ABSTRACT
The spread and consolidation of the modern nation-state in principle symbolized the replacement of earlier ideational systems by secularism and nationalist ideology. The Enlightenment ontology of secularism in conjunction with nationalism formed a new modern social order. The universalist doctrines of the Enlightenment were to be implemented within the boundaries of the nation-state. Be it modernization and the ‘high culture’ argued by Gellner or Anderson’s print capitalism and the imagined community, modern ideology is embodied in nationalism and the nation-state. Concurrently, with secularism, the preeminence of religion and the predominance of religious identity prevalent in the Middle Ages receded as secular ideals became the foundational principles of the modern nation-state. Religion was to be relegated to the private sphere as the Weberian legal-rational regime, underpinned by national identity, became the organizing principle.
