Field Hospital: The Church's Engagement with a Wounded World

by William T. Cavanaugh

Compelling social perspectives from a prominent Catholic scholar

Pope Francis in a 2013 interview famously likened the church to a field hospital. In this book William Cavanaugh adopts Pope Francis’s metaphor to show how the church can help heal both the spiritual and the material wounds of the world.
 
As he examines the intersection of theology with themes of religious freedom, economic injustice, religious violence, and other pressing topics, Cavanaugh emphasizes that the church cannot condemn the evils of the world from a position of superiority. Rather, he says, its practices of solidarity with humanity must be based on a profound recognition that the church shares in the guilt of human sin.
 
Cavanaugh’s Field Hospital provides guideposts for a church that is willing to go outside of itself onto today’s battlefields — both metaphorical and literal — not to inflict wounds but to bind them up and heal them.

Genres: Theology, Politics, Church, Religion

276 pages, Paperback

First published February 12, 2016

About the author

Dr. William T. Cavanaugh, Ph.D. (Religion, Duke University; M.A., Theology and Religious Studies, Cambridge University) is Associate Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Reviews

[Squolle]

"Field Hospital" ist, was ich erst nicht mitgeschnitten hatte, eine Aufsatzsammlung. Entsprechend schlaff ist der rote Faden durch das Buch selbst gezogen.
Die einzelnen Aufsätze umkreisen grob die Themen Ökonomie, Politische Theologie und den Zusammenhang von Religion und Gewalt.
Am meisten gefreut hat mich, dass er in einem Aufsatz mal seinen Begriff des Körpers theologisch ausbaut. Auch dass er sich auf eine ernsthafte Auseinandersetzung mit Carl Schmitt eingelassen hat, die über die langweilige Wiederholung der immergleichen drei Schmitt-Zitate hinausging, hat mich beglückt.
Was für mich mittlerweile Cavanaugh-Standard, aber eigentlich garnicht selbstverständlich ist, sind seine ausgewählten und mutigen Griffe zur Geschichtswissenschaft. Das Kapitel über Konstantin, Religionsfreiheit und das Catholic Worker Movement sind einfach solide und erhellend. Er zieht seine Diskussion über Religionsfreiheit anhand einer indigenen Gruppe auf, die in den 1920ern ihre traditionellen Tänze unter Berufung auf die Religionsfreiheit gegen die amerikanische Regierung verteidigt hat und damit Prämissen eingekauft hat, die zur Gefährdung des Stammesgefüges wurden. Was fürn geiler Anfahrtsweg, um über Religionsfreiheit zu reden.

Hier und da wiederholt sich das Buch sehr stark, weil es eben eine Sammlung ist. Es doppelt sich auch teils mit anderen Büchern von Cavanaugh; insbesondere "The Myth of Religious Violence" und "Migrations of the Holy".

[Mike Fendrich · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Cavanaugh is a brilliant cultural observer coming from the aspect of Catholic social theology. I do wish he would wrestle with Romans and Galatians more, our theological differences seem to get in our way the more I read him. But it is still a profitable book, as are his others, and DePaul is fortunate to have him on staff.

[Joan Connell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating concept: the church, not as an institution, but as a field hospital set up in a crisis zone, where compassionate people are on duty to help.

At a time when our confidence in organized religion is shaken by sex abuse and other scandals, this book cuts to the heart of how a person of faith responds to a wounded world.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a collection of essays, mostly published elsewhere. Cavanaugh's expertise is political theology from the perspective of an Roman Catholic theologian and that perspective is apparent throughout the work. This collection is intended for the specialist. Watch for a more extensive review I wrote that will be published in the Englewood Review of Books.