Onward, secular soldiers, marching as to war.

• Author: Stromberg, Joseph R.
• Position: 'The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict' - Book review

A Myth Nearly Everyone Believes

In The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), William T. Cavanaugh, a professor of theology at DePaul University (Chicago), takes up the difficult and thankless task of overthrowing the entrenched view that religion uniquely fosters violence and that by imposing secularism the modern state has saved us from what would otherwise be a world of ongoing and remorseless sectarian violence. (1) Because this conventional wisdom is so deeply embedded in modern Western culture as to constitute a kind of second nature, Cavanaugh presents it in detail before unleashing his critique. He carries out the necessary demolition with great success. The book expands a line of argument that Cavanaugh pioneered in his essay "'A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House'" (Modern Theology [Oct. 1995]: 397-420), but given the book's specific focus, some of that essay's interesting material does not appear here.

The book proceeds straightforwardly. In chapter 1, Cavanaugh canvasses the views of nine prominent scholars who deal with religion in modern society, including John Hick, Charles Kimball, Richard Wentz, David C. Rapoport, Bhiku Parekh, R. Scott Appleby, and Charles Selengut. These writers believe, Cavanaugh writes, that "[r]eligion causes violence because it is (1) absolutist, (2) divisive, and (3) insufficiently rational" (pp. 17-18). Alas, in the works Cavanaugh surveys, he can find no serious attempt to define religion in a fashion that links "religion" in particular to violence in some way distinguishable from economic, political, or social motives for violence. Vague definitions and a priori linking of religion and violence seem to suffice for the essentialist accounts the Nine put forward. Cavanaugh tentatively concludes: "There is no reason to suppose that so-called secular ideologies such as nationalism, patriotism, capitalism, Marxism, and liberalism are any less prone to be absolutist, divisive, and irrational than belief in, for example, the biblical God" (p. 55).

In chapter 2, the stakes get higher. Having found (so far) no satisfactory definition of "religion" in the literature, Cavanaugh does find substantivist and functionalist approaches. Substantivists study religion in terms of content (gods, transcendence). Functionalists ponder ideology, practices, and structures of meaning. A third approach takes religion as "a constructed category" proper to modern Western ideology. These schools tend to ignore one another. Cavanaugh asks whether something called "religion," found "in any era and any place" (p. 61), can be neatly separated from other human activities. No ancient language reveals such a concept. The Latin term religio referred to...