Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T22:43:36.577Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Render Unto Caesar… What? Reflections on the Work of William Cavanaugh

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2009

Paul S. Rowe
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An increasing concern for the place of religion in global politics in the past decade is reflected in the work of William Cavanaugh, a political theologian coming from the radical orthodox movement of the Roman Catholic tradition. Taking aim at key tropes in international relations, Cavanaugh introduces a strong critique of the legitimacy of the state and against its martial attitude. This review questions the historicity and generalizability of Cavanaugh's analysis. It also challenges Cavanaugh's exaltation of the church from both an internal and external perspective. Finally, it considers the expanded role of the state as compared to Cavanaugh's vision of the martial state. By way of conclusion, it questions the extent to which Cavanaugh provides an alternative to consigning religious groups to civil society or a workable role for Christian engagement with global politics, even though he provides us with a strong critique of the state.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 71 , Issue 4 , Fall 2009 , pp. 583 - 605
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Huntington, Samuel, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998)Google Scholar; Hitchens, Christopher, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve, 2007)Google Scholar.

2 A broad array of texts have arisen since the mid-1990s, including Johnston, Douglas and Sampson, Cynthia, eds., Religion: the Missing Dimension of Statecraft (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber and Piscatori, James, eds., Transnational Religion and Fading States (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Esposito, John and Watson, Michael, eds., Religion and Global Order (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Johnston, Douglas, ed., Faith-Based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Thomas, Scott M., The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations: The Struggle for the Soul of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Philpott, Daniel, “The Challenge of September 11 to Secularism in International Relations,” World Politics 55, no. 1 (2002): 92–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Radical orthodoxy is a broadly based ecumenical movement in Christian theology that combines postmodern analysis with a return to the earlier church traditions to provide a critique of modern Enlightenment reason. It tends to stress the Christian roots of various political concepts and theories as a means of assessing how in modern society they have departed from their original meanings. The term for this perspective arose with the publication of Milbank, John, Pickstock, Catherine, and Ward, Graham, eds., Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology (London: Routledge, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Smith, James A. K., Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-Secular Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004)Google Scholar.

5 For Benedict XVI, see the (in)famous Regensburg address, Benedict XVI, Faith Reason, and the University: Memories and Reflections, Lecture of the Holy Father, September 12, 2006, available at http://vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_benxvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html. For the reference to Chomsky, see Chomsky, Noam, Pirates and Emperors, Old and New (Cambridge, MA: Southend Press, 2002)Google Scholar, vii. It is perhaps noteworthy that Chomsky's image comes originally from St. Augustine.

6 Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan, 1977), 254CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Cavanaugh, William T., “Killing for the Telephone Company: Why the Nation-State Is Not the Keeper of the Common Good,” Modern Theology 20 (April 2004): 247CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Cavanaugh, William T., “‘A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House’: The Wars of Religion and the Rise of the State,” Modern Theology 11 (October 1995): 398CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Cavanaugh, William T., Theopolitical Imagination (New York: T. and T. Clark, 2002), 70ffGoogle Scholar.

10 Cavanaugh, “Killing,” 251–54.

11 Ibid., 256.

12 Ibid., 263.

13 Weber, Max, “What Is a State?” in Comparative Politics: Notes and Readings, 9th ed., ed. Brown, Bernard E. (Fort Worth: Harcourt College Publishers, 2000), 147Google Scholar.

14 Cavanaugh, William T., Torture and Eucharist (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998), 12Google Scholar.

15 Cavanaugh, William T., “How to Do Penance for the Inquisition,” Review of Faith and International Affairs 5, no. 2 (2007): 13–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Cavanaugh, William T., “The Liturgies of Church and State,” Liturgy 20, no. 1 (2005): 25–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist, 195–96.

18 Cavanaugh, “A Fire,” 400.

19 Ibid., 403.

20 Sanchez, Jose, Anticlericalism: A Brief History (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972)Google Scholar. See also Burleigh, Michael, Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics, from the Great War to the War on Terror (New York: Harper Collins, 2007)Google Scholar.

21 Waltz, Kenneth, Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 177Google Scholar.

22 See, for example, Gurr, Ted Robert, “War, Revolution, and the Growth of the Coercive State,” Comparative Political Studies 21, no. 1 (1988): 25–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 See Wendt's, “Three Cultures of Anarchy,” in Social Theory of International Politics, ed. Wendt, Alexander (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 246–312CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Wendt, Social Theory, 311–12.

25 This has been the chief claim of many liberal and neorealist arguments against the autonomy of the state in the international system at least since the publication of Keohane, Robert O. and Nye's, Joseph S.Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1977)Google Scholar.

26 Russett, Bruce and Oneal, John, Triangulating Peace (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001)Google Scholar.

27 It is perhaps important to note that I don't mean to suggest that these philosophers were seeking to engage in Christian reasoning or to engage in religious discourse: indeed, Hobbes and others were seeking to do quite the opposite. However, these foundational philosophers cannot be separated from their dialogue with the Christian tradition, and they largely understood the world through the lenses of Christian thought. Mark Lilla has recently argued that this was a long process “opened up by a unique theological-political crisis within Christendom” whereby political theology was largely replaced by political philosophy. Lilla, Mark, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (New York: Knopf, 2007), 308Google Scholar.

28 Holsti, K. J., The State, War, and the State of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Fukuyama, Francis, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Russett and Oneal, Triangulating Peace.

30 “The Avuncular State,” The Economist, April 8, 2006, 67–69.

31 Along these lines, see Evans, Peter, Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, and Skocpol, Theda, eds., Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)Google Scholar and Evans, Peter, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

32 Following Strange, Susan, The Retreat of the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 For example, Harmes, Adam, The Return of the State (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 2004)Google Scholar.

34 Cavanaugh, “A Fire,” 414.

35 Jelen and Wilcox use personal choice in the midst of a market of ideas as a template for the operation of religious groups in liberal-democratic societies. They present several case studies in areas throughout the world to support their contention. Jelen, Ted and Wilcox, Clyde, eds., Religion and Politics in Comparative Perspective: The One, the Few, and the Many (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Cox, Robert, “Civil Society at the Turn of the Millennium: Prospects for an Alternative World Order,” Review of International Studies 25 (1999): 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Cavanaugh, “Killing,” 267.

38 Cavanaugh, William, “The City: Beyond Secular Parodies,” in Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology, ed. Milbank, , Pickstock, , and Ward, (London: Routledge, 1999), 182Google Scholar.

39 For an excellent exploration of the broader concept of religion as an alternative to the modern international system, see Philpott, “The Challenge of September 11th,” 66–95.

40 Cavanaugh, William T., “Sailing under True Colors: Academic Freedom and the Ecclesially Based University,” in Conflicting Allegiances: The Church-Based University in a Liberal Democratic Society, ed. Budde, Michael L. and Wright, John (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2004), 41–42Google Scholar.

41 Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist, 74ff.

42 Note here that pluralism is used solely in the neoinstitutional sense, rather than the sense of cultural pluralism. A useful study of pluralism as a model as against established churches and strict separation of church and state is provided by Monsma, Stephen V. and Soper, J. Christopher, The Challenge of Pluralism: Church and State in Five Democracies (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997)Google Scholar. However, Monsma and Soper refer to pluralism as a mode of state neutrality, whereas pluralism as a model of interest representation could be used in a state with or without the application of strict neutrality.

43 Cavanaugh, “A Fire,” 415.

44 Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination, 83.

45 Cavanaugh, “Penance,” 14.

46 Chaplin, Jonathan, “Suspended Communities or Covenanted Communities? Reformed Reflections on the Social Thought of Radical Orthodoxy,” in Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition, eds. Smith, James K. A. and Olthuis, James H. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 166Google Scholar.

47 Cavanaugh, “A Fire,” 411–12.

48 Cavanaugh, “Killing,” 267.

49 Cavanaugh, Theolopolitical Imagination, 85.

50 Cavanaugh, “A Fire,” 399.

51 Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination, 2–3.

52 “Secularism is the ideology that argues the historical inevitability and progressive nature of secularization everywhere” (Madan, T. N., Modern Myths, Locked Minds [Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998], 5–6Google Scholar).

53 Bull, The Anarchical Society, 255.