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Rethinking Religion, Nationalism, and Pluralism - Slavica Jakelic

• Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding • Season 5 • Episode 7

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Scholars keep predicting nationalism will fade, and it keeps surprising us. Slavica Jakelic argues we're asking the wrong questions. Drawing on her experience in Croatia during the Yugoslav wars and her research on religious-secular alliances in Poland and South Africa, she makes the case for 'ethical nationalism,' a form of belonging that serves pluralism rather than undermining it. We discuss why particular attachments matter, how religious and secular actors can work together, and what it might mean to reclaim symbols like the American flag for more expansive visions of national identity.

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Chip Gruen:

Welcome to ReligionWise. I'm your host, Chip Gruen. If you look back at the history of the study of religion, you recognize something that has been sort of persistent over the last century or so, going all the way back, well even further than that, to Marx and Freud, among others, and that is the idea that religion will one day go away, that it is a surviving appendage of a previous set of needs and explanations that modern or contemporary society doesn't need any more and therefore will cast off. Obviously, that has not been the case, and I think anybody with a reasonable understanding of human society and cultural impulses will see that it won't ever be the case. People make the same argument about nationalism. Scholars predict that globalization will make it fade away, but as we've seen, instead, it's become resurgent. I mean, most notably in Europe and here in the United States as well, the response to this very often falls into two categories. One option is to reject it entirely, as dangerous, as a moral problem, as something to be overcome. The other is to embrace it uncritically and to celebrate nationalism as being about unity and recognizing the importance of one's own history, tradition and culture. Today's guest offers a third path, Slavica Jakelic, who is the Richard P. Baepler Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Valparaiso University, though I should note that she is recording with us from her home base in England, has written extensively on the question of nationalism, corporate and group identity and religion. Her book"Collectivistic Religions" enjoins this conversation, and she has a forthcoming book called "Pluralizing Humanism" which takes up the question in a new direction. So her work sits at the intersection of religion, nationalism and civil society. But not only does she bring scholarly rigor and to this work, but she also brings her own personal experiences, having lived through the wars after the breakup of Yugoslavia, and being exposed to the competing nationalisms and their interactions with religious communities as well, and Seeing those communities work towards common ground and not always being divisive, but also working towards shared goals. Another part of this conversation that I just want to preview is a conversation that Slava and I have on critique. Critique is essentially the intellectual move that seeks to deconstruct categories that we might perceive as natural, whether that be religion or nationalism or any other sort of abstract characteristic that we use to talk about our world. So for example, religion can be dismissed as being only about power or social structures or politics, and therefore the category of religion makes much less sense, is an abstraction built on other things that are more stable and able to be understood more clearly. Our guest today doesn't reject critique out of hand. I mean, she rightly says she's learned much from it, as we all have who study religion, but she wants to move beyond it and thinking about affirmative stances and not just deconstruction. So she looks for instances where nationalism and religious identity have served pluralism and democratic life. So this puts her in a productive tension with a lot of other current academic trends, particularly around this idea of deconstruction and critique. So in this conversation, we'll start thinking about her own personal experiences in her native Croatia, and then also talk about her work, analyzing and considering Polish solidarity, the late Pope Francis, talking about humanism and a variety of other topics, including, near the end, American nationalism, and how that fits into this conversation. So suffice it to say, I think this conversation is not only very relevant, but it's very productive, because Slava seeks to have it in a in a different way than we tend to have this conversation, particularly in the academy. So here's my discussion with Slavica Jakelic. Slava Jakelic, thank you very much for being on ReligionWise.

Slavica Jakelic:

Thank you very much for having me.

Chip Gruen:

So I want to start, and it is kind of my pattern to start a little bit with how you got into the work that you do. You know, growing up in a Croatian home, obviously the work that you do on nationalism and populism and religion, it's all sort of very tied up in your history. Can you talk a little bit about your your memories of that you you remark about how memorable it is that there are Catholic priests and Communist Party members sitting around your dinner table. That must have been very influential on you as a you know, as you grew up, right?

Slavica Jakelic:

Thank you very much for for this question, because I, as you said yourself, I am Croatian, and maybe to give a context for that image that you described, which is the sort of little piece that I give in terms of my upbringing in a working class home in Croatia. Croatia was between, 1945 and 1991, Croatia was part of communist Yugoslavia, and in that context in which predominantly Catholic society, like Croatian society, was in a larger sort of, you know, framework, political framework of a communist state, I would say that in that context, the image that you start with, and in- that I mentioned in my book is members of the Catholic Church, with Communist Party leaders being in the same at the same kitchen table. I think what's most striking is that my experience was all, actually not all that unique. And there were many families in which these kinds of images are actually quite common. So in that sense, I would say what is not unusual, but what I think is interesting is that only later I came to think of it as my first one, some of my first experiences of pluralism. You know, when I came to understand the the sort of context in which I lived, as having the capacity to teach us something about what it means to live together with really deep differences. And what I also realized much later, especially as I was beginning to engage in the academic conversations about religions and secularism, was that these types of religious secular encounters that I was with witnessing in my own home encounters that really more productive, even if very intense, but very productive. And I would say the rich, intensive, pluralistic possibilities that such types of experiences were getting lost. They were getting marginalized because the studies of religion and secularism over the last 20 years, especially in North American Academy, were primarily emphasizing religious-secular conflicts. And so my work was attempting to think about religious-secular relations in a different way based on these experiences, and sort of to answer first, why are we missing these things? Why is there silence about them? And what do they teach us? What do they tell us about the ways in which religious-secular encounters can play out differently?

Chip Gruen:

So we get the feeling. I mean, it's very clear through your writing that that your you know, as you say, your personal experiences, your family experiences, what was formative to you isn't, you know, it's not that you found the theory and you found it interesting, and then you go, you know, and find practical implications for that theory, but the other way around, right? You start with the practical. You start with the lived experience. You start with your experiences in, you know, what was Yugoslavia, and then, you know, in your Croatian context, can you talk a little bit about your experiences with the Erasmus Guild and and how that, you know, proved to be sort of the fodder of what became your professional, academic, intellectual and eventually, theoretical work, but grounded in that, that practical experience.

Slavica Jakelic:

I think that, I think you look at it correctly, that there is something about the relationship between the sort of social life that I, that I observe and try to analyze, and the theoretical tools that defined, you know, around us, and especially in the studies of religious secularism in this context. And I would say that that I always push with examples from history and, you know, sociological examples against theory, to see how far theories are actually taking us and what what they're missing, or how to make them- I'm interested in theoretical pluralism in my work. So I don't claim to have, you know, greater awareness of theories. I just want to see how they encounter one another, and how empirical experiences kind of push against them, and what what that what it tells us in the end. But what you were referring to when you mentioned the Erasmus Guild is my former life. Of in the early 1990s as a college student, I was working in the Erasmus Guild, the Institute for the Culture of Democracy in the early 1990s. So what I want to say about that, I think I would want to emphasize that for all of us living in societies of Eastern Europe, that experience of civil society in the late 80s and in the early 1990s was the one of a remarkable sense of the possibility of the remarkable sense of freedom of agency we had as sort of members of these civil societies, the sense that, as is just common citizens, and we were really young at the time, so probably also very sort of optimistic, certainly hopeful, but also optimistic. But we as common citizens, when we act in concert, and this notion that when citizens come together to act in concert is actually Hannah Arendt's definition of power, which I always find the most useful understanding of power, so that we can together change things, that we can move our societies, that we can create conditions in which, you know, dignities and freedoms of all can be respected. And so in my work, most recently, sort of these types of, the type of knowledge and the type of to some extent, it's a memory, but it's certainly kind of knowledge. Came together in my recent article I wrote, in which I'm using the notion of anti politics, which is the notion that great Hungarian writer and activist, Georgi Conrad, introduced in the 80s, and for him, anti politics, which is basically located in civil society. He does refer to our capacity to resist and contest the state and ideology, to sort of reject what, what he calls professionals of power are imposing on us. So he's very much, he understands that that's the part of it, but the second part of it, which he, I think, locates, and it's over all too often, kind of neglected, especially by Western observers, is that anti-politics means also capacity to envision. It's sort of based in the ethos of civil society and capacity to envision the given normative horizon that citizens together, while probing their moral intuitions, can actually articulate what kind of society they want, what kind of societies they could have. And so in that sense, I would say, yes, Eastern Europeans, you know, there is a notion of power, power of the palace that Watson Howell introduced. And I think this is something we grew up with, all of us, not just me. And in a way, I am introducing that again, because I think we live in a moment in which it's necessary again to revive our understanding of what civil societies can do.

Chip Gruen:

So I think that this next question sort of will ask you to elaborate on on that idea about what civil societies will do or can do. And one of the mechanisms there, that you know is a part of civil society and or a tool of the political is nationalism. And you know, you've argued that scholars and commentators keep predicting that nationalism will fade away, you know. And then it surprises us. It emerges again, as powerful or more powerful as we keep moving forward. What do you think we keep misreading here about nationalism? Like, what are we missing, right? And, you know, sort of a, you know example, either from from from your Croatian experience, or

Slavica Jakelic:

So it's interesting, you're mentioning something else that our listeners might be familiar with would be, would be great. that because I think in this case, in this instance, when I was re reading literature on nationalisms that was produced in the 1990s I thought there was plenty to be learned from it, because prior to the 1990s ending, the 1990s scholars have been announced, were announcing the prediction, the predicting the disappearance of nationalisms. But it's interesting, they're also at the same time, or, you know, for the sort of greater part of the 20th century, they were announcing and predicting the other religion. And so these are two aspects of social life. I think that scholars got wrong. And so I will get back to the notion of religion and nationalism together. But you were asking aboutt nationalism, so, let's focus on that. So there was, I think, for many scholars, not just the prediction and expectation, but I think there was also hope that nationalisms would go away because they were such powerful sources of group identity that had negative implications. And for them, the hope was that with globalization in particular, but modernity more generally. So there's this modern expectation of progress. So we're moving away from particular types of identities, group identities, to something that's more universal. So that was sort of where they were. And there were always exceptions to these kinds of theoretical assertions. There were people in social theory like Greg Galhoen, who who wrote powerfully on this and the importance of national identity for sense of solidarity across, let's say, class differences, gender differences and so on. There is a political philosopher who was writing in the late 1990s and he was really a lone voice in America, making similar, similar kind of claims from within political philosophy. His name is David Miller, and again, but there are exceptions. There are exceptions because the agreement was the expectation, and the hope, I'd say, was that nationalism was waning, that, you know, entities like European Union are proof that globalization is moving forward, that world is more interconnected, and therefore we are going to move away from something so sort of something that excludes, nationalism excludes and this is sort of the worry. It's an ethical worry that many, many people and scholars have. We're moving towards cosmopolitanism more and more, to the discourse, Universalist discourse of human rights among it, among these kinds of discourses that are sort of winning the day. So looking at these conversations, and this is again, 1990s, late 1990s and early, 2000s looking at them at this moment, which is when we see nationalism rising, and people are saying, oh, new nationalism, renewal of nationalism, return of nationalisms. And it's not the first time that they're talking like this. This is it was also happening in the, you know, 50s, with the waves of decolonization that brought again nationalisms, you know, to the central stage, some scholars are today are rejecting nationalisms altogether. Again, they do that because, again, they see it as intolerant, as a source of violence, as a source of exclusion. People who study Christian nationalism in the United States particularly have a tendency to do that. But there are also those who are sort of rejecting nationalism, let's say, coming from the coloniality perspective, because they don't see it as redeemable. They think it's part of a coloniality modernity project. It's inseparable. It's intertwined the nation states, which is sort of an aspect of colonial metrics of power. And so these are all really, again, rejections of nationalisms desire to replace it or to remove it from from life, because there are ethical problems with it. And I take these kinds of sort of trajectories of thought and line of inquiries really seriously, but my contribution to these debates is basically that we shouldn't jump too quickly, not just with predictions, but with any blanket critiques. I think that's my main problem with blanket critiques of anything like nationalism, because I think what we have as a problem, and why we keep missing the power of nationalism and power of religion, in this sense, is that we don't know what to do with particular attachments. We don't know what to do with those kinds of things that link us as individuals to particular groups of people. And I think we neglected for a very long time what I call democratic participant- democratic formation of particular attachments. And so the questions we should be asking is, why do we have problems with that? And what are the ways can we work to shape, to foster those kinds of particular attachments that are both particular, but are also open. They're capacious, they can tolerate others. They can include others. So I don't think the nationalism is just a political ideology. I think it's a source of identity. It's a very powerful source of identity. And I write in one of my articles that I like to quote, Edward said because he was a critic of nationalism, but he was also very clear on its power. And he said it's the most collective, collective sentiment, the most private of private emotions. And I think dealing with that, addressing that, tackling that, is absolutely critical for the 21st Century.

Chip Gruen:

So let me follow that up with kind of a method question, because how you describe, you know, sort of the idea that nationalism keeps being imagined as something that's going to go away, and it surprises us. It seems like there's a distinction here between having a descriptive project and having an aspirational project. And what you're describing sounds like a lot of people that really would hope that nationalism would fade and go away, but it's not an accurate description of the world that we live in just because of the community functions and the function of nationalism within the building of individual identity and group identity.

Slavica Jakelic:

So my project, my work, is without I have absolutely no- I mean, I'm a social theorist in religious studies, and I always find it to be very conducive for doing normative work without having to apologize for it. So on the one hand, I am interested in I do empirical work. I do historical sociology. I do empirical work in terms of doing even ethnographic studies, even though that's less emphasized in the context of sort of my larger, you know what I've written so far? But yes, I do empirical work, and I am, in that sense, very much sociologist, right? But at the same time, again, without any apology, I am normative in the sense that I want to retrieve, and I'm interested in recovering those instances, those experiences, historical cases in which nationalism is something that is actually pluralistic and something that is tolerant, something that has a potential to sort of increase democratic pluralism, levels of democratic pluralism, some society and something there was some years ago in one of the journals in the United States, there was a sentence that the editors wrote, and they said, can nationalism be leavened by justice, even something without which we actually can't, accomplish justice, right? Can it? Can we think of it that way? And my interest is, really is recovering and again, retrieving those instances where that's the case. So in a way, I'm doing empirical work with a very, very clear normative purpose, I would say. And at the same at the same time, when you're asking me, am I doing something that is trying to posit this as an ideal? Yes, absolutely. In that sense, it's also normative.

Chip Gruen:

So let's dig into that idea a little bit more that some might think is a counter to it counterintuitive claim, and you can flesh this out with maybe some examples for us that nationalism doesn't have to be exclusionary, that it can serve pluralism and democratic life. And here we can maybe, you know, start putting a little more flesh on this too, by not only thinking about nationalism, but also thinking about religious identity, where they, you know, very often get intertwined, get braided together. Can you walk us through what you mean, or maybe give us examples of nationalism serving those pluralistic ends?

Slavica Jakelic:

Yeah, sure. So, of course, I do understand. I want to say that before I forget. I want to say that, of course, I'm aware of nationalisms, the dark sides of history in which nationalism played the role of actually instigating those dark sides of history, and really my own in my own life, I saw that firsthand playing out in the countries of former Yugoslavia, so I'm very much aware of that, but I'm also, again, perhaps affirming again, what something, something that Said noted, I'm aware of its power and if its force, and I can also see this other side, which is the side of, side of, not just tolerant, but also, I would say more virtuous form of belonging, nationalism is a source of that. So let me give some examples, because I think examples you're right can be helpful. So I can talk about, let's say, the 1990s the war in Croatia and Bosnia and Bosnia, it was a it's not a country. It was also country of, for one of the elements of the former Yugoslavia. But in the 1990s it was a country, was a society that basically had three groups of three nations, Croats, now Bosniaks and then Serbs, oftentimes aligned around religious identity as well. So Croatian Catholics, Bosniak Muslims and Orthodox Serbs. And when the war started in Bosnia, in the very beginning, the war looked like this. It was basically Bosnian-Croats, Croatian Catholics and Bosnian Muslims fighting together against the Serbian army and any attempt to divide Bosnia and against Serbian claims to its territory. However, within one year, and this is what happens with wars, often in war in Bosnia, what happened was Croats suddenly aligned with Serbs, and they wanted to divide Bosnia between Croatia and Serbia. Now the press. President of Croatia, the president of my country, supported this politics and this conflict with Muslims. And he basically was affirming a very strong nationalist claim and aspiration claim to another country's territory. He was in favor of this division, of this split of Bosnia between Serbs and Croats. However, the whole of Croatian public, the whole of Croatian civil society, stood firmly against it. There was an outrage, public outrage. Even some members of the President's party actually left the party because they were against that politics, and they were just against this politics because it was a politics of divide and conquer. So what's interesting about this type of, this moment in Croatian recent history, is that Croatian Catholic Cardinal, Cardinal Kucharich, who was otherwise, was a big supporter of Croatian independence, who was very much one of the advocates of the role of the Catholic Church, of preserving Croatian national identity. He also spoke against the politics of nationalism that the President was affirming. And he did, he did it so very publicly, he called for peace between the Croats and Muslims in Bosnia. He called for peace in general, but particularly between Muslims and Croats. And what's interesting is he aligned fully with secular members of civil society here, right? And so what I think in this, in this moment in Croatian history, and I think it's often too forgotten, unfortunately, even now, when there are these debates about what's happening in Croatia in terms of national identity, between sort of more conservative right wing in ways, and sort of more leftist understanding of political identity of Croatia, this moment in which there was this alignment of religious and secular forces to basically affirm that both religion and secular foundations can give reasons to articulate national identity as a vision of something that's tolerant, that respects the sovereignty of other countries, that seeks democracy for oneself, but also for others. I think this was truly a configuration of nationalism, the one that I'm trying to sort of articulate and define as ethical nationalism. So in that sense, it was, it was open tolerant, it was forward looking, and it was certainly, sort of, seeing its neighbors as something that you know you should respect, who they are, what they are, and what kind of political, political future they want to define for themselves. So, so, I mean, you can ask me more questions if you want about this, but I see this as just one of but many instances really, where we can see nationalism is being articulated within civil society as pluralistic and again, embracing both secular and religious articulations of what national identity is,

Chip Gruen:

Yeah, so you've talked a little bit about, sort of where religious identity is the thing at the forefront, right, the Muslim, Orthodox and Catholic contingents, and then you sort of shifted. And also think about how those religious identities are in conversation also with secular actors, right? Who might, who religious identity might not be at the forefront of how they conceive themselves or how they're working, if they have one at all, you know. So here we could think about, you know, socialist or Marxist actors, I think, often as well. And your recent work really goes in that direction, right? So with Polish solidarity or South African anti apartheid movements, can you talk about what makes, where religion is at the forefront versus where it's religion in conversation with secular ideas? How is that a turn? How is that different? How is that sort of show up in your work? You know, distinctly?

Slavica Jakelic:

Yeah, I think that you're referring here to my most recent book, which is called Pluralizing Humanism, Religions and Secularisms Beyond power. And again, it started. The project started as a sort of response, or as part of the conversations about religious secular problematic. And for me, what was again important was to alert us to pay attention to those instances in which religious secular encounters were critical for moving societies towards more democracy, and in this case, in the book, which is both theoretical, normative, deeply normative, but also very, I think, empirical, because it gives these two cases as not illustrations, but I would say as a reference, references really rich references for how to think about religious secular relations. So I write about religious-secular alliances in pro democratic solidarities, religious secular solidarities in Poland and in South Africa in the 80s. And what I show about them, however, is also that prior to the 1980s when these solidarities emerge, religious and secular actors in these two societies were really, there was a strong sense of great levels of this trust that existed, let's say, between Marxist, even just more broadly, leftist Poles and Catholic citizens of Poland. And at the same time, there was a distrust between Marxists and religious leaders anti apartheid leaders in South Africa. So for example, somebody like Bishop Tutu, Archbishop. Archbishop Tutu, he was extremely critical of Marxist theory and Marxist ideology. Yet at the same time, when in the 90s, one of the leaders of anti apartheid movement was killed, it was and this anti apartheid leader was a Marxist himself. At his funeral, it was Bush Bishop Tutu who actually gave eulogy. And so this just shows the extent to which sort of they, you know, they lined, lined around the same kind of goals. And oftentimes what I'm being asked is, oh, well, I didn't they do that because of strategic reasons. Really, many people at various conferences where I presented my work sort of always make a case for but they had to fight together, because there was no other way to bring democracy about, to fight for racial justice in South Africa or to bring democratic regime in Poland. And I was answered yes, and this is exactly what I show in these in these two cases, they started out of strategy, because of strategy. They started because they had they needed each other, but in the process of working together, what they come to realize is also that they did have certain types of normative visions for their societies that they shared. And I call these visions, humanistic type of visions. And for me, I think what, what I think that what they did in the process of working together was become aware of the limits of their own point of view, or their, the absoluteness of their normative commitment, their ideological commitments, was shaken up, because what they realize is that the other side, as they used to see each other, right, the other side actually also wants to envision societies as more just, more democratic, as sort of respecting the freedoms of all. And so I think that there is something that we can learn from these, again, two cases, something that tells us about the nature of collaboration, solidarities, with those with whom we don't agree on everything that we can still find sites of encounter and even sort of agreement in terms of what kind of societies we'd want. And I think it's different. I think that both religions and secularisms when they're in positions of power. actually lose I think both religions and secularisms when they are working together, when religious and secular actors are working together, I think they can learn a lot from each other.

Chip Gruen:

So one of the things that I find myself continually saying to colleagues in other disciplines or, or in conversations like this, not that I need to convince you of this, but with others, is that that religion matters, right, that these religious identities are not just covers for other things that we you know, we see contemporary critique, you know, asking about how religion serves power, or whether religion is an operative or coherent category. You know that it is just a second order or third order abstraction on the things that really matter, right? Which are power, politics, economics, etc, you have sort of expressed in your work the need to move beyond critique. How do you respond right to some of those, I think, very contemporary deconstructions of religion in such a way that they try to make it go away as not the thing that we should be paying attention to.

Slavica Jakelic:

I thank you for asking that question, because I've been thinking about the I would call it the problem of critique, for quite some time, and even as a graduate student, I felt that sort of, I didn't feel at ease with the emphasis on the critical discourses, not because I am against critique or various forms of critique. As such, but because I thought that they were over emphasized as sort of the center of intellectual inquiry. So in a way, I would say that what you're asking about religion, and critique of religion, deconstruction of the notion of religion, I think it's a part of a larger there is a larger background, I think, in which North American Academy and Western European Academy have for very long time, for decades, was, I think, shaped by, organized around discourse of critique, and so I saw great value in critique. I learned a lot from it. I still do. I still do, but I think, let's say, my engagement with secularism studies, critical secularism studies, from the start, I always felt that they were missing things. They were missing something, the other side. For example, in the context of critique of secularism as the sort of system of modern power, or or secular powers, or something that dominates and governs and organizes and so on. What I always felt was what is being missed is the plurality of secularisms. And I'm always insisting on plurality, because I think if we don't pay attention to plurality, I think we also theoretically miss something so so what I was interested always was finding that plurality and what that can tell us about both secularisms and about religions. And in a way, I was thinking for quite some time about why I have this disposition in which, on the one hand, I want to learn from critiques, various discourses of critique and traditions of critical thinking. But at the same time, I'm interested in affirmation. I'm interested in retrieval instances when you know nationalism plays a role that is actually ethical, that promotes democratic pluralism. I'm interested in seeing religious-secular relations as something that, again, builds societies that are better, that are more just, I think in at least one level, on one level, I think this reflects my East European intellectual roots I mentioned earlier, you know, somebody like Matslev [unclear] or Adam Michnik. These were the intellectuals and sort of members of societies. In the case of Alan Michnik, he's less known than Wanzhou Havel, but not for east Europeans, because Adam Mick Nick wrote a book the Church and the Left in Poland in the 1970s recognizing that that Catholic church actually underwent this, I would call it humanist turn, and was focusing on human dignity of all. And he was saying, we have to work together, because we actually this is a different church now. And he was talking about post Vatican two church. So what I'm saying is East European way of engagement with social life, and I think with thought in general, is something that cannot, it's, it's not resting only on critical I think it's like anti politics. It's always turned towards ethical and the ethos of how we work and how we live together. There is a book, I don't know if you encountered it. It's a book by Rita Felski. She is a literary scholar. She teaches at the University of Virginia, and the book is called The Limits of Critique, as you can imagine, a literary scholarship in that discipline, the discourse for critique has been very much dominant in many ways. But she writes in such nuanced ways, a nuanced way about how critique, while it remains important, has taken us away from even being able to teach students, future, future generations, to affirm anything and she she says it's important that we develop ways of thinking and doing what we do so that our students can, and she calls it, they can develop reflexive, reflexive formations of their esthetic attachments. And I thought that's a beautiful way of actually thinking about how we link critical together with something that's affirmative. But I felt for a very long time that critique is absolutely central to so much of what academics do, and I think, in a way that actually is. It's a default mode of intellectual engagement. And I think, and again, it's not a problem. That's the way should be, I mean, and this is why I really recommend this work by Rita Felski. It's a very slim book, but it's beautifully done. She's a great writer. I think she shows how it's important, but at the same time, you need to move in other directions too. And I think that's what I've been trying to do.

Chip Gruen:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I first really encountered this when Russ McCutchen came to town, sort of both literally and figuratively. And he spoke at Lehigh, which is just next door, and, you know, on the one hand, I was like, yeah, I get it. I get it. And it's really valuable. But how can we move beyond it, right? How can we understand, you know, the cash value of that for what we're trying to explain in the world, or what we're trying to understand in the world?

Slavica Jakelic:

So one of the respondents is, like, actually, a colleague and friend of mine had responded to McCutchen, Atalia Omar. He she wrote that piece in, I don't know if you saw it in the jar. It was critic, critic and caretaker, too, and I saw in your question really sort of troubling that. And I agree with you, because I don't think I'm there to affirm any particular tradition. I mean, I can, I can, I can, I know Catholic social thought? Because I know Catholic social thought really well. I'm also Catholic, but at the same time, I'm interested to think about it both critically and constructively, right? So I want to bring it in conversation with social thought. I'm working on an article on that, yeah, but I'm not interested in just critique. For the sake of critique, I'm not interested in the critique of the critique either. I want to do something else. So, yeah.

Chip Gruen:

So the next couple of questions, I want to kind of bring our conversation into the contemporary world, one on the European side of the Atlantic, and then coming to the US, you mentioned humanism, in particular, Catholic humanism, post Vatican two. And you write about Pope Francis's encyclical Fratelli tutti, where he argues about humanism, really, in a way that I think might be, I don't know, at least at first blush, is surprising, because, you know he says there's no solidarity without first knowing who we are, loving our own land and loving people. I will say, and I've quoted this before, but I'll say it again, that Francis also said there's no such thing as concentric circles of Catholic love that you know, you know, that you you know you love your neighbor and you love your family, but not, you know, not in in ranked order. But then you know, there's obviously been a change in the guard, in the papacy, and Leo, the 14th, has picked up some of this and is much more critical of those nationalistic impulses. And I think in particular, in particular with the immigration issues and the migration issues in Europe. I mean, this is all really present and really important in the public conversation. Can you, can you say a little bit about, you know, that Catholic turn towards, towards humanism, you know, particularly very recently?

Slavica Jakelic:

Yeah, I'm pleased that you're bringing up Pope Francis and again, linking him to Leo. I would say that both of them are extremely critical of nationalism, and they're critical of nationalism of the, that kind of nationalism that does not allow with the force of its intolerance, does not allow, it's unable to have space for solidarity with those who don't have home right, who lost their home, who were displaced. And I think this is where both of them are very clear. But I was reading recently not just encyclicals, but also Memoirs of late Pope Francis. It's called Hope. And the reason why I'm bringing this book up is because he speaks so beautifully, I would say, and clearly, of the significance of one's roots and one's rootedness. But the reason why that matters, and he talks about his own ruthness in Italian culture that was part of Argentina and in this sort of immigrant culture of Argentina, what he shows is that having having roots is critical in this world in which everything is all these sort of boundaries are also at the same time broken, right? But it's critical to belong, so that we know what it feels like not to belong, to have that to have to lose that sense of belonging. So what I think you're asking me about how to how to sort of place both Francis and, I would say, Leo, in the larger context of post Vatican, post Vatican two Catholic humanism, what I would say is that both in several popes in different ways, and this also includes John Paul the Second, but all of them in ways in which it both shapes and reflects Catholic social teaching. It is the need to bring together theology of culture, which is a really strong articulation, optic, Catholic articulation of how every time when we talk about Christianity, we're talking about Christianity, it's inculturated. It's always part of particular culture, and that includes national cultures, right? So they want to bring together theology of culture and the use universal notion of human personhood. And I don't see that this is intention. I see these two in productive relationship, and it seems to me, I call it in my work, on the one hand, we have to bring together ethics of identity so sense of responsibility to those with whom we share, language, religion, national identity, culture, right? So ethics of identity with ethics of solidarity. Ethics of solidarity is something that enable us, enables us to see that we have responsibility to those with whom we don't share anything, except the fact that we are all human. They have we are members of human family in the language of Catholic theology. So to me, again, these popes, late Pope Francis, Pope Leo, and I would say particularly John Paul the Second, who was really important for articulating the import, the centrality of nation and nationhood. All of them want to bring theology of culture and human personhood together. They don't want to separate it. And I think there is in social thought, in social theory, I think there is a separation between ethics of identity and ethics of solidarity. I think there is a separation, you know, civic identity versus ethnic identity, this type of religion that is identity based versus faith. There's always this thing that we make distinctions between categories that are particular attachments and those that are more universal. I think we need to start bringing them together, and in a way, that's how I understand Catholic social thought as well.

Chip Gruen:

So as I alluded to earlier, I want to bring you to the US side of the Atlantic and maybe ask for a little guidance on how we can better think about what's happening here with the rise of Christian nationalism, it seems that you know, while you have demonstrated that there is a possibility of having a kind of nationalism and religious identity that is pluralistic and is, you know, has that ethics of solidarity that you refer to all of the juice right now, particularly around religion and nationalism in the US is of the other type, right is is intolerant and not pluralistic and interested in advancing the the needs of a particular social, religious, political, economic group. What does your work help us to see about that, both sort of as a description, but also normatively, about how what the way forward is in order to help that situation?

Slavica Jakelic:

Yeah, I was thinking of two things as you were talking. I was thinking of, on the one hand, the protests that were happening. I think no king protests, that was the name of it. I'm currently in England, so I'm trying to think when that was a couple of months ago. There was this past summer, I think, right, if the last one no kings protest, yeah. But one of the I will always remember this statement by one of the protesters who said carrying American flag. He said, I'm reclaiming this flag, right? That was, there was an interesting notion. I thought, you know, there is a citizen who actually understands that this needs to be done if you want to create American society, or if you want to move American society towards more positive vision of what it means to be American. And I'm thinking also here of Eric Reed's letter. This is American football, not European football. This is American footballer. Eric Reed, who, in 2017, 2018 wrote an article, wrote a letter to the New York Times in which he was explaining why he was not just defending but explaining why he decided to take a knee right during the the American National Anthem. And I always with my students, I read this article in my classes on nationalism, because I think it says a lot, actually, about the discourse what I would say discourse of ethical nationalism, and I'll explain in a second what I mean by this. He says, I love my country. I am proud to be an American. And then he refers to James Baldwin, and he says, because I love my country, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. And I think this statement, reclaim, these two statements, reclaiming my flag, criticizing my country out of a love, critique, out of love, right? I think in many ways, sums up, sort of layers of what ethical nationalism can be. And. The certainly is capacity for self critique, capacity for change, for for expanding the meaning what it means to be American, in this case, so that the conditions and as an immigrant to this country, to America, I always think of, I actually am, always moved by the ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And I always think of it as something that is being expanded, is being revisited, to see how actually we are applying it. And so to expand that notion, I think it means to turn articulations of national identity towards something positive, to some to positive visions of what it means to be American,

Chip Gruen:

Yeah, it's interesting to me how both of the examples that you set out are closely connected to the flag, right? In this, the way that this gets contested in, you know, in public circles, is around symbols and civic religion, etc, right? And then and that the no kings protest that you referred to was on June 14, which is both Flag Day and in one of the sort of the worst, the worst coincidences in, you know, in recent memory, Donald Trump's birthday, right? So that you have this way of playing with symbols in a really, I mean, in a really dangerous way, right, where veneration of the flag somehow ends up being veneration of of the current president?

Slavica Jakelic:

Yeah, it's interesting. I agree with you. I agree with you that so much of it is connected to symbols or to sort of either national anthem or flag, because it symbolizes, in a powerful way, American identity, right? It stands for certain things. And I remember these conversations. I'm particularly interested to hear what 20 year olds have to say about this American, American 20 year olds. And I teach, by the way, I teach also nationalism classes and religion nationalism in other contexts. But what is interesting for American students, let's say some years ago, 7, 6-7, years ago, when I was teaching this for the first time, there was a very strong discomfort when I would ask the students, do you remember the pledge to the flag, which, you know they learned in school? And I'll ask them to do together. Let's say 15-16, of them in the class. Can you say it together? Right? And they would say it, and they will be, oh, my goodness, this sounds terrible. This, you know, it's a collective statement. And they realize they're in their early 20s. They thought about this, and they feel like, oh, this is brainwashing. But it's, I think, what is a powerful thing about what's what these protests that I mentioned, no kings protest and and Eric Reid's letter are saying is that actually you you have to reclaim it, you have to reclaim it, and you have to give it a different meaning, right? You have it, you can give it a different meaning. I think civil society is a space, and it's a space that it has been, particularly, again, criticized by so many scholars, because, you know, civil society is attached to the state, civil society is attached to capitalism and all these sort of variations of critiques. And again, I don't want to dismiss critiques. I see why scholars are doing that kind of work. But what I also think is that civil society is the arena in which we have to come together, if the despite our differences, right to come together, to align around certain notions of common goods and and I think this is sort of what we are facing, again, if in the 90s, it was the Eastern European early, sorry, late 80s and early 90s. 1990s it was the East European societies that made this clear. I think that we can see that now everywhere in western part of the world as well.

Chip Gruen:

So the question I always like to end up on is just sort of aware of my own myopia. You know, what have I not asked you about that you think is particularly germane or important to understand? You know, not only the thrust of your work, but why and how it's just really relevant here, as we sit in 2026

Slavica Jakelic:

Yeah, I don't, I don't have, actually anything, no wisdoms here. I have to say, I think that what, what, what I can say for the end, is that I am always interested in learning from different types of discourses. I think it's absolutely critical to keep what I call theoretical, theoretical pluralism in the context of our intellectual conversations. I think it's absolutely critical to keep academic life, academic institutions as spaces in which these conversations would be happening. This is my hope. I can talk about hope if you want, but that's something that has been on my mind more and more recently, about sort of the sources of hope. But anyway, but at the moment, I'm working on a book Ethical Nationalisms, as many, in many cases before. I always talk in plural, as you can see, because I think we need to be able to think of the world as it is, which is, it's pluralistic, right? It's both pluralistic in terms of reality, but it's also pluralistic in terms of the value.

Chip Gruen:

All right. Well, thank you very much, Slava, it is so good of you to come on ReligionWise. It's been a great conversation. I really appreciate it.

Slavica Jakelic:

Thank you so much, Chip.

Chip Gruen:

This has been ReligionWise, a podcast produced by the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding of Muhlenberg College. ReligionWise is produced and directed by Christine Flicker. For more information about additional programming, or to make an inquiry about a speaking engagement, please visit our website at religionandculture.com There, you'll find our contact information, links to other programming and have the opportunity to support the work of the Institute. Please subscribe to ReligionWise, wherever you get your podcasts. We look forward to seeing you next time.