Premium
The World in a Wafer: A Geography of the Eucharist as Resistance to Globalization
Author(s) -
Cavanaugh William T.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
modern theology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.144
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1468-0025
pISSN - 0266-7177
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0025.00093
Subject(s) - globalization , eucharist , state (computer science) , demise , perfection , resistance (ecology) , political science , political economy , philosophy , sociology , law , epistemology , mathematics , ecology , algorithm , biology
This essay explores Eucharist as resistance to late‐capitalist “globalization.” Globalization is often touted as the first true realization of catholicity. Globalization is seen as the demise of the nation‐state which has caused so much division among peoples. In contrast, I argue that globalization does not signal the decline of the nation‐state but the perfection of the modern state's subsumption of local communities under the universal. True catholicity is based in the practice of the Eucharist, which realizes a universal communion but does so only in local Eucharistic communities, thus overcoming the dichotomy of universal and particular.