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International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

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195561

Religious nationalism and Christian zionist pilgrimages to holy landscapes

Tristan Sturm

pp. 819-839

Abstract

Many studies on nationalism ignore religion or explain it as a function of nationalism. In this view, nationalism is a modernist project that replaces religion by emphasizing socioeconomic factors or cultural or political modernity. Care must be taken in fusing these terms as "religious nationalism," because there are often many reasons for, expressions of, and geographically specific types of nationalism, the use of religious signifiers being but one of them. It is often of secondary influence, an epiphenomena, or used as a guise for political means. I argue that this fusion takes place most convincingly not in how national discourse is inflected by religious language or how religious discourse is inflected with nationalist language, but rather, following Talal Asad's demand, that we understand the category of religion as one of practice rather than solely as belief. What we assume to be nationalist language is also religious practice through prayers, sermons, and pilgrimages. Nationalism can also be a religious practice. Christian Zionists practice a particular form of diasporic nationalism that challenges notions of nationalist exclusivity. They can be best described as performing a type of nationalism: an ethno-religious nationalism. This nationalism emerges from American social, economic, ethnic, and racial anxieties and forces us to reconsider how nationalism, religion, and space can be conceived together. I provide a case study illustrating this fusion by fleshing out through Christian Zionist discourses how they imagine themselves to be a religious nationalism diaspora despite living in America and performing a "civic" secular constitution-based nationalism. It is this imagination and identification allows them to have a diasporic national self-image, a national identification to Israel and Jews that is grounded in an eschatological narrative of the future.

Publication details

Published in:

D. Brunn Stanley, Brunn Stanley D. (2015) The changing world religion map: sacred places, identities, practices and politics. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 819-839

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-9376-6_41

Full citation:

Sturm Tristan (2015) „Religious nationalism and Christian zionist pilgrimages to holy landscapes“, In: S. D. brunn & S. D. Brunn (eds.), The changing world religion map, Dordrecht, Springer, 819–839.