Berkley Center

This chapter argues that the exportation of the nation-state through the expansion of the Westphalian system went hand-in-hand with the diffusion of the Western concept of religion. It demonstrates how the adaptation/adoption of the modern national community has led to the differentiation between religion and politics in peculiar and unprecedented ways. These specific differentiations explain the role religion plays in politics and vice versa in different cultural and national contexts. To do so, the chapter presents original data from a 5-year investigation that combined a historical qualitative approach and quantitative methods applied to the cases of Syria, Turkey, India, China, and Russia. This chapter by Jocelyne Cesari was published in the Routledge Handbook of Religion and Politics.