Chapter Summary Of Cavanaugh's Chapters

To start, chapters 1 and 3 of Cavanaugh’s book examine “pathologies” of the modern state, while more specifically, chapter 1 analyzes its history and that of the modern nation-state. Cavanaugh argues that “neither state nor nation is natural or essential for the promotion of the common good (page 5).” Cavanaugh provides his readers with a very useful overview of contemporary thinking towards political theology from a Catholic perspective, perhaps a leftist one at that. In the introduction, he states his main purpose for the book, that is, “to help Christians and others to be realistic about what we can expect from the ‘powers and principalities’ of our own age, and to urge them not to invest the entirety of their political presence in these powers (page 3).” Some of the more useful and illuminating discussions that I found to be most helpful, specifically from chapter 1, were his thoughts regarding the origins of the nation state, which he refers to as “the result of the fusion of the idea of the nation- a unitary system of shared cultural

For him, “The state does not arise as the establishment of a uniform system of common good and justice on behalf of a society of people; rather, a society is brought into being by the centralization of royal power” (page 14); to put it more bluntly, society is birthed out of war, a point with which I disagree. When military force is used as a means to gain border control, the people become colonized; and a colony is far different than a society. Furthermore, Cavanaugh posits that the state has essentially become the sole legal authority having the capacity to act in all matters on behalf of its citizens, thereby structuring their lives. He describes society as a “pyramid” (page 7), where “the family is at the bottom, other groups and associations are in the middle, and the state,” he says, “is at the top to coordinate and protect it” (page