The idea that religion has a dangerous tendency to promote violence is part of the conventional wisdom of Western societies, and it underlies many of our institutions and policies, from limits on the public role of religion to efforts to promote liberal democracy in the Middle East. William T. Cavanaugh challenges this conventional wisdom by examining how the twin categories of religion and the secular are constructed. A growing body of scholarly work explores how the category 'religion' has been constructed in the modern West and in colonial contexts according to specific configurations of political power. Cavanaugh draws on this scholarship to examine how timeless and transcultural categories of 'religion and 'the secular' are used in arguments that religion causes violence. He argues three points: 1) There is no transhistorical and transcultural essence of religion. What counts as religious or secular in any given context is a function of political configurations of power; 2) Such a transhistorical and transcultural concept of religion as non-rational and prone to violence is one of the foundational legitimating myths of Western society; 3) This myth can be and is used to legitimate neo-colonial violence against non-Western others, particularly the Muslim world.

The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict

Politics & Social Sciences

Cavanaugh, William T.

Social Sciences

Oxford University Press

The Uses of Idolatry

In The Uses of Idolatry, William T. Cavanaugh offers a sustained and interdisciplinary argument that worship has not waned in our supposedly "secular" world. Rather, the target of worship has changed, migrating from the explicit worship of God to the implicit worship of things. Cavanaugh examines modern idolatries and the ways in which humans become dominated by our own creations. While Cavanaugh is critical of modern idolatries, his argument is also sympathetic, seeing in idolatry a deep longing in the human heart for the transformation of our lives. We all believe in something, he argues: we are worshipping creatures whose devotion alights on all sorts of things, in part because we are material creatures, and the material world is beautiful. Following an invisible God is hard for material creatures, so we-those who profess belief in God and those who don't-fixate on things that are closer to hand. Ranging widely across the fields of history, philosophy, political science, sociology, and cultural studies, Cavanaugh develops an account of modernity as not the condition of being disenchanted but the condition of having learned to describe the world as disenchanted. For a better description of the world, Cavanaugh turns to scriptural, theological, and phenomenological accounts of idolatry as inordinate devotion to created things. Through deep explorations of nationalism and consumer culture, The Uses of Idolatry presents a sympathetic but critical account of how and why we sacrifice ourselves and others to gods of our own design.

Philosophy

A critique of modern Western civilization, including contemporary concerns of consumerism, capitalism, globalization, and poverty, from the perspective of a believing Catholic. Responding to Enlightenment and Postmodernist views of the social and economic realities of our time, Cavanaugh engages with contemporary concerns--consumerism, late capitalism, globalization, poverty--in a way reminiscent of Rowan Williams (Lost Icons), Nicholas Boyle (Who Are We Now?) and Michel de Certeau. "Consumption of the Eucharist," he argues, "consumes one into the narrative of the pilgrim City of God, whose reach extends beyond the global to embrace all times and places." He develops the theme of the Eucharist as the basis for Christian resistance to the violent disciplines of state, civil society and globalization.

Theopolitical Imagination: Christian Practices of Space and Time

History

World

T&T Clark

A critique of modern Western civilization, including contemporary concerns of consumerism, capitalism, globalization, and poverty, from the perspective of a believing Catholic.Responding to Enlightenment and Postmodernist views of the social and economic realities of our time, Cavanaugh engages with contemporary concerns—consumerism, late capitalism, globalization, poverty—in a way reminiscent of Rowan Williams (Lost Icons), Nicholas Boyle (Who Are We Now?) and Michel de Certeau. "Consumption of the Eucharist," he argues, "consumes one into the narrative of the pilgrim City of God, whose reach extends beyond the global to embrace all times and places." He develops the theme of the Eucharist as the basis for Christian resistance to the violent disciplines of state, civil society and globalization.

Theopolitical Imagination

Religion & Spirituality

Christian Books & Bibles

Bloomsbury T&T Clark

In this engrossing analysis, Cavanaugh contends that the Eucharist is the Church's response to the use of torture as a social discipline.

Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ (Challenges in Contemporary Theology)

Wiley/Blackwell

Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ

Sociology

Should Christians be for or against the free market? For or against globalization? How are we to live in a world of scarcity? William Cavanaugh uses Christian resources to incisively address basic economic matters -- the free market, consumer culture, globalization, and scarcity -- arguing that we should not just accept these as givens but should instead change the terms of the debate. Among other things, Cavanaugh discusses how God, in the Eucharist, forms us to consume and be consumed rightly. Examining pathologies of desire in contemporary "free market" economies, Being Consumed puts forth a positive and inspiring vision of how the body of Christ can engage in economic alternatives. At every turn, Cavanaugh illustrates his theological analysis with concrete examples of Christian economic practices.

Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire

Business & Money

Economics

Eerdmans

Whether one thinks that "religion" continues to fade or has made a comeback in the contemporary world, there is a common notion that "religion" went away somewhere, at least in the West. But William Cavanaugh argues that religious fervor never left -- it has only migrated toward a new object of worship. In Migrations of the Holy he examines the disconcerting modern transfer of sacred devotion from the church to the nation-state. In these chapters Cavanaugh cautions readers to be wary of a rigid separation of religion and politics that boxes in the church and sends citizens instead to the state for hope, comfort, and salvation as they navigate the risks and pains of mortal life. When nationality becomes the primary source of identity and belonging, he warns, the state becomes the god and idol of its own religion, the language of nationalism becomes a liturgy, and devotees willingly sacrifice their lives to serve and defend their country. Cavanaugh urges Christians to resist this form of idolatry, to unthink the inevitability of the nation-state and its dreary party politics, to embrace radical forms of political pluralism that privilege local communities -- and to cling to an incarnational theology that weaves itself seamlessly and tangibly into all aspects of daily life and culture. Read more about the book in a blog post by Cavanaugh on EerdWord.

Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Compelling social perspectives from a prominent Catholic scholar Pope Francis in a 2013 interview famously likened the church to a field hospital. In this book William Cavanaugh adopts Pope Francis’s metaphor to show how the church can help heal both the spiritual and the material wounds of the world. As he examines the intersection of theology with themes of religious freedom, economic injustice, religious violence, and other pressing topics, Cavanaugh emphasizes that the church cannot condemn the evils of the world from a position of superiority. Rather, he says, its practices of solidarity with humanity must be based on a profound recognition that the church shares in the guilt of human sin. Cavanaugh’s Field Hospital provides guideposts for a church that is willing to go outside of itself onto today’s battlefields — both metaphorical and literal — not to inflict wounds but to bind them up and heal them.

Field Hospital: The Church's Engagement with a Wounded World

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cavanaugh, William T.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Cavanaugh, William T.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cavanaugh, William T.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict

The Uses of Idolatry

The Uses of Idolatry

Theopolitical Imagination: Christian Practices of Space and Time

Theopolitical Imagination

Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ (Challenges in Contemporary Theology)

Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ

Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire

Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church

Field Hospital: The Church's Engagement with a Wounded World