A Comparative Analysis of National-Religious Configurations: Which religious traditions correlate with higher and lower nationalism?

Abstract

Building on the typology and hypotheses I formulated in “Nationalism and Religion in Comparative Perspective” (Aktürk 2022), this paper is an attempt to provide a comparative analysis and a cross-national empirical baseline of the correlations between particular nationalisms and specific religious traditions and/or religiosity. The two data sets I utilize are International Social Survey Programme (2013) and World Values Survey (Wave 7, 2017-2020, and earlier waves in the absence of some countries in Wave 7). The ten countries I focus on are the countries that I formulated empirical predictions for in my earlier work based on my fourfold typology (Aktürk 2022, Table 2): Great Britain, Japan, Israel, India, Ireland, Turkey, United States, Lebanon, Mexico, and Ukraine. First, I ask whether there is a correlation between membership in the nationally dominant religious sectarian tradition and national pride. Second, I ask whether higher national pride is congruent with higher or lower religiosity.