Excerpt: Thus we have a picture of religiosity and nationalism as universal institutions: social paradigms created at approximately one and the same time. Structurally, the two have one main common characteristic: both are based on the invention of tradition but, if nationalism is based on an invented tradition of the past and by dint of these attempts to extend its own schema over its followers, religiosity accumulates believers by creating a tradition of the future. By tradition of the future I mean those religious practices by which it is possible, through specific individual efforts, to attribute a legitimate picture of a specific and clear future to the person making these efforts. This is an immanent part of the structure of all religions. Naturally, the latter is not the first-born child of modernity, but an emphasis on the creation of a tradition of the future, its advancement at the expense of other characteristics and qualities, and its broadening from a path of personal salvation to an axis of collective identity must be consequences of modernity.