s. See, for examp le, Reinhard Bendix,
‘Tradition and Modernity Reconsid ered’, Comparative Studies in So ciety and History 9, no. 2 (1966):
292-346 and Joseph R. Gusfield, ‘Tradit ion and Modernity: Misp laced Polarities in the Study of Social
Change’, American Journal of Sociology 72, no. 4 (1967): 35l-62.
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