Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

William T. Cavanaugh is senior research professor at the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology and professor of Catholic studies at DePaul University.

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Migrations of the Holy

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Contents

Introduction..........................................................................................................11. "Killing for the Telephone Company": Why the Nation-State Is Not the Keeper of the Common Good.....................72. From One City to Two: Christian Reimagining of Political Space.....................................................463. Migrant, Tourist, Pilgrim, Monk: Identity and Mobility in a Global Age.............................................694. Messianic Nation: A Christian Theological Critique of American Exceptionalism......................................885. How to Do Penance for the Inquisition..............................................................................1096. The Liturgies of Church and State..................................................................................1157. The Church as Political............................................................................................1238. The Sinfulness and Visibility of the Church: A Christological Exploration..........................................1419. A Politics of Vulnerability........................................................................................170Index.................................................................................................................196

Chapter One

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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 chapter 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. They are ahistorical because they assume that the state has been with us since biblical times. The state, as Charles Curran says, is "natural and necessary" and "based on creation." It takes different forms — polis for Aristotle, regimen principum for Aquinas — but these different terms refer to the same essential reality: all historical forms of political community are conflated into the term "state." These accounts are also idealized because they assume that society is prior to the state and broader than the state. Human society is represented as a pyramid: the family is at the base, other groups and associations are in the middle, and the state is at the top to coordinate and protect. The base has "ontological priority" to the state and calls forth the state to be at its service. Furthermore, "[s]ociety is broader than the state and includes much more." The state is just one limited part of society, but is established in nature with an important role to play: "the end or purpose of the state or government [is] the pursuit of the common good."

What I find unhelpful about such accounts is the way they float free from any empirical testing of their theses. Christian ethicists will commonly recognize that, in a sinful world, particular states always fall short of the ideal. Nevertheless, the ideal is presented not merely as a standard for Christian political practice but as a statement of fact: the state in its essential form simply is that agency of society whose purpose it is to protect and promote the common good, even if particular states do not always live up to that responsibility. This conclusion is based on a series of assumptions of fact: that the state is natural and primordial; that society gives rise to the state and not vice versa; and that the state is one limited part of society. These assumptions of fact, however, are often made without any attempt to present historical evidence on their behalf.

This may be because such evidence is lacking. In this chapter I will examine the origins of the state and the state-society relationship according to those who study the historical record. I will argue that the above assumptions of fact are untenable in the face of the evidence. I will examine these three assumptions in order. First, unless one equivocates on the meaning of "state," the state is not natural, but a rather recent and artificial innovation in human political order. Second, the state gives rise to society, and not vice versa. Third, the state is not one limited part of society, but has in fact expanded and become fused with society. The primary burden of this chapter is negative: in arguing these three points, I will attempt to present the case against seeing the state as the promoter and protector of the common good. Only in the conclusion will I make some brief comments on what this implies positively for Christian thinking and practice.

A preliminary comment is necessary: my analysis of the development and current condition of the state and nation-state is based on Western models — that is, primarily Europe and the United States. The state and nation-state are Western inventions. They have been exported to the rest of the world with varying degrees of success. In many Southern lands, the reality of the state and the sense of the nation are tenuous at best, and are mixed with other forms of political organization, such as tribal structures. I take most of my examples from the United States, though insofar as the nation-state has taken root elsewhere, we can see similar dynamics in other contexts.

The State Is Not Natural, but Artificial

History of the Term

The word "state" is sometimes used loosely to refer to the political form through which a stable group of people is organized. Nomadic groups are usually the only kind of political community excluded from this definition, since the term implies some form of geographical stability. The state is thus treated, as Engels says, as a necessary and ancient "product of society at a certain stage of development." Thus questions of "church and state," for example, are perennial questions. In more precise usage, however, "state" refers to amore limited development characteristic of modernity. The state emerged in Europe amidst the late Renaissance and Reformation. As Bruce Porter puts it, "The state as we know it is a relatively new invention, originating in Europe between 1450 and 1650." In this more precise sense, the state is a political form based on the distinctly modern concept of sovereignty, which may be defined as "supreme authority within a territory." As formulated by Bodin, Hobbes, and other lesser figures of the early modern period, the state claims legitimate authority — as opposed to mere coercion — a supreme authority that no lesser authorities within a recognized set of geographical borders may legitimately oppose. Sovereignty is a departure from earlier forms of governance, in which people's political loyalties were based not necessarily on territoriality but on feudal ties, kinship, and religious or tribal affiliation. If a stranger committed a crime on someone else's land, it would be necessary to find out to whom he or she owed loyalty in order to know what law applied.

It is perfectly acceptable to use the term "state" in the looser sense, provided one is clear that it is not being used in the stricter sense. Confusion is produced when, as in the case of Curran...