Trump, Merry Christmas and White Christian Nationalism

Here are few articles on President Trump's focus on Christmas and "war on Christmas."

Independent informed the readers about Trump's ending the "war on Christmas":

For those who felt they needed the President's permission, Donald Trump has declared: "We can say Merry Christmas again."

Mr Trump repeatedly vowed during his campaign to end the so-called “war on Christmas", a commonly held belief among many of the President’s Christian supporters.
His comment came during a speech celebrating the passage of the tax reform bill.

Some of Mr Trump's supporters have felt that saying the more neutral and inclusive “happy holidays” to mark celebrations of Hannukah, Eid, or other holidays taking place around the same time, has undermined the Christian majority in the country.
The "war" extends to some feeling as if political correctness is a forced and unnecessary social practice as well. 

Dan Cassino, a professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University told CNN that Mr Trump “is no one's idea as an evangelical Christian, but he is very much using the same rhetoric as the war on Christmas...And it fits very much into his worldview that the people he's representing have been left behind by this liberal society".

Mr Trump claimed on the campaign trail that Americans would say “Merry Christmas in every store” during his presidency, implying that the phrase had gone out of use. (read the article Donald Trump announces 'we can say Merry Christmas again')

The CNN informed its readers that almost one in three adult Americans are bothered by at least some degree by the declining emphasis on religion in the way Americans celebrate Christmas:

Did President Donald Trump live up to his promise to end the "war on Christmas"? Depends on who you ask.
While some would quibble with the very idea that a war on the holiday exists, recent polling does suggest that the Christian nature of Christmas is less culturally prevalent than in the past.

A Pew Research Center survey, published last week, found that most US adults believe the religious aspects of the holiday are emphasized less now than they used to be. But overall, just 31% of adults said "they are bothered at least 'some' by the declining emphasis on religion in the way the U.S. commemorates Christmas."
Meanwhile, the "remaining two-thirds of the U.S. public either is not bothered by a perceived decline in religion in Christmas or does not believe that the emphasis on the religious elements of Christmas is waning," according to the Pew poll.

Throughout his presidential campaign -- and during his first year in office -- Trump emphasized he would "make Christmas great again" by ending the "war on Christmas," a concept that is the revival of a quintessential conservative culture war.
"If I become president, we're going to be saying Merry Christmas at every store," he promised supporters in 2015, among the many times he made such a yuletide pledge.
Fast-forward to October 2017 -- two months ahead of the annual holiday -- and Trump repeated such rhetoric at the Values Voter Summit. "Guess what?" the President told those gathered. "We're saying 'Merry Christmas' again."

His Christmas rhetoric -- and interest in making speeches in front of Christmas trees -- has inspired everything from "Saturday Night Live" sketches to merchandise (there is an official "Make Christmas Merry" hat sold on the Trump campaign website, and dozens of Trump-inspired Christmas-themed sweaters on websites such as Etsy and Amazon).
The Pew survey suggests that while most Americans still celebrate Christmas, the way they think about and commemorate the holiday appears to be moving in a more secular direction.
About 55% of US adults "say they celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, including 46% who see it as more of a religious holiday than a cultural holiday and 9% who celebrate Christmas as both a religious and a cultural occasion." That's slightly down 4 percentage points from 2013, when 59% of Americans said they celebrated Christmas as a religious holiday, including 51% who saw it as more religious than cultural.

A vast majority of Americans — including 56% of Republicans — say the "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" debate is "made up" and not a "real issue," according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday. (Read the article In his 1st year in office, did Trump end the 'war on Christmas'?)

Newsweek article reminds the readers that Nazis also used Christmas to promote a divisive nationalism, albeit Trump does not promote genocide or violence against minorities like Nazis:

Trump isn’t the first political figure in history to co-opt Christmas. In fact, some see parallels between Trump’s speeches in front of Christmas trees and attempts by authoritarian regimes like the Nazis to manipulate popular celebrations to promote a political ideology. But by weaponizing Christmas in this way, Trump is bringing a dangerous tradition of politicizing religious holidays into the United States, one expert says.  

“Because Americans have enjoyed a relatively stable political system, Christmas in the U.S. has been relatively immune to the overt politicization of the holiday,” Joe Perry told Newsweek. He is the author of the book Christmas in Germany: A Cultural History, which examines the way Nazis used Christmas to spread fascism.

“But not completely immune. The far right’s engagement in the ‘war on Christmas’ explicitly posits that there is one single true or correct Christmas. The holiday’s true nature is somehow under threat from outsiders and liberals who act as forces of degradation, multiculturalism and secularization,” Perry continued.

In this context, Trump has been using the so-called war on Christmas to wage a culture war that pits multicultural liberals against Christian conservatives. He began doing this long before Christmas. Meanwhile, some members of the religious right support Trump’s most nationalist, race-baiting form of political rhetoric, including his reclaiming of Christmas.
Likewise, Nazi Germany’s propagandists rooted their idea of Christmas in visions of ethno-nationalism. They rewrote the lyrics of Christmas carols, promoted Nazified holiday traditions and launched numerous Christmas charity events for poor Germans. The ultimate goal was to draw a clear line between those who belonged and those who should be excluded and not benefit from the joys of Christmas.

Trump’s rhetoric differs from that of Nazi Germany’s, most notably because he has never advocated genocide. But Trump’s talk about Christmas coexists with re-emerging white identity politics, Randy Blazak, a sociology professor who studies white nationalism, told Newsweek.

“Committed white nationalists love Trump’s bring back Christmas campaign almost as much as evangelicals,” he said. “His followers see this as gospel and a rebuking of multiculturalism and political correctness, and the growing influence of Jews, Muslims, atheists and other non-WASPs.”

President Donald Trump signs a proclamation in front of a Christmas tree, as Vice President Mike Pence stands behind him

Source: How Trump and the Nazis stole Christmas to promote White nationalism

Perry said that Trump hasn’t gone nearly as far as the Nazis in promoting his vision of the holidays, and he sees major flaws in describing Trump as a Nazi-like figure. But there are some clear parallels.

“Trump and the Nazis share aspects of race baiting and perhaps broader aspects of extreme conservatism—many political ideologies do,” Perry said.

“Frankly, I’m not sure how far Trump himself is willing to go to use the holiday to promote anti-Muslim or anti-minority visions of America, or if he even really understands what he is doing with his ‘merry Christmas’ tirades.” (Read the article How Trump and the Nazis stole Christmas to promote White nationalism)

Religious nationalism in the US is foundational and one should be wary of Trump's rise

Jack Jenkins's Historians of Christian nationalism are alarmed by its appearance in American pulpits

A lesson on the dangers to the United States article in Think Progress is informative and warns Americans about what can happen. Christian nationalism is nothing new to the US and countries, like Germany between world wars, have some similarities with the present day US, although there are certainly many differences as well. Following are few excerpts of the article:

Christian nationalism isn’t just common in America. It’s foundational.

At least that’s the argument Aeon editor and former Harvard Society fellow Sam Haselby makes in his book The Origins of American Religious Nationalism, in which he insists American Christian nationalism is an inescapable part our national political discourse. He points to some of the earliest revolutionaries as proof: A band of (apparently laughably bad) poets calling themselves Connecticut Wits were among the first to protest for American independence, calling for a society that was “hierarchical, theological, and anti-racist” in nature.

“[Christian nationalism is] an old debate, as old as the United States itself,” Haselby wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed.

Granted, the Connecticut Wit social framework didn’t win out against its eventual rival, the so-called Jeffersonian or Virginia model of American identity, which Haselby describes as ultimately “evangelical, egalitarian, and racist.” But like the savior they worship, religious nationalism would not die. As the United States evolved, Haselby says two Protestant Christian ideological frameworks — which he calls “national evangelicalism” and “frontier revivalism” — began to vie for power. Their intellectual dimensions are complex, but the result of their feud was the creation of a shared political rhetoric Haselby describes as religious nationalism, primary articulated through the lens of Protestant Christianity.

The scholar differentiates his definition of Christian nationalism from more contemporary iterations by pointing to three defining (but broad) characteristics.
“Abraham Lincoln called on his fellow countrymen to revere American revolutionaries and the U.S. Constitution as part of the ‘political religion of the nation,'”

The first is the almost sacred status Americans often bestow upon the Founding Fathers and the nation’s founding documents. In 1838, for instance, a 28-year-old Abraham Lincoln called on his fellow countrymen to revere American revolutionaries and the U.S. Constitution as part of the “political religion of the nation,” which he argued should be “breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe…taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges…let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls.”

Haselby says this reverence for historical figures is unusual when compared to other industrialized states in Europe, where “founders” in the American sense are an alien concept.

“There is no counterpart in, say, Britain,” he said in an interview with ThinkProgress. “The figure that comes closest to that is probably Winston Churchill.”
The second feature of American religious nationalism, Haselby says, is the fact that leaders of U.S. social movements often invoke what he calls the “Jeremiad” narrative, or the idea that their political cause is in keeping with the spirit of America’s founding. The third facet is the most obvious: The undeniable prevalence of religious rhetoric or “God talk” in political spaces, no matter which party is in power.

“There’s a lot of liberals and progressive people who theologize,” he said. “When it comes to nationality, Americans are people of the word. They’re textual exegetes, whether they’re liberal or conservative.”

It’s easy to find evidence of these tendencies—sometimes described as our country’s “civil religion”—in modern American political disputes. Fervent debates over what is “constitutional” have defined Trump’s young presidency, with advocates on all sides invoking founding documents in ways that can resemble a theological discussion. Trump supporters and “resistance” activists alike insist their movement carried the torch of liberty lit by the Founders. And appeals to the Almighty were present at both the RNC and the DNC this year, with the latter arguably more overtly religious than the former.

Moment of prayer after Trump's nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch for the US Supreme Court

Source: The US President official twitter account

Robert Ericksen, a historian and professor at Pacific Lutheran University, has written about Christians active participation in Adolf Hitler’s rise in his book Complicity in the Holocaust: Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany. Hitler was a product of Christian nationalism and Professor  Ericksen wants to learn from that era.

Direct conflations between Nazi Germany and U.S. politics are prone to gross hyperbole, and Erickson was quick to list a number of differences between the modern political moment and the rise of the Third Reich. 1930s Germany, for instance, was still reeling from a humiliating defeat during World War I while also enduring the Great Depression—neither of which are directly applicable to the United States in 2017. And while Trump-supporting Nazi sympathizers have made news in recent days, virtually none have any major institutional faith affiliation.

But Ericksen argues the past is meant to inform the present, which is likely why he was one of the first scholars to point to broad parallels between Trump’s Christian nationalist supporters and those that backed the infamous German dictator.

In a Huffington Post op-ed published in September of 2016, Ericksen observed that evangelicals were already falling in line behind the businessman despite his questionable ethics during the campaign—and observed similarities between their fervor and that of 1930s German Christians. Like modern American Christians, these Germans emerged out of a deeply Christian Europe, where religious nationalism was embedded in many cultures. Although obviously distinct from Haselby’s understanding of faith-fueled political discourse, fusions of faith and politics permeated German society in ways not altogether dissimilar from American “civil religion.”

“To be loyal to God and country was a very powerful emotion and a common slogan,” Ericksen said.
“There was a widespread belief in Germany among Christians that Hitler kept a copy of the New Testament in his breast pocket, and he read from it every day—which was completely false,”

There are also eerily familiar cultural factors that accelerated Hitler’s rise—including appeals to what modern observers might describe as “family values.” The infusion of women into the workplace during and after World War I altered traditional perceptions of gender roles, for instance, and the forced imposition of democracy on Germany as a byproduct of losing the war didn’t sit well with many citizens.
“All of these things were perceived by the Christian community as a moral breakdown,” he said. “Democracy we believed to have encouraged that moral breakdown, because democracy believed in political equality.”

What’s more, the relatively few residents who were able to celebrate aspects of the “roaring 20s”—dance halls, the emergence of the movie industry, and a “more open sense to people having a moral right to express themselves”—suddenly became targets.
“They were perceived as not accepting Christian values and standards,” Ericksen explained. “They were aggressively blamed for pornography and prostitution.”
The result was broad support for Hitler’s rise to power among German Christians and their leaders, some of whom took their devotion to an extreme. Hitler’s numerous flaws were often explained away or, in some cases, replaced with complete fabrications about his faith.

Interweaving authoritarianism with American-style Christian nationalism isn’t just theoretical: it’s happened before.

“There was a widespread belief in Germany among Christians that Hitler kept a copy of the New Testament in his breast pocket, and he read from it every day—which was completely false,” Ericksen said. “[Hitler] was happy to nurture or not confront those kind of misconceptions, because he wanted that kind of Christian support. And the Christians were so willing to bend over backwards — they accepted or in some ways maybe even invented explanations of how he could be a real Christian leader.”

By the time his power crescendoed, the difference between Hitler and religious leaders was almost nonexistent. The most extreme form of Christian nationalism had taken hold.
“There were a lot of comparisons to [famous theologian] Martin Luther, who was, up until then, probably the biggest German hero,” he said. “He saved Germany or created Protestantism by his response to the Bible and God’s word, and now Hitler had come along to save Germany in this time of need in a different way—but still according to God’s will.”

Ericksen pointed out that Christians did this even as Hitler exhibited behavior to contrary—much as Christian nationalists have publicly ignored Trump’s attacks on the press, democratic institutions, and other evangelical faith leaders. And even if Trump ultimately has little in common with Hitler, Ericksen noted that Trump has more dangerous weapons in his arsenal—weapons Christian nationalists such as Robert Jeffress has proclaimed God gave him the authority to use.
“In the end, Trump could be more dangerous than Hitler, because Trump has the nuclear option,” he said.

Religious nationalism in 19th century Europe

Hugh McLeod in his article, "Christianity and nationalism in nineteenth-century Europe" (International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, Vol. 15, No.1, 2015) discusses the 19th century European nationalisms, the relationship between Christianity and nationalisms and religious support for the First World War in all the European countries.

McLeod argues that nationalism was one of the most influential ideologies in 19th century Europe, along with socialism, liberalism and conservatism. Nationalism was sometimes allied with liberalism and at other times with conservatism. Socialists were also not devoid of nationalist sentiments. 

Mcleod distinguishes between three types of nationalisms in nineteenth-century Europe:

Nationalism 'from below': The nationalism of the subject peoples, living within the great European Empires, that asserted their right to more autonomy or independence

Unification nationalisms: The nationalism of the people, who belonged to the same culture but were divided into numerous small states, that sought to form a unified nation-state for these 

Nationalism ‘from above’: The nationalism propagated by the governments through the education

system, etc. in their own countries so that their people are ready to defend or attack and do not fall prey to nationalism 'from below.'

Mcleod explains, with examples, why nationalism and Christianity were so close and overlapping in 19th century Europe or, in other words, why religious nationalism was so popular at that time:

Many of the classic histories of nationalism see it as an essentially secular ideology – even as a ‘political religion’, substituting for a declining Christianity. The French Revolution does indeed demonstrate this possibility. But more often nationalists made free use of Christian symbols and concepts, and churches willingly embraced nationalist ideologies. 

Benedict Anderson famously defined the nation as an ‘Imagined Community’, whereby people felt an affinity with millions of others, whom they had never met and with whom they might have little in common, because they belonged to the same ‘nation’. But this ‘Imagined Community’ could not be created out of nothing. Its basic building blocks were shared language and/or shared historical memories. Even the language sometimes had a significant religious dimension, as is shown by the importance of translations of the Bible in the history of many languages. The historical memories nearly always had a significant religious dimension. The alliance between religion and nationalism was two-edged in its implications both for nationalism and for Christianity – as I shall argue. But it was uniquely potent as a means of inspiring both devotion to the nation and loyalty to the church. As regards the latter, it is well known that, in an era of increasing secularisation in many parts of Europe, loyalty to the church reached its highest levels in countries such as Ireland, where the links between religious and national identities were closest. Conversely, secularisation progressed much more rapidly where nationalism had a predominantly anti-church or anti-religious character....  

When nationalists pointed to shared experiences of oppression or of unity against external foes, these experiences were more often than not associated with religion. For example, in the eyes of Irish nationalists, the clearest example of British oppression was offered by the anti-Catholic Penal Laws ..... For English nationalists, on the other hand, the proudest moment in their national history was the defeat in 1588 of the Spanish Armada.... 

The national heroes whom they revered more often than not had an evident religious significance. The greatest figures in Spanish history were Ferdinand and Isabella, ‘The Catholic Monarchs’, who had not only united the nation, but had forced Muslims and Jews either to convert or to leave....  

Nationalists liked to celebrate distinctive national values and virtues, and very often these were seen as having religious roots. Thus nineteenth-century Britons frequently claimed that their political power, their economic success and their free institutions were all rooted in Protestantism. In a typical sermon of 1898, Dr Welldon, headmaster of Harrow School and later Bishop of Calcutta, claimed that ‘wherever there was a nation that was stationary and retrogressive it was Catholic, wherever there was a people that was progressive and Imperial it was Protestant’.... 

Nationalists celebrated the art, architecture, literature, music and folklore of their people, and very often these were shaped by specific religious traditions. A classic case is the French Catholic revival of the years around 1900, which was strongly coloured by nationalism.... An important part of this rediscovery was the realisation that French history and culture were so deeply imbued with Catholicism, that to be truly French it was necessary also to be Catholic. 

Nationalists also drew on ideas of national mission or chosenness. Many nineteenth century Britons believed that the British Empire had been providentially ordained to facilitate the spread of the pure Protestant gospel. Sometimes, as in France there were two rival versions of this national mission: one pointing to France’s historical identity as ‘The Eldest Daughter of the Church’, while the other focused on ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’.... 

More commonly, as in Britain, explicitly religious and more secular understandings of national mission, rather than being in opposition to one another were mutually reinforcing, offering a repertoire of justifications for national pride and national power which could be drawn upon separately or in combination as the situation demanded. The historian of missions, Andrew Walls, highlights the immense popularity of the poetry of Rudyard Kipling, whose justification for British (and American) imperialism as ‘The White Man’s Burden’, though not explicitly Christian, drew on biblical language and examples in a way that both Christian and agnostic readers found inspiring.

Meanwhile priests and pastors were often strongly influenced by nationalist ideas and gave them influential support through sermons, through ‘national’ hymns, through the teaching in church schools, through Christian youth organisations. 

Anniversaries of notable battles, as well as royal birthdays and jubilees provided occasions for special services with patriotic sermons and sometimes the composition of new hymns with patriotic themes. For example Queen Victoria’s jubilees in 1887 and 1897 were marked by numerous special services at which imperial themes played a big role. The year 1913 saw the anniversary of the Prussian uprising against Napoleon and special services were held in many German churches.... Walls notes a new category of ‘national hymns’ entering British hymn-books in the 1880s, and observes that it was then that hymn-books began to include the national anthem. The Swedish historian Alf Tergel refers to the popularity in the early years of the twentieth century of hymns by J.A. Eklund, bishop of Karlstad. In ‘Our Fathers’ Church’ he recalled Sweden’s decisive role in the Thirty Years’ War, and then went on to appeal to ‘Christian youth’ to ‘battle for God’s glory in the North’..... 

In Britain Christian youth organisations with military trappings proliferated in the years 1880–1914. The prototype was the Boys’ Brigade (BB), founded by a Glasgow Presbyterian in 1883, and also popular in the English and Welsh Free Churches. This aimed to attract members through the wearing of uniforms and military ranks, and marches through the street banging drums and blowing bugles, and carrying dummy rifles....

Again in France there were rival Catholic and Republican youth organisations in these years, but both were imbued with the nationalist spirit.... For Catholics and republicans alike, politics and religion were closely bound together and could not be clearly separated, and neither could be separated from devotion to an idealised Catholic or Republican France.

There were many reasons for the strongly nationalist colouring of much European Christianity in the nineteenth century, but among these reasons we should remember that priests and pastors could not be entirely detached from their social environment. It would indeed be crudely reductionist to suppose that clergymen thought and behaved exactly like other members of their social class, but it would be equally unrealistic to suppose that they lived entirely within a clerical sub-culture. Protestant clergy, in particular, who had been educated at university with future doctors and lawyers, and who also married and had children, were especially likely to be influenced by their family and by those of their parishioners with whom they mixed socially. Furthermore, both Protestant and Catholic clergy were highly politicised in this period, and were influenced not only by their families but by the political circles in which they moved...

German Empire Standard (1871-1918) with motto, Gott mit uns (God with us)

Source: Wiki Commons

Of course, religion and nationalism did not always agree and there were tensions as Mcleod explains:

In spite of many affinities, the relationship was two-edged. Religious sentiments and symbols could nearly always be drawn upon by nationalist orators and organisers – but churches were institutions with their own doctrines and interests which could contradict the nationalist agenda. 

A striking example was the conflict between Italian nationalism and the papacy. Enthusiasts for Italian unification initially hoped that the pope might give his blessing to their cause. But it soon became clear that Pius IX was completely opposed.... In response to papal obstruction, a nationalist movement that had initially been strongly influenced by Catholicism took on a strongly anti-clerical dimension.  

The church might also be strongly committed to nationalist objectives, while condemning the methods that some nationalists used. Here the classic example would be the persistent tensions between the Irish Catholic Church and the revolutionary wing of Irish nationalism, from the Fenians in the 1860s to the Provisional IRA in our own times. 

Moreover the alliance between religion and nationalism, while extremely effective in countries that were more or less religiously homogeneous, could raise problems within religiously divided nations, where appeals to the religion of the majority risked alienating minorities. Indeed there is a fundamental tension between a religion such as Christianity, which claims to have a message for all of humankind and in which ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek’, and the claims by nationalists that everyone’s first loyalty should be to his or her own people. 

So in the later nineteenth century many nationalists were seeking new bases for national identity which were religiously neutral and which circumvented confessional differences.... Sometimes this meant a focus on language, or even on sport.... But most often the search for alternative bases for national identity meant recourse to the newly fashionable racial ideas, which gained intellectual authority from trends in anthropology and in Social Darwinism.... In Great Britain the dominant imperialism of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was legitimated by belief in a national mission to bring civilisation and good government to less favoured regions of the world. This was often linked to Protestant Christianity and its plethora of overseas missions. But increasingly this religiously based concept of national mission was supplemented by, or even replaced by, claims for the racial superiority of the ‘Anglo-Saxon peoples’.... 

National churches were not surprisingly those readiest to identify with ‘the nation’. These national churches included most obviously the ‘people’s churches’ (Volkskirchen) of Germany and Scandinavia, the Churches of England and Scotland, the Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox Churches – but also the Catholic Churches of France and Spain which saw themselves as churches of the nation, or those of Ireland and Poland which claimed to speak for a nation as yet denied nationhood. Overt opposition to the nationalist agenda was most likely to come from minority churches, whether because of uncertainty as to how far they were really part of the national project – or whether the experience of being in a minority (and often of discrimination arising from this) tended to make such churches readier to question mainstream values and conventional wisdom. Thus in Germany the Catholic Church was more cautious than the Protestants in its support for militarism and imperialism....

McLeod's article demonstrates that religious nationalism was almost as popular in the 19th century Europe as it is now in Asia and North Africa.

Religious Nationalism and Sectarianism

When a state argues to be based on religious nationalism, religion becomes important in defining who are full citizens of that state. It is a case similar to countries based on ethnic nationalism. Japanese, Turkish, Korean or German nationalisms are based on specific ethnicities and those ethnicities are sometimes consciously and blatantly and sometimes unconsciously prioritized. Not long ago, a Russian, having German ancestry, who could not speak German and had never lived in Germany had a stronger claim to German citizenship than a Turk, who had not only been born in Germany but had lived in Germany all his life.

In such 'ethnic' nations, it becomes very important to clearly define who has the 'correct' ancestry and who has not. It becomes important for the state to know, for example, whether both your parents of a citizen were born in the country or not, even if both of them are also citizens. These defining markers are controlled by the state as means of informing the masses who they are and what should be important to them and punishing those who ignore these markers. Recently, the highest court of Dominican Republic court stripped thousands of people of citizenship because their parents had entered the country illegally decades ago (see Haitian-descended residents of Dominican Republic stripped of citizenship by high court). 

In case of religious nationalism, the focus is on religion or sect so defining who is a Muslim, Jew or Catholic becomes important. An Irish joke makes this point clear. In Northern Ireland, a car is stopped at a checkpoint and policeman asks the driver, 'Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?' The driver answers, 'I am an atheist.' The policeman thinks for a few seconds and then asks, 'A Catholic-atheist or a Protestant-atheist?'

The first nationality marker is of course whether one is a member of the national church. This marker discriminates against those who are not members but states with religious nationalism usually ignore this criticism as many states based on ethnic nationalism also do when they discriminate against those not belonging to prioritized/majority ethnic group.

However, as citizenship comes with significant social, cultural and economic benefits, markers of nationalism (ethnic or religious) are contested. Minorities try to dilute these markers to be part of the mainstream while diverse social groups within the titular group try to narrow them to get a larger share of benefits. As a result, in case of ethnic nationalism, the titular group experiences more ethnic fragmentation and infighting. And in states with religious nationalism, sectarianism rages unless state decisively intervenes. Readers of this blog will remember that Malaysian lawmakers from ruling party UMNO recently suggested that Islam should be limited to Sunni sect. A much horrible aspect of sectarianism is visible in Pakistan where there are attacks on religious places and leaders of rival sects (Sectarian killings soar in Pakistan, raising fears of regional spillover).

Source: The Various Strands of Shiite-Sunni Discord

Can religious nationalists stop sectarianism? I personally think the answer is no.