Nationalist trials raise the same questions that religious trials raised before the advent of nationalism.

Until modern times, roughly since the sixteenth century, religion served to unify society, just as nationalism does today. Nationalism is as much our political bond as religion once was.

Religious trials before modern times and nationalist trials today are, at their core, trials over the issue of representation. Who speaks for God’s people? Who dares to claim that he or she, this group or that imperium possesses a will that is God’s will? The Roman emperor? The priestly theocracy? The pope? The king? Today, in spite of all that has changed, we can notice that in trials of nationalists the question of representation remains. Just as heresy trials for centuries involved more than a dispute over matters of doctrine, so nationalist trials touch deeper into our political identity than differences over public policy. Does the government represent all the people, or does it represent one people yet rule another? Who speaks, for instance, for the American Indian: the United States government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the tribal councils, or the American Indian Movement (AIM)? The same basic question arises in all precincts of the world and it has for a long time.