William T. Cavanaugh

The World in a Wafer: A Geography of the Eucharist as Resistance to Globalization

This essay explores Eucharist as resistance to late-capitalist “globalization.” Globalization is often touted as the first true realization of catholicity. Globalization is seen as the demise of the nation-state which has caused so much division among peoples. In contrast, I argue that globalization does not signal the decline of the nation-state but the perfection of the modern states subsumption of local communities under the universal. True catholicity is based in the practice of the Eucharist, which realizes a universal communion but does so only in local Eucharistic communities, thus overcoming the dichotomy of universal and particular.

From One City to Two: Christian Reimagining of Political Space

Abstract The paper questions the basic assumption that the nation-state is one city, within which there is a division of goods and a division of labour, which follow certain well-worn binaries: civil society and state, sacred and secular, eternal and temporal, religion and politics, church and state. It explores some deficiencies of John Courtney Murrays conceptualization of the political space in this way, and turns to Augustines tale of two cities for a more adequate conceptualization. The paper especially argues that the two cities are not two institutions but two performances, two practices of space and time.

Migrant, Tourist, Pilgrim, Monk: Mobility and Identity in a Global Age:

Globalization is often portrayed as ushering in a world without borders, a mobile world where everything is shifting. This essay aims to nuance this portrayal by examining different kinds of mobility in the globalized world and the identities they create. It begins with examining two typical figures from a globalized world: the migrant and the tourist. Then two figures from religious traditions—the pilgrim and the monk—are examined as resources for a positive response to globalization.

Making Enemies: The Imagination of Torture in Chile and the United States

Through a comparison of the use of torture by Chile under General Pinochet and the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay, the author argues that one of tortures primary purposes is the fostering of a certain kind of social imagination of who our enemies are. The author then briefly suggests how communities of faith can resist this imagination.

Dying for the Eucharist or Being Killed by it?: Romero's Challenge to First-World Christians

This essay uses the life, death, and writings of Oscar Romero to explore the connection between eucharist and martyrdom, and how to tell the difference between dying for the eucharist and being killed by it. The essay begins by examining the logic of martyrdom, then shows its connections with the eucharist, and concludes with some comments about the situation of first-world Christians in a relatively safe church. The essay suggests that the eucharist can bring judgment if Christians do not attend to those who suffer in their midst.

Religious Violence as Modern Myth

Abstract In this essay the author summarizes the argument of his book entitled The Myth of Religious Violence, whose main contention is that there is no reason to suppose that people are more likely to kill for a god than for a whole other host of “secular” ideologies and practices that behave in the way that “religions” do. The author then goes on to respond to various critiques that have been made of the book since its appearance in 2009.

The Liturgies of Church and State

Today the most significant misunderstanding of the Christian liturgy is that it is sacred. Let me clarify. The problem is that “sacred” has been opposed to “secular,” and the two are presumed to describe two separate—but occasionally related—orbits. The problem is not simply that this separation leaves the church’s liturgy begging for relevance to the “real world.” The problem is rather that the supposedly “secular” world invents its own liturgies, with pretensions every bit as “sacred” as those of the Christian liturgy, and these liturgies can come to rival the church’s liturgy for our bodies and our minds. In this brief essay I want to explore in particular some of the liturgies of the American nation-state. I will suggest first that such liturgies are not properly called “secular,” and second, that the Christian liturgy is not properly cordoned off into the realm of the “sacred.”

Am I Impossible

A sensible theologian gets used to the marginalization of theology in the mainstream academy. To find a book about the importance of political theology by a legal scholar at Yale is, however, cause for excitement. Paul Kahn’s exploration of, and extrapolation from, key themes in Carl Schmitt’s classic work goes beyond the usual association of political theology with fundamentalism and shows how even a liberal political order has a theology of its own.2 There has been no “resurgence” of religion; Kahn sees rightly that Mark Lilla’s “Great Separation” never happened, and that even liberal nation-states like the US have taken on the aura of the sacred. Kahn’s insightful comments about nuclear warfare make this point acutely: “How is it that a political order that understands itself as characterized by the rule of law can hold forth the possibility of such destruction?” (11–12). It can only be because the nation has taken on an infinite value, and the popular sovereign, or nation as god, must retain its exceptional powers to act. In times of war, the President embodies the people like Christ embodies the whole (86). Liberal theories like that of Rawls have never properly come to grips with the violence of the nationstate and the persistence of sacrifice in modern politics. All of this and more is expanded upon in quite brilliant fashion, and I remain grateful to Kahn for opening up new lines of inquiry that may have

The Fall of the Fall in Early Modern Political Theory

In this essay I offer a contribution to a political genealogy of secularization through the fading of the Fall in early modern political theory. I begin by giving a brief overview of the importance of the Fall in pre-modern Christian political thought. I then examine the fate of the Fall in early modern thought, briefly discussing Niccolò Machiavelli and Francisco de Vitoria, but concentrating on the English tradition most influential on our context, namely Thomas Hobbes, Robert Filmer, and John Locke. I show how and why the Fall is replaced by the “state of nature” as pre-historical justification of political power. I conclude with some comments on what is lost when Western society no longer uses the Fall to mark the difference between the way things are and the way things are meant to be.

Return of the Golden Calf: Economy, Idolatry, and Secularization since Gaudium et spes

Pope Francis consistently addresses economic issues with the concept of idolatry, but Gaudium et spes treats the economy as an autonomous, secular realm amenable to technocratic solutions guided by principles of right reason. Cavanaugh accounts for this difference by examining changes in theories about secularization from the 1960s to the present. He argues that today we are less likely to see the secular realm as neutral and devoid of belief, and more likely to see it as enchanted and idolatrous.