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

There are a number of issues that have come to prominence in recent years and become especially contested, with a capacity to polarise opinion. They stand on the fault lines between different cultures and those that exist within pluralist western societies. One such topic is that of migration, ably dealt with by David Day in Conquest: how societies overwhelm others (2008). Another topic is the place of religion within an increasingly secularised, pluralist western culture, and the relation between religion and the nation state. Increasingly, the nation state seeks to portray itself as rational and neutral in matters of cultural loyalties and affiliation, whilst making ever increasing claims to people's loyalties. Nation states have achieved this by a process of appropriating the space within societies and the traditions and loyalties previously associated with religion. They ascribe negative characteristics of irrationality and extremism to religion, whilst claiming moderation and reasonableness to themselves. The targets of these processes in the west are principally the various Christian churches, although this is only part of a wider process of a post- enlightenment challenge to traditional values embodied in Judaeo- Christian culture. The trigger for the upsurge of a more militant and outspoken secularism was the terrorist attacks on America in 2001 and a fear of Islam; but all religions are now the objects of this assault.

William T. Cavanaugh skilfully lays bare the inconsistencies and double standards of the methods used by partisan secularists, in particular the way in which they act, without acknowledging what they are doing, in the service of an increasingly authoritarian and intrusive state that is fearful and suspicious of alternative sources of values and beliefs, and resentful of their claims on citizens' loyalties. The other unacknowledged process that underpins this is the failure of the nation state and its secularist apologists to recognise how the state has taken on the features and methods of the religious culture it so criticises, along with the dogmatism and intolerance that characterise the liberal/ secularist enterprise. Cavanaugh quotes chillingly in his final chapter from some of these zealots, such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, who have urged pre-emptive war in the name of tolerance and secular values.

Cavanaugh skilfully analyses the weaknesses of secular/ liberal attempts to construct an essentialist account of religion as timeless, unchanging and outside the mainstream of historical narrative and development. His arguments are logical and closely reasoned, and he is careful to be fair to those he is criticising, and to base his critique on a close reading of their arguments. The first chapter of the book, which sets out an analysis of various accounts of the nature of religion, does tend to be somewhat dry and repetitive, but the book comes more to life in the third chapter when Cavanaugh looks at the rise of the nation state and its struggles for supremacy with religion in western Europe at the time of the Reformation and the so- called "wars of religion". For me, this was the most interesting part of the book, as the historical narrative came alive and became less theoretical. In the final chapter Cavanaugh gives an account of the complexities of church- state relations in the United States in the twentieth century, by way of considering the legacy of the principles set out by the founding fathers in the Constitution, and how these have been interpreted by judgements of the Supreme Court.

Central to the processes of migration and church- state relations has been the rise of globalisation and the paradigm of liberal capitalism. This has generated anxiety and hostility, both from those cultures and traditions at risk from this process, and from those within western secularism who see the resistance of those other cultures as threats to enlightenment values. Cavanaugh is unsparing in his critique of neo-conservatism and its misguided advocacy and justification of wars to impose secularist values on cultures that are not founded on those values. His book is a timely exposition of the cant and selective standards on which that project has been based. It is contrary and counter- intuitive to the prevailing culture and mindset. For that reason, it is likely either to be angrily criticised or ignored by those more comfortable and secure within the current mainstream of left- liberal thought.

This book might be thought of as a sort of companion piece or sequel to Wilfred Cantwell Smith's classic work "The Meaning and End of Religion". In this book professor Cavanaugh takes us on a philosophical and historical journey to show how our notion of what is and is not "religion" was constructed, providing examples such as the creation of "Hiduism". Cavenaugh argues in roughly the following manner:

There is no single objective "essence" to religion, and nor is there a consistent, universal practice to which this term might apply:

"...religion is not a transcultural reality. Masuzawa puts this conclusion bluntly: "This concept of religion as general, transcultural phenomenon, yet also as a distinct sphere in its own right... is patently groundless; it came from nowhere, and there is no credible way of demonstrating its factual and empirical substantiality." Those who go looking to spy religion in all places and times - as if it were a reality that is simply there before anyone develops a concept of it - are guaranteed to produce confusion or worse. Religion is originally a Western concept, and it only becomes a worldwide concept through - and in reaction to - Western influence." (P98-99)

The author concludes that so-called religions like Buddhism and Christianity have precious little in common, and what they do have in common can also be found in secular practices that are not defined as "religions" such as Marxism. Not only is there no reason to draw this distinction from a substantivist perspective, there's also no way to avoid these sorts of problems from a functionalist view. It's argued that, no matter which way you square it, the concept and definition of "religion" is arbitrary and contradictory, and certainly doesn't efer to any universal, transcultural practice. Cavanaugh provides us with this helpful and amusing elucidation of the problem of defining what is and is not religion:

"As William Arnal says, there might be a logical way of dividing the world's phenomena into things that are blue and things that are not blue, but it would not justify coming up with general theories of the nature of blueness or having Departments of Blue Studies in universities." (P105)

Having made the case that "Religion" is a Western construct, which has its origins in our Judeo-Christian culture, and which was then arbitrarily applied to other cultures in a way that distorted and misrepresented the authentic practices and beliefs of those very different cultures, the author then turns his attention to discovering how this was done, and for what reasons it was done in the way it was:

"Instead of searching [...] for the timeless essence of religion, therefore, let us ask why certain things are called religion under certain conditions. What configurations of power are authorized by changes in the way the concept of religion - and its counterpart, the secular - are used? What changes in practices correspond to changes in these concepts? Why deny that the natives have religion at first, then assign some of their practices to the category religion? Which practices become religion, and why? Why deny that Marxism is a religion? Why accept that Marxism is a religion but emphatically deny that U.S. nationalism is?" (P119)

The author argues that the discourse of religion was and is intimately linked to the legitimization of Western cultural and political dominance:

"...the discourse of religion has been used to provide a tool of comparison by which non-Western practices could be shown to be deficient when compared with Christianity and Western culture more generally. Perhaps most important, the discourse of religion was also a tool of secularization, the cordoning off of significant elements of non-Western cultures into a personal, apolitical realm of belief." (P100-101)

Cavanaugh goes on to write:

"The idea that there is a transcultural phenomenon called religion that has a dangerous tendency toward violence - and must therefore be domesticated - is not only a misdescription of reality. The idea itself should be interrogated for the kinds of power that it authorizes. The attempt to domesticate certain practices as religion, both at home and abroad, is not innocent of political use." (P101)

In short, Cavanaugh is arguing this: our arbitrary and misleading definition of religion as a universal, spiritual phenomenon, that can be easily misused to become a dangerous force, and which stands in opposition to reasonable and moderating secularism, serves as a means to justify the violence of the secular state and to marginalize or colonize other cultural traditions and practices. This is the eponymous myth of religious violence.

Let's be clear about what this book is and isn't though: this book is about the history and origin of an ideology, and provides a deconstruction of it. In that sense it stands in the tradition of Foucault's archaeology of knowledge, and like Foucault emphasises the role of power in the construction of understanding (though this author differs from Foucault in not jettisoning the idea of objective truth altogether). It is a radical, deconstructive thesis, rather than a conventional apologetic. One of the other reviewers on Amazon describes the book more or less accurately, but nonetheless accidentally gives the impression that this book is more like a standard apologetic or polemic against secularists. This book does, of course, include those polemical elements (especially towards the end), but it's also much more profound, challenging and controversial than that. I would recommend this book to anybody who's interested in examining our understanding of terms like "religion", and the way that these concepts have been applied so as to shape our understanding of the world.

Regardless of your own position on these issues, this book is a must-read.