In this article, Wayne Northey responds to William Cavanaugh's classic Modern Theology piece, “A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House": The Wars of Religion and the Rise of the State.
Wayne Northey: Dr. Cavanaugh has been producing an impressive list of scholarly works challenging certain Enlightenment narratives about Christianity in the West. I previously reviewed two of his books together: The Myth of Religious Violence and Migrations of the Holy.
I can think of two professionals I know well, senior in their respective fields, flawed though in their lack of critical thinking about post-Enlightenment bias against Christianity. (They were once fundamentalist Christians,) As Cavanaugh succinctly argues in the article highlighted below, claims that the secular state of necessity stepped in to end the bloody religious wars in the West, get the matter ass-backwards. I confess to being one of those who as well once imbibed/expressed unthinkingly such prejudice . . .
Charles Tilly’s article, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” highlighted below, has a compelling echo in this story by Saint Augustine:
The king asked the fellow, “What is your idea, in infesting the sea?” And the pirate answered, with uninhibited insolence, ”the same as yours, in infesting the earth! But because I do it with a tiny craft, I’m called a pirate: because you have a mighty navy, you’re called an emperor.” (Saint Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, trans. Henry Bettenson, New York: Penguin Books, 1984, IV, 4, p. 139).”
One takeaway from that article is[1]: any adherence to a doctrine of “Just War” was rendered utterly beside the point against the events of European history throughout this era of state-making. It no more pertained then than in any other kind of “gang” warfare. There has in this respect never been honour among thieves–never will be. It is even less apt in developing nations worldwide. In short: it is, pace Saint Augustine (and a long line of ethicists in intellectually casuistic lockstep), for all intents a kind of ethical hoax.
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