A post-secular interpretation of religious nationalism: the case of Religious-Zionism

Abstract

Adopting the ‘post-secular’ critique of the mainstream discourse on ‘religion and politics’, this article aims to offer a novel consideration of what is commonly identified as religious nationalism. Following the post-secular cue, we highlight the importance of the nation-statist configuration of power for the very construction of the conceptual and categorical frameworks into which discussions of religion, secularity, politics, and nationalism have usually been put. We use a comprehensive study of Religious-Zionist ideology, as manifested in public debates between 1967 and 2014, to examine how this phenomenon can be interpreted without falling into the trap of employing historically and politically embodied conceptual toolkits as if they were ahistorical and universal. Our analysis highlights the foundational indebtedness of Religious-Zionism to the nation-statist configuration of power, a commitment that in effect ‘politicizes’ and ‘nationalizes’ what is seen as theology or religion.