This presentation explores how modern nation-states have reshaped religion through legal, political, and symbolic means. It argues that religion and the nation-state co-evolved, each shaping the other’s institutional form and public meaning. Drawing on conceptual history and historical institutionalism, it traces the transition from sacred/profane to secular/religious categories. Case studies of Turkey and Syria show contrasting methods of subordinating Islam to national political agendas. The modern state redefined religious authority, standardized rituals, and reframed sacredness in national terms. In Islam, decentralized pluralism gave way to bureaucratic control. Globally, states either privatized or instrumentalized religion to bolster legitimacy. As a result, religious traditions now negotiate their relevance within the framework of national sovereignty. The talk invites a rethinking of secularization as a restructuring rather than a retreat of the sacred.

Jocelyne Cesari holds the Chair of Religion and Politics at the University of Birmingham (UK) and Research Professor at Ben Gurion University in the Negev. She is Senior scholar in residence at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem and Senior Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University. From 2018 to 2024, she was the T. J. Dermot Dunphy Professor of Religion, Violence, and Peacebuilding at Harvard Divinity School and the President of the European Academy of Religion (2018-19). She is the academic advisor of www.euro-islam.info . Her new book: We God’s Nations: Political Christianity, Islam and Hinduism in the World of Nations, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022.

The mission of the Yves Oltramare Chair for Religion and Politics in the Contemporary World is to provide a major scientific contribution to the analysis of the impact of the relationship between religion and politics, on the evolution of societies and the international system.