Religion and state in the modern period: The advice of the French minister in the wake of the Revolution is well known: For the sake of stability, French citizens should be encouraged to study religion since it evident that the same faithfulness and obedience religious people display to God they are also inclined to exhibit towards the State, of whatever kind it may be. One may impose taxes on them without arousing opposition. Thus to the extent that the religious groupings do not seek to take power, they constitute a faithful and quiet foundation of the State. Obviously this principle does not hold good when the ruling power oppresses the religious simply because of their religion. The unrest in Algeria comes against the background of the attempt by fundamental religious groups to take power, as well as the infringement of their religious, civil, and democratic rights to vote for their preferred candidates for government. Although they won in the free elections which began to be conducted in Algeria, the secular government intervened and stopped the electoral process when it perceived that the religious parties were going to win by democratic vote. The Chechin rebellion against the Russians is an ethnic revolt mixed together with the Chechin religious tradition. The military guerilla movement against the Muslims in Kashmir arose against the background of the inter-religious rivalry for power between Hindus and Muslims. Many central national elements are involved in the Palestinian intifada, together with the strengthening of the Muslim religious faction. The fanatic religious Muslims amongst the Palestinians, who believe that they support national Palestinian interests, strengthen the national foundation within the Palestinian people. The Copts in Egypt endeavour to protect their rights in the face of a Muslim majority and even though the Egyptian regime is secular the Copts feel oppressed by the Muslim majority. This is the background of the unrest in Egypt: the Egyptian Muslims are seeking to take power from the secularists, while the latter take care through their constitutional power to preserve the State's fundamentally secular nature and prevent the penetration of fanatic Muslim elements into the governmental system. In Canada - which was founded as an alliance between the Protestant majority and Catholic minority, two communities divided by their religious and cultural allegiance, and whose educational system was dominated by religious interests from both sides right from the beginning - the secular trend towards division of state and religion is growing, together with a call for secularisation of the educational system and an end to the dominance of the English-speaking over the French-speaking populations. The religious groupings are losing their hold on the educational system and are coming to terms with the weakening of their power. In Israel, despite the percentage of religious people and those who support the religious nature of the State - their power and status having grown - the religious way of life is on the wane. The religious in Israel feel that the religious status is being undermined. The religious orthodox population in Israel is in involved in an attempt to defend itself against the secular population, displaying a greater support for Jewish nationalism which expresses itself in greater interest on the part of the non-zionist orthodox in the State's problems and in their willingness to entertain the possibility of a compromise involving concessions regarding the military conscription of yeshiva students such as the well-known Tal law. Growing numbers of religious zionists are serving in elite military combat units. From the perspective of state-religion and religious-national relations, the general picture in Israel is therefore one of a process of greater support on the part of the religious population as a whole for the interests of the State and the Jewish nation. In the wars between various European nations - al of them Christian - the priests and bishops served as pawns for those in power and the soldiers on both sides frequently found themselves fighting in the name of the same God. They worshipped the same God - just as His priests did - and laboured so mightily on behalf of their country that they brought their nations to the point of war in defence of His honour and name. In the Thirty Years war a catholic cardinal in the French government fought against another Catholic state - Austria - by making an alliance with Protestant forces. Only cynical interpretations can explain the absurdity of religion being used as a pawn - and not for the advancement of religion but for the interests of one king or another. Religion served masters who only worked on behalf of their own power. And during all this time, religion filled important functions in society, the religious ability to enlist people being important to those who held the reins of power. The above review clearly demonstrates the existence of a widespread phenomenon of religious support for the state and nationalism. Less widespread - in modern days - is the state's support of religion and nationality. There are very few states in which religious institutions aspire to take power, and equally few states in which they even seek a place in the government as a religious institution. Religion and nation in the modern period: In discussing the influence of religion on nationality it is important to mention the work of Liah Greenfeld, whose doctoral dissertation looks at how Protestantism, the force which established the English in their habit of reading Scripture, also created in them a sense of superiority over their French and Spanish catholic counterparts, the latter being the last to remain dependent upon the priest when seeking to know what is written in the Book of Books. This sense of superiority instilled in the English a pride and sense of uniqueness which, together with their literacy, enabled them to develop a level of commerce and travel which further gained for them a higher standard of living. While the English suffered from famine infrequently and only over short periods of time, the French regularly endured hunger. The literate English were accustomed to reading newspapers, showed a great regard for what happened in parliament and actively participated in the electoral process, and developed an interest in politics. The development of the printing industry was faster in Britain than in any other European country and the literary catalogue flourished. As a result of the sale of ecclesiastical land under Henry VIII, who rebelled against the Pope, the middle class acquired estates, thus creating a new and vibrant class of nobles. Their reading of Scripture also led the English to develop an awareness of constituting the "New Israel" - the chosen people, possessed of a commission on the basis of which they proceeded to create a worldwide empire. They further developed a willingness to serve in the army greater than that evident among the French. English nationalism was founded on the waves of enlightenment which spread and their sense of uniqueness, together with the translation of the Bible into English and their anger at the catholic expulsion of the protestant Huguenots. The persecution of Protestants during the short reign of the catholic Queen Mary also helped to further internal English political processes. The basic element in these processes was the reading of Scripture, a phenomenon which snowballed, created, and supported a special English form of nationalism. In the wake of these developments, falling in battle against the Spanish was considered to be a death more on behalf of the English nation than on behalf of the Crown. The latter thus turned into a tool of the English nation, the "chosen people." Following the "praised" revolution, nationalism gradually established itself in Britain and religion - which had until then played an active part in politics - began to lose its influence, as is evident in the well-known saying (not as a quote from Greenfeld), "The black has done his work, the black can go home." This statement holds also true for the United States, Canada, Israel, and generally speaking with respect to almost all nations in the world, some less and some more. Religion is destined to play the motherly role of nourishing nationalism, and when the daughter grew up on her mother's knees she - nationalism - abandoned the source of her birth - religion - without sustenance, in the spirit of the slogan "separation of state and religion." Linda Colley's book constitutes a continuation in the same spirit as Liah Greenfeld's work, the difference between them lying in the fact that Colley surveys a later period. Here the subject is Britain and the British nation, which combines three separate nations, and not of English nationalism. A further difference can be seen in the fact that the war against the French, which Colley examines in her book, had already taken on a more nationalistic than religious hue, against the background of the earlier aid which the French had extended to the Americans in the latters' revolt against the British and in consequence of the resulting depressions created in Britain. Despite this, religion still had a part to play, and indeed continued to strengthen British nationalist feelings. Greenfeld reviews the crystallisation of Russian nationalism during the days of Catherine the Great and Peter the Great - a period and process in which the pravoslavic religion played a central role on behalf of the Czars. The role of national crystallisation before the American nation had yet been established - a role played by the English-style puritan stream of Protestantism in the United States - is described by Avihu Zakkai. Zakkai depicts how the Americans believe that they are the "chosen people" and as a result how America is also the "promised land". Americans believe up until today, on the basis of their puritan religious background, that God has given them a mission in the world. This belief leads them to disseminate American ideals and the American form of government throughout the whole world. On the other hand, even though Zakkai does not include this in his purview, which focuses on the period up until the American War of Independence, it is known that American excels today in her "castration" of the theistic religions within her boundaries through her adoption of their main festivals as national holidays. She has stolen the unique theistic-religious content from these holidays - first and foremost in their protestant religious form. Thus "Christmas" has become a national holiday in the American civil religious calendar, a holiday which not a few Jews also celebrate, the same have happened earlier to Thanksgiving, whose original purpose was to give thanks to Jesus, within the protestant religious framework, for the good which he gave to the protestant immigrants to America. The United States is the only enlightened country in the world in which catholic parents who send their children to a catholic school bear the costs of this education, while protestant parents - who do not need a protestant school but are quite happy sending their children to public schools in consequence of the different educational ideals held by catholics and protestants - are not required to pay for their children's education. In this sense it is not protestant religion which is favoured but Protestants, as adherents of the American civil religion, since the public school system in America is the cradle of American civil religion. Since the end of the nineteenth century, even reading of the Bible in public schools has been prohibited, such reading being a protestant custom and the separation of church and state being stricter than in any other western nation. No representative of any theistic religion is allowed in the United States - as a public religious official - to stand for election to government. In this way American civil religion has become the sole recognised legal religion of America. This demonstrates the truth of the axiom "free religion supports nationalism" - but once nationalism has strengthened itself on the back of religion it kicks religion down the steps leading to power (in the States, to the Capitol). Summary of the relations between religion and the state and nationalism: The removal of religion from politics did not do any good to nations and peoples with respect to their internal crystallisation. American is one example of this, where national identity has been weakened due to Americans' dual loyalty - to the State on the one hand and to one's country of birth on the other.As has been seen, religion possess great power, and the force of nationalism is even greater, as shall become clear in Part 3, due to be published soon. When religion and nationalism join forces, they become particularly powerful, as can be seen from the different responses of Israeli Arabs to the rumour that Haram al-Sharif - the El Aksa mosque - was under threat. Israeli Arabs did not participate in the first intifada with their Palestinian brethren. In the second, however, the rumour concerning the mosque was sufficient to drive them to join. This demonstrates the combination of two foundational elements, the national and the religious. The struggle in Kashmir is also a combination of these two elements. Likewise, the troubles in Northern Ireland bear the stamp-marks of the catholic-protestant conflict which arose on the heels of the British-Irish, or English-Irish, conflict. The war between Iran and Iraq demonstrates similar characteristics, apart from its national element, in its Sunni-Shi'ite rivalry. In general, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is also a combination of the two elements of religion and nationalism. Religion's power expresses itself both for good and for bad. Side by side with the vicious fighting conducted in the name of religion - religion's negative face - the influence of theistic religion on morality began from the dawn of history and continues up until this day.