Tag: <span>04 article</span>

Tag: 04 article

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Messianic Nation: A Christian Theological Critique of American Exceptionalism (Cavanaugh, 2005)

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I want to distinguish between two broad types of American exceptionalism, one with Judeo-Christian roots, and the other with its roots in the Enlightenment. There is of course much mixing of the two types, but they represent two quite distinct ways of approaching the question of exceptionalism. The first explicitly appeals to Christian theological concepts such as the election of Israel and God’s providence. The second appeals to Enlightenment concepts concerning the universal applicability of the American value of freedom…. My basic argument is that when a direct, unmediated relationship is posited between America and a transcendent reality – either God or freedom – there is a danger that the state will be divinized.

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The Liturgies of Church and State (Cavanaugh, 2005)

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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.”

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Eucharistic Sacrifice and the Social Imagination in Early Modern Europe (Cavanaugh, 2001)

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My explorations will proceed by way of showing the “fittingness” of the rise of the modern social order with certain conceptions or misconceptions of sacrifice in the Reformation era. I will begin with an examination of Martin Luther’s critique of the Mass as sacrifice. Then I will show how Luther’s arguments on sacrifice —as well as those of his opponents—serve as a bridge from the medieval to the modern, specifically in partially reflecting the shift from an organic idealization of society to a contractual conception of social processes. Finally, I will conclude with some brief comments on alternative Christian conceptions of sacrifice which do not succumb to the modern logic of gift and exchange.

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Dying for the Eucharist or Being Killed by It?: Romero’s Challenge to First-World Christians (Cavanaugh, 2001)

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We first-world Christians want to be in solidarity with Oscar Romero and the persecuted church in Latin America. The problem for most of us here is that when we go to church no one shoots at us. We do not fear for our lives, unless we count the fear of being bored to death.

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The World in a Wafer: A Geography of the Eucharist as Resistance to Globalization (Cavanaugh, 1999)

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I was going to subtitle this essay “How to be a Global Village Idiot”, but “A Geography of the Eucharist” better captures what I hope to accomplish, for I believe that much of the Christian confusion over globalization results from a neglect of the Eucharist as the source of a truly Catholic practice of space and time. Globalization marks a certain configuration for the discipline of space and time; I would like to juxtapose this geography with another geography, a geography of the Eucharist and its production of catholicity.

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Terrorist Enemies and Just War (Cavanaugh, 2004)

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Terrorists don’t fight fair. To Christians who are accustomed to approaching matters of organized violence through the just war tradition, terrorist tactics are a source of frustration. Within the tradition are criteria for deciding when and how violence can be used legitimately in a limited fashion for the correction of injustice, but for the last few centuries at least, the tradition primarily has been applied to conflicts between states. What happens when major acts of violence are perpetrated by nonstate actors who don’t even pretend to play by the rules?

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When Enough is Enough: Why God’s abundant life won’t fit in a shopping cart, and other mysteries of consumerism (Cavanaugh, 2005)

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Consumerism is not so much about having more as it is about having something else. It is not buying but shopping that captures the spirit of consumerism. Buying is certainly an important part of consumerism, but buying brings a temporary halt to the restlessness that typifies it. It is this restlessness—the moving on to shopping for something else no matter what one has just purchased—that sets the spiritual tone for consumerism.

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Sins of Omission: What “Religion and Violence” Arguments Ignore (Cavanaugh, 2004)

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My hypothesis is that “religion and violence” arguments serve a particular need for their consumers in the West. These arguments are part of a broader Enlightenment narrative that invents a dichotomy between the religious and the secular and constructs the former as an irrational and dangerous impulse that must give way in public to rational, secular forms of power.

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Killing for the Telephone Company: Why the Nation-State is Not the Keeper of the Common Good (Cavanaugh, 2004)

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In Christian social ethics the assumption is often made, with a minimum of examination, that the responsibility for promoting and protecting the common good falls to the state. In this essay I want to examine that assumption. All too often Christian social ethics begins from ahistorical and idealized assumptions about the state as protector and benefactor.

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Consumption, The Market and the Eucharist (Cavanaugh, 2005)

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Economics, we are told, is the science which studies the allocation of resources under conditions of scarcity. The very basis of the market, trade – giving up something to get something else – assumes scarcity. Resources are scarce wherever the desires of all persons for goods or services cannot be met….Consumerism is the death of Christian eschatology. There can be no rupture with the status quo, no inbreaking Kingdom of God, but only endless superficial novelty….The Eucharist tells another story about hunger and consumption. It does not begin with scarcity, but with the one who came that we might have life, and have it abundantly (John 10:10).