ABSTRACT
What do we, as social scientists, know about secularism, religion, and modern nationalism? The answer is “surprisingly little.” Some readers will be surprised by this. Others may not be surprised at all. What little debate that does exist has been centered on a small group of sociologists of religion who have examined, with much controversy, the issue of secularization. Although the general debate does not focus on the issue of religious nationalism per se, it does address the important concepts surrounding national identity; and a few individuals have made important contributions to our understanding of modern religious nationalism specifically. The goal of this chapter is to wade into the literature and retrieve the useful bits while leaving behind the rest. As a result, this chapter lays out just a few of the prominent ideas that
have brought us this far in our understanding of religious nationalism. Each of the ideas discussed here points in the right direction – either by laying out new ideas about the nature of religious nationalism or by bringing up important questions about our current knowledge. These ideas, however, only reveal a part of the broader picture.
