The Myth of Religious Violence (Chapter Two): The Invention of Religion
I had to take a bit of a break blogging because of finals, but since I made it alive I thought I would start off by continuing blogging through William Cavanaugh's book. Chapter two is quite lengthy and complex, so my posts on it will be broken into smaller manageable chunks that correspond roughly with the subdivisions in the chapter. Here I will start slow both for my sake and for those whose interest is sparked by this post but have not yet read the first few. Or perhaps better: the first small section of chapter two is both a summary of chapter one, and several terse statements about Cavanaugh's theses and goals for chapter two. Thus if you are not interested in reading the first several posts on chapter one which covers nine different sociologists and philosophers of religion and why their definition of religion (and hence their prognosis of religious violence) are fundamentally arbitrary, unsustainable, and analytically empty, you dont need to! Thus without further ado let us dive into the first few pages of chapter two.
The Invention of Religion
Cavanaugh opens somewhat apologetically about the pedantic nature of the first chapter (a somewhat ironic apology since this chapter is double the length with double the footnotes). He writes: "At the risk of trying the reader's patience...I wanted to present enough evidence that the reader would conclude that the problem with the arguments [regarding religion and violence] would not be solved by coming up with novel and better arguments for why religion has a peculiar tendency toward violence, or by choosing a different set of authors..." (57) The authors selected were all highly intelligent, respected in their fields, and indeed cannot be dismissed wholesale as they have many very important insights, especially regarding empirical conditions under which ideologies have become violent.
Yet, says Cavanaugh, the problem is not with their scholarship, "but with the categories under which the debate takes place. The problem specifically is with the category 'religion.'"
Indeed the inability to coherently produce a stable definition of religion has become so widespread as of late that it constitutes "almost an article of methodological dogma." Yet it has not always been so. For quite some time philosophy and sociology of religion could be (roughly) divided into two camps of thought: essentialist and functionalist.
Essentialists tend to try and define religion by essential core features. This methodological "type" is probably the one we are all most familiar with. Religion then tends to be defined as beliefs and practices oriented toward the transcendent (i.e. how Rudolph Otto defines "the Numinous" or how Paul Tillich describes "Absolute Concern"). Thus what would, on these accounts, separate the religious from the secular is the content of the beliefs. Speaking in broad generalities, religion would in this sense deal with the mystical, the transcendent, whatever is "above," while the secular would organize "the below" i.e. everyday earthly needs and realities. "Substantivist definitions of religion approximate the common Western idea of religion as what Christians and Mulsims and Hindus and members of a few other 'world religions' believe and do." (57-58)
Functionalist on the other hand generally expand the definition of religion to include other ideologies and practices not usually included in Essentialist types of definition, because Functionalists are more concerned about (wait for it) the function that is being performed rather than specific content (i.e. the transcendent, God or the gods, etc...). Thus, for example, religion can be expanded to include anything that symbolically organizes life into a meaningful structure, and so on.
Yet Cavanaugh notes that both of these types actually end up being essentialist, and that while Functionalism is laudably more expansive in its definition and the phenomena it includes, nonetheless both methods are fundamentally looking for essentially transhistorical and transcultural structures or contents which inevitably (or at least de facto) appear in all periods of human life.
There is, however, a significantly growing number of scholars who explore the way the concept of religion has been constructed in different times and in different places (and indeed this is what Cavanaugh intends to do in this chapter). "According to this approach," he says, "the reason that essentialist definitions have failed to meet with agreement is not a lack of scholarly ingenuity but the fact that there is no essence of religion such that 'we all know it when we see it' as Charles Kimball would have it." Rather (Cavanaugh agrees) "religion is a constructed category, not a neutral descriptor of a reality that is simply out there in the world." (58). More specifically "the category religion as it is most commonly used is tied up with the history of Western modernity and is inseparable from the creation of what Talal Asad has called religion's 'Siamese twin,' secularism." Religion is a term that constructs and is constructed by different kinds of political configurations.
At this point it behooves us to quote Cavanaugh at length since he lays down a thesis statement for the chapter:
Cavanaugh therefore outlines the chapter, which will proceed in five sections (as will my blog posts about them):
In the first two sections Cavanaugh will demonstrate that religion is not a transhistorical concept by demonstrating its development within Western thought.
In the third section Cavanaugh will show that religion is not transcultural, but was borrowed or imposed by Westerners in much of the rest of the world through colonialism.
In the fourth section Cavanaugh will demonstrate that even within the secular modern West, the religious-secular division remains widely contested.
In the fifth and final section then, Cavanaugh concludes by arguing that what counts as religious or secular depends upon what practices are being authorized, and what practices are being subordinated.
Just a little preview of the coming days!
The Invention of Religion
Cavanaugh opens somewhat apologetically about the pedantic nature of the first chapter (a somewhat ironic apology since this chapter is double the length with double the footnotes). He writes: "At the risk of trying the reader's patience...I wanted to present enough evidence that the reader would conclude that the problem with the arguments [regarding religion and violence] would not be solved by coming up with novel and better arguments for why religion has a peculiar tendency toward violence, or by choosing a different set of authors..." (57) The authors selected were all highly intelligent, respected in their fields, and indeed cannot be dismissed wholesale as they have many very important insights, especially regarding empirical conditions under which ideologies have become violent.
Yet, says Cavanaugh, the problem is not with their scholarship, "but with the categories under which the debate takes place. The problem specifically is with the category 'religion.'"
Indeed the inability to coherently produce a stable definition of religion has become so widespread as of late that it constitutes "almost an article of methodological dogma." Yet it has not always been so. For quite some time philosophy and sociology of religion could be (roughly) divided into two camps of thought: essentialist and functionalist.
Essentialists tend to try and define religion by essential core features. This methodological "type" is probably the one we are all most familiar with. Religion then tends to be defined as beliefs and practices oriented toward the transcendent (i.e. how Rudolph Otto defines "the Numinous" or how Paul Tillich describes "Absolute Concern"). Thus what would, on these accounts, separate the religious from the secular is the content of the beliefs. Speaking in broad generalities, religion would in this sense deal with the mystical, the transcendent, whatever is "above," while the secular would organize "the below" i.e. everyday earthly needs and realities. "Substantivist definitions of religion approximate the common Western idea of religion as what Christians and Mulsims and Hindus and members of a few other 'world religions' believe and do." (57-58)
Functionalist on the other hand generally expand the definition of religion to include other ideologies and practices not usually included in Essentialist types of definition, because Functionalists are more concerned about (wait for it) the function that is being performed rather than specific content (i.e. the transcendent, God or the gods, etc...). Thus, for example, religion can be expanded to include anything that symbolically organizes life into a meaningful structure, and so on.
Yet Cavanaugh notes that both of these types actually end up being essentialist, and that while Functionalism is laudably more expansive in its definition and the phenomena it includes, nonetheless both methods are fundamentally looking for essentially transhistorical and transcultural structures or contents which inevitably (or at least de facto) appear in all periods of human life.
There is, however, a significantly growing number of scholars who explore the way the concept of religion has been constructed in different times and in different places (and indeed this is what Cavanaugh intends to do in this chapter). "According to this approach," he says, "the reason that essentialist definitions have failed to meet with agreement is not a lack of scholarly ingenuity but the fact that there is no essence of religion such that 'we all know it when we see it' as Charles Kimball would have it." Rather (Cavanaugh agrees) "religion is a constructed category, not a neutral descriptor of a reality that is simply out there in the world." (58). More specifically "the category religion as it is most commonly used is tied up with the history of Western modernity and is inseparable from the creation of what Talal Asad has called religion's 'Siamese twin,' secularism." Religion is a term that constructs and is constructed by different kinds of political configurations.
At this point it behooves us to quote Cavanaugh at length since he lays down a thesis statement for the chapter:
The point of this exercise is not to dissolve the problem of religion and violence by saying that religion is a fuzzy concept, so there is no such thing as religion and therefore no such problem of religion and violence. The problem is not that the implicit definitions of religion used by [chapter one's] group of scholars are vague and fuzzy around the edges. With the exception of Richard Wentz, they are very clear about what counts as religion and what does not. The question is: are these distinctions arbitrary? What configurations of power and authority are authorized by these distinctions? As I will show in this chapter there is no transhistorical and transcultural essence of religion. What counts as religion and what does not in any given context is contestable and depends on who has the power and authority to define religion at any given time and place...[as I will argue] the concept of religion as used by the theorists in chapter one is a development of the modern liberal state; the religious-secular distinction accompanies the invention of private-public, religion-politics, and church-state dichotomies. The religious-secular distinction also accompanies the state's monopolies over internal violence and colonial expansion. If the religious-secular distinction develops in the context of this new configuration of power, then the distinctions made by the authors in chapter one should be interrogated within this history. If I can show that the very definition of religion is part of the history of Western power, then the idea that religion causes violence might not be simply a neutral, empirical observation, but might perhaps have an ideological function in legitimating certain kinds of practices and delegitimating others.
In this chapter I will give evidence for two conclusions. The first conclusion is that there is no transhistorical or transcultural concept of religion. Religions have a history, and what counts as religion and what does not...depends on different configurations of power and authority. The second conclusion is that the attempt to say that there is a transcultural and transhistorical concept of religion that is separable from secular phenomena is itself part of a particular configuration of power, that of the modern, liberal nation-state as it developed in the West. In this context, religion is constructed as transhistorical, transcultural, essentially interior, and essentially distinct from public, secular rationality. To construe Christianity as a religion, therefore, helps to separate loyalty to God from one's public loyalty to the nation-state. The idea that religion has a tendency to cause violence--and is therefore to be removed from public power--is one type of this essentialist construction. (59).
Cavanaugh therefore outlines the chapter, which will proceed in five sections (as will my blog posts about them):
In the first two sections Cavanaugh will demonstrate that religion is not a transhistorical concept by demonstrating its development within Western thought.
In the third section Cavanaugh will show that religion is not transcultural, but was borrowed or imposed by Westerners in much of the rest of the world through colonialism.
In the fourth section Cavanaugh will demonstrate that even within the secular modern West, the religious-secular division remains widely contested.
In the fifth and final section then, Cavanaugh concludes by arguing that what counts as religious or secular depends upon what practices are being authorized, and what practices are being subordinated.
Just a little preview of the coming days!
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