The Uses of Idolatry, by William T. Cavanaugh, deals with the economic and political maladaptations of our day due to idolatry. The transfer of religious zeal and reverence towards politics and material things is, of course, ground that has been covered differently in books as diverse as Eugene McCarraher’s The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity, and my Ideological Possession and the Rise of the New Right. This book begins with the contributions of Max Weber and Charles Taylor, and Cavanaugh details how his argument differs from theirs.
Cavanaugh starts by emphasizing the need to reject the dichotomy of enchantment vs. disenchantment. We need to think past that dichotomy to see the strong tendency towards idolatry across time and space. He disagrees with Charles Taylor, whom he interprets as thinking that we live now in entirely imminent frame. Cavanaugh also criticizes Taylor for thinking in binaries such as secular vs. enchanted. Taylor does indeed employ binary reasoning, though not exclusively. But it is not as clear to me that Taylor, in A Secular Age, fails to recognize that we have transferred some of our enchantment to mundane things.
Cavanaugh wants to show that the same mentality that created the idols of the Old Testament has created the idolatry of commodity fetishism. He takes a position that perhaps downplays the uniqueness of capitalism by questioning that aspect of Marx’s teaching which tends to think there are economic imperatives in capitalism that are extremely difficult to ignore. Realizing that there are various interpretations of Marx, for those who are inclined to think that capitalism is like no other system that came before it because it operates more on market imperatives than on choice, this part of Cavanaugh’s argument may be unsatisfactory. But it is at least somewhat persuasive at the level of the individual who is trying to decide what to value and how to live. It may not address as well what to do with the overall system in order to overcome the destructive effects of the consumer market that leads to climate change and endless wars.
Cavanaugh uses St. Augustine’s thought to show that idolatry is narcissism. To know the one true God is at least to know that he cannot be manipulated, and people are not ultimately in control of their world. But idolatry centers the individual. Whether idolatry takes the form of worshipping and sacrificing to personified gods to win their favors, or whether it reveals itself in consumerism or nationalism, the impulse is to control. And the ultimate source of that impulse is self-love rather than kenosis. Even God can be made an idol if people approach him as though he can be bribed. So, Cavanaugh is basically arguing as Eric Voegelin did, that the proper place for the human soul is the metaxy or “in-between.”
A chapter is devoted to the phenomenological approach of Jean-Luc Marion, which allows Cavanaugh to deal with idolatry as an “authentic expression of the human experience of the divine.” Marion argues that human beings are easily overwhelmed by the impossible task of comprehending an infinite and omnipotent God. To conceive of him, they must reduce God to something they can grasp. This sets people up for slippage into the narcissistic manipulation of magic. This introduces us to a different take on the idolatry of nationalism as a “splendid idolatry,” one that aims at something bigger than oneself and thus does invite a certain kenosis.
Understanding nationalism as as misplaced religious energy is of course an insight of numerous thinkers from Jung to Voegelin to (arguably) Taylor, but armed with Marion’s insights, Cavanaugh can grasp the tragedy of this mistake, and the potential grandeur of the human spirit. This line of reasoning resonates with Protestant authors (such as Derek Vreeland, Centering Jesus: How the Lamb of God Transforms our Communities, Ethics, and Spiritual Lives, NavPress, 2023) who critique the idolatry of right- and left-wing Christian politics.
Cavanaugh also spends a chapter on consumerism. This kind of idolatry is also a form of narcissism. While many of us are more familiar with this form of idolatry because we engage in it every day, through Cavanaugh’s analysis we see more clearly how we allow those material things to take on an imagined life, and how they take our lives along with them. In his chapter on consumerism, Cavanaugh skillfully weaves Marx’s concepts of alienation and commodity fetishism into a more nuanced picture of consumer behavior. He shows how the consumer’s magical experience of products appearing on her doorstep makes her blind to the suffering of all the workers in-between the raw materials and the finished product.
He then turns to how sacrament and iconography can help us deal with our inability to fully grasp the divine in a healthier fashion. This line of argument resonates with Hans Boersma’s Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry. There is increased attention to sacramentality and iconography in evangelical and charismatic Protestant circles combatting Christian nationalism. The book will give the reader a much better idea of how the sacraments and icons function, and why it is a mistake to view these as merely aesthetic.
Cavanaugh’s The Uses of Idolatry is well worth a read beyond the Christian theological context. It may be especially good for those who are wondering why Christians are susceptible to misplaced priorities, and how those misplaced priorities can turn into identities and obsessions that lead to bad attitudes and bad politics.
–Laurie M Johnson, August 28, 2024
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