Nationalism as (replaces) Religion

Nationalism has given shape decisively to the modern world, because its popularity in part stems from the way in which assembling peoples into states has helped with the process of industrialization and modern bureaucratic organization…

…there are rituals of nationhood: speaking of the language itself; the national anthem; the flying and perhaps the saluting of the flag; republic and memorial days, and other such festivals and holidays; the appearance of the Head of State at solemn occasions; military march-pasts; and so on. It is usual for citizens to make secular pilgrimages to the nation’s capital and other significant spots… Memorials to the nation’s dead are of special significance, and often religious language is used…

…History is the narrative which helps to create in the young and in citizens at large a sense of identity, of belonging, of group solidarity.

Of doctrines…nations appeal to principles animating from modern state, such as the need for democracy… Or it may hark back to the teachings of its ancestral religion, and so represent itself as guarding the truth…

…Young people are expected to be loyal people, tax payers, willing to fight if necessary for the country, law-abiding, and hopefully good family people (supplying thus the nation with its people). There is of course a blend between ethical values in general and the particular obligations to one’s own kith and kin, one’s fellow nationals.

…There are the public schools, with the teachers imparting the treasured knowledge and rules of the nation. Even games come to play and institutional role; loyalty is expressed through the Olympics and various other contests…a secular ideology blends with loyalty to one’s nation, and those who do not subscribe to it are treated as disloyal.

...In all these ways, then, the nation today is like religion…

[Today people die for their nation like people use to die for their religion.]

It is, then, reasonable to treat modern nationalism in the same terms as religion. It represents a set of values often allied with a kind of modernism, which is natural to the thinking of many of our contemporaries, and which stresses certain essentially modern concerns: the importance of economic development; the merits of technology; the wonders of science; the importance of either socialism or capitalism, or some mixture, in the process of modernization…

The World’s Religions (Second Edition) – Cambridge University Press [pages 22-25]

[People seek modern medical programs as they once sought religious miracles]