Why The Nations Rage
By Christopher Catherwood
Hodder & Stoughton. £6.99
Publication date July 17
This is an ambitious book on the origin of human conflict; an attempt to look at what it is that impels war and massacre. In particular, the author, an historian, tries to explain the horrors of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia and see this as a possible rehearsal for a much wider and greater conflict, which we must seek to prevent.
Catherwood argues that the ethnic cleansing, massacres, mass rapes and deliberate destruction of cultural monuments like the library in Sarajevo can only be understood in the context of religious nationalism. The irony of Bosnia was that all the parties were more or less ethnically the same. The difference was religious: Catholic Croat, Orthodox Serb and 'Bosnian' Muslim (some blue-eyed and fair-haired). As the Orthodox Serbs were the main aggressors and perpetrators of war crimes (not the sole ones), Catherwood explains something of the narrowness, backwardness and territorial nature of Orthodoxy, in part a product of being under 500 years of Ottoman rule but also for having lacked a Renaissance, Reformation and Counter Reformation which he says helped to open up Western Europe eventually to a more tolerant view.
However, Catherwood is anxious not just to tell of the Bosnian tragedy but also warn that with the end of the Cold War, with its constraints of Mutually Assured Destruction, conflict on a global scale is not over but only too possible. The form he suggest this might take, drawing on other academics' ideas, is the clash of the major world cultures e.g. Europe v. Islam or China v. the West, in which the clashes will be the worldviews i.e. the essentially religious worldviews of the different culture blocks.
In this probable scenario, Catherwood warns, the West's tolerant secularism with its superficial materialism, which he calls the 'bland consensus of the MacWorld view' will be wholly inadequate. This is because it is deeply despised by other cultures. Rather, he argues, it is Christianity (and I assume he means a biblical Christianity) which does have something to offer which can help to produce tolerance and peace. This is because, he says, Christianity really does uphold the unity of the human family; truly upholds tolerance in that it recognises the essential voluntariness of faith i.e. God lets us choose and we must have the same attitude to others, and at the same time has values which other worldviews can respect.
In assessing Catherwood's theme, I found myself both stimulated, challenged and yet not wholly satisfied. While I think, as all Christians must, that human beings are essentially religious, God-fearers or idol-worshippers and sometimes both, and while I recognise the place played by formal religion in contributing to conflict, especially in Bosnia, I am not sure that sufficient weight is given to other sources of conflict - material gain, power and prestige, ethnic, caste and class hatred and ideological differences. Then again, I found the discussion on nationalism insufficient. For Catherwood, the Christian cannot be a nationalist and I sort of know what he means, but what about patriotism? And should Christians object to the current New Labour plans for devolution as they are concessions to Welsh and Scottish nationalism? Or support the rush to the federal superstate in Europe because it seeks to replace the Nation State? Or criticise the post-war colonial African and Indian nationalist movements etc. etc. Put another way, are Christians to be international citizens with only legal obligations to 'their' country and no other attachments? How does the church deal with diversity? I wanted more on this.
