William Cavanaugh

Christian theologian cited in Restoration — God’s Call To The 21st Century for a thought experiment that probes the line between religious and national loyalty: are you willing to die — and to kill — for your country, versus for your religion? Cavanaugh argues that most people’s willingness to kill for their country but not their religion reveals how the nation-state has set itself up as an absolute authority that functionally operates as a rival to, if not a replacement for, God in modern times. His conclusion as quoted in the book: “at least among American Christians, the nation-state — [Thomas] Hobbes’s ‘mortal god’ — is subject to far more absolutist fervor than religion.” The author uses this to frame the nation-state as a potential idol, a “false god” in Spencer W. Kimball’s words, feeding the book’s larger argument that nationalism is one of the “graven images” the Restoration must tear down.

Context: William T. Cavanaugh is a Catholic theologian and political theology scholar (DePaul University), known for work on the “myth of religious violence” and on how the modern state appropriates religious devotion. The Hobbes “mortal god” reference points to Leviathan’s account of the commonwealth as an earthly sovereign power.

Where this appears

• Restoration — God’s Call To The 21st Century — quoted at length for the die/kill thought experiment and the claim that the nation-state functions as a “mortal god” rivaling religious loyalty