EVENT CANCELLATION - In keeping with the university's COVID-19 protocols, the Lectures in Catholic Experience event scheduled for April 17th has been cancelled. To revisit previously recorded events in this series, please use this link to access the LCE archives.
Indian President Narendra Modi promotes a new nationalism that defines India as a Hindu state. In Myranmar (Burma), Buddhist monks lead a populist nationalist movement that targets Muslim Rohingya as a “foreign” threat. In the United States, evangelical Christians overwhelmingly support Donald Trump’s brand of “populist” nationalism. Despite predictions that globalization would consign both religion and nationalism to the dust heap of history, there has been a resurgence of religiously inspired nationalist movements worldwide. David Seljak will examine this phenomenon against the background of the ethics of nationalism defined by Canadian Roman Catholic theologian Gregory Baum.
David Seljak is Professor of Religious Studies at St. Jerome's University in Waterloo, Ontario, and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Waterloo. Along with PaulBramadat, he co-edited Religion and Ethnicity in Canada (2005) and Christianity and Ethnicity in Canada (2008). He has worked on issues of religion and multiculturalism with the Canadian government’s Department of Canadian Heritage and the Ontario Human Rights Commission.