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The Myth of the State as Peacemaker
...As mentioned before, state history tells us falsely that peace and justice originate with the state. The modern myth we are taught in our schools about the origins of the modern nation-states are instructive here. The modern state was founded on the myth that the state must save us from the “wars of religion” of the 16th Century. In other words, the state is trying to save all of us from the church. When the Reformation began and the Holy Catholic Church began to splinter, the state tells us that these factions began killing each other over stupid things like baptism, and other doctrines. The Catholic will kill the protestant for not recognizing the transformation of the Eucharist into the actual body of Christ, and the Protestant in turn would kill the Catholic because he would not renounce such doctrine and both Catholic and Protestant would kill us Anabaptists because we refused to fight at all! Well thank our lucky stars the state stepped in and put all these fanatics in their place. This is the story we are told in our state sponsored history books.

An irony of this false story we are told is that it is also religious in that it is also a story of salvation (it is “soteriological” in theological terms). We are saved from something and into something else. Hence it is a story of salvation.

The problem is that this story is a lie. These so called “wars of religion” did not make the state necessary, but as theologian William Cavanaugh has shown, these wars were a symptom of an already emerging state. For example, Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, attacked and pillaged Rome with his armies in 1527. A Catholic pillaging Rome! Later when he attacked Lutheran strongholds Cavanaugh says that this was about consolidating imperial power and not about doctrinal loyalties. Indeed virtually all of the wars during this century were about princes attempting to consolidate their power rather than about loyalty to any particular faith or dogma. The emerging state, far from being birthed as a peacemaker spent its early years in bitter war: The state arose not as peacemaker but as war maker, the state arose not as a unifier but a divider and conqueror. Charles Tilly has written an examination of this history entitled “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime” in which he argues that the origins of the state more resemble a racketeering ring than a knight in shining armor saving a far maiden. The story of salvation that we are told is simply false, through and through. The State then moves to create “religion” by making belief a private affair with no relevance to any sort of social body that requires a politic. Religion is itself a creation of the nation-state and a legitimator of it. ...