{"id":3267,"date":"2009-11-11T11:49:43","date_gmt":"2009-11-11T19:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=3267"},"modified":"2009-11-11T11:49:43","modified_gmt":"2009-11-11T19:49:43","slug":"the-nation-state-as-idol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/the-nation-state-as-idol\/","title":{"rendered":"The nation-state as idol"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/crunchycon\/2009\/11\/god-first-america-second.html\">Rod Dreher<\/a> &amp; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amconmag.com\/larison\/2009\/11\/11\/god-and-country\/\">Daniel Larison<\/a> discuss the intersection of religion and patriotism. The issue of course isn&#8217;t adherence to a higher law vs. the nation-state; even those without explicitly religious motivations can reject loyalty to a state whose actions they feel to be illegitimate. Rather, the bigger issue are <strong>multiple loyalties<\/strong>.  Religion is an incredible ideological and institutional system for transcending boundaries of nationality, but the inverse of that is that religious minorities have long been under suspicion. During the Persian-Byzantine wars of the early 7th century Jews notably sided with Persians and exacted revenge for 6th century persecutions in the Levant upon the previously dominant Christians. This was a rational act by a religious minority who aligned with the power which had a history of greater tolerance toward their faith, the Zoroastrian Sassanians.<\/p>\n<p>But the relevance of multiple loyalties varies from group to group. There is for example one majority-Jewish nation. And there are only two majority-Hindu nations. There is only one Cuba. By contrast, there are ~1.5 billion Muslims <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oic-oci.org\/\">scattered across the World Island<\/a>. One reason Islam has bloody borders with other civilizations likely has to do with the fact that it has <b>many borders, period<\/b>. This means that Muslim populations are likely to be faced with a test of loyalty far more often than Hindu populations, or Sikh populations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rod Dreher &amp; Daniel Larison discuss the intersection of religion and patriotism. The issue of course isn&#8217;t adherence to a higher law vs. the nation-state; even those without explicitly religious motivations can reject loyalty to a state whose actions they &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/the-nation-state-as-idol\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[395,94],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3267"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3268,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3267\/revisions\/3268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}