The Myth of Religious Violence

         It is quite scandalous and perplexing to undermine longstanding myths, but William Cavanaugh – Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas - in his book The Myth of Religious Violence compromises this myth in an extraordinary thorough, clear and persuasive way. Cavanaugh meticulously crafted his argument in explaining that in order to claim that religion is highly prone to violence we have to make sure that such term as religion can be clearly identified and explained. He presents an argument that the term religion didn't naturally occur, but was created by political thinkers, historians and philosophers during 16-17^th centuries for legitimizing state formation and excluding Church from any social power. Further, the author argues that in most of the phenomenon of so-called 'religious violence' it is extremely hard to make a sharp distinction between its religious or secular causes. Thus, this myth is irrelevant in understanding violence committed by different people that may claim their violence to be done in the name of God or for some other religious purposes. To make the argument of the myth of 'religious violence' multidimensional, I will take into consideration Ephraim Radner's book A Brutal Unity which serves as a counter-argument to Cavanaugh's book. While Cavanaugh provides well-thought and thorough research on Thirty Years Wars of Religion, Radner argues that Cavanaugh misinterprets relations between Church and Liberal state and their mutual benefits from each other’s existence. Moreover, Radner insists that because of this misinterpretation Cavanaugh fails to explain or justify modern examples of 'religious violence' such as Rwandan genocide. Finally, by writing The Myth of Religious Violence, in Radners strong opinion, Cavanaugh not just creates an excuse for Christian violence, but actually encourages future violence as well. In this essay I will provide a critical analysis of William Cavanaugh's book The Myth of Religious Violence as well as present Radner's opposition on the issue of the myth of 'religious violence' that is described in A Brutal Unity and finally I will prove that it is absolutely essential to consider and review all possible religious as well as secular influences of violent behavior of any individuals or groups of individuals in order to comprehend a problem of world's violence in its entirety.

       At the beginning of his argument William Cavanaugh emphasizes the importance of understanding the term religion especially its meaning, context and different ways how it can be used and applied in our lives if we want to speak about the myth of 'religious violence'. Cavanaugh insists that many modern theorists like Nicholas of Cusa, Marsilio Ficino, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke fail to comprehend and accept the myth of 'religious violence' because they don't succeed to understand the concept of religion as a social construct rather than a timeless unchanging phenomenon that is transhistorical and transcultural (Lloyd). This means that religion always meant the same thing and encompassed the same qualities through different historical eras and cultural settings. He argues that what considered as secular or religious in any given moment largely depends on underlying societal power arrangements. Further, Cavanaugh claims that these thinkers treat religion as something essentially distinct from secular and something that is not overlapping with politics, economics or other social structures. As the result, 'religion' has strong inclination for violence, thus 'secular' power has to tame 'religion.' To prove these thinkers wrong, Cavanaugh traces back to an ancient Rome and the Latin word “religio” from which the word religion originated, but which carries a different meaning from modern religion. “There was a time when religion, as modern people use the term, was not,” claims Cavanaugh, because religio was like a devotion to anything from God, to family, to emperor, to hobbies (Cavanaugh 81). Religio was not a separate practice of social life, but was fully integrated in everything else that people did and thought. Thus, it is hard to blame early Christianity for their religious violence, because there was no such thing as religion that they clearly identified and practiced. In our present days the only situation when we still use religion in the meaning of old religio is when we say that were are “doing something religiously”.

     There is no such clear distinction on what religion is and what it is not, Cavanaugh claims, and different people have different ways of trying to define religion. In substantivist view of religion the content matters the most and they heavily refer to ideas such as belief in God, transcendence, or the sacred. This approach is known to be too exclusive because it restricts non-theistic Asian beliefs like Buddhism, but on the criterion of transcendence it has to include nationalism as a religion. Further, functonalist perspective disregards the content of religion and is more concerned on how religion works and what people actually practice. By doing so, functionalism includes too many things like civil religion, political religion, or idol adoration. Cavanaugh criticizes both of these approaches because they “tend to be essentialist approaches that regard religion as a thing out there in the world, a basic, transhistorical, and transcultural component of human social life identifiable by its content or function” (Cavanaugh 58). The constructivist explanation of religion tends to represent Cavanaugh's view the best because it looks at historical circumstances and specific purposes under which nationalism, Confucianism, Islam, etc., are considered religions. Religion is “a constructed category, not a neutral descriptor of a reality that is simply out there in the world” (Cavanaugh 58). Constructivists discovered that the term religion as we know it today was developed by Western thinkers and was often used by colonizers to marginalize and manipulate native populations to their advantage. In order to concur a territory westerns would prove that practice of faith or devotion of native population is irrational; thus, it had to be dismissed from public use and be kept for private use only. By doing so they were able to divide, embarrass, downgrade and rule these native people. Religion of Hinduism, as we know it today, was inseparable from Indian's every day social and political life, but English colonizers extracted it out and forced Indians to keep it private. Islam is still inseparable from any other secular parts of people's lives; therefore, Western people think that Muslim world is irrational, barbaric and backward and that it should be tamed, educated, and reformatted.

       Very often when people try to prove the existence and severity of religious violence they cite a Thirty years War of religion in sixteen and seventeen century Europe. In the light of great historical thinkers these wars were heavily influenced by religious differences between Catholics and Protestants that couldn't agree on each other’s dogmatic differences. This proved that religion is too passionate and irrational; thus, it fails to maintain peace and order in the society (Lloyd). As a solution to these bloody killings a liberal nation state occurred as a more rational, peaceful and ultimate object of loyalty. The state was able to tame religion from its own irrationality and stop the war by forcing church to leave the front public stage into the back private room, that allowed Catholics and protestant to peacefully live with their differences (Philpott). Even though this theory sounds clear and persuasive, William Cavanaugh radically reinterprets the Thirty years War of religious violence and challenges four major problems of the standard liberal chronicle. He undermines view that combatants that fought with each other did so because of religious differences; the primary cause of the war was religion, not political, economic, or societal differences; religious causes were absolutely separable from secular cause; and finally the rise of modern state was a solution to the war.  First, Cavanugh provides multiple occasions when members of different churches collaborated together, while members of the same church viciously were killing each other. Also, the entire second half of the war was fought by Catholic France and Catholic Habsburg and very often mercenaries fought for a higher bidder regardless of their religious commitments. Second, it is very difficult if not impossible to distinguish relative religious as opposed to political, economic or other social causes of this war, because it is almost to the end of the war when these terms were purposefully developed and clearly identified. Cavanaugh asserts that the narrative of devout Christians fanatically killing each other for religious differences is a “myth [that] is at best a distorted and one-dimensional narrative; at worst, it eliminates so many of the relevant political, economic, and social factors as to be rendered false” (Cavanaugh 155). Third, as mentioned earlier religion was so intertwined with the rest of people's social life it is almost impossible to distinguish politics from religion, religion from economics and your “attempt to assign the cause of the wars in question to religion – as opposed to politics or other secular causes – will get bogged down in hopeless anachronism” (Cavanaugh 160).  Fourth myth that Cavanaugh compromises is that the formation of the state was eventual solution to the problem or religious wars; while in reality it was one of the primary causes.  The “transfer of power from church to the state appears not so much as a solution to the wars in question, but as a cause of those wars. The so-called wars of religion appear as wars fought by state-building elites for the purpose of consolidating their power over the church and other rivals”(Cavanaugh 162). Cavanaugh explains that by marginalizing religion from the public sphere, nation-state was able to transfer all of the power from church to the state. That’s why it is more relevant, in Cavanugh's opinion, to talk about wars of early modern European state formation.

      In order for the state to appropriate power of the Church it had to remove it from any spheres of its influence. Therefore, religion was presented as too passionate and irrational in its decision-making process and it had to be substituted by more rational, modest, liberal state. There were several problems with this assumption since the liberal state got solidified and arrived only a century after these wars ended (Philpott). That means that after religion got suppressed from the power of the society, people began killing for god-like queens and kings and the so-called migration of the Holly came to place. In his interview with Donald A.Yerxa William Cavanaugh explains, “Nationalism ensured that the loyalties previously attached to God and Church were transferred to the new nation-state.” Since the religion became a private practice and something that people didn't speak about in public, it became unheard off to die for Jesus or any other religious beliefs (Lloyd). On the other hand, it was more reasonable to die for your country, freedom, flag and oil. Westerns began to think that we overcame irrational killing for religion, but the truth is that we just began killing for the state with the same if not even stronger devotion and passion.

      Ephraim Radner in his book A Brutal Unity raises multiple objections to William Cavanaugh's argument of our delusion in understanding the religious violence. In his opinion Cavanaugh fails to understand “ 'religion' with respect to violence, a significance that itself religious,” as the result he fails to understand modern versions for religious violence like case of Rwandan genocide and finally, he undermines positive relations between Church and State, which to the degree is more beneficial for the Church itself. Radner's first argument to Cavanaugh is his misleading attempt to define the modern term 'religion' and he suggests that its better to look at the religion “in terms of practices rather than concepts” because dogma may say one thing but in practice do something different, because people are sinners in their nature (Radner 21). Radner argues that synonymous words of our modern western understanding of religion existed in pre-modern era such as sectum, fides and etc. These terms identified different ways of idolatry of different Gods or transcendent, which are very similar to our understanding of modern religion (Resch). Further, there is a major difficulty with Cavanaugh's argument because “it fails to take seriously the actual attitudes of participants in what is called ‘religious violence’ ” (Radner 25).  Anybody who claims that they committed an act of their violence in the name of God is committing religious violence, explains Radner. Even if there is an underlying secular factor in this violence, the fact that the person claims his act as a religious makes it religious automatically. This claim seems very troubling and requires more explanation, especially in the modern acts of so-called religious violence. While affected by different secular influences such as economics and politics, many people become desperate and with their materialistic goals and reasons in mind they commit violence. This violence, further, is claimed to be religious because its more poetic to an extent to fight in the name of God and for the purpose that is bigger than yourself, when in reality you fight for the basic human injustice (Long).

      Second, Radner claims that Cavanaugh and other like thinkers “unjustifiably absolve Christians from their share in the violence of the liberal state” (Radner 22). By justifying the creation of the nation-state as primary cause and not a solution, Church and its divisiveness that caused the violence ends up being innocent in this war. However, it seems that Ephraim Radner misinterprets the argument of William Cavanaugh, because in The Myth of Religious Violence he neither rejects nor excuses religious violence during 16-17^th centuries, nor does he doubt that some religious ideas and practices did promote violence under certain conditions. What Cavanaugh actually challenged in his book is that there were something distinguishably clear that could have been called religion that people were fighting for. Further, Radner explains that “the Church need[ed] the liberal state as much as the liberal state need[ed] the church, because the nations as we know them arose from the inability of Christians to refrain from mutual murder” (Radner 28). Radner rejects Cavanaugh's idea that the formation of the state actually triggered the war; instead it came as the only possible solution to stop the violence by taking power of the church away and look at the world with more pragmatic point of view. Radner continuing to explain that the creation of the liberal state was actually beneficial for the Church in light of the fact that because of long-lasting bloody war, Christian Church began to loose its popularity and even further its holiness (W. Klink A). Therefore, the liberal state did a big favor to the Church by taming its violence and taking away its power and maybe “not so much as to protect it from itself  (although this could be said in some cases) as to provide a framework for self-accountability” (Radner 22).

        Radner's last and biggest argument is Cavanugh's failure to understand the modern examples of religious violence on the example of Rwandan Genocide. Since Christianity was the predominant religion in the Rwanda and it was heavily involved and even in charge in education, medical field and other social aspects of every day life, it is absolutely essential to recognize religious involvement in the genocide and admit its responsibility. He begins by explaining that “Cavanaugh misses out on paying attention on Christianity’s divisive nature at birth” which means that already existed division and rivalry of Hutu and Tutsi was not criticized by the church, but even supported (Radner 26). Cavanaugh's argument to that would be that even though the division existed already in the Christianity as well as in Rwanda, it is impossible to claim that religion stimulated previously existed socio-political conflict. Moreover, taking into consideration detailed analysis of Longman, that Radner cites in his book, will only support Cavanaugh's argument that there we many others significant factors that influenced the genocide such as “the progressive colonial and national-building aspects of ethnic differentiation, social distinction, separatist policy, organized political assault, and finally violence. Into these dynamics, the churches were swept, along with every other institution” (Radner 30). This reassures even more Cavanaugh's view that what is 'religious' and what is 'secular' is impossible to clearly differentiate. Radner's response/criticism is that “Christians killed each other, [...], because of the kind of Christianity they had embraced – a message of 'obedience, division, and power' - whose dynamics rendered them 'unable or unwilling to restrain genocide.' To this degree their faith was wholly complicit in murder” (Radner 31).

     Further, Radner raises the questions that “given that Christians did the killing and did so surrounded by their lived Christian symbols and spatial forms and led often by their Christian pastors, in some cases taking Mass quite self-consciously before going out to kill, how are we to understand the nature of their faith?” (Radner 31). By documenting how Christians were unable to prevent violence, Radner is now taking step back and not suggesting that religious division causes violence, as he claimed earlier, as much as it coheres with it, which is to say, Christian division is not the exclusive inflamer of violence, but it is a central one (Resch). At this point it is unclear which position represents Radner's view on Rwandan genocide better, either that Christians primarily triggered the violence or failed to prevent it. It is very important to understand that under which historical and cultural circumstances did this genocide occur. While Christianity was brought to Rwandans by the English colonizers, their ethnic differences existed way before that and were in-rooted in their cultures and perception of each other.  At this point Radner presents a third approach to the problem where he states that “the problem is that Christian violence in itself bears a range of terrible consequences, obscuring God's truth, and hence religious violence has a horrendous character peculiar to itself” (Radner 28). Here he admits that not all Christians are devout believers and under certain social pressures some of them easily give up their beliefs. This is a result of Church's inability to create and nourish strong enough faiths in people's souls that will be able to serve as the core belief system to resist any opposing pressures (Long). This argument seems to be one of the most relevant and valuable in comparison to other views that he doesn't stick to for a very long time. If look at people as something constructed by both secular and religious aspects, it seems that religion has to be able to provide people at least with strong sets of moral beliefs and social standards that they are ready to stand for, but as William Cavanaugh argues, at various historical periods and different cultural settings religion takes different shapes and places in people's life and there is no such thing as a universal religion that everybody practice the same.

      The final argument of Ephraim Radner is religious proneness to demonization of others, where  “[d]emonization is a religious concept, bound not only to particular Christian categories, […], but also to the process of scriptural and theological translation” (Radner 35). He examines that Christians historically used Biblical images of Satan and sinners to apply to others in order to raise support for their unjustified violence. Cavanaugh argues with this notion that religion intensifies political conflicts into unsolvable cosmic wars against 'satanic' others because this view ignores how secular wars and political reasoning is able to use the same tendencies but with greater intensiveness. William Cavanaugh without a moment of hesitation uses a provocative example, where he insists that there is no “warrant for supposing that the commitment of a US Marine – semper fidelis – is any less “intense” than that of a Hamas militant, as if such a thing could be measured” (Cavanaugh 32).

       To the end of this essay I want to clarify that in Radner's critique of Cavanaugh he misses out a lot of points by looking only at the case of Christianity and its divisiveness instead of the wide spectrum of different religions, if this term makes any sense at all now, and secular devotions. By doing so Radner wanted to concentrate on specific subject and make it easier to make a convincing argument to Cavanaugh, but instead he failed to understand the bigger argument that Cavanaugh succeeded to make. Moreover, even if Radner’s view about Christian divisiveness as well as Castelios explanation of different sectums are right, than the question of why Catholics and Protestants didn't begin to kill each other earlier remains unanswered. Radner is mislead by his eager to make a strong counter-argument to Cavanaugh, that he fails to see that Cavanaugh never tries to create an excuse for Christianity or any other religions for their violence, and he very clearly and on multiple occasions states that religion can and was violent, but we can't be absolutist and, accept this as the only cause for this violence. As Cavanaugh proved already that you can not talk about these wars in terms of the root divisiveness of Christianity, because there were multiple occasions where people with the same religious views were killing each other and people with different religious views were cooperating. In the example of Rwandan genocide there were many Hutus helping Tutsis, while some Tutsis were killing their own kind in order to save their political standings or lives. Radner, using Longman's theory, has only one valuable, in my opinion, point that the church failed to prevent the violence. It seems that the strong religious views and beliefs should be at the core of peoples life and life views, thus when the violence occurs they should be able to resist this violence. However, we have to realize that in life people will most likely change, or give up their religious views when their entire existence comes under question. The main idea of this essay is to illustrate that in order to fully understand any existing world problem you have to look into the complexity of causes and problems as they usually come in the entire package, instead of picking one possible cause and concentrate on it, because by looking only for one excuse is the easy way out of the problem of answering complex questions.

                                               

                                                           Works Cited:

Cavanaugh, William T. "If You Render Unto God What Is God's, What Is Left for Caesar?" The Review of Politics 71.4 (2009): 607-19. JSTOR. Web. 10 Mar. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/25655866>.

Cavanaugh, William T. The Myth of Religious Violence:Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict. New York And Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. ix-285. Print.

Lloyd, Vincent. "Cavanaugh, William T. The Myth of Religious Violence:Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict."Theory, Culture & Society 28.5 (2011): 144-54. SAGE Journals. Web. 10 Mar. 2014. <http://tcs.sagepub.com.libproxy.usc.edu/content/28/5/144>.

Long, Stephen D. "A Brutal Unity: The Spiritual Politics of the Christian Church by Ephraim Radner." Modern Theology 30.1 (2014): 166-68. Web. 10 Mar. 2014. <http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/moth.12085>.

Philpott, Daniel. "The Religious Roots of Modern International Relations." World   

             Politics 52.2 (2000): 206-45. JSTOR. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.   

           <http://www.jstor.org/stable/25054109>.

Radner, Ephraim. A Brutal Unity: The Spiritual Politics of the Christian Church. Texas: Baylor University Press, 2012. Print.

Resch, Dustin. "A Brutal Unity: The Spiritual Politics of the Christian Church." Anglican Theological Review 95.3 (2013): 566-67. ProQuest. Web. 10 Mar. 2014. <http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.usc.edu/docview/1420130380?accountid=14749>.

W, Klink A. "A brutal unity: the spiritual politics of the Christian church." Choice 50.12 (2013): 2248-49. ProQuest. Web. 10 Mar. 2014. <http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.usc.edu/docview/1428955342?accountid=14749>.