Scapegoating

This picture was taken by my daughter Issabella at a bullfight in Spain. She and husband Ted are finishing a year in Barcellona. Her blog is a wonderful description of Spain and her latest post inspired me to ponder Rene Girard's theory of scapegoating. Read Issabella's post - A wonderful nightmare in Sevilla - first.

With apologies to Professor Girard, I have outlined his scapegoating mechanism below. Included are comments by Walter Wink who linked Girard's thesis to atonement theories. Wink postulates that Jesus entire ministry was opposition to systems of dominance and that God did not kill Jesus - as most theories of the atonement say - but WE killed Jesus through the domination systems that continue to this day.

Rene’ Girard’s theory of the Scapegoat

It is clear that the domination system is founded on violence but not why.

Human origins of violence

1. We lacked instinctual breaking mechanisms – wolves will spare a defeated rival
2. Humans fell headlong into endless spirals of violence
3. We survived – Girard believes – because we discovered a mechanism that could perform a final killing  of a surrogate victim

Scapegoat

1. Usually randomly chosen
2. Disabled, old, or marginal
3. No one would seek to avenge – but everyone agrees is to blame
4. Regarded as odious – monstrous but because his death brings reconciliation he is a savior, a god, a cult figure

This is the origin of

• Religion
• gods
• Sacrifice
• Ritual
• Myth

Mimetic desire

1. We become human by learning from others
2. Imitate (mimesis) by desiring what they desire
3. In itself this is good
4. This defines value

Mimetic rivalry

1. But in a world of scarcity this is problematic
2. Be like me – but when you reach to take it  - don’t be like me
3. Conflict ensues
4. Girard believes Oedipal conflict is more simply explained this way than Freud’s

Crisis of distinctions occurs

1. When the differences that formerly separated potential rivals are dissolved as a result of both desiring the same thing –
2. Social distinctions which preserved order collapse
3. Students seize the admin bldg
4. Soldiers refuse to obey orders
5. Mill workers shut down a plant

Collapse can be avoided if society can find a scapegoat

The necessary victim

1. Can be a foreigner, an eccentric, a communist, a witch , a homosexual,a prophet
2. The fiction of the scapegoat’s guilt must be maintained  regardless of the real truth
3. Caiaphas – it is expedient that one man die and that the whole nation not perish (John 11:50)

Sacralizing the victim

1. Victim is rendered sacred as compensation for sacrificial death
2. Sometimes elevated to divinity
3. Not only is violence survived it is the impetus for
1. Development of religion and myth
2. Legislation
3. Human culture

Sacrificial repetition

1. Subsequent sacrifices repeat in strictly controlled ritual the primordial structure of the scapegoat mechanism
2. Internal aggressions are thus diverted and expended ritually
3. Social fabric is preserved
4. Religion is organized violence in the service of social tranquility
5. Kierkegaard – the ethical expression of what Abraham did is  - murder
6. Religious expression is - sacrifice

Girard’s conclusion

1. The Christian Gospel is the counterforce to this power – it reveals the immortal lie.
2. There is nothing unique about the suffering and death of Jesus
3. What is astonishing is that contrary to other myths – the gospel myth denounces the verdict passed by the powers that be
4. The gospels are at great pains to show that the charges against Jesus do not hold water
5. This is done to reveal the scapegoating mechanism

What went wrong

1. The earliest Christians were not able to sustain this intensity
2. The dimmed it by confusing God’s intention to expose the scapegoating mechanism with God’s intention for Jesus to die.
3. This took the powers off the hook

What is wrong with this kind of God?

1. Jesus simply declared people forgiven confident that he spoke the mind of God.
2. Why then is a sacrificial victim necessary to make forgiveness possible?
3. Does not the death of Jesus reveal that all such sacrifices are unnecessary?

Walter Wink on Rene’ Girard

1. Not all myths are lies masking events of generative violence. Some myths (sacred stories) reveal the truth.
2. Scapegoat myth is just a subset of redemptive violence
3. Paul betrays an ambivalence toward sacrifice  - Christ is the end of sacrificing by exposing the scapegoat mechanism BUT he goes on the say that Christ is the final sacrifice whose death was required by God.
4. Christianity has suffered ever since.
5. Our sacred stories do not have a monopoly on the criticism of violence

But in fairness to Girard, the other sacred stories (myths) do not raise the scapegoating mechanism to consciousness

Three creation stories - which one do we embrace?

Two creation stories appear in Genesis and one is from ancient Babylonian mythology. Walter Wink makes the case that the western church ignores the two biblical stories but embraces the story of creation  found in the mythology of Tiamet and Marduk. 

Our sacred stories are high religion, as Joseph Sittler says in the post below. Joseph Campbell says that a story (myth) is that which can never be yet ever is. All human civilizations are defined by their sacred stories. 

The first biblical account of creation describes a creator that is good and the creation is good. The second creation story about Adam and Eve reveals how this good creation was corrupted by humanity with the introduction of violence - Cain and Abel. Humanity created violence, not God.

A very strong case can be made that if we embraced these stories, we would take better care of creation and ourselves. If we worshiped the God of the bible we would care for the earth and its people and resources because God's creation is good. If we worshiped the God of the bible, we would reject violence because violence is not what God intended for the world that God created.

Clearly, the church has not embraced these stories. The fundies reduce the creation myths to stories of history,   or science, or geology that require that you believe that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church on Sunday. By focusing on the literal facts of the myths, they suck the life out of our sacred stories.

Tiamet was a great Goddess who mistreated the lesser gods. Marduk made a deal with the other gods that if he killed Tiamet, he would be rewarded. The universe was created when Marduk filled Tiamet with a great wind and impaled her on his sword (think Jaws) so that Tiamet's entrails became the components of the universe. The essence of this myth is that violence is redemptive.

Look at our popular culture and you can see the story of Tiamet and Marduk played out over and over. Most children know the Popeye story. A bully beats up the hero for most of the story until the hero eats his spinach and defeats the bully in a terrible act of violence. Have you ever seen a Popeye episode where he and Bluto sit down and talk about their differences over OliveOyl? Is non-violence ever a factor?

The hollywood movies that follow the Tiamet and Marduk are too numerous to list but they include the Terminator movies, Zorro, Superman, Rambo, and on and on. Violence is always redemptive.

When we were attacked by 17 Saudis and two Pakistani's on 911 our response was extreme violence. A trillion dollar war that we still wage.

Please see the op-ed I wrote after 911 ( on the page bar at the top of this blog) which offers a non-violent response to that attack.

The church of Jesus Christ was virtually silent on the build up to the invasion of Iraq. For sure, all of the Christian denominations - except the Missouri Synod Lutherans and the Southern Baptists - took positions opposing the invasion, but these statements were toothless because the pastors preaching from the thousands of pulpits in the church were afraid to go against the thirst for retribution that was motivating the people in the pews. 

If we Lutherans want to be relevant in the 21st century, we must return to the roots of the church. Non-violence. We must not equivocate on this issue.