The Myth of Religious Violence

The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict. William T. Cavanaugh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

That religion is violent seems to be a given. In the past month, each time I told a parishioner that I was reading a book called ‘The Myth of Religious Violence’ I was met with the same blank stare ‘The Myth?’ they would ask? Who would doubt that religion is prone to violence? The evidence seems to be on every nightly news program.

In his latest book William Cavanaugh challenges the claim that religion is prone to violence in a surprising way. Rather than working to show that religion is non-violent Cavanaugh goes to the source of the myth, the modern distinction between religious and secular phenomena. The book begins by reviewing nine prominent proponents of the idea that religion is given to violence and finds that each argument fails to adequately name the distinction between religious and secular violence. Cavanaugh goes on to critique the commonly accepted concept of religion as transcultural and transhistorical by providing a history of the concept of religion from its medieval origins to its use in the modern west.   Since September 11th 2001 a host of bestselling authors have benefited from a nearly universal agreement that religion is prone to violence. This book is not meant to capitalize on that fervor or defend religion against its cultured despisers.  The strength of the book is the way it shows the language of religious violence to be more than just a myth  or  anachronistic but truly dangerous.

The myth of religious violence portrays some forms of violence as essentially irrational while distracting attention from and at the same time legitimizing secular violence which is deemed necessary, rational, and in many cases laudable. For those interested in exploring the history and the consequences of our current discourse on religion and violence this book is a must read.

Christianity & Liberalsim

In the Western world, the dominance of liberalism can hardly be overstated. Accordingly, any Christian attempt to engage in social and political issues in the West must necessarily engage liberalism. In Christianity & Liberal Society Robert Song offers a promising model for theological encounters with liberalism in which he seeks to bring “both the promise and the danger of liberal society, both the freedom it offers and the tyranny it portends” into conversation with Christian theological commitments. (2)  To that end, Song offers what he calls “a multifaceted collage of images both of liberalism and of possible Christian responses to it.” (3)  After a brief introduction, Song moves in chapter 2 to his family resemblance interpretation of liberalism.  The core of the book is found in chapters 3-5 where he considers various Christian responses to liberalism through an in-depth examination of three Christian political thinkers: Reinhold Niebuhr, George Grant and Jacques Maritain. The sixth chapter takes up questions of liberal constitutional theory using the work of Ronald Dworkin and John Finnis.  The book concludes with Song pointing in the direction of a provisional recognition of liberalism to which the Church must speak both a ‘Yes’ and a ‘No.’   Song’s book excels in both form and content though the book’s greatest strength is the former.  In what follows I will examine his interpretation of liberalism and his engagement with Niebuhr, Grant and Maritain, noting at each stage the model of Christian political thought practiced by Song.  As we will see, the form of theological engagement exemplified in Christianity and Liberal Society is of greater value than any particular conclusion the work reaches.

An Interpretation of Liberalism:

Song begins by offering his own interpretation of liberalism, taking as a foundation two starting points: that “liberalism is the dominant political ideology of the modern West, and… liberalism is the political aspect of the Enlightenment.” (11)  This narrows the field some but we are still left with over two hundred years of thought spread across multiple countries, cultures and historical events. The challenge before Song is to give an account of liberalism that can take into consideration the plurality of contexts, histories and values within the liberal corpus while at the same time naming a common and unifying basis that will offer enough consistency to justify speaking of liberalism as a coherent political ideology.  Song is critical of attempts to identify liberalism by finding the defining period in history or the core value that all thinkers and systems must hold to qualify as liberal.  These attempts fail to deal adequately with the vast diversity of values and beliefs among liberals and liberalisms.   Song employs a family resemblance model in which “Liberalism can be satisfactorily understood as defining a family of thinkers who are indeed disparate but still sufficiently close to enable us to point to a pattern of characteristic family resemblances.” (9)  Song’s model allows him to carefully consider the idiosyncrasies of particular types of liberalism while still providing a broad basis by which to identify liberal thinkers and projects.

Song employs this model to assess constitutional, welfare and economic liberalism as well as key contributors to each, including John Locke, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, L.T. Hobhouse and F.A. Hayek. (10)  As he considers each of these he consistently takes into account the social, political and historical context of each and in so doing, Song is able to allow for liberalism to take different forms in different social, political and historical contexts while still holding an admittedly diffuse center.  Song names five interrelated family resemblances: (1) the centrality of individual human agents understood as “sovereign choosers” with regard to their own decisions, obligations and (2) moral autonomy.  This includes (3) a high valuing of reason (primarily an instrumental reason) that is (4) “individualist, universalist, and abstract.”  Lastly, (5) liberalism is characterized by a progressive understanding of history as moving toward greater freedom, equality, and happiness. (41)  Song’s family resemblance model allows for a genuine diversity of commitments among liberals and liberalisms while still holding together a core that a variety of liberals can claim.

Prior Encounters: Looking over the shoulder of Niebuhr, Grant and Maritain

In the middle chapters of the book Song engages three Christian political thinkers.  Each chapter begins with an introduction that sets the theologian within his ecclesial, social-historical and philosophical context.    These chapters could easily be read as independent essays, but taken together, they offer a guided tour through the complex maze of issues and practices that constitute Christian engagements with liberalism.  Song reads each of his conversation partners with a care and charity that reveals a deep respect.  Nevertheless, Song is often critical of them as the purpose of these chapters is not to lionize the Christian political thinkers of the past but rather to mine their encounters with liberalism seeking guidance for our own current context.

In each case Song sifts out what he regards as the wheat from the tares in these meetings of Christianity and liberalism.  For example, Song praises Niebuhr for recognizing the weakness of liberal accounts of anthropology and historical progress.  Still, Song criticizes Niebuhr for failing give sufficient weight to God’s action in history.  This is the result of Niebuhr’s weak doctrinal commitments, which lead Song to conclude “both in the direction of his life’s interests and in the structure of his thought he posited politics and deduced theology.” (83)  Similarly, George Grant’s civilizational contradiction helpfully draws out the problematic way in which the liberal values of freedom and progress lead to greater technological growth.  This technological growth in turn undercuts liberal values of freedom, equality and humanity dignity in the name of its own relentless progress toward mastering creation and ordering life according to the instrumental goods of efficiency. (87-96)  Still, Song expresses reservations about Grant’s dualistic philosophical theology which is heavily indebted to Plato and Simone Weil. (120-124)  Lastly, Song appreciates the possibilities that Maritain’s new Christendom provides for a pluralism that resists the radical individualism of liberal society.  Still, he critiques Maritain for weakening his own pluralism by offering natural law as the unifying basis for legislation as well as for using a historical relativism to justify his new Christendom. (152, 158-160)

To aid in the work of sifting through the successes and the failures of these prior attempts at Christian political thought, Song frequently brings in other conversation partners.  He suggests for example that R.A. Markus’ reading of Augustine could be used to help Maritain and much of his treatment of Grant is taken up in conversation with the work of Rawls.

Conclusion: 

Song’s family resemblance interpretation of liberalism is one of the strengths of the book as it allows for diversity and tensions within competing liberals and liberalisms.  Rather than attempting to work around these tensions by treating them as insignificant Song’s model allows him to account for, and even to take advantage of, these differences.  Further, Song is to be commended for both his selection of conversation partners and his careful attention to their particularities.  Song’s careful use of the context of each of these thinkers reveals that they were intentionally selected not just because they were all critics of liberalism that continued to operate within the liberal paradigm but also because their diversity enriches the engagement that Song himself is attempting to carry out.  This diversity exists on multiple levels as Reinhold Niebuhr, the German born, urban Lutheran pastor, indebted to an Augustinian tradition differs from George Grant, the Canadian Anglican who followed a Platonic line of thinking and who also differs from Jacques Maritain, a French, Catholic, Thomist.  His use of three different thinkers with different nationalities, ecclesial identities and orienting theologies greatly enriches the conversation he is attempting to foster between Christianity and liberal society.  The model utilized here is indeed so fertile that one wonders how the book would be different if Song had selected other thinkers, for example, Alasdair MacIntyre (a Scottish born convert to Catholicism), Carl Schmitt (German Protestant) and James K.A. Smith (Canadian Pentecostal).

However, the fecundity of Song’s wide ranging method leaves the book somewhat scattered despite helpful subheadings within each chapter.  For instance, for all of the richness that George Grant brings to discussions of liberalism, much of the chapter engaging Grant is actually given over to discussing John Rawls.  In his treatment of Maritain, Song introduces the contemporary debates between communitarians and liberals arguing that Maritain is a helpful presence in those debates.  Nevertheless, his treatment is too brief to do justice to the complexity of the debates between communitarians and liberals and it fails to enrich his engagement with Maritain.  By the time we reach chapter six one wonders how and why we have departed from chapters exploring particular theologians and entered instead into a single chapter exploring one particular issue (judicial review) within the larger concerns of constitutional theory.

As the title of the book indicates, Song has taken on a massive task.  In the introduction he admits that his will not be comprehensive treatment of either Christianity or liberal society, but rather a multifaceted collage of cross sections.  Song indeed lives up to this description with a work that embodies the ad hoc conclusion he reaches.  For in the end, Song returns to the qualified and provisional role that Augustine granted the earthly city.  In every encounter between Christianity and liberal society we can neither dissolve the differences nor set them in stone.  Rather we endure, working toward “such precarious justice as this world affords” through the kinds of conversations, debates and convergences with others so ably modeled in Christianity and Liberal Society. (233)