At the end of the First World War, iconoclastic American journalist Randolph Bourne famously warned, “War is the health of the state.” He had witnessed the unprecedented expansion of national power in the heat of war mobilization. Twenty years ago, political scientist Bruce D. Porter likewise argued, “States make war, but war also makes states.” For the losers, of course, unsuccessful war destroys states, but the hundred years since the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 ought to make the symbiosis between warfare and Leviathan obvious. Do we find similar tendencies when we turn from war and politics to … Continue reading Religion in the Service of State Mass-Murder