Nationalism as a Religion, I

...But as one studies historic Protestantism one is impressed less by the novelties which the reformers introduced into the content of Christianity than by the conservatism with which they clung to certain central dogmas and rites of the older Christian Church...

...in the tended fire of the vestal virgins...

...Christianity was a syncretic religion, as had been Graeco-Roman paganism before it...

...He would be right in guessing that it is modern...

...and thereby it prepared the way for the eventual widespread diffusion and acceptance of Christianity...

...Contemporary nationalism is attributable to historical events of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries...

...Even in ages when doubt and scepticism about a popular religion have been most rampant, the very sceptics and doubters have been disposed to seek some object outside of themselves to which they might pay reverence...

...Again, in the later middle-ages, doubts arose and multiplied in western and central Europe about the teaching of the Catholic Church concerning the nature and proper worship of the Christian God...

...Indeed the proverbial man from Mars, initiated into the temper of our age and informed of the current vogue of nationalism on earth, might reasonably conjecture that nationalism is extolled by us because it is modern...

...in the tabus of Eskimo and Hottentot...

...He may lose faith in a particular religion, but if so he usually dedicates himself consciously or unconsciously to another object of worship...

...Conversion from Catholicism to Protestantism in the sixteenth century doubtless betokened a lessening faith in a particular religion, but the historical student knows that the sixteenth century was not irreligious...

...The loyalty of the American to a political leader, a secret lodge, a church, a trade-union, a college, a New England town, a southern plantation, or a western ranch, is different in degree but not in kind from loyalties of ancient Roman, Jew, and Egyptian...

...Christianity did not represent a clean break with the past...

...in the laws of Moses and the rites of Aaron...

...But nowadays, and herein lies the fundamental difference between us and our ancient and mediaeval and early modern forebears, the individual is commonly disposed, in case of conflict, to sacrifice one loyalty after another, loyalty to persons, places and ideas, loyalty even to family, to the paramount call of nationality and the national state...

...These explanations of contemporary nationalism, however, are not entirely satisfactory...

...December 16, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL 149 NATIONALISM AS A RELIGION I. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND By CARLTON J. H. HAYES THE present generation has a curious hobby of at least pretending to like a thing not because it has intrinsic excellence but solely because it is new...

...Now, as one looks back over the multifarious pages of man's history, one is struck by the frequency and force of human movements which have had their mainspring in religious emotion...

...In some quarters this hobby is interpreted as "progress...

...in the pyramids of Egypt...

...As always, so today, man feels its spell...

...Ancient stoicism, mediaeval nominalism or realism, modern hedonism, alike have led to interesting speculation by "intellectuals," have been accepted by influential members of the upper classes, and have had at least some indirect effect upon the masses, but great aggregates of men have never fought and died for any of those philosophies...

...Followed the rise of Protestantism...

...it may likewise be worship of science or humanity—provided these concepts are written in his mind with capital letters...

...It may be worship of Christ or Buddha...

...To this aspect of the subject let us address ourselves...

...he may leave the lodge at the behest of his priests...

...Why are millions ready and willing to lay down their lives for nationalism...

...This is nationalism, and surely it must have a richly emotional content to predominate over all other emotional loyalties of the present generation...

...The contact of political democracy, the industrial revolution, and philosophical romanticism with a long germinating popular consciousness of nationality has produced a nationalist process and a nationalist doctrine—the body and the soul, as it were, of nationalism...

...Of late, too, the doctrine has been preached and the process made palatable to the masses of mankind by means of educational and propagandist agencies which the French Revolution deemed desirable and the industrial revolution rendered practical— national schooling, national militarism, and national journalism...

...he might truthfully say that it is very modern...

...it preserved much of the antique doctrine and practice of Judaism, and simultaneously it borrowed for its cult and theology many elements from pagan and Gentile religions...

...The resultant unsettling and diversification of religion was in that instance only transitional and not at all irreligious: it inspired quaint attempts to mingle and reconcile heterogeneous objects of worship ; it presently produced a kind of religious syncretism...

...This something is obviously an emotion, an emotional loyalty to the idea or the fact of the national state, a loyalty so intensely emotional that it motivates all sorts of people and causes them to subordinate all other human loyalties to national loyalty...

...Everywhere, under the most diverse forms, you find its expression—in the caves of primitive men...

...May it not be that we shall here find the most convincing explanation of the strength of modern nationalism, the zeal of its apostles and the devotion of its disciples...

...Yet such a neo-Protestantism, if and when it appears, will almost certainly differ from sixteenth-century Protestantism not so much in its constituent elements as in its adaptations and stresses and results...

...Above all, it will be, quite as much as historic Protestantism, and as historic Catholicism before that, an embodiment of man's religious sense...

...You find it enshrined in great religious systems, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism, which through the centuries have counted their devotees by billions...

...in the temples of Inca and Aztec...

...The reader will recall that long ago this opinion was voiced by Gibbon with devastating rhetoric and mordant wit...

...From the dawn of his history man has been distinguished by what may be called a "religious sense," that is, a mysterious faith in some power outside of himself, a faith always accompanied by feelings of reverence and usually attended by external acts and ceremonial...

...They borrowed plentifully from Catholicism, whilst at the same time they appropriated much from the intellectual movements of their day and put themselves especially under new obligations to ancient Judaism...

...They may be valid so far as they go, but they do not make perfectly clear why apostles of the new gospel are characterized by a missionary zeal that is fiery and why its multitudinous disciples are possessed of a love that is consuming...

...For example, in the early centuries of the Christian era, when Graeco-Roman paganism was losing its hold upon the intellectual classes of the Roman empire, there was a notable tendency to find an outlet for the religious sense, on the one hand, in Stoicism and other philosophies that proclaimed a truer higher divinity in duty or in reasoned pleasure, and, on the other hand, in mystical communion with strange and somewhat bizarre gods, with Isis and Osiris, with Mithra, or with the "spirits" of neoPlatonism...

...it may be worship of totem or fetish...

...Herein is a valuable clue for us...

...but he would be wrong in concluding that its modernity is the sole or chief cause of its popularity...

...In like manner it may be argued that the subsequent rapid disintegration of Protestantism into innumerable denominations and sects has been simply a modern parallel to the ancient deliquescence of Graeco-Roman paganism, and further, that the syncretism latterly proceeding in the Protestant world may correspondingly usher in a new form of religion, which, however Christian and Protestant in name, will depart very considerably from historic Protestantism and historic Christianity...

...There must be something more than a philosophy, something more than a doctrine and an historical process, about modern nationalism...

...in the words of the Delphic oracle...

...In Protestantism, as in Catholicism, or in Judaism, and likewise in the transition from one to another, man gave expression to his religious sense...

...he may turn against the priests in order to follow the fortunes of a political leader...

...In modern national states, of course, individual citizens still retain many if not most of the emotional loyalties to particular persons, specific places, and peculiar ideas that have marked the human race since the dawn of its history...

...There have been many historical processes and philosophical preachments which called forth no such popular response in the past as, in the present age, nationalism evokes...

...Now as ever, too, it may transpire that an individual must choose between two loyalties: he may throw over a political leader to do the bidding of a secret lodge...

...In any case it involves an experience, a reverential emotion, which is primordially religious...

...Apparently the "religious sense" is so ingrained in man that normally he must give expression to it in one way or another...

...Both paganism and Christianity and also the transitional steps from the one to the other, appealed to man's religious sense...

...It was different from paganism not so much in its component elements as in its combinations and emphases and effects...

...Is it not a demonstrable fact that nationalism has become to a vast number of persons a veritable religion, capable of arousing that deep and compelling emotion which is essentially religious...