Historically, no religious denomination has categorically or systematically promoted Belarusian nationalism. Rather, for centuries, an Orthodox-Catholic contest over which faith would play a dominant role in Belarusian lands ended up promoting the national causes of Russia and Poland, respectively, and not offering a niche for Belarus as such. Consequently, Belarus has long been effectively a cultural borderland. And the existence of a fuzzy and unstable border between two Christian denominations on this territory resulted in frequent, geopolitically triggered changes in religious allegiance on the part of the ancestors of today’s Belarusians.
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