308 book reviews

William T. Cavanaugh, Field Hospital: The Church’s Engagement with a Wounded World (Grand Rapids/Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans, 2016), pp. viii + 268, $24.00, ISBN 978-0-8028-7297-5 (pbk)

In Field Hospital, a leading Catholic scholar borrows an analogy used by Pope Francis to develop a complex, theological proposition (or, more accurately, a series of essays with precise arguments) that the Christian church needs to critique and countermand contemporary social, political and economic insti- tutions. The purpose of this engagement is to ‘heal the wounds’ of the world yet make no mistake, readers should not be looking here for a ‘how to’ manual with practical solutions for lay practitioners. Instead, William Cavanaugh’s ‘guide’ takes us to a 35,000-foot-level of analysis that few theologians could climb with his level of aplomb, depth and sophistication. As with Cavanaugh’s Migrations of the Holy (2011), this new book is not re- ally ‘new’ in that much of the material has been previously published or pre- sented. Similar to that earlier work, Field Hospital also suffers from the lack of a concluding chapter drawing together the many diverse strands of this wide-ranging analysis. This weakness aside, there is a cohesive centrality here to sustain anyone interested in a theologically well-grounded explana- tion and advocacy for what Cavanaugh calls ‘the deep solidarity of all human beings’ (p. 5). Field Hospital is organized to examine what the author says are the world’s three primary sets of ‘wounds’—the economic, political, and the wounds of violence. In Part I, ‘Markets and Bodies,’ four chapters explore how economic theory fails humanity. For Cavanaugh, the methodological individualism at the heart of the market economy, the resulting rise of and the privileging of individual choice has corrupted culture to the point where de- mocracy itself is threatened from the inside. In contrast, Christians are ‘called to live in community’ whereas ‘individualism is in fact a fiction, and a dan- gerous one at that’ (p. 65). He argues that modern is less a series of scientifically-based­ propositions and more a form of totalizing theology (a belief system, doxa) that dominates discourse in damaging ways. Therefore, modern economics must be engaged by Christians theologically, and not ac- cording to terms set by economics itself. An example is the chapter ‘Are People?’ where Cavanaugh ar- gues that the famous 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United decision, which has been criticized for giving corporations the right to free speech (‘corporations are not people’ is the common refrain), requires a response from the church but not one based on market principles that prioritize the individual. We need

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/15697320-12341543 book reviews 309 instead to realize that ‘corporate personhood is a dominant theme through- out the Bible’ (p. 16) and the real transgression of this Supreme Court deci- sion is that it amplifies the marketization of the political process, privileging those with economic wealth over those without such power. Instead of arguing about the legal rights of businesses, Cavanaugh calls the church ‘to speak as a corporate person on behalf of the poor, to promote organizations of true social solidarity, and also to encourage businesses to pursue legitimate profit within the wider telos of an economy of love’ (p. 31). In Part II of Field Hospital, Cavanaugh explores political systems and prac- tices through a theological lens. The chapter on ‘Dispersed Political Authority’ unpacks the negative power of both the market and the state in limiting how humans can and should act in social spaces. Using the 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Cavanaugh interprets this document as opening up alternative so- cial spaces for engagement that go beyond the limitations of the state/market binary (to ‘outwit the logic of both market and state,’ p. 125). Such spaces must be based on a principle of subsidiarity, the notion that social problems should be addressed at the lowest, most direct level of political interaction possible. Cavanaugh reads Caritas in Veritate as an argument for resisting the central- izing tendency of both the market economy and the state, a resistance that is ‘located within a longer trajectory of Christian social thought’ and sets forth ‘a breathtakingly ambitious vision of a political economy that is based in truth and love’ (p. 139). Another chapter in section II, ‘A of Multiplicity,’ explores further the possibilities of political power by offering us a fascinating discussion on the convergences between Augustine’s City of God and the work of secular political theorist Sheldon Weldon. The latter is well-known for his 1960 book Politics and Vision (updated 2004), which argues that modern has been overridden by a new modality of power (‘’) resulting in an ‘inverted ’ that controls society by ‘demobilizing citizens and depoliticizing them’ to the point where people are ‘simultaneously distrustful of and fiercely loyal to -state’ (p. 144). Cavanaugh recog- nizes a parallel with Augustine’s description of the earthly city, civitas terrena, divided against itself with a restless lust for domination as a form of security. Weldon advocates for a ‘fugitive democracy’ that can ‘remobilize citizens by opening up spaces for participation that outflank the of corporate- sponsored state elections’ (p. 148). However, confrontational attack is not the answer. Instead, the only truly effective response to this hegemonic power is getting people to slow down, limit their individual interests and re-construct their spaces for the sake of the good of the community. Cavanaugh notes a

International Journal of Public Theology 12 (2018) 297–310