ABSTRACT
Ethnic identity and its practical upshot, ethnopolitics, base their authority on bonds of blood and descent, and even the bonds of language and culture are treated as if they were natural facts. This essentialist position does not hold water: Far from
being a natural identity, ethnicity is a carefully cultivated, and not seldom a manipulated, strategy of social action led by unelected elites who often exploit or mislead their supposed beneficiaries. Religion, on the other hand, provides no unchanging identities. While believers think of their faiths as unchanging, religions are more like highly context-sensitive sextants than like the tied and tagged baggage of unified groups.
