Boo for Cusa

There’s a great deal to like in the work of Nicholas of Cusa, but William Cavanaugh ( The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict ) places him at the beginning of an unfortunate genealogy that develops into the modern conception of religion as a generic universal interior impulse, reducible to propositions, that forms a distinct realm from all other areas of life.  He quotes Cusa’s comment that “there is, in spite of many varieties of rites, but one religion,” and observes:

“Religion here is clear not identified with rites or the bodily disciplines proper to virtue, but with an interior wisdom that underlies all rites . . . .In Cusa, we see the beginnings of religion as an interior impulse that is universal to human beings and therefore stands behind the multiplicity of exterior rites that express it.”