The myth of religious violence: secular ideology and the roots of modern conflict

Abstract

William Cavanaugh is well-known and respected for several earlier works, especially Torture and Eucharist (Wiley-Blackwell, 1998) which reflects upon the exclusion of known torturers from the Roman Catholic eucharist during the reign of terror Chile suffered under General Augusto Pinochet (1973–90). Excommunication was a potent symbol of authentic Christian identity, and of the church’s commitment to a risky politics of protest, resistance, and reform. Chile’s Catholic episcopacy and Catholic social organizations networked with other civic groups and local government agencies to empower the people and protect human rights. As an observer and participant in those efforts, Cavanaugh has a well-founded commitment to the role of religion in politics and society, reducing violence and promoting popular voice and participation. Cavanaugh is also a former student of Stanley Hauerwas, professor of Christian ethics at Duke University who envisions the church as a “community of character” in which Christian virtue and practices, especially nonviolence, are formed around faithfulness to Christ’s cross. Unlike Cavanaugh, Hauerwas sharply distinguishes Christian discipleship from worldly politics, seeing the Christian social-ethical role as countercultural witness, not reform. Special targets of critique by Hauerwas are liberal Protestantism and liberalism in general. Liberal Christians, he believes, are too complacently optimistic about the possibilities of progressive politics and about the upward trajectory of human history. They are also self-deluding about the reality of sin—their own and others’—and unwilling to accept the sacrifices that true Christianity demands. Myth of Religious Violence shares Hauerwas’s antipathy toward liberalism, if not his skepticism about religious investment in social change. Here the book differs markedly from the works of Christian ethicists (such as Jeffrey Stout, Eric Gregory, and Richard Miller) who believe that Christian social ethics should make common cause with liberal democracy, in order to build or strengthen respect for equality, human rights, political participation and the rule of law. Myth of Religious Violence claims that secular liberalism not only treats religion and politics as if they were separable into private and public spheres, but sees all religion as prone to violence, divisive, and dangerous. In Cavanaugh’s view, the “myth” that religion is peculiarly irrational and violent serves to distract attention from and conceal the fact that liberalism itself uses violence to promote its own, supposedly “rational,” ends. It is liberal, secular violence (both economic and military) that has provoked a reaction in kind from some religious groups such as radical Muslims. Cavanaugh states his aim negatively: to dismantle the myth of religious violence, and so destroy the key plank of “a groundless religiousModern Theology 28:3 July 2012 ISSN 0266-7177 (Print) ISSN 1468-0025 (Online)