In The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (2009), theology professor William T. Cavanaugh refutes the orthodoxy that religion uniquely fosters violence and that by imposing secularism the modern state has saved mankind from a world of sectarian violence. Cavanaugh reveals the hypocrisy of the modern nation state whose very existence is based on a secular crusade against the bogus threat of religion.