(RNS) — George Orwell famously defined nationalism as “the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.” But what exactly is a nation?

The term derives from the Latin natio, meaning breed or species, and was adopted in medieval universities to organize students coming from different places. (At the University of Paris, the principal nations were French, Norman, Picard and English-German.) In due course, the term was applied to entire populations, but geography alone did not suffice to establish national identity. What also counted (or could count) was your native language, your ethnicity or ancestry, and your religion.

Countries defined in terms of a single nation thus came to be called nation-states. A significant dimension of 19th-century nationalism was the desire on the part of nations that lacked a country of their own to have one.

After World War I, various nations in Central and Eastern Europe that had been part of multinational empires, like Russia and Austro-Hungary, were enabled to establish nation-states — Poland for the Poles, Hungary for the Hungarians, Lithuania for Lithuanians, etc. In our time, the breakup of the Soviet Union created comparable nation-states like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. 

But what of the people in a given nation-state who belonged to a different nation — Ukrainians or Germans or Jews, for example, living in interwar Poland? They could express their national identity through their own (sometimes state-supported) educational and cultural institutions, and with representation in governmental bodies.

All this is at odds with how the United States has defined itself. Within our borders the only nations in the European sense are Native Americans, many of whom have territory and laws of their own and who in fact identify as nations. 

If, in the words of the Pledge of Allegiance, we are “one nation,” it’s because of the terms laid out in our founding documents. Or as Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch told New York Times columnist David French the other day, “We’re a creedal nation, right, David? I mean, we don’t share a religion, we don’t share a race, we share an idea, OK?”

To be sure, many Americans identify with a particular ethnic or racial community, a religious body or a country of origin. And while they are not identified as separate nations, they may be considered adherents of separate nationalisms.

Before the fall of the Soviet Union, there were Ukrainian nationalists raising money for an independent Ukraine. Zionists — Jewish nationalists — support the state of Israel as the Jewish homeland. Black nationalists reject integration in favor of self-determination, economic empowerment and racial solidarity. 

Such nationalisms relate to the interests or aspirations of minorities of the population. It’s something else entirely when nationalist claims are made on behalf of the majority. These have to do with defining the United States itself.

Christian nationalism thus has to do with advancing the claim that Christianity has special standing in the country. As religion scholar Jerome Copulsky makes clear in a fine essay on this site, the desire to do so has a long history, in large part because the framers of the Constitution went a long way toward making sure that wasn’t the case — rejecting religious tests for office, barring religious establishments and guaranteeing religious free exercise.

According to White House faith adviser Paula White-Cain, Sunday’s daylong federally underwritten Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving on the National Mall is about “rededicating the country to God.” The thing is, our nation wasn’t dedicated to God in the first place.