> A person's national identity was directly tied to one's national religion. A point I often bring up when people discuss things done "in the name of religion"

> A person's national identity was directly tied to one's national religion. A point I often bring up when people discuss things done "in the name of religion" that seem either counter to the themes of said religion or just odd under that justification. And I say this as a non-religious person under the common usage of "religious". For a lot of people, and possibly to a greater extent in different places and different times than the modern, western world, there is little distinction between "creed" and national/cultural identity. Religion wasn't just where you went to church or temple on Saturday or Sunday but rather it's another term for the distinct identity of a group. Ideas of divine laws and rules of behavior mix with the shared cultural, ethnic, and historically geographical identity of your tribe or nation. Just as now we might talk about the things you must believe and practice to be considered a true Christian or a true Muslim, there were things you had to accept and behaviors you had to practice in order to be a "real" Roman or a "real" Hebrew. I think this was more of an identifying factor than our modern concept of nations and religions. So when you wonder how someone could do a thing because of their religion, and so many people do different things based on the same religion, I often think about it in terms of how people act differently even though their motivation may fall under the scope of "because I'm an American" (or any other nationality). "Nationalism" almost serves the same purpose as "religion" when transposing between secular and sacred frameworks. I'm admittedly not an expert on this but it's something that interests me in terms of history and anthropology.