Finally, it should have become clear by now that the group's identification with a particular nation is often an ideological discursive resource in which strategic solidarity with allied groups and antagonism with competitors is established in order to achieve social legitimization and religious authority. Inasmuch as the contours of the 'nations' in Afro-Brazilian religions are based on the promotion of a series of variable and interchangeable distinctive signs (pantheon, language drum rhythms, dance steps, initiation rituals etc.), religious identification shares the same dialogic dynamic inherent to processes of ethnic differentiation. The oppositional and relational nature of religious identity is homologous to that of ethnic identity, so that it is not surprising that the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century idiom of African nations operative during the slave trade period overlapped with processes of religious and ritual differentiation, and was partially fossilized and reshaped by those processes.