Cavanaugh's book sat on my "to read" pile for nearly four years, largely because - despite its good reviews - the title, the blurb and the author's background as a theologian all triggered this atheist reader's "apologist" alarm bells. The idea that religion is inherently prone to violence is so deeply rooted in our culture that a book which argued this was wrong seemed like it was inevitably going to be unconvincing.

But I was wrong. Cavanaugh makes a compelling and ultimately quite convincing case that this idea that religion especially and particularly inclines toward violence is actually without solid foundations.

Of course, he doesn't deny that religious people can be violent, that religion can and has inspired violence or that there is no such thing as violence and war based on religious ideology. Both history and current affairs give us plenty of examples of all these things. But Cavanaugh's arguments expose the flaws in the Enlightenment myth that religion is especially inclined toward violence more than other forms of belief or ideology, as well as the claim that the solution to this "problem" is the nation state restricting religion as much as possible to the private and the personal to save us from religion's terrible impulses.

By tracing the problems with defining what "religion" actually is in any coherent way, showing how "religion" is in fact a uniquely and particularly Western concept that doesn't map well onto the rest of the world and critiquing the common conceptions of religion in history, Cavanagh undermines the foundations of the Myth. His critique of the commonly held conception of the "Wars of Religion" of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries exposes that these were, in fact, more wars of new absolutist nation states jockeying for precedence than clashes between Catholics and Protestants. And the claim that the calming, secular and rational influence of those nation states was the "solution" to these wars is replaced by Cavanaugh by a strong case that the nation states of the period were actually the causes of these wars, not the benign forces that ended them.

This central section of the book has some keen insights, such as the exposition of the idea that the Reformation only took root in parts of Europe where it was backed by the local nation state power and did not take root when the nation state opposed it. Far from being some kind of spiritual rebellion from the bottom, it was largely imposed from the top and failed when the top didn't support it. Seen this way, it was part of a wider dynamic whereby the rising absolutist nation state either restricted Church power by hijacking and supporting the Reformers or did so by other means, and so resisted the Reformers because the state already had the Church largely under local control or political dominance. Ultimately, whether in Catholic or Protestant Europe, it was a process of the state co-opting and limiting church power.

The final section on the uses to which the state has put and continues to put the Myth for its own ends contains some serious critiques of modern political discourse. The way that Islam has been cast as the ultimate religious bogeyman in recent times is one clear example, leading to a justification of great and terrible (state) violence to "save" us from the spectre of Islam's particular religious threat. By the time we get to New Atheist luminaries Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris invoking war, torture and even nuclear strikes in the name of preventing the terrors that religion could bring to us (such as ... well, war, torture and even nuclear strikes) the paradoxes of the Myth are pretty clear.

This is not to say that many of the things that the Myth upholds - freedom of individual conscience, the right to not believe, tolerance of all faiths or the lack thereof or the separation of church and state - are not still worth maintaining and strengthening. But Cavanaugh goes a long way toward showing that much of the supposed historical foundations of these things are actually more spin than reality.

Good books make you rethink things and open up new questions. So this is a good book.

A pretty solid argument. Lawrence shows that the threat of religious violence is one of the founding myths of the establishment of liberal nation-states. By religious violence, he means the idea that religion is the primary cause of violence and conflict throughout history. The book is structured to dispel and contest this myth through theoretical and historical reasoning.

First, Lawrence shows how religion is not a fixed or universal concept, but a construct that has changed over time and varies across cultures, so you can't prop up a holistic picture of holy violence without causing troublesome misconceptions.

Moreover, the very distinction between religious and secular is politically determined, serving to legitimize certain practices, so it is itself dependent on power structures. The myth is used to justify the separation of church and state, but he claims the separation never occurred. Now, the state (and its ideological paradigm) is revered instead of organized religion. 

Lawrence spends a lot of the book arguing quite convincingly that secular ideologies and institutions can be just as violent as religious ones. It creates villains for liberal societies to define themselves against, similar to past Western imperial schemes.

He does admit that certain forms of religious beliefs and practices do promote violence, but criticism should not be based on a flawed religious-secular dichotomy that ignores secular forms of brutality in the name of democracy, free market, liberalism, even communism and fascism.

This narrative is a political tool used to shape public opinion, justify certain policies, and stigmatize certain religions. 

Quite well done.

Makes a well articulated case for the fictional (yet strategically useful to the West) label of "religious" violence. Raises good questions about why "secular" violence is superior and more rational, and challenges the origin story of the Enlightenment biases that fuel this narrative.

This book blew my mind with every page.

You’ve heard the myth. It’s foundational to Western civilization and has been pounded into your head since you were kid: religion is violent. After the religious wars of Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, there was a clear division of the roles of the church and the state.

Cavanaugh tears down this myth in two parts. First, he asks “What’s a religion?” Is it a belief system where people worship or attempt to follow a supernatural being? If that is so, then why is Theravada Buddhism or Confucianism called a religion? Is it a system with texts, prophets, saints, temples, shrines, etc.? If so, why isn’t Marxism considered a religion? Cavanaugh doesn’t try to give any easy answers here. He basically just argues that no one can really agree what constitutes a “religion.” If no one can really agree what religion is, how can everyone agree that religion is violent?

In the second leg of his argument, Cavanaugh exposes the myth itself and shows how it has been used in the past and is being used in the present. Essentially, the “religion is violent” folks point to the “religious wars” of Europe to push religion into a private corner and allowing the secular nation-state to do essentially whatever it wants. Palestinians bombing Israelis as a jihad? Irrational evil. Bombing the Israelis into oblivion? Well, that’s okay.

There are so many great thoughts in this book. I particularly found the section interesting where he showed how most of the non-Western “religions” were not religions in the sense that we know the term. Rather, colonialists, comparing these systems to Christianity, forced them into a similar mold.

Very based, albeit to hammer a point the author can bring many examples which makes it sometimes boring to read.

If you're interested in religion, religious and/or secular violence, or even how we create narratives to justify existing power structures, this book is for you! Cavanaugh persuasively argues that the 'myth of religious violence' is primarily an ideological construction used to justify secular violence and encourage devotion to a nation-state, and the broader project of secularism. The book is chock-full of anecdotes and details and specific examples that illustrate Cavanaugh's main points. These details may make the book a bit tiresome and difficult to navigate for some readers, but are pretty easily skimmed over if they prove uninteresting (though I personally found them illuminating and worthwhile).

The passages that Cavanaugh quotes from various contemporary figures that invoke the myth of religious violence to justify secular violence (generally against Muslims and countries the figures associate with Islam) are harrowing and vile. Though they help demonstrate the value and necessity of Cavanaugh's work, drawing attention to the real human cost of the 'myth of religious violence'.

A must read.