Laudator Temporis Acti

Philippians 3:20 (New International Version):

But our citizenship is in heaven.

ἡμῶν γὰρ τὸ πολίτευμα ἐν οὐρανοῖς ὑπάρχει.

Jonathan Z. Smith (1938-2017), Map is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (1978; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. xiv (I added apostrophes to one's):

Within diasporic religion, the chief religious figures were no longer priests or kings but rather god-men, saviors or religious entrepreneurs. The chief mode of religious activity shifted from celebration to initiation. Rather than being born into a divinely established and protected land whose glories one celebrated, one was initiated (reborn) into a divine protector who was tied to no land.

For the native religionist, homeplace, the place to which one belongs, was the central religious category. One's self-definition, one's reality was the place into which one had been born—understood as both geographical and social place. To the new immigrant in the diaspora, nostalgia for homeplace and cultic substitutes for the old, sacred center were central religious values. For the thoroughly diasporic member, who may not have belonged to the deity's original ethnic group, freedom from place became the central religious category. Projecting the group's diasporic existence into the cosmos, he discovered himself to be in exile from his true home (a world beyond this world), he found his fulfillment in serving the god beyond the god of this world and true freedom in stripping off his body which belonged to this world and in awakening that aspect of himself which was from the Beyond. Diasporic religion, in contrast to native, locative religion, was utopian in the strictest sense of the word, a religion of "nowhere", of transcendence.

Cf. Smith, "Native Cults in the Hellenistic Period," History of Religions 11.2 (November, 1971) 236-249 (at 238, footnote omitted)

To the native religionist, homeplace, the place to which one belongs, was an important religious category. One's self-definition, one's reality, was the place into which one had been born geographically and socially. To the new immigrant in the diaspora, nostalgia for homeplace and cultic substitutes for the sacred center became the important religious categories (e.g., Jewish diasporic synagogues were oriented toward Jerusalem; all water used in the cultus of the Roman Isis temples was considered to come from the Nile). To the thoroughly diasporic member, who may not even have belonged to the deity's ethnic group, freedom from place became the major religious category. For such an individual the values of the native religion appeared reversed. For the native religionist to be in place was to truly live. His freedom found fulfillment in the service of the national deity. For the diasporic religionist to be in place was death. It was to be shackled to that which was confining and hence untrue. Diasporic religion was "utopian" in the strictest sense of the word, it was a religion of "nowhere," a religion of transcendence.