Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity

Smith argues that sacred belief remains central to national identity even in an increasingly secular and globalised world. Modern nations draw on ancient myths of ethnic election—the conviction that a people has been chosen by God for a special destiny. These myths, often rooted in Judeo-Christian covenant traditions, supply the cultural resources that sustain national solidarity, sacred homelands, and collective mission. Smith contends that theories of nationalism which ignore religion miss something fundamental about why nations persist and inspire devotion.

Ethnic election refers to the belief that a community stands in a privileged relationship with the deity. Smith distinguishes two forms: a conditional covenant, originating with the Israelites, where chosenness depends on adherence to a strict moral and ritual code; and an unconditional version adopted by many European nations, where privileges of election entail only vague duties of conversion or expansion. The concept helps explain why certain ethnies survived over long time spans and how their myths were politicised by modern nationalism.

Chosen Peoples represents the culmination of Smith's ethno-symbolic project, bringing together nearly forty years of reflection on ethnicity, nationalism, and religion. It deepens the framework developed in The Ethnic Origins of Nations by focusing specifically on the sacred dimension of ethnic identity. Where the earlier work established that modern nations draw on premodern ethnic cores, Chosen Peoples specifies the religious content of those cores—covenants, election myths, sacred homelands, and golden ages—and traces their transmission into modern national identities.

Smith draws on an unusually wide range of examples: Armenia, England, Scotland, Wales, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Greece, Mexico, Turkey, Israel, and the United States. He examines historic landscapes in Ireland, Switzerland, and Egypt; Arthurian myths of Britain; Holy Russia and Byzantium; memories of golden ages; and the modern commemoration of the 'Glorious Dead' and war victims. This breadth allows him to show that the myth of chosenness appears across cultures and religious traditions, not only in the Judeo-Christian West.

Reception was largely positive. Irving Hexham called it a 'tour de force' that brings together Smith's lifetime of scholarship, praising the well-chosen examples and chapter structure. Mary Anne Perkins noted its 'erudition, accessibility, and interest,' describing it as an effective antidote to the tendency to dismiss religion's role in nationalism. The American Historical Review called it 'a big book: not in size, but in ideas'. However, Hexham criticised Smith's claim that Afrikaner nationalism drew on the 'genealogy of Ham,' finding no evidence in South African archives.

A frequent misreading treats Smith's argument as claiming that nationalism is simply religion in disguise or that all nations are fundamentally religious. Smith explicitly rejects this. He argues that nationalism is 'a distinctly this-worldly movement and culture,' not a millennialist creed promising apocalypse. What nationalists draw from religion is not soteriology but 'the very core of traditional religions, their conception of the sacred and their rites of salvation'. The relationship is one of appropriation and analogy, not identity. Nationalism borrows sacred forms without becoming a religion itself.