Some of nationalism’s most ardent advocates have had tenuous connections to the very nations they championed. Napoleon was a Corsican; Stalin, a Georgian; Hitler, an Austrian. For those whose membership in the national community is less than self-evident, plumbing the depths of national identity can be particularly important.
Is the same true when it comes to religion? Do religious minorities have a special stake in defending the dominant faith in the societies in which they live? One striking answer to that question can be found in the career of Éric Zemmour, a journalist turned presidential candidate who has championed a conception of nationhood that prioritizes France’s Catholic identity. In an interview over email, Zemmour told me that he sees himself as following the “peculiarly French” tradition, first identified by the literary critic Albert Thibaudet and associated with such figures as Chateaubriand, Auguste Comte, and Charles Péguy, of “Catholicism from the outside” (catholicisme du dehors) or “other people’s Catholicism.” It consists in defending the social and cultural value of a faith that, for any number of reasons, one does not practice.