“For God and Country”

Abstract

To assess the relationship between personal religious motivation and spontaneous thoughts about one’s nation, Canadian and American undergraduates completed a measure of religious orientation, and both listed and rated the importance of self-generated thoughts about their respective countries. Among Americans, intrinsic orientation predicted greater ascribed importance to the national heritage (e.g., freedom, equal opportunity, tradition, and family) and to official national symbols such as the flag. Among Canadians, intrinsic orientation predicted greater ascribed importance to multiculturalism, but was unrelated to the enshrining of national symbols. Thus, in both cases, intrinsic religion was associated with the endorsement of ideological components of the nation’s dominant self-stereotype.