People of God: A Quantitative Study of Religious Nationalism in the Modern World

The link between religion and national identity has been explored by scholars from a number of different fields (political science, sociology, and religious studies among others).  Although there have been great strides in our understanding of religious nationalism, most studies have been qualitative in nature, and useful quantitative measures of the religious nationalism have been more difficult to achieve.  This paper aims to lay out a new methodology for measuring religious nationalism through the use of survey data from the past five waves of the World Values Survey.  Regression analysis is used to measure the strength of the relationship between religiosity and national pride in each individual country while controlling for age, sex, education, and political views. The resultant scores for religious nationalism are then used to look at broad trends in religious nationalism today, including ANOVA analysis of various geographic areas.  The findings demonstrate that many of our understandings of religious nationalism are problematic.  European states, for instance, tend to have higher levels of religious nationalism than Islamic states.  Data analysis also shows that wealth and religious diversity are strong predictors of religious nationalism (inversely correlated) across the globe.

The methods and measurements laid out in this paper will hopefully provide new tools for scholars interested in examining religious nationalism in the future.